Mum wore wig and adopted fake name to steal £31,000 of top shelf wine

A British mum who wore a disguise as part of a scheme to steal £30,000 of wine from a high-end restaurant could walk free in six months.

Natali Ray, 57, was one of two people involved in the ‘planned out heist’ at L’Auberge Provençale in Virginia, US, last November.

The former guest house owner and her accomplice, Nikola Krndija, also 57, told the restaurant’s co-owner that they were representatives of a wealthy Canadian businesswoman looking to book a 25-person dinner.

The pair parked far from the restaurant, wore wigs to conceal their identities and introduced themselves under fake names, with Ray going by the pseudonym Stephanie Baker.

She then requested a tour of the wine cellar, telling sommelier Christian Borel her boss was ‘very particular’ about storage.

Once there, Ray distracted the co-owner while Krndija allegedly took eight bottles of wine and slipped them into his coat, swapping them out for cheaper plonk.

Following the incident, Krndija fled the scene and boarded a flight to Austria, and has not been seen since.

But Ray was apprehended in the car park and later pleaded guilty to grand larceny, possession of burglary tools, and defrauding a restaurant or inn.

Ray had faced up to 40 years behind bars over the crimes, but six months into her sentence, she is now facing the prospect of freedom much earlier than anticipated.

During a hearing at Clarke Circuit Court on Monday, Ray was handed a one-year sentence, which was shorter than prosecutors expected.

However, it was deemed she had already served half her sentence in the six months she has been held in custody.

It comes after two bottles with a combined value of around £22,200 had been returned to the restaurant following the incident.

However, the restaurant’s owners argued the wines were not stored properly following the heist, and therefore had lost much of their value.

During the trial at Clarke Circuit Court, it emerged that two of the bottles had been handed back in the months that followed the heist, including a prized pinot noir valued at $24,000 (£17,000), and another worth $7,000 (£5,200).

But the restaurant’s owners argued that these wines had lost much of their value, as they were not stored properly while missing.

Celeste Borel, co-owner of L’Auberge Provençale, told local newspaper The Winchester Star of the decision: ‘It really makes you question the judicial system.

‘Nobody’s getting a cellar tour again unless I happen to know them extremely well already.’