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Members of an Italy-based clan of burglars who took more than £1.2m worth of items, including from former Newcastle United striker Alexander Isak, have been ordered to return just £1 each.

Siblings Valentino and Giacomo Nikolov, their female sibling Jela Jovanovic and her child Charlie journeyed to the northeastern of the UK to raid multiple homes in April 2024.

The foursome were imprisoned for from a decade or less in May 2025.

At a criminal assets hearing at Newcastle Crown Court, Jela Jovanovic and the brothers Nikolov were ordered to repay £1 each while Charlie Jovanovic must pay over a thousand pounds.

Details of the Break-ins

The court was told the group came by ferry in the United Kingdom on March 27, 2024 and used a campervan as their "base of operations", which they parked at Scotch Corner and Durham rest stops while utilizing a separate vehicle to search for targets and carry out burglaries.

On 31 March they stole more than one million pounds of items such as designer clothing, purses, jewelry and a CBE medal from a house on a street in Jesmond, Newcastle, while the owners were away.

The next evening, the gang entered a house on a gated cul-de-sac in Whitburn, and took designer handbags, jewellery and shoes valued at more than £100,000.

After scouting out the football club's training ground for two days, they then acted at the home of Swedish player Alexander Isak in Darras Hall, Ponteland on April 4, stealing £10,000 in money, sixty-eight thousand pounds worth of jewelry and the player's one hundred twenty thousand pound Audi RS6.

The group, who were portrayed by prosecutors as professional touring thieves, wore hand coverings and masks, switched their phones off as they neared their targets and strapped a number plate, which had been taken from a garage in Chester-le-Street, on to their car with rubber straps.

They were arrested in the Birmingham area on April 13.

Legal Hearings and Sentencing

Valentino had pleaded not guilty to the burglary plot but was convicted by jurors, while his three relations had all entered admissions to the identical accusation.

At the criminal gains session, lawyer the prosecution said each of the defendants had benefited from their offenses to the amount of over £1.2 million, which was based on what the victims said they had had stolen.

But Charlie Jovanovic was the sole individual deemed to have any money that could be "recovered", namely over a thousand pounds which had already been seized by police, the judge heard, with two weeks to be spent in jail if he defaulted.

The remaining members had no money or assets so were ordered to pay a nominal fee of £1 per person, with one week in incarceration the result if the sum was not submitted.

Judge Robert Spragg said if they were discovered with property in the coming years, "such as driving around Italy in a sports car or owning a property", the prosecution could initiate new proceedings to "satisfy the sum outstanding".