A sex worker caught wearing £3,250 diamond earrings stolen in the £25 million raid at Tamara Ecclestone's mansion told jurors today she is 'just a stupid chicken' and had no knowledge of the theft carried out by a 'professional' burglary gang.  

Maria Mester, 47, denied having any involvement in the conspiracy, which saw four alleged thieves steal expensive jewellery, property and cash from three celebrity homes in West London during a two-week period last December.  

She insisted she was paid to be in London as an escort, and nothing more. 

Mester gesticulated repeatedly as she told jurors she had nothing to do with the plot.

Under cross-examination from junior prosecutor Paul Jarvis at Isleworth Crown Court on Monday afternoon, she described herself as a 'stupid chicken' compared with the 'professional' burglars.

Mester said she was in London only because she was paid around £5,000 to work as an escort for one of the alleged burglars, staying in an apartment in Orpington, Bromley, where the raiders were said to have been based.

The escort, her barman son Emil Bogdan Savastru, 30, along with security worker Sorin Marcovici, 53, and hotel concierge Alexandru Stan, 49, all deny involvement in the raid.

Isleworth Crown Court heard Mester was arrested at Stansted Airport wearing the pair of stolen earrings on January 31. 

The earrings are said to be 'identical' to a pair stolen from Tamara Ecclestone's home.

Made by jewellers NOA, they are valued at £3,250, and described as: 'earrings, modern, by NOA, each of elongated teardrop design, pave set with round brilliant cut diamond melees, colourless to tinted, hinged hook fittings, yellow mount'. 

She had also posted a photograph wearing one of the stolen necklaces on Facebook on January 1, jurors heard. 

Mr Jarvis asked: 'Why would these men invite an innocent woman like yourself to spend a week at their base of operations?

Mester replied: 'These men did not invite me, only one of them paid me to be his escort, there is a difference between being invited by both of them, and being asked by one and paid by one to be his escort and offering sexual services.'

Mester replied: 'He invited me to be his escort, not to participate (in the burglaries).

'I came here as an escort.

I didn't come here to watch them, I didn't come here to babysit them. It's not rocket science.

'A man who wants to have fun does not entrust an escort with his life, his personal details, his information.'

She described herself and her son as 'two victims in this'.

Mr Jarvis said told Mester she was 'more than just an escort', to which the defendant replied: 'No, I was a simple escort, please prove to me I wasn't.'

The court heard Mester was arrested in January this year after returning to London, when she was said to be wearing a pair of earrings identical to those stolen in the Ecclestone raid.

Mr Jarvis said: 'You were perfectly happy to help plan and commit these burglaries, weren't you?'

Mester replied: 'That's what you say.

Is that the reason why I returned wearing those earrings when I was arrested?

'You're talking here about professionals, I am just a stupid chicken.'

Leonard Smith, QC, for Mester, asked her at Iselworth Crown Court today why she had lied about the stolen earrings in her first defence statement by saying it was a gift from 'an Arab client in Dubai'.

She said: 'The truth is that I was so terrified and right at the beginning, without the lawyers I have at the moment.

'I didn't know whom I could trust...I was kept in prison for a month and ten days without clothing, the police didn't give them to me.

My child had been beaten up, scalded with water and sugar in the prison where he was kept.

She added: 'I didn't know which direction to go, I was accused of having stolen £50m.' 

Mester stood in the dock with her hands clasped behind her back, her hair in a ponytail, wearing a purple jumper and speaking through an interpreter as she answered questions. 

Mr Smith asked why she didn't tell police she had returned to the UK due to her son's arrest.

She said: 'In that moment I didn't realise how serious the situation was, I felt as if somebody was saying that I killed my mother, we are talking about £50m, not £5,000.

Mester was asked why she answered no comment to police questions about the alleged burglars she had spent time with.

She said: 'In those moments I didn't care about anybody, I only cared about leaving, and I was living a nightmare that was not my life, I asked them to submit me to a lie detector.'

Three days before the Ecclestone burglary the thieves had made off with jewellery worth Euro 600,000 and Euro 400,000 in cash, from the Knightsbridge home of late Leicester City chairman Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha after cracking one of his safes on 10 December, the court has heard.

The burglars had made off with £60,000 worth of valuables from the home Chelsea FC manager Frank Lampard shares with his TV presenter wife Christine on December 1.

On December 17, Mester was filmed on a luxury goods spending spree at Harrods with a sister of one of the alleged burglars.

She is accused of bringing in her son Savastru to help organise the thieves' stay in London.

Savastru was caught in possession of a Tag Heuer watch and Louis Vuitton bag, similar to one taken in the raid, and was planning to board a flight to Japan, it is claimed.

Mester, of no fixed address, denies three counts of conspiracy to commit burglary and concealing criminal property.

Savastru, of Bethnal Green, denies two counts of conspiracy to burgle and attempting to remove criminal property.

Marcovici, of Romford, and Stan, of Harrow, deny conspiracy to burgle.

The trial continues.