Two people have been jailed for 17 years each after a scheme in which two men were killed and two others poisoned. According to the account of the case, the pair spiked the drinks of their victims in order to rob them, in a calculated operation that turned deadly. The sentences bring to a close a disturbing case in which robbery was pursued through the drugging of unsuspecting men.
At the centre of the scheme was Adina Mihai, who posed as a sex worker in order to meet men in their own homes. Presenting herself in that way gave her a pretext to be invited inside, placing her in a position of trust with men who believed they were simply meeting someone. It was that access to the victims' homes that made the rest of the plan possible.
Once inside, Mihai laced the men's drinks with a powerful sedative. The drug left the victims incapacitated, unable to resist or to realise what was happening to them. It was this deliberate drugging that lay at the heart of the case, transforming what was presented as a private encounter into the opening stage of a robbery.
While the men were left unconscious by the sedative, Mihai's partner, Madalin Dumitru, played his own part in the operation. He would rifle through their belongings as they lay incapacitated, taking advantage of their helpless state to steal from them. The division of roles between the two allowed the pair to target their victims methodically.
In total, the scheme claimed a heavy toll. Two of the men who had their drinks spiked died as a result, while two others were poisoned but survived the ordeal. What might have been treated as a series of robberies instead became a case involving the deaths of two people, giving the prosecution and the court a far graver set of facts to weigh.
The two men who died were identified as Malcolm King, who was 80 years old and lived in Gloucestershire, and Gary Mouat, who was 36 and from Banbury. The gap in their ages and the different places they lived underlined how the pair's method could ensnare very different men, united only by having been targeted through the same deadly ruse of drink spiking.
With the sentencing, Adina Mihai and Madalin Dumitru were each ordered to serve 17 years behind bars. The case stands as a stark example of a predatory scheme that exploited men in the supposed privacy of their homes, using drugs not only to steal but with fatal consequences for two of those they targeted. The outcome closes the criminal proceedings against the pair over the deaths and poisonings.