Shanel Tofaeono, 39, is one of only six people who has pleaded guilty to participating in a scheme involving the Germani Jewellery store in Sydney in January 2022. He was sentenced to a maximum of four years and seven months in prison.
During the robbery, men posing as customers threatened a staff member with a knife while demanding access to the safe.
The men allegedly bound the hands and feet of staff members with cable ties before leaving the store with an expensive collection of jewellery.
Judge John Pickering discounted Tofaeono’s sentence due to his early plea to one count of detaining a person in company to commit a serious indictable offence and one count of attempting to dishonestly obtain a financial advantage by deception.
According to reporting by The Guardian, Judge Pickering said Tofaeono played an instrumental role in making the 11-minute robbery seem ‘real’ enough to fool investigators and said employees of the store suffered greatly.
“Some of the jewellery fell onto the floor as her hands were shaking so much due to fear,” he said.
“For her, for all intents and purposes, she was then involved in what was a very real robbery to her, one that must have been terrifying.”
The other five accused have each pleaded not guilty to a range of charges and will face a joint trial in May 2025. Authorities are yet to recover more than 160 items, valued at $2.8 million, that the jeweller reported to insurers as stolen.
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