Italian police find stolen Van Goghs 14 years after infamous Amsterdam heist
Police unveil paintings recovered from house in stronghold of Camorra crime syndicate near
Naples
Van Gogh’s View of the Sea at Scheveningen is presented at a press conference in Naples after it was recovered from a house near the Italian city. Photograph: Ciro Fusco/EPA
paintings that were stolen from a museum in Amsterdam more than a decade ago have been recovered by Italian authorities in Naples following a sting operation that targeted organised crime.
The paintings, View of the Sea at Scheveningen, painted in 1882, and Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen, painted in 1884, were recently discovered after allegedly being hidden away in one of the houses of an international drug trafficker based in Castellammare di Stabia, near Naples.
“When we finally found them, we did not believe our eyes,” an unnamed local official told the Italian newspaper La Repubblica.
The authenticity of the paintings has already been confirmed by an expert from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, from where they were stolen in 2002.
Axel Rütger, director of the Van Gogh Museum, said he wasn’t sure when the paintings could be returned to the Netherlands, as they are likely to be needed as evidence in the ensuing trial.
“After so many years I didn’t dare to think they would ever return,” Rütger said. “We’ve waited 14 years for this moment and of course we’d like to take them straight home. We’ll need to exercise a bit of patience, but I am convinced we can count on the support of the Italian authorities.”
The frames have been removed and the seascape has a small patch of damage in the bottom left-hand corner, the museum said, but otherwise the paintings appeared to be in good condition.
The theft was considered one of the most infamous heists to rock the art world in recent times. The thieves entered the Van Gogh museum from the roof of the building, which allowed them to get past security and cameras undetected, even though their entry did trigger alarms. They had used a ladder to climb up to a window and then smashed through it using a cloth to protect their hands.
Two men, Octave Durham, an art thief who earned the nickname The Monkey for his ability to evade police, and his accomplice Henk Bieslijn, were eventually convicted of the theft in 2004 afterpolicediscovered their DNA at the scene of the crime.They were handed four year sentences, but authorities were never able to track down the stolen works.
The FBI considered the heist one of the “top 10” art crimes,according to its website. Italian investigative authorities told the Ansa news agency that the paintings were worth £77m.
View of the Sea at Scheveningen is one of Van Gogh’s early paintings and depicts the beach resort close to The Hague. It was the only work in the museum’s collection from Van Gogh’s two years in The Hague and one of just two Dutch seascapes the artist made.
Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen is a smaller work that Van Gogh painted for his mother in 1884, and depicts a church in Brabant where his father Theodorus was attached as a preacher. After his father’s death in 1885 Van Gogh revised the painting, adding figures of women wearing black shawls used in mourning.
Dario Franceschini, the Italian culture minister, said the discovery was extraordinary and “confirmed the strength of the Italian system in the fight against the illicit trafficking of works of art”.
“The result of this investigation confirms how interested criminal organisations are in art works which they use both as a form of investment and as a source of funds,” he said in a statement.
John Dickie, a historian and expert in organised crime in Italy, said the reason the country was known for its expertise in following the illicit trade of art was the extent to which that trade existed in the first place.
“Italy also has the best mafia police in the world, because it has the most powerful mafia networks,” he added.
The town of Castellammare di Stabia, about 19 miles south-east of Naples, where the paintings were found, has long been known as a Camorra stronghold. It was the home of Assunta Maresca, known as Pupetta, who was a former beauty queen, convicted murderer, and Camorra boss described as a trailblazer and suffragette in the syndicate.
Unlike the highly organised Sicilian mafia, the Camorra is an “archipelago of gangs”, Dickie said, with some branches being more sophisticated than others.
“With this sort of thing, it is easy to say the Camorra did it and then jump to the conclusion that the Camorra is moving into the art market,” Dickie said.
He said the discovery and the alleged involvement of the Camorra actually reflects the opportunistic nature of the Neapolitan syndicate. Its members spend a lot of time in prison and are part of a vast underworld network in which illegal goods are sold and traded.
“I don’t think we need to conclude that it’s the Camorra boss who is putting this art on his mantlepiece. A lot of times these people don’t have a lot of class [and] they wouldn’t necessarily be impressed by having this,” Dickie said.
Generally, highly-valued art can be stolen by thieves for the purpose of selling it, only for the thieves to realise that the work is so famous that it cannot be purchased and shown, forcing them to sell or trade it at a heavy discount.
The camorristiwho end up with precious works of art may not even be aware of the value of the painting they have in their posession.
Federico Varese, an expert in criminology from Oxford University, said it was unsurprising that the discovery exposed a link between Amsterdam and the Camorra, given the Dutch city’s reputation as a major drug hub. Cross-border investigations dating back to the 1980s had found the presence of the Camorra in Amsterdam.
“What I know for sure is that a lot of camorristi are in Amsterdam, not because they want to be rooted there or deal in racketeering of shops or that kind of thing, but because they are there to buy drugs. Amsterdam is a hub for the buying and selling of illegal goods,” Varese said.
In the Camorra underworld, art – like anything that is valuable – is a currency that can be used in drug trafficking. In some cases, it might also be seen as giving prestige to camorristi, Varese said.
The Italian prime minister, Matteo Renzi, informed his Dutch counterpart Mark Rutte about the police operation before the funeral in Jerusalem of former Israeli leader Shimon Peres, according to a Reuters report.
Art Hostage Comments: In January 2016, officers arrested two suspected clan members, Raffaele Imperiale and Mario Cerrone. Reports say that Mario Cerrone confessed that the two stolen Van Goghs were hidden in Mr Imperiale's home in Castellammare di Stabia, 34km (21 miles) from Naples. They were wrapped in a cloth and stashed inside safe at a house in Castellammare di Stabia, near Pomeii. The actual thieves, Octave Durham, an art thief who earned the nickname ‘The Monkey’ for his evasiveness, and his accomplice, Henk Bieslijn – were convicted with four-year sentences, but the priceless art was never recovered – until now
On returning from a dinner party on October 2 night in Paris--which she was visiting for Paris Fashion Week--Kim Kardashian, 35, retreated to her room inside her portered building apartment.
These apartment buildings have especially been designed for multi-millionaires. The Kardashians stayed here regularly every time they came to Paris, as did Madonna, Leonardo Di Caprio, and the late Prince.
Kim's sisters, Kourtney Kardashian, 37, and Kendall Jenner, 20, went out for the night with Kim's bodyguard, Pascal Duvier.
Kim was in bed with just her robe on when she heard boots pounding up the stairs of her two-story apartment.
Kim's stylist and long-time friend Simone Harouche was believed to be in the bedroom downstairs.
Kim posted a video of her on Snapchat, showing off outfits and her shiny new ring, wishing friend Blac Chyna a happy baby shower.
Five masked men, dressed as police officers, threatened the building's concierge with a gun and forced him to take them to Kim's room and unlock the door. The concierge was reportedly bound and gagged, and locked in a stairwell.
Kim saw at least one masked man and another wearing a police hat through a sliding glass door. She knew something was amiss, so she rolled off the bed and tried dialling her bodyguard on her cell phone, reports TMZ.
Before she could finish dialling, one of the men snatched the phone out of her hands.
Two men held a gun to Kim's head, while the others tied her hands with plastic handcuffs and duct-taped her. One of the men grabbed her by the ankles, duct-taped them, picked her up and put her in the bathtub, reports Hollywood Life.
This is where Kim said she feared that she was going to be raped. She started screaming and begging them to not kill her because she has children at home. She told them to take whatever they wanted.
Though Kim did not understand a word of their French, she realised they were saying "ring, ring" repeatedly. Kim figured they were after the new ring Kanye had recently gifted her. She told them where it was in the apartment.
The men stole a jewellery box with USD 6.4 million worth of jewels inside, as well as a USD 4.3 million ring, which many suspect is the massive diamond Kanye West had gifted her a few months ago.
Kim's friend Simone heard the commotion and managed to lock herself in her room's bathroom to call Kim's bodyguard, Pascal, and sister Kourtney.
Kim's bodyguard, Pascal Duvier, arrived at the apartment just two minutes after the robbers escaped.
The entire incident took around 6 minutes.
Kim Kardashian reunited with husband Kanye West in New York City on Monday, October 3. The reality star was greeted by West at Teterboro Airport around 11 am, reports US Weekly.
According to Daily Mail, the raid on Kim's apartment had all the hallmarks of the Pink Panthers, a gang of super-criminals who have got away with tens of millions of pounds in jewels in high-profile heists since 1984.
A Supreme Court Justice Just Talked About Kim Kardashian’s Robbery in Court
Kim Kardashian (left) and Justice Stephen Breyer (right).Photo: Getty Images
Justice Stephen Breyer on Tuesday proved that he’s just as glued to the pop-culture news cycle as the rest of us when he brought up Kim Kardashian’s horrific robbery in court, thereby introducing it into the official Supreme Court record.
The justices were in the middle of hearing oral arguments in the case of a man who had been convicted of bank fraud whose public defender claimed that a federal statute under which the defendant was convicted requires an intent to cause financial loss to the bank itself. Breyer was skeptical over the argument, and he brought up the recent theft of $10 million worth of Kardashian’s jewelry in Paris to illustrate his point, according to SCOTUS blog.
Breyer wondered if all of Kardashian’s jewelry is insured — “indeed over-insured” — and she therefore wouldn’t lose any money from the robbery, is it still technically considered theft? The justice believes the answer to that question is yes.
This is just further proof that everything in life can be discussed in terms of the Kardashians.
Art Hostage Comments:
Parisian suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis is where this heist eminated from, armed with inside knowledge, gang, including two siblings, struck and fled.
Michael Morse crew, Ray Hobin, Darryl Vincent, Ira Hussey Aaron Sherman Sergei Khatchaturov and sibling Yurii Khatchaturov
Aaron Sherman's mother Penny used to roll with the Michael Morse gang, Ray Hobin, Darryl Vincent, Ira Hussey etc.
How about Sergei Khatchaturov and sibling Yurii Khatchaturov or Hines and Gagne ?
Art stolen from Steinberg heir likely to go to organized crime: expert
Dozens of paintings stolen from the residence of a wealthy couple in the Laurentians are likely destined to end up in the hands of organized crime figures who use artworks as currency, an expert on the subject says. Earlier this week, 25 to 30 paintings were stolen from a home in Ivry-sur-le-Lac owned by Mitzi Steinberg-Dobrin, heir to the former Steinberg grocery chain and her husband, Mel Dobrin, a former president of the chain, La Presse reported. Some of the paintings are estimated to be worth more than $100,000. The town of Ivry-sur-le-Lac is about 110 kilometres north of Montreal. Experts with the Sûreté du Québec’s investigative unit specializing in stolen artwork are working on the case along with colleagues based in the Laurentians, police spokesperson Sgt. Annie Thibodeau said. The couple could not be reached for comment. Their son told La Presse his parents had amassed a large collection of artwork over four decades. The theft appears to be an expert job because the thieves managed to turn off the home’s alarm system, and they were apparently selective with the paintings they chose. Alain Lacoursière, a former detective with the Montreal police who specialized in recovering stolen artwork, said valuable stolen paintings often end up in the hands of organized crime figures even if they can never be hung on a wall and appreciated for their beauty. “To people in organized crime, they represent 20 per cent of the cash value of the painting. They are easy to transport and they are easy to get across a border,” he said, adding he has seen cases where expensive paintings ended up in Russia or Colombia and were used to purchase drugs from drug traffickers based in those countries. “The artwork remains a form of currency throughout. They remain hidden away in a closet. It’s not like in the movies, where some guy who really appreciates art has a secret room in his mansion (where he displays it). I have never seen that in my entire career.” One case that stands out in his memory involved artwork stolen from homes in Westmount and Outremont during the late 1990s that was found in October 2000 in the Laval home of Joseph Ghaleb, a notorious loanshark who had ties to the Hells Angels and the Montreal Mafia who was murdered in 2004. Last month, police in Italy recovered two paintings by Vincent Van Gogh in a farmhouse near Castellammare di Stabia that investigators linked to two Camorra drug kingpins, Mario Cerrone and Raffaele Imperiale. The paintings had been stolen from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam in 2002, and were found hidden in a safe wrapped in a cloth. Lacoursière, who now has an appraisal company, Expertises Alain Lacoursière, said that the list of people in Quebec who could have pulled of such a heist is a very short one. “There are three guys, maybe five tops, who can pull off a job like that – where they know a lot about art. You have to possess a great deal of knowledge about art to do something like that,” Lacoursière said. And he means three people in particular. “The Sûreté du Québec knows who they are and will likely want to talk to them.” The Sûreté du Québec is asking anyone with information on the theft to contact them at 1-800-659-4264.
Billionaire Art Dealer Is Awaiting Verdict in Tax Fraud Case
The art dealer Guy Wildenstein. A tribunal is expected to rule on his fraud case in January.Credit Eric Feferberg/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
PARIS — The tax fraud trial of Guy Wildenstein, the billionaire international art dealer, ended here Thursday night and a prosecutor asked the tribunal of judges hearing the case to sentence Mr. Wildenstein to two years in prison on charges that he helped shield a vast art collection in a maze of foreign trusts.
The tribunal at the Palais de Justice will now spend nearly three months weighing a decision in the case that ensnared Mr. Wildenstein, 70, his nephew and his estranged sister-in-law, along with his team of Swiss and French legal advisers and foreign trust companies. Authorities are also asking the judges to levy a 250 million euro fine (about $275 million) on Mr. Wildenstein, who is president of Wildenstein & Co. in New York art gallery.
On Thursday, Olivier Géron, the lead judge on the tribunal, set Jan. 12 as the date that judges will deliver a ruling on the case, which started a month ago.
Monica d’Onofrio, the prosecutor on the case, has demanded severe punishment for Mr. Wildenstein, calling the family’s financial operations “the longest and the most sophisticated tax fraud” in contemporary France. Part of a newly created financial prosecution unit, she called for an actual sentence of four years in prison for Mr. Wildenstein with two of those years suspended.
Mr. Wildenstein is accused of underestimating inheritance taxes after his father, Daniel, died at 84 in 2001 in France. Prosecutors contend that Mr. Wildenstein and his brother, Alec, schemed to hide art and assets under the ownership of complex trusts and abruptly moved millions of dollar in artworks to Switzerland from New York days after their father died.
The trial exposed in numbing detail the financial strategies of the wealthy family — with a presence in the art world dating back four generations to 1875 — and their use of artwork owned by trusts and stored in Switzerland to reap income from bank loans against the rising value of the paintings.
Mr. Wildenstein has steadfastly maintained he was unaware of the details of the trusts and has contended that he was following a strategy that is more accepted in countries outside France. His lawyers also argued that reporting a trust was not clearly required by French tax authorities until 2011 — years after Daniel Wildenstein’s death.
In addition to the fine asked for by the prosecutor, French tax authorities are seeking back taxes of more than 550 million euros — or roughly $600 million — in connection with the family inheritance from Daniel Wildenstein.
The Wildenstein family has long maintained a mystique because no one knew what rested in their vaults in New York and Tokyo and a research institute in Paris. The institute was raided in 2011 by police investigators who seized about 30 works reported missing or stolen by previous owners.
Those works, still in police custody, remain part of separate legal proceedings. At the trial, one of the daily spectators was Alexandre Bronstein, who is pressing a criminal lawsuit in connection with some of the seized works — a missing bronze by the Italian sculptor Rembrandt Bugatti and two Degas drawings that he contends belong to his family.
“I’m here to see if the truth comes out,” Mr. Bronstein said. He said he had been struck by testimony from a family trust banker who said trust officials never conducted an independent financial evaluation of the 2,500 works in Daniel Wildenstein’s estate. “That means they can keep art works in storage in Switzerland for two or three generations and if there is problem with the provenance, no one will know. The bank knows only what the family told them.”
Those works were valued at about $1.1 billion before Daniel Wildenstein’s death. Since then about 675 of the works have been sold, raising about $238 million for family members from the collection that is now valued at about $875 million, according to court testimony. The remaining works are now stored in the United States, Switzerland and Singapore.
The rest of the seven defendants in the case face lesser punishments recommended by the prosecutor, including suspended sentences for Mr. Wildenstein’s nephew, Alec Jr., and Liouba Stoupakova, the widow of Alec Wildenstein (who died in 2008). Two trusts — the Northern Trust Fiduciary Services in Guernsey, a Channel island that is part of Britain; and the Royal Bank of Canada Trust Company in the Cayman Islands — could end up paying fines of more than $200,000 for “complicity in tax fraud.”
A large canvas painting of Batman was among those taken in the raid of Terry Bradley's pop-up gallery
About £50,000 worth of artwork by Belfast artist Terry Bradley has been stolen after a "well-planned" raid.
It is estimated that between 80 and 100 pieces of art were taken from a pop-up gallery in the city centre. These included original canvases worth up to £10,000. A large original painting of Batman, worth an estimated £2,500, was also taken in the burglary. Ashley Bradley, the artist's wife, said they believed thieves gained access after one hid in the gallery overnight. She added that Mr Bradley was "devastated" by the thefts. Ashley Bradley urged anyone who sees the art being passed on to get in touch "Terry puts his heart and soul into his work," she said. "They're a moment in time. The original pieces cannot be replaced. "Some of the original drawings have been ordered by people for Christmas - they're all gone. So much stuff has been paid off by customers and we're going to work to replace what we can. "Terry is completely floored by what's happened." Staff at the gallery have said they will work hard to replace the stolen artworks. Gayle Williamson said she was heartbroken when she arrived at work this morning: "I was speechless. What can you say? "It's horrendous and I wasn't expecting it in the mouth of Christmas, but we'll do our best to replace what orders we have." Gayle Williamson said staff at the gallery will work hard to replace the stolen art works Police said they are appealing for witnesses to the burglary that took place on Chichester Street between 18:00 GMT on Wednesday and 10:00 on Thursday. Mrs Bradley said the family believed the gallery had been targeted by people who "knew what they were doing". Some of the stolen art was ordered by customers in time for Christmas "We think someone had hidden in the gallery and opened the back door," she said. "I was in last night with my daughter at about 21:30. We hope somebody wasn't in there with us. "It would have taken a long time. These are big and heavy pieces - I can only lift one picture at a time. "My sister opened at 10 o'clock this morning and it was all gone." Ashley Bradley said her husband was "completely floored" over the thefts Mrs Bradley, who vowed that the gallery would re-open on Friday, urged anyone who has any information to come forward. "We're going straight back to work. Nobody was hurt. Hopefully we have enough time before Christmas to replace what can be replaced. "My hope is a fan of Terry will see this art being passed off. I know they'll be outraged when they hear this has happened. "If someone sees them, they will know what they are and hopefully come forward with information so we can get them back." Police said the burglary happened between 18:00 GMT on Wednesday and Tuesday morning Stolen artwork by Mr Bradley has been recovered before. In 2014, two paintings, worth £6,000 each, were taken from a shop in south Belfast. Police found them after a tip-off.
Toronto police search for stolen art worth more than $50K
Art stolen from collector during hospital stay, police say
By Julia Whalen, CBC NewsPosted: Nov 23, 2016 3:27 PM ETLast Updated: Nov 23, 2016 6:20 PM ET
Police say the stolen artwork is considered valuable and cannot be replaced. (Toronto Police)
Police are searching for several paintings worth more than $50,000 after they were stolen from a home in Toronto's Yorkville neighbourhood last month.
One of several paintings stolen from a home near Bay Street and Bloor Street West in October. (Toronto Police)
A 79-year-old art collector had a number of paintings hanging in his home near Bay Street and Bloor Street West. Police say he went into hospital on Oct. 16 and died about a week later. During that time, the paintings — which are considered valuable and cannot be replaced — were stolen. Detective Constable Matt Fenwick says he believes it happened in the early-morning hours of Oct. 16.
The stolen paintings have an estimated value of approximately $50,000. (Toronto Police)
"I wanted to get this out quickly because I believe the art community is an honest community," Fenwick told CBC Toronto. "If these things start turning up for sale, maybe I'll start getting some information."
Detective Constable Matt Fenwick says he believes the paintings were stolen in the early-morning hours of Oct. 16. (Toronto Police)
Fenwick says there were no signs of forced entry, so he thinks the suspect was known to the victim. Anyone with information is asked to contact police at 52 Division or Crime Stoppers.
Qatari sisters robbed of $5.3 million in valuables near Paris
Two Qatari sisters were robbed north of Paris by masked men who took jewelry and other personal effects worth an estimated 5 million euros ($5.3 million), officials say. The women were being driven from Paris-Le Bourget Airport to Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport when two masked men intercepted their car Monday, said the general secretary of the Bobigny prosecutor, who according to protocol did not wish to be named. Forcing the vehicle to stop, the robbers sprayed tear gas at the driver and manhandled the women before taking their suitcases containing the valuables, the official said. The Banditry Repression Brigade, a special police unit within the Interior Ministry, was set to interview the women. Spate of high-profile crimes The case is the latest in a spate of recent high-profile robberies, or attempted robberies, in the Paris region. On October 3, American reality TV star Kim Kardashian West was tied up and robbed at gunpoint of an estimated $10 million worth of jewelry in a luxury private apartment in Paris' 8th Arrondissement by men dressed as police officers. And this month, masked attackers accosted Bollywood actress Mallika Sherawat and her French boyfriend in the hallway of his apartment building in Paris' 16th Arrondissement. The three attackers sprayed tear gas at the couple, pushed the actress to the ground and tried to grab her bag, but fled empty-handed after the two fought back. Two years ago, gunmen brandishing automatic weapons robbed a Saudi Embassy convoy carrying a Saudi prince to Paris-Le Bourget Airport, taking 250,000 euros and diplomatic documents, French police said at the time.
Justice Barry Ostrager of the New York Supreme Court wants to know, where is Julian Radcliffe? A no show or non-appearance at today’s final court hearing (see court record photo below). It appears that Radcliffe is in arrears to the tune of 86k in back rent to his NYC landlord. Other questions have resurfaced about his viability in light of other partners claims against him.
Art Loss Register Update - Sources allege the following: The ALR used to own a company called Albion in Delhi, India. There, they processed all the database registrations and searches. In the summer of 2013, Radcliffe’s partners, Tony LeFevre and Preeti Bahl, forced Radcliffe to sell the company to Loss Management Group (LMG), based in Eastbourne and who, according to their website, are the UK’s largest organisation specialising in the professional management of insurance claims for jewellery, watches and other valuable items, whether they have been damaged, lost or stolen. The vote on the sale was 2/3 against 1/3. Radcliffe was furious and demanded an apology from his former financial director and long time business partner LeFevre who resigned from ALR over the distasteful and nebulous payments Radcliffe was making to criminals. LeFevre basically told Radcliffe to stick it where the sun don’t shine. Once Albion was sold, Radcliffe had a problem. Now, all he had was a contract with a third party company in Delhi which handled confidential police, victim and insurance data. This in turn, violates many of ALR contracts with victims as well as insurers and dealers who think their confidential material is “safe with the ALR”. To hide this fact from the public, he rented out his own office at Hatton Garden to Albion (for a satellite office) and placed a sign on the door (see image below) to give the impression that it was still an ALR controlled operation. He even demanded a seat on the Albion Board, which didn’t happen. Until now, the public is unaware of these ALR shenanigans. Galleries, TEFAF, Art Basel, Frieze Art Fairs, victims, and IFAR amongst others, might like to consider that their confidential data is being sent to LMG, and that the ALR is nothing but a front of house boiler plate. Exterior of the Art Loss Regster / Albion Ltd. offices in Hatton Garden 20/12/2016
What's Going On With The Art Loss Register?
Julian Radcliffe in legal court room drama. Once the hunter, now the prey, the alleged would be extortionist is on the hot seat for monies owed.
Looks like the extortion business ain’t what it used to be.
A New York City art lawyer noticed this case on the docket recently in NY State Civil Supreme Court. It appears that the ALR, which closed its offices in NY, Germany, Paris, and Amsterdam between 2009-2010, bailed out on its New York City landlord 10839 Associates, with a sizeable unpaid bill to the tune of $86k.
NOWHERE TO RUN, NOWHERE TO HIDE
After trying to stiff the landlord, the plaintiffs found Radcliffe, who personally acted as guarantor on the lease, and sued. Mr. Radcliffe, who has admitted that the register has not made a profit under his stewardship for over a decade appears to have kept the ALR in the red over the last two years since this interview.
Whilst the date of 20 December for judgment seems like an end to this, yet another ALR sordid affair, there is no guarantee that Mr. Radcliffe will settle. Word on the street is that the ALR has lost its US insurance subscribers and is struggling to bring in recovery income since a mass exodus of talent took place in 2012 that gave rise to the creation of a rival database called Artive. Is a dead beat tenant what the art world needs in a due diligence service or can we do better? Are ALR shareholders like Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Bonhams keeping the ALR just barely alive to show some semblance of due diligence? Is it being used to present a bogus veil of integrity? Perhaps, but one thing is for sure, having not made a profit in a decade, Mr. Radcliffe’s skills in recovery of stolen art have to be questioned, as does his ability to pay rent.
In a final twist to this story so far, Justice Barry R. Ostrager, who has taken the case since it was filled by the plaintiff on November 10 2015, is known to be relentless. As a matter of fact, one of AAD’s staff knows the Judge very well. Justice Ostrager used to have a summer home in Saratoga, he loves race horses, hates criminals, and loathes dead beats. Watch this space.
Ramsbury Manor's Harry Hyams leaves £487m will
THE former owner of Ramsbury Manor has left a huge art collection to the nation in his £487m will. Property magnate Harry Hyams has left one of the largest charitable bequests, £450m out of his total estate of £487, in English legal history by selling off the manor, his art and many antique cars. Now that the will of Mr Hyams, who died at the age of 87 last December and is best known as the developer of the Centre Point office building in London, has been released, his Capricorn Foundation will now work to put the collection on display. Diana Rawstrone, a trustee of the foundation which formed in 2010, said that sculptures and paintings by the likes of JMW Turner, Edward Burne-Jones and George Stubbs will be loaned out to museums and art galleries across the UK. The reclusive multi-millionaire, who was rarely seen in public or photographed, started work as an office boy aged 17 and made his money through shrewd dealings in real estate development and by the time he was 30 he was a millionaire. Last year he was ranked number 12 in the list of the richest people in the South West and number 332 in the Sunday Times Rich List. Mr Hyams, who was married to his wife Kathleen from 1954-2011, bought the manor from Lord Rootes for £650,000 which was a record price for a private house in England back in 1964. In 2006, Ramsbury Manor was the scene for one of Britain's biggest ever burglaries. Initially it was estimated up to £60m worth of world-famous fine art and porcelain was stolen, however valuation expert Leslie Weller later put a figure on the stolen goods of £6.07m. Mr Hyams nor his wife were in the house at the time and the gang of five men, all part of the notorious Johnson family of travellers, were jailed for a total of 49 years in 2008.
Gardai in Limerick seize rare, valuable Chinese libation cup made from rhino horn
LIMERICK, Ireland - The Criminal Assets Bureau, along with a team of 50 Gardai officers led a massive operation in Limerick - raiding 11 properties in Rathkeale and seizing rare and valuable products.
According to reports, amongst the many things the gardai seized, was a rare and extremely valuable Chinese libation cup, dubbed to be worth ‘six-figure’ cash sum, believed to be made from rhinoceros horn. Officials are also said to have seized three high-end watches worth over 100,000 euros, bank statements and other documents. Reports noted that the officers were leading an investigation into the notorious Rathkeale Rovers criminal Traveller gang. The gang was recently mentioned in a high-profile legal tangle in the U.K. earlier this year - subsequently being jailed for dealing in stolen rhino horns and other valuable property. Reports quoted a Garda source as saying, “One piece of ivory was seized in the searches. It’s a (Chinese) libation cup, made from rhino horn. We are examining it to make sure it is what we believe it to be. It will be forensically examined; it’s an ornament of some sort.” The source was also quoted as saying, “The search phase has finished and the investigation phase will continue for some time.We seized cash in excess of six figures but the exact amount cannot be disclosed for operational reasons. We also have to determine the exact value of the three high-end watches we recovered but we believe they have a combined retail value of in excess of 100,000 euros.” The Garda press office said in a statement, “The CAB investigation relates to suspected criminal activity by an organised crime gang in Ireland, the U.K., and Europe.” Head of the Limerick Garda Division, Chief Superintendent David Sheahan said, “We have CAB profilers in Limerick who prepared background work for the national unit which led to today’s investigation. We are happy to support CAB, and this was their investigation.” Reports added that two men were arrested for breaches of public order after they tried to block detectives during the raids. They were produced before the court and charged in connection with “minor public order incidents,” and granted bail on strict conditions.
What became of Russborough House’s Old Masters for sale?
Of the Beit paintings controversially earmarked for auction, three avoided the hammer
For a few decades in the second half of the 20th century, Russborough House near Blessington, Co Wicklow was an unlikely home to one of the world’s most important – and valuable – privately owned art collections. But not any more. So where did all the art go, and who owns it now?
In the 1950s, the opulent Anglo-Irish mansion was bought by English aristocrat Sir Alfred Beit, heir to both a diamond-mining fortune and a stunning collection of paintings. He and Lady Beit moved to Co Wicklow, settled into Irish country life and adorned Russborough House with museum-quality works of art and antiques.
The couple had no children and so, after two decades, in 1976 they effectively handed over the house and their art collection to the people of Ireland by establishing the Alfred Beit Foundation, a charitable and educational trust “with the object of keeping the house and art collection intact, making it a centre for the arts and open to the public”.
Russborough House was opened to visitors but the art, inevitably, attracted the attention of criminals. Many of the paintings were stolen in a series of notorious robberies – among them one by an IRA gang that included, improbably, the heiress Rose Dugdale. (Most were later recovered by the Garda.) As a consequence, in 1986 the Beits donated the most valuable of the paintings, including a Vermeer, to the National Gallery of Ireland. This act of astounding generosity was worth an estimated €100 million.
In 1993, in a first for British subjects, the couple were granted honorary Irish citizenship. Sir Alfred died the following year, aged 91; Lady Beit died in 2005, aged 89.
Short of money
Meanwhile, the foundation got on with the job of running Russborough House and attracting visitors. The house did receive some funding from the State but, evidently, not enough. Cash was needed to pay for ongoing maintenance and conservation. But how to raise it? The oldest solution in the Big House book, of course: was to “sell the family silver”.
In 2006, the foundation sold a collection of 16th-century Italian bronze sculptures at auction, which made €3.8 million. When that cash ran out, a small collection of Chinese porcelain was sent to Sotheby’s in 2013. Initially valued at €350,000, the porcelain sold for €1.2 million.
The financial problems persisted. In 2015, the foundation announced that it needed to create an endowment fund to pay for ongoing running costs and conservation; otherwise Russborough House might have to close. It also announced plans to sell some of the remaining Beit art collection – including six “Old Master” paintings, among them two works by Rubens – at a Christie’s auction in London.
The foundation said the paintings had been in storage for years and would not be hung in the house again because of security concerns. However, the proposed auction prompted a public outcry. After a series of emergency meetings with Minister for Arts and Heritage Heather Humphreys, the foundation agreed to postpone the auction of the Old Master paintings until 2016. It would attempt to find private sources in Ireland who might buy the paintings and donate them to the State.
Following months of secret negotiations, it emerged that buyers had been found for three of the six paintings for donation to the National Gallery of Ireland. These purchases aren’t quite as kind-hearted as they may appear. Such donors are entitled to 80 per of the price written off their tax liabilities. So the State, in fact, ends up footing most of the cost in foregone taxes.
Humphreys’s department said it would not name the donors as the arrangements involved their private tax affairs. But the details have emerged.
Anonymous buyers
Denis O’Brien, the telecoms billionaire, bought Head of a Bearded Man by Rubens for €3.5 million, which enables him to claim €2.8million in tax relief. Lochlann Quinn, part-owner of Dublin’s five-star Merrion Hotel, bought A Village Kermesse Near Antwerp by David Teniers the Younger, a 17th-century Flemish artist, for €2 million (tax relief worth €1.6 million).
It is believed that Dublin businessman John Gallagher (who has made no public comment on the matter) is willing to buy a third painting, Adoration of the Shepherds by Adriaen Van Ostade, for €1 million, which would entail tax relief of €800,000. The Department of Arts & Heritage said the process to agree a valuation for the Van Ostade painting, which must be approved by the Revenue Commissioners, is still ongoing.
As for the other three Old Masters, they were sent back to the salesroom. Last July 7th three lots “consigned by the Alfred Beit Foundation” were sold by Christie’s in London. Venus Supplicating Jupiter by Rubens made £1.3 million (€1.5 million at the prevailing exchange rate); Piazza San Marco, Venice, with the Basilica and the Campanile, with Figures in Carnival Costume by Francesco Guardi made £164,500 (€192,000); and Guardi’s The Piazzetta, Venice, with the Doge’s Palace and the Libreria, San Giorgio Maggiore Beyond, also made £164,500.
Will these sales prevent the threatened closure of Russborough House? For the foreseeable future, almost certainly yes. But the long-term fate of the house, and its remaining treasures, is uncertain.
A French court on Friday upheld the two-year suspended sentences of Pablo Picasso's former electrician and his wife, who kept 271 of his artworks stashed in their garage for almost 40 years.
Pierre Le Guennec and his wife Danielle were convicted last year of possessing stolen goods and for hiding the works from Picasso's heirs. At his original trial Le Guennec, now 77, claimed that Picasso had presented him with the artworks in 1971 or 1972, to reward him for his loyal service. The painter died in 1973.
"Picasso had total confidence in me. Maybe it was my discretion," Le Guennec told the court at the time. "Monsieur and Madame called me 'little cousin'." The former electrician later changed his account, however, telling the appeals court in the southern city of Aix-en-Provence that the works were part of a huge trove of art that Picasso's widow asked him to conceal after the artist's death in 1973. He claimed that Jacqueline Picasso later retrieved most of the works but left him a box containing 180 single pieces and a notebook containing 91 drawings as a gift, saying "this is for you". Le Guennec said it was only when he got home that he found what he described as "drawings, sketches, crumpled paper", which he put in his garage. He claims he then forgot about the box and its contents until he rediscovered it again in 2009, almost four decades later. A lot of the evidence during the first trial centred around why none of the works were signed, with several witnesses saying the artist would sign everything – partly to ensure against theft. According to Gerard Sassier, the son of Picasso's long-time chambermaid, the artist once said after a theft attempt: "Anyway, nothing can be stolen as nothing is signed." One of the few plaintiffs to have known Le Guennec when he was employed by the Picasso family, the artist's granddaughter Catherine Hutin-Blay, acknowledged during the trial that the electrician did have a special relationship with the artist. "We really trusted him. He was someone who was very familiar in the house and had an absolutely friendly relationship," she told the court at the first trial. The collection, whose value has been estimated at between 60-100 million euros ($63-$105 million), includes drawings of women and horses, nine rare Cubist collages from the time Picasso was working with fellow French artist Georges Braque and a work from his "blue period". Other more intimate works include portraits of Picasso's mistress Fernande, drawings of his first wife Olga and a drawing of a horse for his children. French authorities seized them after Le Guennec presented them to Picasso's son Claude Ruiz-Picasso in 2010 to try get them authenticated. Ruiz-Picasso, who represents the artist's six heirs, subsequently pressed charges. Claude Picasso’s lawyer, Jean-Jacques Neuer, welcomed Friday’s ruling and told reporters that the artworks were in perfect condition despite having been kept almost 40 years in the Le Guennec couple’s garage.
Stolen paintings recovered in Ukraine return to Verona
VERONA, Italy (AP) — Italy's culture minister is returning home from Ukraine on Wednesday with 17 paintings, including works by Tintoretto, Rubens and Mantegna, stolen from a Verona museum in an audacious heist last year and later recovered by Ukrainian officials. Ukranian President Petro Poroshenko handed over the paintings to Culture Minister Dario Franceschini in a ceremony in Kiev, saying "the theft of masterpiece paintings was akin to stealing part of the city's heart." The paintings were recovered in May by Ukrainian border guards who intercepted an attempt to smuggle them from Ukraine to Moldova. The paintings were found hidden in plastic bags on a small island on the Dneister River, which runs between the two countries. They were stolen in November 2015 when three armed robbers entered the Castelvecchio Museum, located in a medieval castle, at closing time just before the alarm system was activated. The robbers calmly removed the paintings before escaping in a security guard's car. A guard at the museum, Pasquale Silvestri Riccardi, was convicted of armed robbery and sentenced to 10 years and eight months in prison in a speedy trial earlier this month. Five others were also convicted, including Riccardi's Moldovan girlfriend, who received six years, and his twin brother, who was sentenced to eight months. A video of the handover released by the culture ministry shows the works displayed in plain wooden frames, after their original frames went missing in the theft and transfer to Ukraine. Members of the Carabinieri art squad could be seen examining the paintings for damage, before they were wrapped in cloth to be crated and returned to Italy. Culture Minister Dario Franceschini said the return of the paintings is a "celebration for Verona and all of Italy." The paintings are scheduled to be shown together at their home in the Castelvecchio Museum from Friday, before being returned to their former spots after the holidays.
NYPD: Gold flakes thief is 'professional burglar,' believed to be hiding in LA
NEW YORK – New York City police said the man they believed to be an opportunistic thief when he swiped $1.6 million worth of gold flakes from a truck is actually a “professional burglar” who has been arrested and deported several times to his native Ecuador. Det. Martin Pastor of the NYPD’s Major Case Squad said the man seen in a surveillance video in September is allegedly Julio Nivelo, a 53-year-old career crook, who has used several aliases including Luis Toledo and David Vargas, among others.
Photo released on Julio Nivelo, who New York City police said is the alleged thief of the 83-pound buck of gold flakes. (NYPD)
“Now that we know who he is, he’s well organized,” Pastor said, according to the NY Daily News. “He is, I would say, a professional burglar, a professional thief.” Nivelo was allegedly captured by surveillance cameras capitalizing on a 20-second window left open by the armored truck’s guards, one of whom was making a pickup while the other was walking to the front seat. He is seen taking the 83-pound bucket of gold flakes and walking about a half-mile to a waiting car on 49th St. near Third Ave. Police said Nivelo fled to the Orlando, Florida area after the Sept. 29 theft before ultimately landing in California. They believe he’s been hiding out in the Los Angeles area with the stolen riches. Nivelo has been deported from the U.S. to his native Ecuador in 1994, 2001, 2005 and 2008, Pastor said, who did not mention what other crimes he committed. Armored car company Loomis is reportedly offering $100,000 for the safe return of the gold.
Woman finds she is missing £7m gold after Hatton Garden raid
The claim would mean a total of £21m of gold, diamonds and other jewellery were taken in the London heist.
A woman has come forward after realising £7m of her gold is missing - 20 months after the heist at a Hatton Garden jewellers.
The woman has claimed one of her safety deposit boxes had been stolen and she only realised it was missing after the trial of the gang who carried out the raid. The claim, which is being treated seriously by police, would mean the total stolen in the heist stands at around £21m.
Image Caption:John Collins, Daniel Jones, Terry Perkins, (bottom row left to right) Carl Wood, William Lincoln and Hugh Doyle
Seven men were convicted last year over the break-in at Hatton Garden Safe Deposit, and jailed for terms of six and seven years. The gang ransacked 73 safe deposit boxes after using a drill to bore a hole into the vault wall during the meticulously-planned heist, taking gold, diamonds and sapphires. More to follow........................
How Donald Trump Spent New Year’s Eve With a Convicted Art Thief
"Joey No Socks" Cinque has a checkered past.
What was the president-elect doing on New Year’s Eve? Hanging out with former art thief Joseph “Joey No Socks” Cinque at Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s swanky Palm Beach, Florida, estate. To mark the occasion, Cinque presented Trump with a large painted statue of an eagle, which he dubbed a “one-of-a kind bronze Eagle award,” on behalf of the American Academy of Hospitality Sciences, reports the Daily Beast. Cinque is director of the for-profit organization, which bestows Star Diamond Awards, the self-described “most prestigious award of true excellence,” to high-end hotels and restaurants. According to a profile published in New Yorkmagazinein April 1995, however, Cinque also has a checkered past, with one colorful incident involving fine art:
In 1989, Cinque was arrested on felony charges; police had retrieved a gallery’s worth of stolen art from his apartment. Though police had arrived armed with a search warrant, Cinque had refused to let them in—so they’d called in a battering ram and broken down his front door. Inside they’d found two Chagall prints, valued at more than $20,000 apiece, that had recently been stolen from the Center Art Gallery on 57th Street, and a $9,000 Cecille Schatzberg sculpture stolen from the Lever Brothers Gallery on Park Avenue.
Cinque was convicted of a felony for possession of stolen property, and received a “conditional discharge” in 1990, reports CNN. In May, Trump denied knowledge of Cinque’s criminal past. “If a guy’s going to give you an award, you take it,” he told the Associated Press. “You don’t tend to look up his whole life story.” In addition to having accepted Star Diamond awards for over a dozen of his golf courses, hotels, casinos, and private clubs, Trump was reportedly listed as an “ambassador extraordinaire” on the American Academy of Hospitality Sciences website as recently as 2015. According to CNN, Trump praised Cinque in a 2009 promotional video for the academy, saying, “There’s nobody like him. He’s a special guy.” The former felon also judged the 2008 Miss Universe Contest alongside Trump, and attended the businessman-turned-politician’s 59th birthday party. At Mar-a-Lago, Trump reportedly gave a speech on stage with Cinque, repeating his campaign promises to lower taxes and build a wall, informing guests, “all I can tell you is we’re gonna do a good job.”
Found Levitan's paintings stolen in Museum PLICSCOM
In the course of military operations of police, FSB and Regardie was detained robbers, suspects in the theft of five paintings from the Museum Leviathan in Plyos. Picture found
the Official message about the successful completion of the operation appeared today on the website of the MIA of Russia. The paintings of Russian painter Isaac Levitan stolen 2.5 years ago from a Museum in the Ivanovo region, was discovered after the arrest of suspects in a cottage in the Moscow region.
On account of criminals, according to the interior Ministry, — robbery at a Bank in Nizhny Novgorod, attacks on collectors, and on employees of traffic police. The suspects in these crimes was 33@- 37-летний residents of Nizhny Novgorod. Together with them, police also detained 29-летний a resident of one of the Neighboring countries under investigation. Criminals found during the search of "a Quiet river" by Levitan. And later in Nizhniy Novgorod security officers was discovered the other four stolen painting of Isaac Levitan.
Adds that the Museum robbery in our day have little to no economic sense. To sell with the noise of the stolen paintings and drawings is almost impossible, and the existence of a certain of a developed "black market" things like — is rather an exaggeration. Collectors in life not buy such, and unskilled attempts to sell stolen paintings or fuss with their transportation rather withdraw the police on the trail of criminals. So recently , Ukraine with the stolen Italian paintings. So it was with the paintings, stolen in the Munch Museum. Sooner or later caught. And those who were trying to sell. And those who tried to blackmail the government, threatening the destruction of masterpieces. Criminals operating in Russia the lack of a unified public or paid information databases of stolen valuables. Now the information about the missing apply via our forum, groups on Facebook, the website of the Ministry of culture and other channels. Single point of collecting information yet. But I think it's only a matter of time.
In the case of theft is a frequent problem complicating the search for and dissemination of information about the incident, is the simple lack of high quality photos and detailed descriptions of the works from the owner. It often happens that the picture hanging on the wall over the years, pleases its owner, and describe her simply do not come to mind: neither the picture, nor the exact size to remove. Perhaps not useful. Even more likely. But every story with the abduction or loss of the paintings is a "bell" that every collector and every owner of works of art is useful to concerned with this issue. Just in case. Let it be at hand.
BREAKING NEWS: French police charge suspect with robbing Kim Kardashian at gunpoint and leaving her bound and gagged in Paris apartment
Kardashian, 36, was tied up and robbed at gunpoint in apartment in Paris, France
Police have arrested 17 people in the Paris region over the October 3 robbery
A source close to the investigation has said suspects are starting to 'come clean'
Information about many of the suspects' criminal pasts have also come to light
One of five men suspected of taking part in the armed robbery of US reality TV star Kim Kardashian in Paris in October has been charged, a prosecutor said Thursday.
Yunice A., 63, has been charged with robbing Ms Kardashian at gunpoint and leaving her bound and gagged in a bathroom in her luxury residence in the early hours of October 3, the prosecutor said.
Nine suspects are still in custody including four other men ranging in age from 54 to 72 who are suspected of direct involvement in the spectacular heist in which they made off with jewellery worth around nine million euros ($9.5 million).
It comes as the suspects were 'beginning to admit their involvement' in the robbery, a source close to investigation said.
Those remaining are thought to include the five robbers who actually broke into Ms Kardashian's apartment in the French capital last October.
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One of those arrested is the chauffeur with the limo firm used by the Kardashian family in Paris, raising the possibility that the crime could have been an inside job
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Reality star Kim, 36, was woken at 2.35am on October 3 as she slept in her luxury Paris apartment
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Bling: Kim posted this image of the stolen £3.5m ring on Instagram before the robbery
After holding a security guard and Ms Kadashian at gunpoint, they left the 36-year-old reality TV star bound and gagged in a bath.
Then they fled on bicycles with a £4million diamond engagement ring – which had been presented to Ms Kardashian by husband Kanye West – and around £5million worth of other jewels.
Most were caught on CCTV, and mobile phone triangulation is also thought to have placed some of them in the area.
Crucially, at least three DNA samples were also found, including on plastic ties and masking tape used to incapacitate Ms Kardashian.
The source close to the investigation said: ‘The CCTV is of very poor quality, but body shapes can still be matched up.
‘The telephone evidence is strong, as is the DNA.
'When faced with this kind of evidence it is very hard for suspects to say they were not present.’
Michael Madar, the 40-year-old limousine driver who drove Ms Kardashian to the central Paris flat on October 3 was among those released without charge.
But his brother, Gary Madar, 27, remains in custody, and is suspected of leaking details of Ms Kardashian’s movements to the gang.
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Arrests: Further details of the gang that held up Kim Kardashian in the terrifying jewel heist in Paris have emerged. The thieves are said to include a man known as Omar le Vieux – Old Omar – as well has his two sons aged 23 and 29, according to Le Parisien newspaper. Police arrested 17 people over the robbery, including two brothers in their 50s accused of disposing of a $4m engagement ring. Two men are pictured being arrested during raids on Monday
Further details of the gang that held up Kim Kardashian in the terrifying jewel heist in Paris have emerged.
The five principal suspects reported to have been directly involved in the heist are in the age range 54 to 74, and include some of France’s most notorious villains.
Two suspects in the Kardashian jewel heist travelled to Antwerp, the diamond capital of Europe, in the days after the multi-million pound robbery, according to French media.
Telephones owned by Old Omar and Marceau the gypsy have been tracked to the Belgian jewellery centre a couple of days after Kim Kardashian was forced to hand over her gems at gunpoint, LCI news channel has reported.
Jewels worth up to £9 million were taken from the reality TV star who was tied up and left in the bath of an exclusive hotel in the centre of Paris in October last year.
The TV channel claims the two suspects are well known to France’s organised crime brigade (BRB).
Old Omar was dragged from his bed in Creteil, a rough suburb in south-east Paris, along with his two sons, according to reports.
Marceau the gypsy was detained at a travellers’ site on the outskirts of the French capital.
He is accused of participating in the sale of the jewellery.
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Reliable: Reality star Kim pictured in Paris on October 1 last year had her wrists tied by the gang during her terrible ordeal in which £8.5million worth of jewellry was stolen
Another suspect is Didier Dubreucq, a convicted drug runner nicknamed ‘Blue Eyes’.
In 2003, Dubreucq was convicted to eight and a half years in prison for his role in a drug smuggling case involving Prince Nayef Bin Fawaz al-Shaalan, a grandson of Saudi Arabia's founding monarch, Abdulaziz.
Prince Nayef was later sentenced to ten years in prison in absentia for using his diplomatic immunity to smuggle two tons of cocaine from Venezuela to France in his private Boeing 727 in 1999.
The US Drug Enforcement Agency had accused the prince of making contacts with Colombia's Medellin cartel.
Dubreucq, 62, was convicted of receiving the drugs at Le Bourget airport and helping to distribute it around Europe.
All of those still in custody can be held until early on Friday morning.
Then they have to be charged, or released.
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Raids: Special French investigators swooped on a restaurant in Rue de Bretagne in connection with the robbery of Kardashian, which happened during Paris fashion week in October
The thieves are said to include a man known as Omar le Vieux – Old Omar – as well as his two sons aged 23 and 29, according to Le Parisien newspaper.
Old Omar was dragged from his bed in Creteil – a rough suburb in south-east Paris, in the early hours of Monday morning by officers from France’s organised crime brigade (BRB).
The 60-year-old's fingerprints are said to have been found on plastic ties used to bind Ms Kardashian’s hands during the extraordinary robbery at an exclusive hotel in central Paris in October last year.
The elite BRB detectives brought in two allegedly seasoned criminals – aged 60 and 63 – who have so far used their right to silence and refused to answer any questions, the popular French newspaper reported.
Investigators have also pulled in ‘former associates’ of Old Omar for questioning.
These include a 64-year-old gypsy named only as Marceau.
Another member of the alleged gang is a man known as Nez Râpé, 'Broken Nose', who was responsible for a series of terrifying motorway robberies.
KIM 'WILL NOT GET JEWELS BACK'
Kim Kardashian has been warned by authorities in Paris that she will not get her $4million engagement ring back, according toTMZ.
Police have apparently told her legal team that most diamonds the size of Kim's are immediately shipped off to Antwerp's diamond district in Belgium and then quickly disappear.
Kim submitted an insurance claim after the robbery listing her 20 carat emerald cut stone diamond ring at $4 million -- in total, 13 items totaling $5.6 million were stolen.
'Broken Nose' was part of a gang that posed as policemen to pull over and rob at gun-point the owners of luxury cars of travelling on the country’s A5 and A6 motorways from Paris to the south of France of their jewellery.
As gang-leader, 'Broken Nose' was sentenced to 30 months in jail after he was captured in December 2008.
For his part, Marceau was taken to court in June last year accused of the sale of forged 20 Euro notes and the sale of stolen jewellery and gold in Antwerp, Belgium. He was however acquitted following a trial.
BRB officers recovered almost Euro 300,000 in cash from the homes of the various suspects following their dawn raids on Monday morning, Le Parisien reported.
The operation included the search for a 72-year-old man, known as Pierre, at his home in Grasse, in the mountains overlooking the French riveria.
Pierre, who ran a private beach club in Saint Tropez, was jailed in the early 2000’s for drug trafficking.
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Date night: Kim and rapper husband Kanye, pictured, appeared to brush off the raid in Paris to go on a date to a sushi restaurant in Beverly Hills on Monday night
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Police swoop: 17 were arrested in a series of raids in Paris connected to the October heist, but the couple shrugged off the drama with a low key night out together
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Unity: Kim linked arms with her husband Kanye as they enjoyed a quiet night out together on the same day as a series of arrests were made in Paris
Pierre, 72, and his 70-year-old long term partner Christiane, are currently being held in custody in Paris.
Another suspect is reportedly Didier Dubreucq, who was convicted to eight and a half years in prison in in 2003 for his role in a drug smuggling ring involving Saudi Prince Nayef Bin Fawaz al-Shaalan, the Telegraph reports.
Dubreucq, nicknamed 'Blue Eyes', is said to be in his sixties.
The prince was convicted of smuggling 1,980 kilograms (4,400 pounds) of cocaine on his private jet in 1999 and was accused of having links to Colombia's Medellin cartel.
The drugs were flown from Venezuela to France and Dubreucq was convicted of receiving them at Le Bourget airport in Paris.
'In this case, the drug traffickers used powerful people to create a facade of legitimacy to help them conceal their drug trafficking activities,' Marcos Daniel Jiménez, United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, said in a statement about the prince's conviction in 2005.
Two of the other 17 people arrested in dawn raids on Monday - an unnamed man and woman - have also been released without charge, according to Le Figaro newspaper.
Details of those being held have emerged as the limo company owner arrested by French police investigating the robbery has been released - but his brother remains in police custody.
Michael Madar and his brother Gary were arrested in a series of raids on Monday morning.
Madar, 40, is the owner of Unic Worldpass, the chauffeur company used by Kim Kardashian and her family in Paris while his brother Gary, 27, worked for the firm on and off.
Michael Madar was released from police custody in Paris without charges shortly after midnight, a source close to the investigation has confirmed. He was 'speechless' to learn that his brother had also been held, the source said.
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A DNA match from the necklace, along with tape used to gag Ms Kardashian, enabled detectives to trace key members of the gang and 17 were arrested in a series of raids
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French police yesterday arrested 17 people in connection with the £8.5million robbery in October
The source told MailOnline: ‘Michael has taken the news really badly. Michael had no idea that Gary had somehow become involved.
‘He was speechless when he learned his brother had been arrested,’ the source told MailOnline.
Investigators have been given 96 hours – four days - to interview the suspects.
Friends of Mr Madar had expressed shock at his arrest, while AP said officials in France were 'unsure' which brother chauffeured the reality TV star the night she was robbed in a rented apartment in the French capital.
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Businessman: Michael Madar was arrested on his home on Monday morning – one of 17 people detained by police's organised crime brigade in the Paris area and the south of France. Pictured: Madar holding an umbrella for Kim and Kourtney days before the robbery in Paris in October last year
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Arrested: Gary Madar, pictured with Kim Kardashian, was held alongside his chauffeur firm boss brother Michael, 40
Close: The brothers, Michael and Gary pictured left with Michael's wife Carole Scigliano, chief executive of his company Unic Worldpass
One friend said: 'This is very strange. Michael is a really sweet guy. I would not be surprised if the police had got this one wrong.'
It is understood that Mr Madar was taken to a police station for interview yesterday morning where he was then arrested.
The arrested men are aged mostly in their 50s, 60s and 70s.
Pierre B - the 72-year-old alleged ringleader - was arrested after officers broke down the gate of his villa in Plascassier, a village near Grasse, in the south of France.
The age of the suspects has echoes of the 2015 Hatton Garden safe deposit robbery in London – carried out by a team of veteran British criminals.
A police source said: 'The oldest suspect is 72, while others are in their 50s and 60s and some are well known to the police.'
Multiple firearms, including an automatic pistol, and £121,000 in cash were found during the raids that took place across Paris on Monday morning
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French police are seen carrying bags of evidence after carrying out a dawn raid in Paris
The reality TV star had a gun pointed at her, her hands and feet bound with cable ties and was left in the bath after masked men with police badges on their jackets burst into her room at a hotel in the city's exclusive 8th arrondissement.
Ms Kardashian, the world's highest paid reality television star, was alone because her bodyguard, Pascal Duvier, was out at a nightclub with her sisters.
But three months since the heist, the gang – including 'career villain' Pierre B – are thought to have been rounded up.
All those arrested can be held for up to 96 hours before being charged or released.
Barrister Jean Veil said his 36-year-old client had been left deeply traumatised after being bound, gagged and threatened with death in the French capital last October.
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Coordinated raids at 6am saw a total of 16 men including a 'major thug' arrested in the city, and also in the south of France
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The arrests come three months after the reality TV star was tied up and robbed at gunpoint by intruders at her luxury Paris flat
'I welcome this with great satisfaction,' said Mr Veil, who said he was due to discuss details of the raids with Ms Kardashian when she woke up in Los Angeles last night.
'These arrests are a nice surprise because on the one hand, it will perhaps make it possible to find the jewellery,' said Mr Veil.
'On the other hand, it puts an end to the outrageous speculation by some, who thought it was intelligent to pretend that this robbery was staged, or a publicity stunt organised by Ms Kardashian.'
Mr Veil indicated that Ms Kardashian would look forward 'putting her nose up' at those who had doubted her word.
During recent conversations, Mr Veil said Ms Kardashian 'still showed some form of anxiety. I think she was recently shocked and had the opportunity to say so on television.
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Bags from the raids were taken away by police yesterday and 17 people were arrested in total
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The suspects' homes are still being searched, with documents and other potential evidence being seized. A suspect (right) is pictured being escorted to a police station
'The money she lost during this robbery is not the only issue. Even though my client was not injured, this assault was very brutal and traumatic. Imagine yourself alone, at night, in front of armed people.'
Earlier this month, Ms Kardashian broke her silence on the robbery in a teaser for the family's reality show, telling two of her sisters her thoughts at the time: 'They're going to shoot me in the back. There's no way out. It makes me so upset to think about it.'
It has also emerged that French police have failed to call on the key witness in the case – because the authorities will not grant him a temporary visa to enter France.
Abdulrahman, the Algerian concierge who was tied up and forced to give the robbers access to the reality star's apartment, left France in November to recover from the stress of the experience.
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A handcuffed man was seen being led in to a police station in Paris following the raids yesterday
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Raids are also underway at other key premises, including a jewellery shop in the centre of Paris. Police are pictured bringing a suspect into custody in Paris
Currently in Algeria, Abdulrahman, 39, is thought to be the only person to have clearly seen the intruders' faces, and to have had prolonged conversations with them on the night of the crime.
So far, however, investigators have not contacted him to identify the suspects, and his attempts to enter France to be available to police have been rejected, MailOnline can reveal.
He told MailOnline: 'Before leaving France, the judge in charge of this case told my lawyers that I should renew my residence permit so I can travel quickly for the investigation purposes.
'Last week, I was in Paris to receive a letter from 'le prefet de Police' but he refused my request.'
He added: 'It is so crazy.'
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A suspect in Kim Kardashian West's Paris robbery is brought to BRB building, Brigade de Repression du Banditisme (suppression of banditry brigade), by police
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The suspects that police have held are accused of breaking into the reality TV star's Paris apartment block last October
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The accused men are suspected of stealing millions of pounds worth of jewellery
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Sources say that 'months of surveillance' has taken place, including phone taps. A suspect is pictured being taken to a police station in Paris
Abdulrahman's lawyer, Henri de Beauregard, told MailOnline: 'He had a visa that expired in November, and when he applied for a new one, he was refused.
'He doesn't want to stay in France for long, he just wants to come and be available for the investigation and help the police. It is important for justice and important for him.
'A victim is a victim. He is no less a victim than Kim – he has a right to face his aggressor.
'I don't know if this is incompetence or just a bad decision. He is the best witness, he saw the criminals much longer than Miss Kardashian. I hope the police have a lot of solid proof and evidence, because if they don't, it will be seen as a crazy decision.'
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French police have arrested 17 people over the robbery of Kim Kardashian in Paris, it has emerged
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One theory is that many of Ms Kardashian's jewels ended up in Antwerp – the diamond capital of Europe and a police operation was carried out in the Belgian city today (pictured)
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Belgium police are known to be involved in the investigation, and are carrying out checks in a number of businesses in Antwerp
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Kim Kardashian returned to social media this month and was on Snapchat for a make-up tutorial in Dubai
The gang escaped on 'velibs' - hire bicycles which can be rented all over Paris - but one of them dropped a diamond pendant worth around £28,000 in the street outside.
It was found by a woman who handed it in to police, as grainy CCTV of the men on bikes also emerged.
Police said the butter-fingered thief who lost the necklace had effectively led them to the entire group of suspects.
A DNA match from the necklace, along with tape used to gag Ms Kardashian, enabled detectives to trace key members of the gang.
A surveillance operation then led detectives to the other suspects, including jewel dealers thought to have been involved in fencing the stolen gems.
Just an hour before the robbery, Kim posted a video on Snapchat that showed her wearing the engagement ring (left)
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The multimillionaire, who was in the French capital for Paris Fashion Week, was locked in a bathroom while robbers stole a $4.5 million ring and a case of jewellery valued at $5.6 million
Forensics material found in a Paris hotel matched that of a well-known convicted armed robber described as a 'major thug'.
A suspected 'Mr Big' has been partially identified as Pierre B, a 72-year-old 'career villain' from the south of France who made millions through counterfeit money.
Others arrested include two diamond dealers and three women – some of whom are suspected of trailing Ms Kardashian around Paris before the robbery. They can be held for up to 96 hours before being charged or released.
Homes were still being searched on Monday, documents and other potential evidence being seized.
Raids were also underway at other key premises, including a jewellery shop in the centre of Paris.
A source confirmed that 'months of surveillance' had taken place, including phone taps.
Spending patterns have been looked at, and attempts to re-sell the jewellery stolen in October.
Shock acquittals in Wildenstein art dynasty's tax fraud trial
Guy Wildenstein's lawyer Herve Temime (L) speaks to reporters after the verdictAFP
A French court has delivered a shock acquittal on tax-dodging charges for the heirs to the Wildenstein art-dealing dynasty, while declaring there had been a "clear attempt" to conceal art treasures and other property worth billions of euros.
Presiding judge Olivier Géron was worried that his decision could be "misunderstood" when he announced on Thursday that he was acquitting 71-year-old Franco-American Guy Wildenstein, his nephew Alec Junior, his estranged Russian sister-in-law Liouba Stoupakova, two lawyers, a notary and two offshore trusts. They had clearly intended to conceal their massive wealth from tax authorities, he said, but shortcomings in French law and in the conduct of the inquiry made it impossible to convict them. Assets worth billions offshore The heirs were accused of concealing assets worth billions in offshore trusts and failing to declare their full worth on the occasion of the deaths of two heads of family. Their possessions included thorough-bred horses, artworks - including paintings by renaissance master Caravaggio, rococo painter Fragonard and post-impressionist artist Bonnard - and a gigantic ranch in Kenya that was used in the filming of Sydney Pollack's 1985 movie Out of Africa. After their father's death in 2001, Guy and his brother Alec declared they were worth just 40.9 million euros for inheritance tax purposes, paying the bill in bas-reliefs sculpted for Louis XVI's wife, Marie-Antoinette. When Alec died in 2008, Guy declared an inheritance of less than 60 million euros. The prosecution called for a four-year suspended sentence and 250-million-euro fine for Guy Wildenstein, one year suspended for Stoupakova and six months suspended for Alec Junior. None of them appeared in court. Prosecutors also wanted a two-year suspended sentence for notary Robert Panhard, two years in jail and one suspended with a million-euro fine for Swiss lawyer Peter Altorfer and two years suspended for French lawyer Olivier Riffaud. And they called for two trusts - one based in the Bahamas, the other in Guernsey - to be fined the maximum possible for complicity in tax fraud, 187,500 euros each. Intention not enough for conviction But the law has to apply equally to "the powerful and the poor", Géron said, and knowing that the family intentionally hid its wealth was not a sufficient legal basis to find them guilty. He said he was "astonished" that French MPs had not passed laws to clarify the status of trusts until 2011, although they have been under the spotlight for over a century. That law could not be applied to this case since it referred to events that took place before it had been passed. Géron also criticised investigators, claiming they had failed to carry out sufficient research in the tax havens to establish that the trusts were "fictional" and that the Wildensteins had secretly maintained access to and control of their fortune. After the verdict Guy Wildenstein's lawyer, Hervé Témine, said his client was "very relieved" while expressing concern it might give rise to controversy over "justice for the rich". Widows, ex-wives and lawsuits The first signs of trouble for the Wildensteins came in 2005 when Daniel's second wife, Sylvia Roth-Wildenstein, sued Guy and Alec, accusing them of hiding the true extent of the family's wealth when her husband died. In 2011 Stoupakova filed suit for breach of trust, claiming that she had been deprived of her fair share of the inheritance. There were further legal worries in the US in the same year when prosecutors opened an investigation into suspicions of receiving stolen goods and breach of trust against Guy Wildenstein, seizing several paintings, including one by impressionist Berthe Morisot valued at 800,000 euros. New tax case pending The case has been an embarrassment for former president Nicolas Sarkozy, who made Guy Wildenstein, a member of his party's US branch, a commnader of the Legion of Honour in 2009, describing him as a "friend". Thursday's acquittal will not be the end of the Wildensteins' legal difficulties.The French fiscal authorities are pursuing them for 550 million euros in allegedly unpaid taxes.
For Italy's Art Police, An Ongoing Fight Against Pillage Of Priceless Works
The police force for protection of Italy's cultural heritage is headquartered in Rome's Piazza Sant'Ignazio.
Italy has been described as the world's biggest open-air museum.
And with illegally excavated antiquities, looting of unguarded, centuries-old churches and smuggling of precious artworks, it's also an art theft playground.
But thanks to an elite police squad, Italy is also at the forefront in combating the illicit trade in artworks — believed to be among the world's biggest forms of trafficking and estimated to be worth billions.
A fifth grade class of a Roman elementary school came to see some 200 artworks that were stolen and then recovered.
Lt. Sebastiano Antoci, a 20-year veteran of the elite squad, told the kids how its investigations work.
"We tail suspects or use wiretaps so we can listen to the bad guys' phone calls or we check their bank accounts. And when we're out in the field," he said, "we look like everyone else, we don't wear uniforms."
The fifth-graders listened attentively to the art detective as he pointed to two medieval frescoes.
"We recovered the lamb in Switzerland," he said, "and the Christ in the United States. They're back together again for the first time since they were stolen"— in 1978 from a small church in Guidonia, a town south of Rome.
In 1969, Italy created the world's first specialized police force to combat art crime. It now numbers 280 investigators who also safeguard artworks in regions struck by floods and earthquakes. The unit also combats antiquities trafficking fueled by conflicts in the Middle East and Afghanistan.
At the Rome exhibit, Antoci showed the schoolchildren a marble sculpture that depicts a man and his two sons. It originates from the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra — which recently came under ISIS control.
Adding to his knowledge of art history the excitement of a detective tale, Antoci tells the kids the story of the sculpture, which was tracked down as part of an investigation into financial irregularities and dates back some 2,000 years. "It's a funerary sculpture," he tells them. "The terrorists smuggled it out of Syria and put it on the illicit antiques market. We tracked it down to an Italian businessman in Piedmont, who bought it just it a few months ago."
Gen. Fabrizio Parulli, the commander of this unique police force, explains what's needed to become a good art sleuth. "First of all, you need to be a good investigator," he says.
Speaking in his Rome office — located in a Baroque square that looks like an opera stage set — Parulli says his agents start as police officers and then get specialized training in art history, archaeology, restoration and recognizing counterfeit works.
But the heart of the investigative work is done elsewhere, in a large barracks in Rome's Trastevere neighborhood.
Sitting at a computer, Lt. Francesco Ficarella demonstrates the jewel in the crown of the cultural heritage protection squad — a database known as Leonardo, containing names and photos of close to 6 million registered artworks, mostly from Italy. Of those, 1.2 million are listed as stolen, missing, illegally excavated or smuggled.
Leonardo, he says, "is a crucial instrument not only for our national police forces but also for those abroad — it's the biggest artworks database in the world," he says.
The squad's recovery record is high. In 2014, it managed to recover 137,000 works with an estimated value of $500 million.
Until they're returned to the owners, recovered pieces are warehoused on the ground floor of the Trastevere building. Behind an armored door, tens of thousands of artworks are stored — wooden crucifixes, marble busts, bronze statues and hundreds of paintings, all carefully labeled.
These recovered pieces serve as evidence in criminal cases that are still open.
One of them, "Leda and the Swan," by 16th century painter Lelio Orsi, was auctioned for $1.6 million in New York. Smuggled out of Italy, it was tracked down, thanks to cooperation from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
But there's one piece that has eluded this elite art squad for almost three decades: a 6-square-foot canvas of the Nativity by the Baroque master Caravaggio. It was stolen in Sicily in 1969, the same year this special unit was created.
Lt. Calogero Gliozzo says the painting's whereabouts were known until the early 1980s. "We know the names of the robbers and we know the Mafia family that was hiding it," he says, "but then there was a Mafia war and we lost track of the painting."
One Mafia informant told police he had heard that the canvas had been destroyed by rats at a farm where it was hidden.
But here at the police squad, the art sleuths are convinced the masterpiece still exists — and that one day, they will succeed in recovering this No. 1 artwork on their most wanted list.
Copyright 2017 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.
KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:
In Italy, art and artifacts are everywhere - in museums, in the excavation sites and often unguarded churches - and that invites art thieves. But thanks to an elite police unit, Italy is at the forefront in combating the trafficking of stolen art. Here's NPR's Sylvia Poggioli.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Speaking Italian).
SYLVIA POGGIOLI, BYLINE: The fifth grade class of a Roman elementary school is visiting a special museum exhibit - 200 stolen artworks that were recovered by the police unit for protection of Italy's cultural heritage. Lieutenant Sebastiano Antoci tells the kids how their investigations work.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
SEBASTIANO ANTOCI: (Through interpreter) We tail suspects. We use wire taps so we can listen to bad guys' phone calls. We check their bank accounts. And when we're out in the field, we look like everyone else. We don't wear uniforms.
POGGIOLI: In 1969, Italy created the first police unit to combat art crime. It now numbers 280 agents who also safeguard artworks in regions struck by floods or earthquakes. And they combat antiquities trafficking fueled by conflicts in the Middle East and Afghanistan. Lieutenant Antoci shows the schoolchildren a magnificent piece originating from the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, which has been under ISIS control. The marble sculpture dating from the first or second century A.D. depicts a man and his two sons.
ANTOCI: (Through interpreter) The terrorists smuggled it out of Syria and put it on the illicit market. We tracked it down to an Italian businessman who bought it a few months ago.
POGGIOLI: So what's needed to become a good art sleuth?
FABRIZIO PARULLI: First of all, you need to be a good investigator.
POGGIOLI: General Fabrizio Parullo is the commander of this unique police force. His agents start as police officers and then get specialized training.
PARULLI: I have in my unit also people that has background as a archeologist, as a historian of art. So people that knows very well about these art worlds.
POGGIOLI: The investigative work is done in a large barracks in Rome's Trastevere neighborhood. Sitting at a computer screen, Lieutenant Francesco Ficarella demonstrates the jewel in the crown of the cultural heritage protection squad, a database known as Leonardo.
FRANCESCO FICARELLA: (Through interpreter) It's a crucial instrument, not only for our national police forces, but also for those abroad. It's the biggest artworks database in the world.
POGGIOLI: Leonardo contains close to 6 million registered artworks. More than a million are listed as stolen, missing, illegally excavated or smuggled. The squad's recovery record is high. In 2014, it managed to recover close to 140,000 works with an estimated value of $500 million. Until the return to the owners, they're stored on the ground floor - racks of paintings, wooden crucifixes, marble busts and bronze statues, all carefully labeled. These recovered pieces serve as evidence in criminal cases that are still open.
Yet there's one item that has eluded the art squad for almost three decades. The six-foot-square canvas of the Nativity by the baroque master Caravaggio was stolen in Sicily in 1969, the same year this special unit was created. Lieutenant Calogero Gliozzo says its whereabouts were known until the early 1980s.
CALOGERO GLIOZZO: (Through interpreter) We know the names of the robbers, and we know the mafia family that was hiding it. But then there was a mafia war, and we lost track of the painting.
POGGIOLI: One Mafia turncoat told police he'd heard the canvas had been destroyed by rats in a farm where was hidden. But here at the police squad, the art detectives are convinced the masterpiece still exists and that one day they will succeed in recovering this number one artwork on their most wanted list. Sylvia Poggioli, NPR News, Rome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
Kim Kardashian’s stolen jewellery re-cut, sold in black market
Los angeles: Reality TV star Kim Kardashian’s stolen jewellery have all been reportedly “melted down or re-cut and sold in the black market.” A police source has confirmed that none of the items taken by robbers breaking into her Paris apartment last October could be recovered, reported Us magazine.
Police detain Dutch diamond heist suspects 12 years after robbery
Dutch authorities have detained seven people over one of the world's biggest ever jewelry heists. Some 67 million euros worth of diamonds and jewels were snatched during a holdup at Amsterdam's airport 12 years ago.
Royal Marechausse police issued a statement Saturday saying five men and two women were detained Friday and Saturday on suspicion of money laundering and involvement in the armed robbery. Armed robbers hijacked an armored car belonging to the airline KLM at a high-security area of Amsterdam's Schiphol airport on February 25, 2005. They made off with diamonds worth an estimated $72 million (67 million euros). Part of the haul was quickly recovered from the getaway car, but the police said diamonds worth $43 million remained missing. It was one of the world's biggest ever heists. Nobody was physically hurt in the attack, even though the robbers were armed. A few months afterwards, five men were detained as suspects, but they were later released due to a lack of evidence. Police said the seven suspects detained Friday and Saturday were all Dutch nationals. They were tracked down with the help of new information which had come to light in the past year. They were arrested in Amsterdam and the eastern Spanish coastal city of Valencia.
Stolen Van Gogh masterpieces found in Mafia’s lair returning home after mobster’s conviction
Ciro Fusco/ANSA via AP, fileIn this Friday, Sept. 30, 2016 file photo, Director of Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum Axel Rueger, center, stands next to the paintings 'Congregation Leaving The Reformed Church of Nuenen', left, and 1882 'Seascape at Scheveningen' by Vincent Van Gogh, during a press conference in Naples, Italy.
This week Italian Judge Claudia Picciotti handed down more than one hundred years of prison time in the sentencing of eight members of the international drug trafficking Amato-Pagano clan, an organized crime network once affiliated with the Secondigliano-based Di Lauro crime syndicate, and an offshoot of the Naples Camorra.
The court's ajudication closes down one of the Camorra's largest suppliers of cocaine to the Bay of Naples area, paving the way for two recovered Van Gogh paintings, View of the Sea at Scheveningen, 1882 and Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen 1884 - 1885 to return home to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
The paintings were recovered during an asset seizure warrant executed in September 2016 at property occupied by the parents of drug kingpin, Raffaele Imperiale in Castellammare di Stabia, near Naples, Italy.
On hand for the sentencing hearing of the trial were:
Prosecutor Stefania Castaldi Prosecutor Maurizio De Marco Prosecutor Marra Vincenza Deputy Prosecutor Filippo Beatrice Prosecutor of the National Anti-Mafia Directorate Maria Vittoria De Simone Dutch Liaison Magistrate for Italy Hester van Bruggen Assistant to the Liaison Magistrate for Italy Royal Netherlands Embassy, Rome Peter Hemmes Van Gogh Museum Attorney Carel Raymakers
The defendants convicted and sentenced January 19, 2017 include:
Carmine Amato - Before his arrest, Amato was one of Italy's 100 most wanted and dangerous criminals. Considered the regent of the Amato-Pagano clan, a splinter organised crime group of the Di Lauro clan, dominant in the north of Naples, Amato was sentenced to twenty years imprisonment.
Vincenzo Scarpa - Drug supplier to Camorra clans in the Vesuvius periphery of the Bay of Naples, including the Gallo-Cavalieri, the Annunziatafrom Torre Annunziata, the i Falanga of Torre del Greco and the Licciardi of Secondigliano. Scarpa maintained key alliances with Camorra loyal suppliers based in Spain and the Netherlands. He has been sentenced to twenty years imprisonment.
(Fugitive) Raffaele Imperiale - Clan boss of the international drug trafficking Amato-Pagano clan which supplied cocaine to Amato and Scarpa. Although on the run from the authorities, he admitted to purchasing the Van Gogh paintings and to his illegal operations in letters to the prosecuting authorities. Imperiale was sentenced to 18 years imprisonment in absentia. He is believed to be hiding in Dubai. Mario Cerrone - Clan affiliate and business partner to Imperiale, who provided evidence to state authorities. Cerrone also led Italy's Corpo della Guardia di Finanza, which probes financial crimes related to organised crime, together with the Italian Public Prosecutions office, the Naples Direzione distrettuale antimafia and dedicated Dutch investigators to the whereabouts of the two stolen Vincent Van Gogh paintings. He has been sentenced to 14 years imprisonment.
Gaetano Schettino - A loyalist and drug broker for Raffaele Imperial, he has been sentenced to ten years imprisonment.
Three unnamed defendants - Sentenced to eight years imprisonment respectively.
Six other defendants are still awaiting the outcome of their judicial proceedings in relation to this criminal investigation.
Originally expected to be held as evidence for future lengthy trials, the court in Naples elected to release the Van Gogh paintings from legal seizure on Thursday. While talk continues between the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and Sylvain Bellenger, Director of the Museo di Capodimonte about the possibility of holding a brief exhibition in Naples, provided security measures are sufficient to guarantee their safety,the Dutch Impressionist's paintings are expected to be returned to Amsterdam as soon as February.
Once back home, the artworks will go on display at the Van Gogh Museum briefly, in the condition with which they were recovered, to celebrate their return. Then the artworks will undergo close examination and conservation treatment to clean and repair damages sustained during their trubulent time with the Italian crime syndicate.
Two stolen Vincent Van Gogh paintings found by police in a Mafia lair in Italy in September will soon return to their home in Amsterdam from where they were stolen in a spectacular heist in 2002. Originally expected to be held as evidence for future lengthy trials, a court in Naples released the paintings from legal attachment on Thursday after sentencing — in absentia — the drug baron in whose cottage the masterpieces were found to 18 years. The two works appear to be in reasonably good shape after their harrowing 14-year travels through the underworld, although both are missing their frames and show some signs of damage, according to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
Ciro Fusco/ANSA via AP, fileIn this Friday, Sept. 30 2016 file photo, the recovered painting 'Seascape at Scheveningen' by Vincent Van Gogh, is shown during a press conference in Naples, Italy.
“It’s great news: we can now focus fully on preparing for the paintings to come home. The two canvases will be formally handed over in the near future. A precise date hasn’t been fixed yet, but it’s expected to happen quickly,” said the museum’s director Axel Rüger. “We’re especially grateful to the Italian authorities for achieving something we almost thought would never happen. We can’t wait to place the two lost works back in our museum’s collection.” Van Gogh’s “Seascape at Scheveningen,” painted in 1882, and “Congregation leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen” painting from 1884 to 1885, are expected to again be on public display in the museum as soon as possible. It is believed the works, now made far more famous because of their underworld lineage, will make a brief public display in Naples before they are returned, but authorities would not confirm this.
Ciro Fusco/ANSA via AP, FileIn this Friday, Sept. 30 2016 file photo, the painting 'Congregation Leaving The Reformed Church of Nuenen' by Vincent Van Gogh, is shown during a press conference in Naples, Italy. Two paintings by Vincent van Gogh that were stolen in 2002 from the Amsterdam museum that is named for the Dutch master and recovered last year by Italian police are set to be returned.
Italian police investigating drug trafficking by a Mafia clan based near Naples found the two valuable masterpieces during raids after a tip from a cooperating witness, police said. Investigators were probing cocaine trafficking by members of the Amato-Pagano clan, said by authorities to be among the most dangerous drug trafficking clans in the Camorra, one of Italy’s Mafia organizations based in the region around Naples. The paintings were recovered in the cottage in Castellammare di Stabia connected to Raffaele Imperiale, accused of being one of the Camorra clan’s prodigious drug barons, called a “supernarco” in Italy. Imperiale built links between the clan and South American drug producers to import cocaine to Europe, authorities said. Although a fugitive, he was sentenced this week to 18 years for drug offenses, Italian media reported. He is believed to have fled to Dubai where he has business interests.
The seizure of assets by the Guardia di Finanza, Italy’s national financial crimes police force, also included several properties, buildings and a small plane. Officers found a hidden bunker behind a mirrored wall of a gym.
The theft of the paintings was considered one of the biggest art heists of modern times. Thieves entered from the roof of the Van Gogh Museum, bypassing security and cameras. When an alarm was triggered, the well-prepared thieves used a ladder to climb to an upper window, smash it and escape. The two thieves were later arrested after their DNA was found at the scene, but the paintings were not recovered until October’s raid. “It is excellent news that the paintings will shortly be returning to the Netherlands. Everyone, both young and old, should soon be able to enjoy these works again at the Van Gogh Museum,” said Jet Bussemaker, the Dutch Minister of Education, Culture and Science. “My compliments to all the parties who have worked so hard to make this happen.”
Possible ‘Pink Panther’ member remanded
A Lithuanian man, 37, suspected to be a member of an international gang, was remanded for eight days Thursday after genetic material linked him to an armed robbery carried out five years ago, at a jewellery shop in Limassol. According to police, during an investigation into a recent burglary in the Germasogeia area, genetic material collected from the 37-year-old, matched that found at the scene of the armed robbery in which expensive watches and jewellery, valued at around a million euros, were taken. The suspect, a member of a cleaning crew working in the area where a home was recently burgled, was summoned along with other workers to give genetic material and fingerprints.
They were all released as nothing incriminating was found against them but a few days later, the genetic material of the Lithuanian was matched to that found at the jewellers, leading to his arrest. The 37-year-old denies any involvement, saying he never visited the shop in question, which is also situated in the Germasogeia area. Detectives however, are not ruling out the possibility he is a member of the notorious international gang of thieves nicknamed the ‘Pink Panthers’ suspected of carrying out the heist. The four perpetrators of the robbery entered the shop through a secured area, one of them wearing a suit and posing as a customer, the other three barging through wearing hoods once the door was opened. The owner’s father and two employees were overpowered under the threat of a gun and bats. Having smashed the glass display cases, the robbers took watches and jewellery. The owner’s father tried to stop them, managing to retrieve some of the stolen goods, and removing the hood one of them was wearing. The attackers fled the scene after punching the man. A replica pistol dropped during their escape was also recovered. Interpol estimates the number of members of the ‘Pink Panthers’ at several hundred thieves, mainly from Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro, and Macedonia. Other sources say the gang is made up of sixty or so members, half of which are thought to come from Montenegro. Many members are said to be former soldiers with violent backgrounds. They are fluent in different languages and have been found to carry genuine passports issued to other people. In a space of six years this century, the Pink Panthers robbed some 120 shops in twenty different countries, with businesses in Japan, London, Denmark, Monaco, Paris, Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates and the United States targeted by the gang. Their success rate has been put down to their attention to detail. Before robbing a Biarritz jewellers, the group freshly painted a nearby bench to stop anyone from using it and seeing them at work.
Deal or no deal? Phoenix Ancient Art sues Getty over billion-dollar Greek and Roman sculpture collection
The Swiss dealership says the museum cut it out of an arrangement to show the art, but the museum says they never had a deal
Some of the statues from the Torlonia family’s collection in storage (Image: Rcs Roma/Archivio Roma)
The Getty and its director, Timothy Potts, were sued for $77m on 12 January in Manhattan federal court by the Swiss antiquities dealership Phoenix Ancient Art for cutting it out of a purported arrangement to “secure rights to” or display antiquities owned by the Torlonia family in Italy. According to the complaint, the collection of more than 600 Greek and Roman sculptures, amassed by the princely family who made a fortune in the 18th and 19th centuries as bankers to the Vatican, hasn’t been displayed since the 1960s and is worth “billions of dollars”.
The Getty, however, denies there was such an agreement and says through a spokesman that Phoenix “cannot plausibly demand payment for a deal that never occurred”. The museum says it was offered an opportunity to discuss a possible sale but “declined the acquisition and the objects were later transferred to the Italian government”. The museum currently has no plan to exhibit the work, the spokesman added. Phoenix’s lawyers did not respond to inquiries about the Getty’s statements.
The suit alleges Phoenix “created exclusive relationships with the Torlonia family and Italian officials designed to create a plan to transfer, sell, [and] display” the collection. The Swiss dealer’s agent Electrum, which was cataloging the collection, contacted the Getty in 2013 about purchasing some of the sculptures.
Because of the Getty’s “dubious acquisitions” and trouble with Italian authorities over its past purchases of allegedly looted art, Phoenix says it required the museum to sign a confidentiality agreement and not to contact the Torlonias except through Phoenix and Electrum. Phoenix arranged for Potts to see the sculptures, negotiated with the Torlonias over the selection and price of some sculptures, and persuaded the Italian government not to interfere, the gallery claims. In 2015, Phoenix says in its complaint, the Getty “feigned” a lack of interest in pursuing a deal but worked behind Phoenix’s back to arrange to show some Torlonia sculptures, using information the museum had agreed to keep confidential.
In 2016, the Italian culture ministry reached an agreement to create a museum for the Torlonia collection in Rome. Meanwhile, the archaeologist and art historian Salvatore Settis is due to organise a temporary exhibition of more than 60 works from the collection at the Palazzo Caffarelli in Rome, the former Mussolini Museum, later this year.
In its filing, Phoenix makes a point of outlining the Getty’s legal troubles with Italy. In 2007, the museum repatriated 40 sculptures the country claimed were looted. The Getty’s former curator Marion True was tried in Italy on charges of receiving stolen artefacts and conspiring to deal in them. (The case against True, who maintained her innocence, was dismissed in 2010). This resulted in a “cultural embargo” between Italy and the museum, which Phoenix overcame, the complaint says.
Phoenix has itself been accused of smuggling illicit antiquities, and in 2004 one of its owners, Hicham Aboutaam, pled guilty to a misdemeanor in connection with importing and selling a silver drinking vessel from Iran for $950,000.
A statue stolen from the Villa Torlonia in Rome in 1983 was recently repatriated to Italy by US authorities. The work ended up in a New York art gallery in the late 1990s and was sold to a private collector in 2001 for around $75,000. When the buyer tried to sell it on at auction, they were informed it was stolen and they voluntarily turned it over to the FBI.
Gallery Owner Under Fire for Jasper Johns Fraud
MANHATTAN (CN) – A Canadian gallery that paid $800,000 for stolen Jasper Johns artwork has brought a federal complaint against the New York seller it says tried to legitimize the heisted pieces. Filed on Jan. 11 in the Southern District of New York, the lawsuit takes aim at Fred Dorfman, a Chelsea art gallery owner described as the mastermind of a scheme that netted him nearly $6 million in commissions from sales of stolen Jasper Johns drawings. Equinox Gallery, of Vancouver, British Columbia, says Dorfman wanted access to Johns’ works so he offered to independently represent the artist’s longtime studio assistant, James Meyer. Noting that they never sold a single Meyer artwork – except those that Dorfman bought himself – Equinox claims that Dorfman always had his eye on Johns’ works – namely those that the artist wanted to destroy rather than include in his oeuvre. Dorfman was never charged in the Johns fraud, but a federal judge sentenced Meyer to a year and half in prison for the scheme in 2015, plus $17.4 million in restitution and forfeiture. Equinox quotes Meyer as calling Dorfman “architect of the scheme and its primary beneficiary.” Even in his confession, Meyer allegedly noted how “Dorfman repeatedly asked [him] if he had access to Mr. Johns’ discarded and/or unfinished artworks that were not intended for sale, and pressured him to obtain as much of these artworks as he could so they could sell them together.” The gallery owner has not returned a request for comment, but Equinox notes that other collectors have gone after it as well. It says Dorfman and his businesses settled with one buyer that brought a civil complaint accusing them of violating federal anti-racketeering law. Equinox says Meyer stole the Johns artwork it bought when he was helping the artist move from his Manhattan apartment on East 63rd Street to his bucolic Sharon, Connecticut, home in 1995 and 1996. When Dorfman agreed to sell these pieces, according to the complaint, he did so “knowing that these pieces were stolen, and in some instances had actually been fished from the trash.” Equinox says the gallery “needed a story legitimizing their provenance.” “To buttress this story, the Dorfman Defendants, among other things, drafted false affidavits for Meyer to sign (to be presented to the buyers, including Plaintiff here) swearing: (i) that the Stolen Works were gifts, (ii) that they were recorded in Johns’s archives, (iii) that they were authentic works, and (iv) that Johns had authorized Meyer to sell them,” the complaint states. “Of course, as the Dorfman Defendants knew at all times, these statements were false.” Equinox says Dorfman also provided photographs purporting to show the stolen drawings listed among other legitimate Johns works in the artist’s studio ledger, and printed counterfeit “Johns” labels to affix to the back of the stolen drawings. When Equinox bought one of the stolen pieces for $800,000 in January 2008, Dorfman earned a $470,000 commission on the sale, according to the complaint. Equinox notes that the sum “dwarf[ed]” the standard 10 percent to 25 percent commission that galleries earn on such sales. Equinox Gallery’s lawsuit calls the piece of artwork it bought “virtually worthless and unsaleable where the market does not consider it to be authentic because it will never be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonne for Johns’s works.” Alleging fraud, violations of RICO, breach of warranty and other claims, Equinox Gallery rescission of the cost of sale, plus seeks compensatory and consequential damages. The Gallery is represented by Judd Grossman. A pretrial conference for the case has been set for April 6, 2017.
GONE IN 60 SECONDS
Lithuanian serial robber who was able to fly into Britain to lead 60 second raid on Queen’s jewellers is jailed for 12 years
Rimantas Borisovas was snared by blood left at the crime scene - two years after the London heist
A SERIAL armed robber raided the Queen’s jewellers of £129,000 worth of watches in a 60-second raid after flying to the UK from Lithuania.
Rimantas Borisovas, 32, has been jailed for 12 years for the heist which saw him lead a gang of men armed with a handgun and claw hammers during a 96-hour round trip to Britain.
Armed robber Rimantas Borisovas, 32, pictured on CCTV leading a gang that raided Mappin And Webb
He had only just been released from a German jail when he orchestrated the smash-and-grab of Cartier watches inside Mappin And Webb, Regent Street, London.
Despite managing to flee, Borisovas was finally snared when cops matched blood from the crime scene of a 2014 raid in Germany and Lithuaina – but the expensive watches have never been found.
Police believe he is part of a major criminal gang from Eastern Europe.
Detective Sergeant Ben Kennedy, of the Metropolitan Police’s Flying Squad, said: “We think it was highly organised and they have exploited freedom-of-movement rules to fly into the country to commit crime and fly out very easily.
“They could have committed other offences here.
“We believe he is part of a Pink Panther-type gang that have been able to go across country borders to target high-end jewellers.
“The Met worked with European law enforcement partners to bring him to justice and I am pleased that the lengthy custodial sentence the judge handed down reflects the seriousness of the crime.”
The mastermind behind the plot is now behind bars – two years after stealing £129,000-worth of watches
On June 10, 2014, Borisovas flew on a Ryanair flight into Stansted before leading the heist less than 48 hours later.
Police believe he may have made a two-week trip to the UK the year before to allegedly carry out another raid before targeting the official silversmith to the Queen.
One of his accomplices was wearing make-up and a curly blond wig to disguise himself before being invited into the store by the security guard.
Once inside he pulled out a handgun while Borisovas and another man – both wearing hooded tops and caps – burst in with claw hammers.
Borisovas left blood at the scene when he smashed open the watch display cabinet with a hammer
Borisovas left smears of blood when he smashed a display case with a hammer to reach the Cartier watches.
This was how police managed to finally catch him two years later.
He then fled on foot – flying out of Stansted the next day to Poland, landing in a city close to the Lithuanian border.
But German police’s DNA database helped track down Borisovas for a Lithuanian car thief imprisoned in Germany for 13 theft offences in 2011.
He had also been convicted of a document fraud in 2016. Borisovas was put on a border watchlist but he was not caught until he flew into Stansted from Gdansk, Poland, on November 17 2016 that he was finally put behind bars.
Police have so far been unable to trace Borisovas’s accomplices, but the hunt continues.
In December, Borisovas admitted robbery and possession of a firearm. He was jailed last week for 12 years at Kingston Crown Court.
Robber steals diamonds worth £13 MILLION after pulling out a GRENADE at a jewellery store in Cannes
A man in sunglasses entered the Harry Winston store on the Croisette yesterday
Eight minutes after arriving he left the shop with £13million worth of diamonds
In 2013 a robber got away with gems worth £90million from a nearby hotel
An audacious robber held up a jewellery shop in Cannes with a pistol and a grenade and escaped on foot with £13million worth of diamonds yesterday.
The man, who was in his 30s and wore sunglasses, strolled casually into the Harry Winston luxury jewellery shop on the city's famed Croisette promenade.
Security camera footage is being examined in an effort to identify the robber but the Mayor of Cannes, David Lisnard said the robbery 'could and should have been avoided' and he called on the government to allow jewellery shops to use biometric recognition software.
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Police patrol outside the Harry Winston store a few hours after it was robbed
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A cameraman films the front of the Harry Winston store in Cannes after yesterday's robbery
The regional prosecutor, Alain Guimbard, said the man claimed to be looking on behalf of a wealthy sponsor: 'He asked to see diamond ornaments on behalf of a sponsor. The saleswoman was suspicious and gave him a catalogue.'
He then pulled out a 7.65-calibre automatic pistol and a grenade, forced security guards to lie on the floor and ordered the two saleswomen to open the display cases.
It is not clear if the grenade was real but the staff clearly were not taking any chances.
Nobody was injured in the heist and the robber was in and out of the shop within eight minutes.
Harry Winston is a New York-based jeweller that popular with billionaires and actresses who are often seen wearing its gems on the red carpet at the Oscars.
It is not the first time the Croisette has been targeted.
In July 2013, a man stole £90million worth of jewels from a temporary exhibition at the Hotel Carlton and has never been caught. He was rumoured to be a member of the famous Pink Panthers gang, who hail from Eastern Europe.
France is gaining an unwelcome reputation as an easy target for jewel thieves.
In October last year £8.5million worth of jewellery belonging to Kim Kardashian was stolen from her at an apartment in Paris.
Several men were arrested earlier this month but they have not been charged and experts say her jewels have long ago been sold on to a fence and recycled.
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Last night detectives could be seen inside the shop meeting with staff from the store
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Breath-taking: In 2014 South African actress Charlize Theron wore a Harry Winston necklace worth £13million (pictured) at the Oscars
Hogan-Howe and the riddle of a 3,000 year old curse: Met commissioner is being sued by a Lebanese antiques dealer over a bewitched £800,000 Assyrian artefact
Bernard Hogan-Howe is being sued by Lebanese antiques dealer Halim Korban
Korban holds the Met Police Commissioner responsible for seizing the artefact
A curse will allegedly be laid upon anyone who tampers with it or moves it
Police seized the object amid claims it had been looted from modern-day Syria
In his final weeks in office Met Police Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe has become embroiled in legal dispute over a 2,800-year-old artefact, which comes complete with a chilling curse.
The Met Commissioner is being sued by a Lebanese antiques dealer over the rare Assyrian relic, which is worth an estimated £800,000.
The ancient slab is engraved with a warning saying a curse will be laid upon anyone who tampers with it or moves it from its place of origin.
The relic, which forms part of a larger piece depicting King Adad-Nirari III, is carved with the words: 'Whoever discards this image from the presence of Salmanu . . . and places it into a taboo house which it is inaccessible, may the god Salmanu, the great lord, overthrow his sovereignty; may his name and his seed disappear in the land, may he live in a contingent together with the slave women of his land.'
Officers seized the black basalt slab, known as a 'stele', back in 2014 following claims it had been stolen.
Antiques dealer Halim Korban had been planning to auction the stele at Bonham's, in Geneva, in the April of that year.
But officers swooped on Bonham's warehouse the night before the auction and seized the relic following a warning from the Beirut-based Saadeh Cultural Foundation, which told UNESCO that the stele had been obtained illegally.
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Lebanese antiques dealer Halim Korban is suing the Metropolitan Police over ownership of the ancient basalt slab
The organisation said that the artefact had probably been looted from a site in modern Syria, and said that it should be returned to the country 'as soon as circumstances permit'.
Prior to the auction Bonham's had said that the antique was 'given as a gift from father to son in the 1960s'.
The auction house also said it was confident of the object's provenance, despite te fact that there were no details available as to how it left Syria.
The upper half of the stele, which depicts King Adad-Hirari's profile, was acquired by the British Museum in 1881 from the private collector Joseph M Shemtob.
The museum obtained the piece two years after it was discovered at the Tell Sheikh Hamad site, and has housed in ever since.
The complete stele would have measured 2.1 metres tall, and bears an image of King Adad-Nirari III.
The king ruled Mesopotamia between 810 BC and 783 BC.
The stele shows the ruler in a position of worship, with his right hand raised in worship and a mace in his left hand.
The tablet is also engraved with symbols representing the winged sun disc of Shamash; the star of Ishtar/Venus, the goddess of human passions in love and war; and the thunderbolt of the weather god Adad.
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Mr Korban holds Bernard Hogan-Howe personally responsible for the seizure of the artefact
Mr Korban offered the museum the bottom half of the slab in November 2011, but, seemingly suspicious of its origins, the museum declined to purchase the piece.
He then attempted to sell the piece on the open market before it was seized by police as evidence in any future trial.
A Geneva-based antiques and jewellery dealer, Emile Chayto was charged with fraud by false representations in connection with the artefact eighteen months after the raid, and police are holding the object as evidence.
But Mr Korban has gone to court to have the piece returned to him, claiming he is the rightful owner.
He is also demanding £200,000 in compensation for loss and damage as part of his claim.
A spokesman for the art dealer told the Sunday Telegraph: 'The stele is a valuable object which Mr Korban considers his and he wants it back. He can show proper provenance and utterly rejects the notion that it was obtained illegally.'
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The upper portion of the stele is currently held by the British Museum
Mr Korban holds Mr Hogan-Howe personally responsible for the seizure of the artefact and preventing its planned sale.
In the writ he has filed against the Commissioner he said: 'At all times since their seizure of the stele the police have been aware of the claimant's [Mr Korban] claim in respect of it, namely that he is its owner, and that he is who is entitled to its possession.'
However, the Met is adamant that the officers acted properly in confiscating the object, saying it is legally being held as part of a criminal investigation.
In a written submission to the High Court the Met's solicitors said: 'there are reasonable grounds for believing that the provenance provided is false and the object of the false representation was to disguise the theft and illegal export of the stele from Syria.'
It is not the first time Mr Korban has had the provenance of an antique that he was trying to offload called into question.
The dealer was at the centre of the sale of 14 pieces of Roman silver worth up to £200 million, known as the Sevso Treasure.
The J Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles was interesting in purchasing the collection, but later declined to go ahead with the sale, claiming that Lebanese export documents had been forged.
Mr Korban and a colleague later sold the silver to former Sotheby's chairman Peter Wilson, who then sold it on to the Marquess of Northampton.
Picasso, Matisse and other art from 2010 Paris heist may be in Israel
‘Spiderman’ burglar on trial over $100m haul of five paintings; one accomplice suspected of selling them to Israeli collector
PARIS — A burglar dubbed “Spiderman,” notorious for daring acrobatic heists, went on trial here this week for a $100 million art heist in 2010 that saw works by Picasso and Matisse stolen from a Paris gallery. Investigators reportedly believe the works may have been smuggled to Israel by one of two other defendants in the trial, for sale to an Israeli collector.
Vjeran Tomic, a 49-year-old who is a skilled rock climber, faces up to 20 years in jail if convicted of the robbery. His co-defendants face up to 10 years.
The second defendant, antiques dealer Jean-Michel Corvez, is accused of ordering one of the paintings, by Fernand Léger, on behalf of a “Moroccan or Saudi” collector.
And the third defendant, Yonathan Birn, a rare watch dealer, is accused of concealing all five paintings after the heist, and suspected of having brougth them to Israel, Britain’s Daily Telegraph reported.
Vjeran Tomic, the main suspect in the 2010 theft of five masterpieces from the Paris Modern Art Museum, arrives at his trial on January 30, 2017, at the courthouse in Paris. (AFP PHOTO / BERTRAND GUAY)
When questioned in court, Birn claimed he had panicked and thrown all the artwork away. “I’m crying because it’s monstrous what I’ve done,” he said according to the indictment. “I was overcome with panic. I lost all reason and decided to take the paintings out of my workplace and from a safe.”
Birn said in court that he “understands that nobody believes” his claim that he destroyed the works. And investigators suspect that he smuggled the paintings out of the country, perhaps to Israel, which he recently visited. Investigators “believe that the works were sold to a collector — perhaps in Israel, which Mr Birn visited,” the Telegraph said.
Tomic arrived in a blue overcoat and sweatshirt for his trial in Paris and admitted to carrying out the heist after being arrested in May 2011 and compared himself to a famed thief from French literature as he spoke to reporters on Monday.
“What role did I have? Arsene Lupin,” he told reporters with a smile, referring to the sly but charming character who ransacked rich Parisians’ homes in stories published at the start of the 20th century.
Tomic and the two alleged accomplices have been charged over the May 2010 robbery at the Modern Art Museum of five paintings by Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Ferdinand Leger and Amedeo Modigliani. All the artworks are still missing.
Tomic is suspected of cutting through a padlocked gate and breaking a window to get into the gallery, one of the most-visited museums in Paris on the banks of the Seine.
The museum’s alarms had been awaiting repair for several weeks and Tomic is alleged to have somehow knocked out a security camera.
Three guards were on duty that night, but the paintings were only found to be missing from their frames just as the museum prepared to open to the public the next day.
When police arrested the Serb in May 2011, Tomic told them he had initially broken into the museum for Leger’s “Still Life with Candlestick” from 1922, not thinking he would also be able to steal another four.
Besides the Leger canvas, the other works stolen were Picasso’s cubist “Dove with Green Peas” from 1912 — alone worth an estimated 25 million euros ($26.8 million) — French contemporary Matisse’s “Pastoral” from 1905, Braque’s “Olive Tree near Estaque” from 1906, and Modigliani’s “Woman with a Fan” from 1919.
All but the Modigliani were hung in the same room in the museum, located in the well-heeled 16th district of Paris, which is run by the city and is home to more than 8,000 works of 20th century art.
‘Liked’ paintings
Tomic, who has a criminal record of 14 previous offenses, said he took them all because he “liked” the paintings.
Authorities put the total value of the haul at 100 million euros ($107 million), but some experts said they were worth twice that, while admitting it would be impossible to sell such artworks on the open market.
The presiding judge at the trial on Monday, Peimane Ghaleh-Marzban, said the value of the masterworks was “far higher than their market value.”
They have still not been recovered.
Ghaleh-Marzban also criticized the security “failures” which enabled the heist to be carried out with “disconcerting ease.”
The defendants face a 10-year jail term if convicted for the theft or re-sale of the artworks, but Tomic’s sentence could be double that given his criminal record.
Athletically built and 1.90 meters (6 foot 2 inches) tall, he earned his nickname for clambering into posh Parisian apartments and museums to steal valuable gems and works of art.
Prosecutors claim he was spotted by a homeless man as he roamed around the museum in the days leading to the theft.
Police arrested him after receiving an anonymous tip and tracking his mobile phone. Surveillance cameras from the night of the heist recorded only one person entering through a window who could not be identified.
An art dealer who admitted to having the paintings for a short time said he dumped them in a garbage can, which authorities do not believe.
International police body Interpol put out an alert to its 188 member countries in the hope of recovering the five paintings, but so far they all remain missing.
There has been a spate of art thefts in Europe in recent years.
The most recent, in 2015, involved the theft of five paintings worth 25 million euros by renowned British artist Francis Bacon in Madrid.
Spanish police arrested seven people last year suspected of being involved in that theft.
Hatton Garden heist value has 'DOUBLED since the raid and now stands at £29million'
It was originally thought that £10million in cash and jewellery had been taken during the raid by a gang of elderly criminals
The estimated value of loot stolen in the Hatton Garden heist has more than doubled to £29m, a court heard. It was originally thought that £10million in cash and jewellery had been taken during the raid by a gang of elderly criminals. But at a confiscation hearing at Woolwich Crown Court, barristers said detectives are now claiming the amount stolen totalled £25m, plus £4million worth of gear that was recovered. If the raiders do not pay back what the judge rules they gained from the crime, they could face up to a maximum of 14 years of jail time being added to their sentences, without parole. Denis Barry, representing gang member Daniel Jones, said: “The Crown says it is £25 million between five and that really is one of the issues we are going to have to wrestle with. That’s what makes this case exceptional.” The true value of the stolen goods will never be known because there was no record of what was stored in the vault. It is in the interests of the police and the alleged victims to over inflate the figure to get longer sentences for the gang and higher insurance payouts. Earlier this month it emerged a woman came forward more than a year after the raid to claim she had £7million worth of valuables stolen. The alleged victim spoke to police last June, 15 months after the break-in. She said that was when she realised her valuables had been stolen, after coverage of the raiders’ trial, which ended in January. The gang, with a combined age of 448, carried out the “sophisticated” and meticulously planned break-in over the 2015 Easter holiday. Using a diamond tipped drill they bored into the vault and ransacked 73 deposit boxes for gold, diamonds and sapphires. John “Kenny” Collins, 76, Daniel Jones, 62, Terry Perkins, 68, and the group’s oldest member, Brian Reader, 78, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit burglary. A biography of mastermind Brian Reader revealed he is the nation’s most prolific thief, having been involved in raids worth £200million. The book, One Last Job, details how he planned the Hatton Garden theft with a burglar alarm expert known as Basil or The Ghost, who is still at large. Tom Wainwright, for Reader, asked for a QC to be appointed to his client’s case, stating they would have the required skill to deal with proceedings of this length and Reader’s health. He said: “The case is made more complex because Mr Reader is not in good health. “He is likely to be in worse health come December or January.” A full confiscation hearing, under the Proceeds of Crime Act, will determine how each of the defendants benefited from the raid and is expected to take place in 2018.
Art thieves suspected of Francis Bacon heist arrested in Madrid
Photo: Policia Nacional
Spanish police have arrested three people in connection with the theft of five paintings by the Irish-born artist Francis Bacon valued at €25 million.
Police raided six properties in the Madrid region and seized a gun, ammunition, manuals to cracking safes, laser devices and oxy-fuel cylinders used to cut metal, Spain’s National Police said in a statement on Tuesday. The three people were “directly connected” to the robbery and were part of a group that burgled homes across Spain, the statement said. Five other members of the gang were also arrested for a further 15 robberies. The five paintings by Francis Bacon were stolen from the Madrid home of an art collector in June, 2015, who had reportedly been a close friend of the artist. They were valued at around €25 million, ($26.88 million). The thieves, who left no trace of their handiwork, had tracked the owner's movements to ensure he did not return to his apartment to catch them red-handed.Irish-born Bacon died in Madrid in 1992 aged 82 and his expressionist-surrealist works, which are often raw and emotional, remain hugely sought after. Bacon's death only enhanced his reputation and the 2013 sale of his 1969 work "Three Studies of Lucien Freud" fetched $142,405,000 at auction, a world record at the time. The theft occurred in June 2015, when J. C. B.—a Spanish friend of the legendary painter who inherited the artworks when Bacon died in 1992—left his residence, in an affluent area in the center of Madrid, for a few hours. Besides the five paintings, said to be of medium to small size, the thieves stole a safe containing several collections of coins, jewels, and other valuable goods. At the time, ABC reported that the initials J. C. B. correspond to José Capelo Blanco, and that he was Bacon’s last lover during a relationship that lasted four years, until Bacon’s death in Madrid. Art market information leader Artprice lists Bacon as one of 10 frontline modern artists alongside the likes of Picasso and Andy Warhol Warhol whose works comprise 18 percent of global sales.
Antiques dealer jailed for stealing painting from Chester Cathedral
Latvian Vasilijs Apilats, 61, sentenced to nine months for stealing painting worth about £2,000 in August 2014
A Latvian antiques dealer who stole a 19th-century religious painting from a cathedral because he was besotted with the artwork has been jailed for nine months. The Raising Of Lazarus was torn from its easel on the altar in the chapel of Saint Anselm in Chester Cathedral, a quiet corner intended for prayer and reflection. In its place a cheap Christmas tree decoration of an angel was left behind. The icon, worth about £2,000, was stolen by talented artist and experienced restorer, Vasilijs Apilats, 61. Chester crown court heard Apilats stole the item not for greed but because he was besotted by such artwork and his actions were “akin to the instinct of a magpie”.The Greek painting was donated to the historic cathedral seven years ago by the family of a former dean of Chester, Ingram Cleasby. The recorder, Eric Lamb, told the court as he jailed the defendant: “Having seen photos of your home, I have formed the view that you committed this crime out of a simple desire to acquire the icon, rather than having any specific monetary gain in mind.” Apilats had denied stealing the icon, dating from about 1870, in August 2014. During his trial last year he professed his orthodox Christian faith and claimed he was offered it for sale by an unidentified man at the cathedral. He said he placed the icon into black bin liners and was told by the man he had to leave the cathedral through a back door and a metal fence. But Apilats, who followed proceedings through a Russian interpreter, was convicted by the jury of the theft. During the hunt for the painting officers searched the Cheshire home of the art collector and found the icon wrapped inside a bin bag and hidden among a haul of dozens of other religious artefacts.Apilats, was tracked down through his DNA from swabs taken from the easel that the painting had been screwed upon. The following month in his terraced home in Crewe officers found paintings mostly depicting Jesus, religious books, crucifixes, busts and other church-related ornaments. Three other men – aged 31, 34 and 36 – and a 57-year-old woman were arrested but freed without charge. After his conviction Apilats, who was given indefinite leave to remain in the UK after moving from Latvia in 1990, wrote a “gushing” apology letter to the cathedral and the general public, begging for forgiveness. In a victim impact statement, Peter Howell-Jones, the vice-dean of Chester Cathedral, said the icon was “hugely important”, used as an aid for prayer and its theft had upset the congregation. It emerged Apilats had previously been made the subject of a restraining order after pleading guilty to harassing the Crewe and Nantwich Tory MP, Edward Timpson, after he attended his constituency office and threatened him and members of staff during a row over housing. Apilats claimed he had been allowed to settle in the UK in 1990 after claiming he had to flee the Russian mafia over his antique deals in Latvia. During his trial, Apilats claimed he had bought the painting for “restoration purposes” in good faith. He said he was approached by two men he claimed worked at the cathedral and said they offered it to him for £250 before negotiating a sale price of £135 in cash. His solicitor, Peter Moss, said Apilats had a mental disorder. He claimed it was from ill-treatment suffered at the hands of the Russian mafia. The defendant was also ordered to pay a £100 victim surcharge. However, Sgt Neil Doleman, of Cheshire constabulary, said: “Apilats is a man who appears to be obsessed with religious artefacts. He selfishly took an icon, which was not only of significant value but was also of huge importance to Chester Cathedral and the public who used it as an aid to pray.” Chester Cathedral constable Chris Jones said: “We are delighted to be able to re-instate the stolen 18th century icon here at the cathedral. It has now been returned to its rightful place in St Anselm’s chapel, a place used for prayer and refection. “The icon was gifted to the cathedral by a former dean of Chester, Ingram Cleasby, so it is a very meaningful part of the history of the building. “We would like to thank everyone involved in the search for the icon, especially the Cheshire constabulary for their careful and dedicated work. We were very saddened when the icon was taken and thought it had gone forever so to see it returned is very special.”
3 Chinese linked to 'Pink Panda' theft group nabbed over diamond ring heist
The Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) arrested three Chinese nationals on Jan. 24 on suspicion of stealing a diamond ring worth 2.8 million yen, the department announced.
The three are thought to be members of the Chinese theft group "Pink Panda," and include Yang Manwan, 47, of unknown occupation.
The three are accused of stealing a diamond ring from a jewelry store's booth at an international jewelry exhibition at Tokyo Big Sight in Koto Ward, Tokyo, before noon on Jan. 20 last year. All three are denying the allegations, the MPD says.
According to the MPD, the three suspects came to the attention of investigators after they examined security footage of the exhibition. Investigators were issued warrants for the arrest of the three and were searching for them, when they showed up at a jewelry exhibition that began this month on Jan. 23. They were then arrested by investigators.
Pink Panda is composed of people from China's Hunan Province. The gang was given the name by French police after the "Pink Panther" group, which is another international jewelry thief group.
Yesterday, March 2nd 2017 at Court 1 Lewes Crown Court in front of Judge Anthony, Terence Michael Boyle, was sentenced to Four years in jail, his Mistress,(Goomah) 22 years his junior, Suzanne Elaine Hawkins was sentenced to Six years in jail, Anthony Cooper was sentenced to Four years in jail with another two years in jail added for another case from Kingston Crown Court to run consecutively, total six years jail. The final defendant Rizzen got two years in jail. This case stems from a Police raid at the Boyle/Hawkins farm in North Chailey East Sussex back in 2014 which yealded 1600 cannabis plants. A proceeds of Crime Order will now go forward with view to recovering at least £1 million from Mr Boyle and Ms Hawkins, not least from the proceeds of the sale of the North Chailey farmhouse, which was put up for sale last year for £1.3 million, then reduced to £1.1 million, then reduced to below £1 million. Current status unknown. Mr Boyle had the farmhouse built on land aquired back in 2005, see for sale details when priced £1.3 million: http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-25939993.html
25 May 2001 For more than 50 years antique dealer Billy Boyle's market stall was a feature of Brighton's bustling street scene. Now one of the city's streets has been named in tribute to the 86-year-old father of seven, who died of cancer last week. His youngest son, Richard, 43, has just had two bungalows built on land behind his own home in Princes Terrace, Kemp Town and the road has been officially named Boyles Lane. More than 100 people, including Billy's 28 grandchildren, filled St John the Baptist Church in Kemp Town for his funeral yesterday. Before the service, family members were taken on a tour of Billy's haunts in a fleet of 12 hearses. The tour included the spot in Upper Gardener Street where he set up his first stall and Palace Pier where he met future wife, Rebecca Mears. His son, Terry, 57, said: "Dad was a wonderful man." Billy, one of five children, left the notorious Gorbals estate in Glasgow aged 21 and headed south searching for work, ending up in Brighton. He set up a market stall in Kemp Town and later became one of the town's original licensed street traders. Boyles Lane will be lit by two of the street lamps salvaged from the site of his stall. Billy and Rebecca married in 1941 while he was serving in the Royal Navy during the Second World War. He reached the rank of leading gunner and once, when his ship was torpedoed, was one of only two survivors who spent three days in freezing water before being rescued. On his return, the couple, who lived in Playden Close, had seven children. Billy died a week before their diamond wedding anniversary. His eldest son, Billy, 59, continues the family business while Terry, 57, and Richard work in the property business. Stephen Boyle, 47, runs Becky's Cafe. His daughter Maureen, 56, runs a sandwich shop, Jeanette, 54, is a care worker and Theresa, 45, mans a fruit and veg stall on the outdoor market. Richard said: "When we had the two bungalows built we were asked to come up with a name. We all agreed it should be named after him because we all loved him so much." Mr Boyle's Elvis impersonator grandson Howard, 21, said: "He was a great character with a wonderful sense of humour." His widow Rebecca said: "His family was his main reason for living. He cherished us all."
Three jailed over Chailey cannabis factory conspiracy
Cannabis factory in North Chailey
Three people have been jailed after the discovery of a cannabis factory worth more than £2 million in North Chailey.
Between them, Terence Boyle, Suzanne Hawkins and Anthony Cooper are set to serve a total of 16 years in prison for their involvement in the drugs operation.
Suzanne Hawkins SUS-170303-150714001
Police say the factory was uncovered at the isolated farm in East Grinstead Road, North Chailey on February 26, 2014, where an outbuilding had been specially adapted to grow the plants.
Officers seized more than 1,700 cannabis plants in various stages of growth, which the court heard could have been worth up to £2.136 million. Pensioner Terence Boyle, 73 and his partner Suzanne Hawkins, 51 were arrested at the farm on the day, Sussex Police say. Three other people were also arrested at the time. Two of those arrested – an 19-year-old woman and a 42-year-old man – were later released without charge.
Terence Boyle SUS-170303-150703001
Boyle and Hawkins’ son Jesse Boyle was also arrested. Jesse Boyle and his parents were charged in May 2015 with conspiracy to supply a controlled class B drug. During the course of the investigation, officers discovered another man with links to the farm, Anthony Cooper. The 47-year-old was arrested in London and also charged in May 2015 with conspiracy to supply and money laundering. All four stood trial at Lewes Crown Court on January 23 this year. Cooper pleaded guilty on the first day of the trial to the charge but the case continued for the other three. Jesse Boyle was found not guilty after a three and a half week trial, however Terence Boyle and Suzanne Hawkins were both found guilty, say police. Boyle, Hawkins and Cooper have all appeared again at Lewes Crown Court and have been sentenced. Boyle and Hawkins were each given four years. Cooper was given a total of six years – four for conspiracy and two for money laundering. Investigating officer detective constable Jim Austin said it had “been a long and complex investigation”.
Three people sent to prison for North Chailey cannabis factory
A discovery of a cannabis factory worth up to £2 million has landed three people in prison. Terence Boyle, Suzanne Hawkins and Anthony Cooper are set to serve 16 years in prison between them for their involvement in the cannabis factory raided by police in February 2014. The factory was uncovered at the isolated farm in East Grinstead Road, North Chailey on February 26, 2014 where an outbuilding had been specially adapted to grow the plants. More than 1,700 cannabis plants, in various stages of growth and the court heard they could have been worth up to £2.136 million. Retired Terence Boyle, 73 and his partner Suzanne Hawkins, 51 were arrested at the farm on the day. Three other people were arrested at the time and two, an 19-year-old woman and a 42-year-old man were released without charge. Boyle and Hawkins' son Jesse Boyle was also arrested. Along with his parents, all these were charged in May 2015 with conspiracy to supply a controlled class B drug. During the course of the investigation, officer discovered another man with links to the farm, Anthony Cooper. The 47-year-old was arrested in London and also charged in May 2015 with conspiracy to supply and money laundering. All four stood trial on January 23 this year at Lewes Crown Court. Cooper pleaded guilty on the first day of the trial to the charge but the case continued for the other three. After a three and a half week trial, Jesse Boyle was found not guilty, however Terence Boyle and Suzanne Hawkins were found guilty. Boyle, Hawkins (both pictured below) and Cooper have all appeared again at Lewes Crown Court and have been sentenced. Boyle has been given four years, Hawkins was given four years and Cooper was given four for conspiracy and two for money laundering. Investigating officer detective constable Jim Austin said: "This has been the largest cannabis factory I have dealt with and this has been a long and complex investigation involving a number of officers and we have succeeded in taking a massive amount of cannabis off the streets. In the process three people who worked together to set up this professional set-up are going to serve time in prison. We are continuing our work to take away the money and assets they have gained from their criminal behaviour."
Back-story to this case:
Sussex Police have uncovered a large-scale cannabis growing facility at an isolated farm.
Detectives and uniform officers executed a drugs warrant at Warrenorth Farm, North Chailey, at 9.15am on Wednesday Feb 26th 2014.
Cannabis farm at North Chailey.
In a specially adapted outbuilding they discovered some 1,500 cannabis plants in various stages of growth, with an estimated street value of at least £1 million.
Two men aged 70 and 25, and two women aged 48 and 19, were arrested at the address on the A275 East Grinstead Road on suspicion of being involved in cannabis cultivation. Later they were in custody for interview and further enquiries.
Cannabis farm at Warrenorth farm, North Chailey.
Detective Inspector Gavin Patch said: “Although our examination of the building is at an early stage it is already clear that this is one of biggest such sites we have seen for some time. “This was an intelligence-led operation, following up information we received. If anyone has any suspicions about such activity we ask them to call us via 101 or email 101@sussex.pnn.police.uk”
Gold coin worth $4 million stolen from Berlin museum
FILE PHOTO - Picture taken in Vienna, Austria on June 25, 2010 shows experts of an Austrian art forwarding company holding one of the world's largest gold coins, a 2007 Canadian $ 1,000,000 ''Big Maple Leaf''. A Canadian gold coin named "Big Maple Leaf" which bears the image of Queen Elizabeth II was stolen in the early hours of Monday morning from Berlin's Bode Museum. The coin is made out of pure gold, weighs about 100 kilos and has a face value of around $1 million (794,344.27 pounds). "The coin was stolen last night, it's gone," museum spokesman Markus Farr said.
Given the high purity of the gold used in the coin, its material value is estimated to be $4 million. The museum said on its website that the coin was issued by the Royal Canadian Mint in 2007 and that it was featured in the Guinness Book of Records for its "unmatched" degree of purity. The coin, with a diameter of 53 centimetres and 3 centimetres thick, was loaned to the Bode Museum in December 2010. Police said it was probably stolen by a group of thieves who entered the museum undetected through a window, possibly with the help of a ladder. we have so far we believe that the thief, maybe thieves, broke open a window in the back of the museum next to the railway tracks," police spokesman Winfrid Wenzel said. "They then managed to enter the building and went to the coin exhibition."The coin was secured with bullet-proof glass inside the building. That much I can say," Wenzel added. "Neither I nor the Bode Museum can go into detail regarding personnel inside the building, the alarm system or security installations." The Bode Museum has one of the world's largest coin collections with more than 540,000 items.
Cops hunt thieves who stole £2.5million worth of art from Bulmers cider tycoon’s mansion while he was on luxury Barbados holiday
Gang fled with art, jewels and silverware of sentimental value to Esmond & Susan Bulmer in horror burglary eight years ago
COPS have issued a renewed appeal for information on thieves who stole art worth £2.5million from the home of an ex-Tory MP and cider tycoon eight years ago.
Esmond Bulmer, 81, of the Bulmers cider dynasty, and his wife Susan, 75, were on holiday together in Barbados when the raiders broke into their decadent mansion and made away with the luxury goods.
Fresh pleas … cops are calling for witnesses to come forward and help Esmond Bulmer, 81, and his wife Susan, 75, find artwork taken from them eight years ago
South West News Service
Cops have arrested 11 men in connection with the burglary at The Pavilion, but are yet to recover the majority of stolen goods They are alleged to have threatened to pour bleach over house-sitter Deborah Branjum, and tied her to a stair banister before fleeing the property with the priceless haul. Some of the gang are believed to have fled with the paintings, while others loaded the boot of the Bulmers’ Mercedes with a safe with £1million worth of jewellery inside.
South West News Service
Italian landscape by Pieter Bruegel … just one of the 15 paintings taken in the raid has been recovered by cops
South West News Service
Edward Poynter masterpiece … Esmond Bulmer and his wife Susan were on holiday in Barbados when thieves broke into their sprawling mansion Up to 15 well-known artworks, along with jewels and silverware were stolen in the March 2009 raid. The shocked house sitter was found at their house, The Pavilion near Bruton, Somerset, 18 hours after the break-in. Cops have arrested 11 men in connection with the aggravated burglary. All remain on bail pending further investigation. The latest arrest was a 42-year-old man from Small Heath, Birmingham. The unnamed man was arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to commit fraud, and conspiracy to handle criminal property.
South West News Service
Back with rightful owners … George Frederick Watts’s Endymion was recovered by private investigators
South West News Service
Still missing … Sir George Clausen’s Apple Blossom was among paintings stolen
South West News Service
Richard Buckner masterpiece … thieves broke into Esmond and Susan Bulmer’s mansion eight years ago
South West News Service
Thieves managed to get away with art worth £2.5million after allegedly threatening to pour bleach over a house sitter Officials have previously arrested suspects in Gloucestershire, West Midlands, London and the South East in connection with the heist. Renewing their appeal for witnesses eight years on, Avon and Somerset Constabulary said all but one of the 15 paintings taken have been recovered by private investigators. The outstanding painting is Sir John Lavery’s “After Glow Taplow.” The jewellery and silverware taken in the heist have great sentimental value to the Bulmer family.
South West News Service
Sentimental value … the gang fled the scene with a number of jewels and silverware which are of great personal importance to the Bulmer family
South West News Service
The gang got lucky with a safe that contained around £1million in jewellery Mr Bulmer is thought to have made £84million when he and his family sold their stake in the family’s Hereford-based Bulmers cider-making business. Upon getting one piece of art back in 2015, Mr Bulmer, who was MP for Kidderminster between 1974 and 1983, said he was “thrilled”. Police are appealing for jewellers and antique and second-hand shop owners who may have been offered the items to come forward. Anyone able to help should call the Operation Shine investigative team via 101, quoting reference Op Shine 3559609.
South West News Service
Woman sitting at a window by Paul Maze … up to 15 well-known artworks were stolen in the raid
South West News Service
Police have renewed their appeal for witnesses eight years on from the burglary, in a desperate bid to return the goods to the distraught family
South West News Service
One down, 14 to go … upon getting one of the 15 pieces stolen back two years ago, Mr Bulmer said he was ‘thrilled’
Stolen Van Goghs back on display after years in criminal underworld
They spent years under wraps and out of sight in a criminal's safe - but two Van Gogh paintings are now back on show in the Dutch museum they were stolen from in 2002.
The canvases, Sea View at Scheveningen and Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church at Nuenen, date from Van Gogh's early period and are described as priceless. However, Dutch culture minister Jet Bussemaker said their real value would be in the eyes of those who can now see them again. Thieves seized the canvases from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam - which contains the world's largest collection of Van Gogh works with more than 200 paintings and 500 drawings - after breaking in through the roof. One of the men convicted over the theft, Octave Durham, has revealed that he was actually after the artist's better known works, but they were harder to steal. He told a documentary to be aired later that he found it "trivially easy" to break in to the museum. "The heist took about three minutes and 40 seconds," Durham says in the film, the New York Times reported. "When I was done, the police were there, and I was passing by with my getaway car. Took my ski mask off, window down, and I was looking at them." He said he and his accomplice had wanted to steal Sunflowers but the artwork was too well guarded, Trouw newspaper reported. They then turned their attention to The Potato Eaters, considered the painter's first masterpiece, but decided it was too big to fit through the hole they had entered through. Durham told the filmmakers he had selected the seascape because the thick paint convinced him it would be valuable. He was arrested a year later in the Spanish resort of Marbella and convicted in 2005, but had until now maintained he was innocent. The theft was a case of "art-napping" by an opportunist burglar, art investigator Arthur Brand told the BBC.
"No art collector will pay for stolen art they can't display," he said. But stolen art could be used as leverage by criminals who offer its return in exchange for reduced sentences for their crimes. Dutch criminal Cor van Hout - who became notorious for kidnapping the beer tycoon Freddy Heineken for an estimated $10m (£8m) ransom in 1983 - wanted to buy them but he was gunned down in a gangland hit before the deal could be done. Another potential buyer met the same fate and the paintings were eventually sold to Raffaele Imperiale, a low-ranking mafioso who was at the time running an Amsterdam coffee shop. Imperiale paid about €350,000 ($380,000; £305,000) for the paintings and his lawyers told the New York Times he had bought them because he was "fond of art" and they were a "bargain".
Imperiale was among several suspected dealers arrested by Italian police last January. Another suspected dealer arrested at the same time reportedly told investigators the paintings were at Imperiale's house. The BBC's James Reynolds in Rome says mafia members are not known for their understated good taste and raids have often revealed a preference for ostentatious, kitsch decoration, so Imperiale was unlikely to have bought the paintings for display purposes.
They were found wrapped in cloth in a safe in a house in the picturesque seaside town of Castellammare di Stabia, near Pompeii, last September. Van Gogh Museum Director Axel Ruger said it was wonderful to have the works back on display. "I think it's one of the most joyous days in my career really," he said. The museum has not made any comment on the upcoming documentary, Trouw said.
Why are the paintings significant?
Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) is widely considered the greatest Dutch artist after Rembrandt. Seascape at Scheveningen was one of only two seascapes he painted while he lived in the Netherlands.
It shows a foaming, stormy sea and thundery sky, and was painted in 1882 while he was staying in The Hague. Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church at Nuenen (1884) was painted for Van Gogh's mother, but also partly for his father, who had become a pastor at the church in 1882. When his father died in 1884, Van Gogh added churchgoers, including a few women wearing shawls used for mourning. Van Gogh committed suicide in France in 1890.
The 2002 Van Gogh museum raid was one of a series of thefts that shocked the art world.
In 2004, two Edvard Munch masterpieces, The Scream and Madonna, were seized by armed men who raided the Munch museum in Oslo. Several men were jailed and the paintings later recovered after painstaking detective work in 2006. Another version of The Scream was stolen from the National Art Museum in Oslo in 1994 and that too was later recovered in a sting operation by UK detectives. In 2012, seven artworks were stolen from Rotterdam's Kunsthal museum, including paintings by Picasso, Monet and Matisse. Two thieves were later jailed, telling a Bucharest court that security at the museum had been lax. Some of the paintings were destroyed in an oven. Earlier this year, four paintings out of a haul of 24 stolen from a Dutch gallery in 2005 were recovered in Ukraine.
As Stolen Van Goghs Return to View, a Thief Tells All
“View of the Sea at Scheveningen,” a van Gogh seascape stolen in 2002.Credit Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (State of the Netherlands, bequest of A.E. Ribbius Peletier)
AMSTERDAM — “Some people are born teachers. Some people are born footballers. I’m a born burglar.” So says Octave Durham, who stole two priceless Vincent van Gogh paintings on the evening of Dec. 7, 2002.
More than 14 years after he and an accomplice clambered onto the roof of the Van Gogh Museum here, broke a window with a sledgehammer and lifted the canvases off the wall, Mr. Durham has finally come clean about his involvement in one of the most infamous postwar art heists.
The confession has no legal impact for Mr. Durham, who was convicted in 2004 and served just over 25 months in prison, but it sheds light on the paintings’ tortuous journey and ultimate rescue, and on the intersection of art theft and organized crime.
“The heist took about 3 minutes and 40 seconds,” Mr. Durham says in the documentary. “When I was done, the police were there, and I was passing by with my getaway car. Took my ski mask off, window down, and I was looking at them.”
He adds: “I could hear them on my police scanner. They didn’t know it was me.”
Mr. Durham, in details that he shares for the first time, after years of claiming innocence, brags of doing “bank jobs, safety deposit and more spectacular jobs than this.” He says he targeted the museum not because of any interest in art but simply because he could. “That’s the eye of a burglar,” he boasts.
The works are of inestimable value because they have never been to market: “View of the Sea at Scheveningen” (1882) is one of only two seascapes van Gogh painted during his years in the Netherlands, and “Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen” (1882-84), showing the church where the artist’s father was a pastor, was a gift to the artist’s mother.
(Prices for van Gogh landscape paintings at auction range from about $10 million to about $70 million.)
But Mr. Durham did not know the historical background of the paintings. He said the paintings were the smallest ones in the gallery he targeted, and closest to the hole through which he entered. He stuffed them into a bag, and escaped by sliding down a rope he and his accomplice had put in place. When he hit the ground, he came down so hard that he smashed the seascape, chipping the paint. He left behind a black baseball cap. A security guard called the police, but she was not permitted to use force to try to stop the burglars.
“It was really a terrible day,” Nienke Bakker, a curator at the Van Gogh Museum, recalled in an interview with The New York Times. “A burglary or robbery is always traumatizing, but when it’s a museum and it’s art that belongs to the whole community, and the whole world, really, and it was stolen in such a brutal way, that was really a shock.”
When he returned home, Mr. Durham said, he removed the frames and plexiglass covers from the paintings. He tossed paint chips from the seascape into a toilet. Later, he dumped the frames in a canal.
Mr. Durham could not sell the canvases on the open market, but he put out the word in the underworld. At one point, he said, he met with Cor van Hout, who was convicted in the 1983kidnapping of the beer magnate Alfred H. Heineken. Mr. van Hout agreed to buy the paintings, but was killed on the day of the planned sale.
Photo
Axel Ruger, right, in Naples, Italy, with the 1880s van Gogh painting “Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen,” also stolen in 2002.Credit Ciro Fusco/European Pressphoto Agency
Later, Mr. Durham and his accomplice, Henk Bieslijn, contacted an Italian mobster, Raffaele Imperiale, who at the time sold marijuana out of a “coffee shop” in Amsterdam. He agreed to buy the two paintings in March 2003 for around 350,000 euros (roughly $380,000), divided equally between the thieves.
Mr. Imperiale’s defense lawyers, Maurizio Frizzi and Giovanni Ricci in Genoa, Italy, confirmed that Mr. Imperiale bought the paintings even though he knew they were stolen, because “he is fond of art” and they were “a good bargain.”
He sent them to Italy within two weeks, and never displayed them.
The thieves spent the money over about six weeks — “Motorcycles, a Mercedes E320, clothes, jewelry for my girlfriend, a trip to New York,” Mr. Durham recalls.
Those purchases helped investigators, who were already wiretapping him, catch Mr. Durham. They went to his apartment, but he escaped by climbing up the side of the building — a skill that earned him the nickname “the Monkey.” They searched his house, but the paintings were long gone.
Mr. Durham fled to Spain, where the police arrested him in Marbella, a southern resort town, in December 2003. The next summer, Dutch forensic investigators confirmed a DNA match from the baseball cap he left behind during the museum robbery. Mr. Durham and Mr. Bieslijn were convicted that year.
Mr. Durham was released from prison in 2006, but still owed 350,000 euros in fines; he has paid about 60,000 euros. He returned to prison after a failed bank robbery. In 2013, he approached the museum and, although he still insisted he was innocent, offered to help retrieve the works. The museum rejected his offer because he suggested that they buy them back.
In 2015, he met the documentary filmmaker Vincent Verweij through a mutual friend. Mr. Durham told Mr. Verweij that he wanted to help find the paintings so that he could clear his debt to the museum and abandon a life of crime. But he still maintained his innocence.
“I told him frankly that I didn’t believe him,” Mr. Verweij recalled in an interview. “One day he sent me a WhatsApp message and asked me to meet him in a cafe, and he admitted that he’d told me a lie and that he did the break-in.”
Mr. Verweij began filming in earnest. Along the way he learned about a big break in the case: Mr. Imperiale had sent a letter on Aug. 29, 2016, to Vincenza Marra, a public prosecutor in Naples, informing them that he had the paintings.
In a phone interview, Ms. Marra said the letter merely confirmed a “much-whispered-about” rumor that investigators had already begun looking into.
“I know that if we hadn’t handed the paintings over to the Dutch authorities, they never would have found them,” she added dryly.
Willem Nijkerk, a Dutch prosecutor, credited the Italian police with solving the case, and noted that Mr. Durham played no role in the recovery of the paintings.
Photo
Octave Durham, who stole the two van Gogh works, is the subject of a new Dutch television documentary.Credit Vincent Verweij
Last September, Italian investigators raided Mr. Imperiale’s mother’s home near Naples, where the works were wrapped in cloth and tucked away in a hidden wall space next to the kitchen. The recovery of the works made global headlines. Italian investigators also seized about 20 million euros in other assets, including farmland, villas and apartments linked to Mr. Imperiale and an associate, prosecutors said at the time.
Ms. Bakker, the Van Gogh Museum curator, recalls receiving a call in late September asking her to travel to Naples the next day. She wasn’t given details, but she had her suspicions. She grabbed her files on the paintings.
“When I was on the plane, I remember thinking: I hope they’ve been preserved well and people haven’t taken them off the stretchers,” she recalls.
At the Naples police station, members of the Guardia di Finanza, the Italian police agency for financial crimes, took her to a room where the paintings had been placed on blue-and-white cloth on a table.
“I immediately thought and knew that these were the paintings from our museum,” she said. “But I took another few minutes to convince myself. They were all waiting and standing for me to say the words. I did say them, and then there were cheers.”
Ms. Bakker was surprised that the works seemed in relatively good condition.
“When I saw the damage in the lower left corner of one of the paintings, it was substantial, but I looked at the rest and realized it was the only big damage, and I was very relieved to see that,” she said of the seascape. “It was really like being in some weird movie, with all these police officers around me and this strange Mafia story they were telling me.”
After they were recovered, with much fanfare in Italy, the works were first exhibited for three weeks in February at the National Museum of Capodimonte in Naples, and will be restored to the walls of the Van Gogh Museum on Monday.
Mr. Imperiale left the Netherlands for Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, in 2013 or 2014. In writing to the prosecutor, he may have hoped for leniency, but in January he was sentenced to 20 years in prison. The Italian authorities are seeking his extradition. His lawyers said that he was not sure if he would return to Italy.
“He is homesick for his parents, but in Dubai he’s a free man,” Mr. Imperiale’s lawyers said through an interpreter in a telephone interview.
The Van Gogh Museum remains furious at Mr. Durham and did not cooperate with the documentary, which was funded by the Dutch national broadcaster KRO-NCRV. (Mr. Durham, who lives in Amsterdam and works mostly as a driver and an assistant for his daughter, a successful musician, was not paid for his participation, the filmmaker said.)
“The last 14 years have been a roller coaster of hope, disappointment and agony,” the museum’s director, Axel Rüger, said in an interview. “All the time this man is sitting on this information. He knew exactly what he had done and he never breathed a word. To us it feels as if he is seeking the limelight.”
He added: “The museum is the victim in this case, and I would expect very different behavior from someone who shows remorse.”
Mr. Verweij acknowledged the tricky ethics of giving Mr. Durham a platform in the documentary.
“The interesting thing is that you never see documentaries or articles about art theft from the perspective of the thief,” Mr. Verweij said. “It’s always the experts, the museum people, the prosecutors, but never the ones who actually do it, and I think that’s a unique perspective. It’s not meant to be a glorification of this guy.”
16 Years Later, Stash of Stolen Paintings Found Near Crime Scene
This painting by Carl Vilhelm Holsøe showed up in the U.S., and led to the thief in Denmark.
The Art Loss Register announced yesterday, March 14, that a stash of stolen paintings was located in Denmark 16 years after their theft. The paintings were found with the help of local police only 50 miles from the scene of the crime.
Last fall, a painting that had gone missing from a private residence in Denmark re-surfaced at an auction in the United States. The work, by the Danish painter Carl Vilhelm Holsøe—which was consigned by a Danish auction house—came up on the Art Loss Register (ALR) in a routine search of the auction catalogue.
Working together with the Danish police, the ALR were granted a warrant to search the original consignor’s residence, who first sold the painting to the Danish auction house, located just an hour away from the place of theft.
There, police found seven additional paintings that had been reported stolen from the same private residence over 16 years ago.
With the Danish police unable to find either the paintings or the thief when the theft of eight paintings was initially reported in December 2000, an insurance company paid out the loss and the works were registered in the ALR’s database for lost and stolen art.
When the Holsøe painting came up during a routine search as part of the auction house’s due diligence, the ALR notified the auction house, the insurer, and the Danish Police.
After seizing the remaining seven artworks, the Danish policereturned them to the insurer as the rightful owner, while the portrait by Holsøe remained in the U.S. auction for the benefit of the insurer.
Lee Millis, 57, from Sussex, who has admitted a string of burglaries on Teesside (Photo: Evening Gazette)Former Sussex antiques dealer turned bogus door-to-door salesman jailed for four years after targeting elderly Teesside victims
JAILED: Lee Millis
A BOGUS door-to-door salesman who targeted elderly people and left his victims living in fear was today jailed for four years. Lee Millis - said to have been an antiques dealer before becoming a heroin addict at the age of 56 - was told his crimes were "despicable". The father-of-four ended up living in Middlesbrough after a marriage split, losing his job, his driving licence and becoming homeless. Desperate for money for drugs, the 57-year-old toured streets looking for homes - usually bungalows - where it was obvious old folk lived. He pretended he bought and sold jewellery and ornaments, had small clear bag full of gold and coins, and a leaflet he gave householders. But Millis either tricked or forced his way inside the properties, tried to confuse his victims, and usually left having stolen something. Over the course of three months last year, he struck in and around Middlesbrough at least eight times, Teesside Crown Court was told. An 89-year-old who lost ornaments, a pendant and an emerald ring, told in a statement how she now sleeps in a different bedroom to feel safe. A second victim, 80, is frightened to answer her door after she realised Millis had stolen two rings after bluffing his way into her home. A 76-year-old man with Parkinson's Disease was pushed to the floor after the con-man barged into his bungalow and took an engraved watch. Judge Deborah Sherwin told Millis, of Shoreham, Sussex: "You have been preying upon the weakest and most vulnerable members of society. "It is no wonder these people are now facing having to spend what will be their final years worrying about who comes to their door. "That's an appalling state of affairs in which to have to live. These are despicable crimes. Many of the items were of sentimental value." Robert Mochrie, mitigating, said Millis's spectacular fall from grace following his separation was the catalyst to his crime-spree. "He feels utterly appalled by his behaviour," said Mr Mochrie. "He realises he has caused a significant degree of distress to those unfortunate enough to have answered the knock at their doors." Millis admitted four burglaries, three charges of burglary with intent to steal, and one of attempted burglary at an earlier hearing.
Burglar, 57, pushed over Parkinson's sufferer in 'despicable' raids on the elderly
Lee Millis turned up to pensioner's doors and forced his way in, before taking treasured jewels
A burglar pushed pensioners over inside their own homes before stealing some of their most treasured jewellery. Drug addict Lee Millis shoved a Parkinson’s sufferer to the ground before taking a watch gifted to him for 25 years of service. The 57-year-old later broke in to an elderly woman’s home, who had trustingly answered the door, only for Millis to steal a chain given to her by her late son. His oldest victim was a “frightened” 89-year-old who he knocked over as he barged into her home. “These are despicable crimes,” said Judge Deborah Sherwin as she jailed him for four years. ”You have been preying on the oldest and most vulnerable members of society.” Teesside Crown Court heard Millis used a “tool kit” - consisting of a leaflet and bag full of jewellery - claiming he was opening a business. His first victim, the 89-year-old, was targeted last April when Millis pushed her out the way knocking her off balance. He priced up her ornaments as she “screamed” for him to leave as he grabbed a pink pendant and £100 emerald ring. She was left frightened and scared and unable to sleep,” prosecutor Emma Atkinson said. “She was embarrassed that someone had taken advantage of her.” That was the first of seven burglaries over the next few months, which often followed a similar pattern. He would almost always target pensioners, often living in bungalows alone and sometimes in poor health. The pattern triggered a police probe, which intensified after an appeal in The Gazette last June alerted more victims. These included an 82-year-old woman who had the chain gifted to her from her late son, a theft she said had caused a “pain and anguish that is unbearable”. At the time, police said they were looking for two suspects including Millis, who they described as having grey hair and “poorly maintained teeth”. Eventually he was found, but refused to answer police questions. It took an ID parade, in which a victim picked him out of the line-up, to act as a breakthrough for the case. After pleading guilty to seven counts of burglary, his story - described as "tragic" by his solicitor - came to light. In a matter of months, he had gone from living a happy family life in Brighton to sleeping rough. Then, at the age of 56, he took the “extraordinarily unusual” step of trying heroin for the first time. Thursday’s sentencing heard his partner had “vanished”, and had refused to let the antiques worker see their two children. He was given the chance to move into a pal’s Middlesbrough flat but his drug habit spiralled into a £30-a-day habit. “He said he had very little choice other than to steal to fund his debt, fund his addiction and allow himself to eat,” said the probation service. But Judge Sherwin said she had no option but to jail him, adding: “It is clear that over a period of time your life has spiralled out of control.” “(But) in some cases you have used a degree of violence.” http://www.gazettelive.co.uk/news/teesside-news/burglar-57-pushed-over-parkinsons-12850123 Art Hostage Comments: Lee Millis is the illegitimate son of the infamous Tommy (The Sewer Rat) Millis, who also uses the name Thomas Melish. In court and under oath, Simon Muggleton, former Sussex Police Art & Antiques Unit detective declared " Sussex Police Art & Antiques Unit had 27, yes twenty seven, Brighton Knocker Boy's signed up as registered Police Informants" Tommy (The Sewer Rat) Millis/Melish being near the top of the list.
Cambridge Fitzwilliam stolen jade 'lost for generations', expert says
Efforts to trace £57m-worth of Chinese artefacts stolen from a Cambridge University museum five years ago have proved fruitless, police said.
Thieves broke into the Fitzwilliam Museum on 13 April 2012 and escaped with 18 mainly jade items but since then there has been no trace of them. Despite the passage of time, the museum remains hopeful of their return. But an art expert believes the objects have been sold into China and could take generations to resurface. A number of people were jailed for their roles in the Fitzwilliam robbery and other raids on museums and an auction house across the UK. While items including a rhino head and Chinese artefacts were retrieved and returned, none of those from the Cambridge museum was ever found. "Artwork is either recovered very quickly, or the thieves realise what they've got is radioactive, and it goes underground for a generation or more," Christopher Marinello, founder of Art Recovery International, said. With the Fitzwilliam artefacts registered on a number of art databases including Interpol and Artive, any dealer exercising due diligence would realise the items are stolen "and that's how they might be located", he said. Because the theft was so widely publicised, Mr Marinello believes the Fitzwilliam jade has "gone underground", most likely traded among criminals, perhaps for drugs or weapons. While Cambridgeshire Police have confirmed the case is still open, the force is not looking for anyone else in connection with the theft. The Fitzwilliam remains hopeful its jade will be found and returned, a spokeswoman said. However, lawyer Mr Marinello, who specialises in recovering stolen artwork for museums, churches, insurance companies and private clients, thinks the museum could be waiting some time. "I believe the Fitzwilliam jade has made its way to the top market for it in the world - and that's China," he said. "I think they're in Chinese collections and until someone perhaps dies and the next generation decides to sell, I don't think we'll see them for quite a while."
£10,000 painting by J M Barclay stolen from home near East Linton
The Piper to the 2nd Marquess of Breadalbane, which has been stolen
A PAINTING valued at about £10,000 has been stolen from an East Lothian home. Police are appealing for witnesses following a housebreaking at an address near Kippielaw Farm, off Braeheads Loan, near East Linton. The incident occurred between 5pm on Saturday, April 15, and 2.45pm on Monday, April 24. Entry was forced to the property and several paintings, including a high-value oil painting, were taken. The work, entitled 'The Piper to the 2nd Marquess of Breadalbane', by J M Barclay, dates from 1842 and is a 33” x 22” oil on canvas, valued in the region of £10,000. Four of the other paintings taken were a black and gold Asian style design. Local police are continuing with their enquiries and are asking anyone with information that may assist to come forward. Community Inspector Andrew Hill from Haddington Police Station said: "Based upon the specific nature of the property taken it is likely that this is a targeted theft. A vehicle would have been involved. "The paintings stolen are all originals and very distinctive. "Crimes such as this are fortunately rare; however, apart from the financial loss to the owner, they also involve a loss of history and heritage.
The Edmonton man who inspired 'Yoga Hoser' arrested for possession of a $1.2-million ancient statue
For a while, it felt like destiny, a string of events so unlikely it could only have been fated. But Simon Metke doesn’t think that way any more.
Instead, for Mr. Metke, it now seems more like a cosmic joke that brought the Edmonton man and an ancient soldier together, thrusting him into a world of Canadian art theft, criminal justice, drug charges, flamboyantly bad Hollywood filmmaking, an army of deadly Canadian Nazi sausages and the creation of the term “yoga hoser.”
“Even though it was such a stressful thing, I still appreciate the beauty of the absurdity of it,” Mr. Metke says. “It’s so easy to try and make it meaningful because of how intense it all is, but it’s so abstract at the same time. People are just like, ‘Yeah, your life is crazy.’”
The story began in 2011, when a friend in Montreal told Mr. Metke about a man who was selling a stone sculpture of a soldier, claiming it was some kind of antiquity. Mr. Metke, who was deeply interested in ancient cultures and heading to Montreal for a visit, seemed a likely buyer.
But when Mr. Metke saw the piece in his friend’s apartment, he was skeptical. It looked to him more like a high-end replica, like a mantle decoration that could be bought at a home store in a suburban strip mall. Still, he appreciated the workmanship and, though the price was high – $1,400 – his friend stood to make a commission on the sale.
Appearing as it did just ahead of the year 2012 (the final year of the Mayan calendar) and in the midst of Mr. Metke’s own intense spiritual journey, well, he thought it was meant to be.
He googled, “Is there a Mesopotamian artifact missing?” but found nothing. So he bought the sculpture, packed it with his clothes and – after his suitcase was briefly lost by an airline – unwittingly brought a 2,500-year-old Persian artifact back to his condo in Edmonton.
At first, Mr. Metke kept it in a meditation area in his living room. But he eventually moved it onto a bedroom bookshelf, where the bas-relief sculpture that once lined the hall in Persepolis sat among an array of Star Wars figurines, stuffed animals and crystals, no more meaningful or special than his other mementos and icons. He thought about taking it on Antiques Roadshow to see if it was worth anything, but never did.
Unbeknownst to Mr. Metke, the sculpture had been stolen from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts a couple of months before he bought it, although the theft was not initially made public. It was valued at $1.2-million, and there was a hefty reward available for its return.
On Jan. 22, 2014, police officers working with the RCMP’s Integrated Art Crime Investigation Team showed up at his door.
“The sun’s coming in through the window, the bougainvillea flowers are glowing, the crystals are making rainbows,” he says, mimicking what he said when interviewed following his arrest for the theft of the sculpture and some drug-related charges.
Mr. Metke’s case – and that colourful quote – caught the attention of Kevin Smith, the American film director behind movies such as Clerks, Mallrats and Dogma, who joked about the story on his podcast. When co-host Scott Mosier mimicked an RCMP officer at the door of Mr. Metke’s apartment saying, “Open up, yoga hoser,” the term took hold.
On April 20 that year – 420, the day that potheads annually celebrate the cannabis culture – Mr. Smith announced he was working on a script for a movie called Yoga Hosers. The plot was not actually Mr. Metke’s story – it’s about two teenaged girls from Winnipeg who save the country from Canadian Nazi sausages – but the film included a flaky yoga teacher character named Yogi Bayer, clearly styled to resemble Mr. Metke.
The movie premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January, 2016, with a cast that included Johnny Depp and Natasha Lyonne. Justin Long, who played Yogi Bayer, tried to contact Mr. Metke before it shot to help develop the character.
“He eventually called me, months after I shot my scenes,” Mr. Long said, speaking on the carpet at Sundance.
The movie was broadly panned, with one review describing it as “close to unwatchable” and “a corny Canuck joke, told for 88 surreally unfunny minutes.”
The situation has, at times, felt surreal and unfunny for Mr. Metke, too.
But after more than three years, the case was finally resolved in an Edmonton courtroom this week. Mr. Metke pleaded guilty to one count of possession of stolen property. Two drug-related charges were stayed.
An agreed statement of facts acknowledged Mr. Metke didn’t know the artifact was stolen but that he “could have gone further” to determine where it came from. The case was described variously by the Crown and defence as “very unique,” “very, very unique” and “extraordinary.”
The judge granted Mr. Metke a conditional discharge with a period of probation and community service. Dozens of friends who showed up in court for Mr. Metke broke out in cheers, and some wiped away tears. Mr. Metke hugged the prosecutor.
With the threat of jail and the possibility of a criminal record behind him, Mr. Metke says he plans to get back into projects he had been working on, including shooting documentary footage of ancient landscapes and further developing a vertical garden system he created. He’s refining a theory about life he calls “The Entropy of Irony,” and is trying to find positive things in his strange experience.
He says he started to watch Yoga Hosers once, and may try again one day.
The ancient soldier, meanwhile, is back at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Court heard it returned from its journey in “pristine condition,” carried back by an archeology professor who travelled to Edmonton to retrieve it.
There’s an orange stuffed octopus on the shelf where the artifact used to be. Mr. Metke knows exactly where it came from.
Lindauer paintings stolen in Auckland art heist 'radioactive'
Lindauer paintings stolen in Auckland art heist 'radioactive'
A leading expert in recovering stolen and missing art said media coverage of the recent smash and grab style theft of two high-profile paintings had left them worthless to thieves. Chris Marinello from Art Recovery International in Italy said the two Gottfried Lindauer paintings snatched from International Art Centre in Parnell, Auckland, were now "radioactive" and no one would buy them. Marinello, an expert who had seen more than $500 million of art recovered, said last weekend's ram-raid theft of the two paintings was amateur and opportunistic.
Art recovery expert Christopher Marinello has negotiated the recovery of more than $500m of stolen art - including this Matisse. Photo / supplied"This was not an elegant robbery. It was totally unsophisticated by people who thought they would be able to sell the paintings quickly," he said. "The level of interest and the publicity in the theft means these paintings are now radioactive - no one in their right mind will touch them." Marinello is based at Art Recovery International's office in Venice but the company also works out of the UK and United States. He has helped recover more than $500m of stolen and looted artwork and helped in the recovery of art taken by Nazis in World War II. Just last year Marinello negotiated the return of a priceless 16th-century carving stolen decades earlier from a historic church in London. A film crew were working with Marinello as he worked through locating seven high-profile stolen works. Marinello urged New Zealand authorities to register the Lindauer theft and details of the artworks on the Artive.org register. He oversaw the development of the Artive.org database which is considered the most technologically advanced system in the identification of stolen art.
CCTV footage of the get-away car used in the theft of two Gottfried Lindaeur paintings. Photo / supplied. The paintings stolen in the Parnell ram-raid were both by Gottfried Lindauer in 1884 and were known as Chieftainess Ngatai - Raure and Chief Ngatai - Raure. They were about to be auctioned, and were estimated to be worth $1m together. Czech-born Lindauer trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and migrated to New Zealand in 1874. He became one of the most prolific and best-known painters of Maori subjects along with Charles Frederick Goldie. Marinello said there was a possibility a ransom could be demanded for the paintings' return or they could be used to access drugs or weapons or as leverage in a "get out of jail free card". He said the theft of the well-known paintings was unlikely to be an ordered grab. If that was the case more care would have been taken, he said. "We are not talking about stolen to order because of the way the smash and grab was done. "My thought is it is common thugs looking to make quick cash."
The International Art Centre in Parnell was robbed in a ram-raid and two Lindauer paintings were stolen. Photo / Jason Oxenham Marinello said paintings in a window attracted smash and grab theft. "It's the sparkle in the window - they take what they can and they are off." He said the paintings could be recovered soon - or could take as long as a decade. Most works were recovered, because it was harder to sell stolen art than it was to take it in the first place, he said. "There is a bit of a black-market of course but they are offered for only about 5 per cent of their value." Marinello said there was a market for the Lindauers overseas because they were attractive works of art and that was why the Artive.org register was so important. If the pieces were recovered Marinello said their value would depend on damage done. The high-profile theft of James Tissot's painting Still on Top saw it plummet in value.
The work was stolen from Auckland Art Gallery in one of New Zealand's most high-profile art heists. Ricardo Sannd, also known as Ricardo Romanov, walked into Auckland Art Gallery with a gun and cut the famous work from its frame in 1998. The painting was found under Romanov's bed a week later but was so badly damaged tiny pieces of it were found on the gallery floor for weeks. Although it will never be sold the painting went from an estimated $8m to an insured $2m. Marinello said some works increased in value because the theft contributed to the story. "There was a Picasso that was stolen and the theft increased the value because it added to the colour of the work's story. "That is not usually the case though." Many works were rolled up, treated badly and stored in conditions vastly different to the temperature controlled environments of museums and galleries. "They are stored under beds, hidden away because they are that hard to sell," he said. "I had a $6m painting handed to me in a garbage bag out the window of a Mercedes." New Zealand art expert Penelope Jackson echoed Marinello's thoughts and concerns on the Lindauers' theft.
New Zealand art expert Penelope Jackson. Photo / supplied. She said there was a lot of speculation as to motive but said until the culprits were caught it was largely an unknown. "We just have to hope they are recovered unscathed because at 130 years old these two pieces are very vulnerable." Jackson said talk that the gallery should not have had art in the window was a shame. "It would be a sad thing if we got to the stage where galleries can't display art because there is a risk of theft. "It's hard to entice people into an auction with blank walls." Police put alerts on New Zealand boarders after the theft and Interpol was notified. Police continue to investigate.
STILL MISSING
Most art stolen within New Zealand has been recovered. The most famous piece still "at large" is Psyche - a 1902 work by British artist Solomon Joseph Solomon. In her book art thieves, fakers & fraudsters - the New Zealand author Penelope Jackson outlines the mystery of the 1942 theft. Theories include an inside job and a phoney burglary to cover up damage done by a cleaner. Hopes were raised in 1982 when a man came forward and said he had seen the life-size reclining nude painting in a Napier house. It ended up being a similar painting by a Christchurch art student. Later in the year the gallery received a Polaroid of what was thought to be Psyche. The photo was later revealed to be a hoax with the clever confession: Dear Sir, Psyches sleep, Psyches awake Some are real, some are fake Masterpieces are seldom met, Touch this one, the paint is still wet. Other recovered high-profile pieces include the 1997 theft of Colin McCahon's Urewera mural stolen from a Department of Conservation visitor centre by Tuhoe activist Te Kaha. The work was returned 15 months later after negotiations. In 1998 the $8m James Tissot oil painting - Still on Top - was stolen by career criminal Ricardo Sannd, also known as Ricardo Romanov. Armed with a gun Sannd stole the painting, worth $8m, from Auckland Art Gallery. It was later found hidden under his bed. Sannd was sentenced to nearly 14 years in prison for the crime. In 2005 the statue Pania of the Reef was stolen from the Napier foreshore. The motive was never known but Pania was discovered a month later and recovered by police. She was restored, then replaced.
LOST MASTERPIECES
The Mystery of the $2.5 Million Rare Book Heist
In January, three thieves drilled through the skylight of a building near Heathrow Airport and rappelled 40 feet to the floor, bypassing the security alarms, and making off with around $2.5 million-worth of rare books.
There is a special place saved in the pantheon of art thieves for those who commit their crimes while displaying almost supernatural feats of athletic prowess.
Thieves who climb up walls, through windows, or prowl around raising nary an alarm get nicknames like “Spideman” and “Ghost.” They have even inspired their own sub-genre of thrillers—think Catherine Zeta Jones’s Cirque de Soleil-worthy contortions to steal a valuable mask in Entrapment.
But it’s Tom Cruise’s vault heist in Mission: Impossible that is the most apt model when it comes to a recent theft of 160 antique books from a warehouse in London.
Late in the night on Jan. 29, three still-unknown thieves drilled through the skylight of a building near Heathrow Airport and rappelled 40 feet to the floor, bypassing the security alarms.
They went straight to six specific crates that contained three dealers’ worth of books that were en route to the California International Antiquarian Book Fair in Oakland.
Over the course of several hours, they unloaded the books they wanted into duffel bags, belayed their loot to the roof, and took off in a waiting van. The haul totaled nearly $2.5 million.
“Behind these books there is a lot of work because we have to search to try to find out where the books are—auction houses, collectors, colleagues—and there’s big research behind these books,” Alessandro Meda Riquier, one of the affected dealers, tells Sky News. “They are not only taking money away from me but also a big part of my job.”
Riquier was the owner of several of the most noteworthy tomes that were taken in the heist. The most expensive book was a second edition of Copernicus’s On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres from 1566 in which the astronomer introduced his revolutionary theory that the sun—not the Earth—is the center of the universe.
That book alone is worth over $250,000. Among the rest of the trove are several rare editions of Dante’s Divine Comedy and a smattering of Galileos, Newtons, and da Vincis, among other titles from the luminaries of the early sciences.
All in all, it is the quantity of books stolen rather than the individual titles that make this heist so significant.
“The books were there for only a short time in that warehouse, and this is a very exotic commodity so this is not something that the average person thinks that they can sell,” Jeremy Norman, a rare book dealer with a specialty in the early sciences, tells The Daily Beast. “I think it’s a real mystery. You really wonder how they knew the stuff was there, and the timing of it, and how they were shipped off, and what the real motivation was.”
Several theories have been offered as to why the thieves went after this quarry. One suggests that this may have been a “made to order” theft, one in which a buyer specifically commissioned the thieves to take these titles.
Similar to fine art, stolen antique books are very difficult to sell on the legitimate market—and thereby net the title’s full value. When a rare book crime becomes known, organizations like the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America (ABAA) quickly take action to alert their members to the volumes that were stolen so dealers can be on the lookout for anyone trying to offload a tainted treasure.
“If you’re a seller, you’re not going to want to touch something that might remotely be even possibly stolen because you’re going to lose a lot of face with your customer,” Susan Benne, executive director of the ABAA, tells The Daily Beast. She points out that the rare book market deals in a lot of repeat transactions, books that change hands multiple times.
The difficulty of sorting out a stolen book after it has made its way through a few owners ensures that most booksellers are painstakingly principled when it comes to provenance.
“It’s a real hassle to have to go back through the process of dealing with insurance companies, with law enforcement,” Benne says, noting that “above and beyond wanting to do the right thing anyway” dealing with stolen material in the end isn’t worth it for dealers.
While a wealthy collector with a gleam in his eye could have commissioned the theft, the more likely scenario is that it was a crime of opportunity. In this theory, a gang of nefarious local elements had help from someone inside the warehouse’s operation who tipped them off to the presence of the expensive cargo and the exact details of the books’ schedule and location.
The shipment was only being stored for a few days, so the opportunity to take the books, not to mention the ability to quickly pick the correct crates out of a room full of other goods that were left untouched, most likely required some help. As Norman says, “to coordinate such a thing, this is like in a movie, how would you know?”
But if this is what happened, the three felons are most likely sitting somewhere scratching their heads right now trying to figure out how to get rid of their ill-begotten library.
“Maybe it was tempting to professional thieves who didn’t understand that this isn’t going to be something that you can fence like jewelry,” Norman says. “I can tell you it’s not going to affect the prices of books, and it’s going to be really hard for these books to be converted to cash if that’s what they want to do.”
Another member of the community, Chris Marinello, CEO of Art Recovery International, offered The Guardian a more dire warning for what might happen if these thieves find it difficult to cash out.
“The books might then be broken up,” he says. “Some of the illuminated manuscripts and engravings contained therein might be traded in the art market, where many buyers don’t know they were cut out of rare books. It becomes a lot more difficult to trace.”
The antique book community is no stranger to crime, but the London heist broke the previous mold. It’s not uncommon for rare bookstore owners to catch someone slipping a book into their pocket—Norman says he dealt with this occasionally at the store he owned for 30 years. And institutions like libraries that have a permanent collection of treasures are not immune to thefts, whether from outsider thieves or by employees or visiting scholars who are looking to make a few extra bucks on the side.
“I mean the thefts that have been really disruptive and sort of shocking in our world, a lot of them more recently have come from libraries,” Benne says.
As a comparison to the London theft, Norman mentions the 1969 attempt on the Gutenberg Bible at the Widener Library at Harvard.
The amateur thief lowered himself by rope into the room where the Bible was displayed, packed the two volumes up in his backpack, and attempted to scale back up to the roof. Unfortunately, he miscalculated how heavy the tomes actually were—over 60 pounds when carried together—and he fell to the ground. Needless to say, the crime was thwarted.
But incompetence isn’t the only thing that separates the 1969 attempted theft from the 160 books successful stolen in January.
“The books in the Harvard Library were there for years. Everybody knew about them, they weren’t going anywhere, you could target it. That [theft] was daring and it flopped,” Norman says. “[The London theft] took real skill… that’s got to be professionals. So now we’re up against professional thieves, and we could have more trouble than we used to have in the past.”
Hertford artist Alan Davie's window cleaner jailed for stealing paintings worth £500,000
A window cleaner who stole £500,000 worth of paintings from renowned Hertford painter Alan Davie after his death has been jailed for four years. Daniel Pressland, 42, was aware of the value of Mr Davie's paintings and knew of weaknesses in the security at his home. He pounced when the Scottish artist died aged 93 in 2014, carrying out a series of burglaries before being caught in the act with three paintings in his van. READ MORE: World-famous artist's window cleaner accused of stealing art worth £500,000 He claimed he wanted to use the paintings, worth £90,000, as ramps to get his motorcross bike into his van. Passing sentence at St Albans Crown Court yesterday (April 5), Judge John Plumstead described him as a "vulture". He said: "You happened on an opportunity to get rich quick by stealing from someone who you had been worked for for years. "You were like a vulture on a carcass and just helping yourself. You acted disgracefully." image: http://www.hertfordshiremercury.co.uk/images/localworld/ugc-images/276464/binaries/Alan%20Davie%20in%20his%20Hertford%20workshop.png Alan Davie in his Hertford workshopPressland had worked for Mr Davie, whose work had been displayed at the Tate Modern, since 2002, cleaning windows and doing odd jobs. The judge said Pressland had committed the burglaries not realising the art gallery that acted on behalf of Mr Davie had a complete record of everything he had painted or drawn in his lifetime and would know what was missing. During his trial, the jury heard that in all he took 31 paintings from the artist's home at Gamels Studio in Rush Green. Sarah Morris, prosecuting, said the works totaled half a million pounds in value, but that £243,500 worth of art remained unrecovered. READ MORE: Items that inspired Alan Davie go on auction The last of Pressland's break-ins took place during the day on April 2, 2015, almost a year after the death of Mr Davie. Neighbours of the painter, who had been admired by artists such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and David Hockney, were concerned to see Pressland at the house and putting large canvases into the back of a van. Police were alerted and were quickly on the scene and caught the window cleaner as he was driving away. The jury was told that during an interview with the police Pressland told them he kept his ladders in the painter's garage and, having gone there to collect them, saw the three works of art which he assumed had been "put out there for the rubbish". image: http://www.hertfordshiremercury.co.uk/images/localworld/ugc-images/276464/binaries/Davie1.png Some of Alan Davie's paintingsBut yesterday (April 5) before passing sentence Judge Plumstead said it was quite possible Pressland had committed more break-ins at the home of Mr Davie using his knowledge of the faulty upstairs window to gain entry. Pressland, of Outward Common, Billericay, was found guilty of burgling the home of the artist between April and August of 2014, when 11 paintings were stolen. Fellow defendant Gavin Challis, 42, from Nazeing, was acquitted of possessing criminal property. He said he had taken Pressland at face value when he had offered him two paintings for £5,000 and had no reason to believe he was buying criminal property. The Davie works found hanging in his home were worth £26,000. Mr Davie was born in Grangemouth, Scotland and went to the Edinburgh College of Art in the late 1930s.
See the Most Expensive Townhouse Ever Sold in New York City
A Depression-era mansion on Manhattan's Upper East Side sold yesterday for a record $79.5 million, according to public records, making it by far the most ever paid for a New York City townhouse.
That distinction used to belong to another Upper East Side property, the Harkness Mansion, when it sold in 2006 for $53 million.
David Wildenstein, scion of his family's art fortune, reportedly sold the 41-foot-wide, 25,000 square foot limestone-clad mansion to a Chinese hedge fund, according to the New York Post. The Beaux Arts-style building, which has three stories and 20-foot high ceilings, housed the Wildenstein art gallery for almost a century.
The property, though, is not without its share of controversy.
Billionaire Len Blavatnik sued for millions last year after he believed Wildenstein reneged on a verbal agreement to sell his firm the townhouse for $79 million, according to Bloomberg.
Blavatnik made the bid after the government of Qatar, which was in talks to buy the property in 2014, balked at the last minute. The home was then put back on the market for $100 billion.
News reports have accused the Wildenstein family fortune of being buoyed by an alleged history of dealing in Nazi-stolen art.
David's father Guy Wildenstein was recently cleared of charges that he attempted to launder money to avoid a French tax bill.
Taxidermy burglar sentenced after recovery of van full of stuffed animals
A member of a gang which stole taxidermy from a well-known dealer a year ago, has been sentenced All the items stolen, included two full African lion mounts, two infant zebras, a troop of baboons and a king penguin, were recovered. Jason Robert Hopwood, 47, of Drummond Road, Romford, who pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to his part in the burglary and fraudulent use of a registration plate, was sentenced to 21 months' imprisonment, suspended for two years, at Kingston Crown Court on April 4. He was also ordered to work 200 hours' community service. The court heard how at around 19.30 on March 1, 2016, a burglary took place at the warehouse of London Taxidermy at the Wimbledon Stadium Business Centre. An angle grinder was used to remove the padlocks and the doors forced open. CCTV footage suggests the van left the scene around 20 minutes later.
Valued at £100,000
Dealer Alexis Turner told ATG he had lost a significant portion of his stock following the raid. However, many of the 27 stolen items with a value of close to £100,000 were immediately identifiable. Press coverage of the unusual nature of the crime aided in the recovery. DC Stuart Goss, from Wandsworth CID, said: "I would also like to thank the media, as I am sure reporting of our appeal forced the criminals to abandon the stolen goods. Cataloguing and exhibiting the stolen items was a truly unique and memorable experience”. Acting on information three weeks after the incident, Essex Police found an abandoned van in the Stapleford Abbots area in Essex. False plates were believed to have been attached and inside were all of the stolen goods. Turner told ATG he received all of the items back within a month after forensic testing and his insurance company had paid out on loss of income. Hopwood, identified as the owner of the van, is the only member of the gang to be prosecuted in relation to the theft. He was arrested on September 29 and charged on November 10.
Photos of Guercino painting, rolled up like a rug by thieves, reveal extent of damage
The work was taken from an Italian church in 2014 and recently recovered in Casablanca
The altarpiece before (left) and after the theft
The first photographs of the Guercino painting stolen from an Italian church in 2014, which was recently recovered in Casablanca, show the extent of damage to the work. Reports in the Italian and Moroccan press suggest that the 17th-century depiction of the Virgin Mary and two saints has lost around a third of its surface paint. The majority of losses appear to be on the lower part of the canvas. But any restoration work will have to wait until the picture returns to Italy. Italian and North African authorities are currently finalising the details.
The painting, entitled Madonna with the Saints John the Evangelist and Gregory the Wonderworker (1639), was tracked to a suburb of Casablanca. It was recovered in February after the thieves tried to sell the picture for ten million dirham (around £800,000). According to the Italian newspaper Modena Today, one of the men arrested in connection with the theft told the police that the painting had been stored rolled up like a carpet, which likely contributed to its current condition.
The altarpiece was stolen from the Church of San Vincenzo in Modena in 2014. At the time of the theft, the art critic Vittorio Sgarbi described the picture as a monumental work that could be worth between €5m and €6m.
Boston police found Richard Abath handcuffed and duct-taped in the basement of the Gardner Museum after it was robbed in 1990.
Evidence in Gardner Museum thefts that might bear DNA is missing
David L. Ryan/Globe Staff
Despite an exhaustive internal search, the FBI has been unable to find the missing evidence in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum art heist.
By Shelley Murphy and Stephen Kurkjian Globe Staff and Globe Correspondent
The trail had been cold for years when the FBI announced in 2010 that it had sent crime scene evidence from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum to its lab for retesting, hoping advances in DNA analysis would identify the thieves who stole $500 million worth of masterpieces. But behind the scenes, federal investigators searching for a break in the world’s largest art theft were stymied by another mystery. The duct tape and handcuffs that the thieves had used to restrain the museum’s two security guards — evidence that might, even 27 years after the crime, retain traces of DNA — had disappeared. The FBI, which collected the crime scene evidence after the heist, lost the duct tape and handcuffs, according to three people familiar with the investigation. Despite an exhaustive internal search, the FBI has been unable to find the missing evidence, thwarting its plan to analyze it for potential traces of the thieves’ genetic material, according to those people, who asked not to be identified because they are not authorized to speak publicly about the case. It’s unclear when the items vanished — although two people said they have been missing for more than a decade — and whether they were thrown away or simply misfiled, the people said.
The lost evidence marks another setback in an ongoing investigation that has been plagued by the deaths of suspects, defiant mobsters, fruitless searches, and a litany of dashed hopes. None of the 13 stolen treasures, which include masterpieces by Vermeer and Rembrandt, have been recovered, and no one has been charged. The FBI declined to comment on the missing evidence, citing the ongoing investigation, but defended its handling of the case. Harold H. Shaw, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Boston office, said the bureau has devoted significant resources to the investigation, chased leads around the world, and remains committed to recovering the artwork. “The investigation has had many twists and turns, promising leads and dead ends,” Shaw said. “It has included thousands of interviews and incalculable hours of effort.” The FBI completed DNA analysis of some museum evidence in 2010, according to Kristen Setera, an FBI spokeswoman. She declined to say what items were tested or what, if anything, the tests showed. The heist remains one of Boston’s greatest mysteries. Promising leads have led nowhere, leaving investigators at a crossroads. Most notably, a seven-year effort to pressure a Connecticut mobster for information has come up empty. Robert Gentile, 80, faces sentencing in August on gun charges but could walk free if he cooperated with federal authorities, his lawyer said. Despite the enticement, and a hefty reward, Gentile denies knowing anything about the stolen artwork. Finding the treasures may require a new approach, according to several former law enforcement officials who worked on the case. They suggested that investigators should restart the investigation from scratch and review the evidence in a contemporary light. Carmen Ortiz, who recently stepped down as US attorney for Massachusetts, said authorities should shift their strategy, perhaps to include appeals on social media, and expand the investigative team. “Get around the table with some fresh eyes, in addition to those who know this case very well, to give it a new look,” Ortiz said. Ortiz’s successor, Acting US Attorney William Weinreb, said the investigation remains a top priority. A former assistant US attorney, Robert Fisher, who oversaw the Gardner investigation from 2010 to 2016, said investigators should “go back to square one” and study the crime as if it just happened, analyzing each piece of evidence with the latest DNA, fingerprint, and video technology. “What if it happened last night, what would we do this morning to try to crack this case?” said Fisher, an attorney at Nixon Peabody. Told that the Globe had learned the duct tape and handcuffs left behind by the thieves were now missing, Fisher said he hoped they would be found. “Frankly, it could be enormously helpful,” Fisher said of the missing items. “I think present-day forensic analysis of evidence like that could lead to a break in the case.” However, he said the tape may yield no viable DNA, depending on its condition. Anthony Amore, the museum’s security director, said investigators are pursuing a number of new leads following last month’s announcement that the reward for information leading to the recovery of the artwork had doubled to $10 million until year’s end. Dozens of tips were received, he said. “I operate in the realm of hope,” said Amore, who has worked with the FBI and US attorney’s office on the investigation for nearly 12 years. “We are never going to stop looking for these paintings.” The brazen heist — the largest property crime in US history — occurred in the early morning hours of March 18, 1990. Two thieves disguised as police officers claimed to be investigating a disturbance when they showed up at the museum’s side door on Palace Road in Boston’s Fenway neighborhood. They were buzzed inside by a 23-year-old security guard, who, by his own admission, has never been eliminated as a suspect. The thieves wrapped duct tape around the hands, eyes, and mouths of the two guards on duty, then left them handcuffed in the museum’s basement as they spent 81 minutes slashing and pulling masterpieces from their frames. In the days after the robbery, FBI and Boston police crime scene analysts scoured the museum for clues. They lifted partial fingerprints from the empty frames but found no matches in the FBI database. At the time, DNA evidence was in its infancy. But scientific advances have since opened new doors for investigators, cracking unsolved cases across the country. DNA experts said it’s possible the thieves’ DNA couldbe pulled from the duct tape, although the chances are slim. Success hinges on a number of variables, such as how the evidence was preserved and how many people handled it while freeing the guards and storing it. “Certainly people have retrieved DNA from samples that old, but how much you can get is the big question,” said Robin Cotton, director of the Biomedical Forensic Sciences Program at the Boston University School of Medicine. Analysts would also need DNA samples from the police officers who removed the tape to distinguish their DNA from the thieves, Cotton said. Tom Evans, scientific director of the DNA Enzymes Division at New England Biolabs, an Ipswich firm that conducts DNA testing, said technology has come so far that it may take only a single cell to identify someone through DNA analysis. But DNA breaks down over time, especially in hot or humid conditions. “Twenty-seven years later, it might work and it might fail,” Evans said. The statute of limitations on the theft expired years ago, but authorities could still bring criminal charges for hiding or transporting the stolen artwork. The US attorney’s office has offered immunity in exchange for the return of the paintings. Four years ago, the FBI announced it was confident it had identified the thieves — local criminals who have since died — and had determined that the stolen artwork traveled through organized crime circles from Boston to Connecticut to Philadelphia, where the trail went cold around 2003. In 2010, the FBI began focusing on Gentile after the widow of another person of interest in the theft, Robert Guarente, told agents that her late husband had given two of the stolen paintings to Gentile before he died in 2004. Federal authorities allege that Gentile offered to sell some of the stolen paintings to an undercover FBI agent in 2015 for $500,000 apiece. They remain convinced that he is holding back what he knows. However, Gentile’s lawyer, A. Ryan McGuigan, said his client insists he has nothing to offer investigators and recently told him, “They could make the reward $100 million and it wouldn’t change anything because there ain’t no paintings.” Another person who has come under renewed scrutiny in recent years is Richard Abath, the guard who opened the door for the thieves. A Berklee College of Music dropout who played in a rock ’n’ roll band while working at the museum, he has steadfastly maintained that he played no role in the heist. Authorities have said that motion sensors that recorded the thieves’ steps as they moved through the museum indicate they never entered the first-floor gallery where Manet’s “Chez Tortoni” was stolen. Only Abath’s steps, as he made his rounds before the thieves arrived, were picked up there, they have said. Steve Keller, a security consultant hired by the museum, said he tested the motion sensors after the theft and determined they were reliable. He said he entered and left the room several times where the Manet had been stolen, even crawling on his hands and knees in an effort to avoid detection. Each time the sensors detected his presence. Abath declined to comment. Former US attorney Brian T. Kelly, who previously oversaw efforts to recover the Gardner artwork, said he remains hopeful the masterpieces will be recovered. “All it takes is a new lead that leads in a new direction and a lucky break or two,” Kelly said. Shelley Murphy can be reached at shelley.murphy@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @shelleymurph. Stephen Kurkjian can be reached at stephenkurkjian@gmail.com Art Hostage Comments: So many false leads, controlled oposition etc. The FBI insist any Gardner art recovery is done on their terms and includes arrests/indictments etc. The Gardner Museum has also been bullied into towing the line therefore any reward includes conditions that allows refusal of reward payment, for example the insistance on all the art work being recovered in "Good condition" before any reward would be paid out.
The museum’s trustees also felt they were being kept in the dark about the status of the investigation. Trustee Francis W. Hatch, Jr. recalled one meeting held ostensibly to gain a briefing from the agent and supervisor on the case. “They wouldn’t tell us anything about what they thought of the robbery or who they considered suspects,” Hatch recalls. “It was very embarrassing to all of us.”
"Hatch convinced the trustees that the museum needed to hire a fi rm to investigate, and stay in touch with the FBI on its probe. IGI, a private investigative firm based in Washington begun by Terry Lenzner, who had cut his teeth as a lawyer for the Senate Watergate Committee, was put on retainer, and the executive assigned to the case was Larry Potts, a former top deputy in the FBI. Fearful that their authority was being undercut, the FBI’s supervisors in Boston complained to US attorney Wayne Budd, who fired off a memo warning the museum that it faced prosecution if it withheld information relevant to the investigation. Hatch responded, saying in his letter that he was “shocked and saddened” by Budd’s attempt to “intimidate” the museum and that it cast “a pall over future cooperative efforts.” From Master Thieves by Stephen Kurkjian
Wow! It's almost as if one of the thieves was untouchable, like because he was the star witness testifying in a German court in absentia against the ringleader of the longest running spy ring in American history, Clyde Lee Conrad, and was also implicating himself and two other spies he himself had recruited, at that time, like Boston area native Rod Ramsay, or somebody like that.
Ramsay's college roommate at Charles River Park in Boston 1980-1981 was Darryl Nitke. Nitke had been roommates at Eton College with Muhammad Khashoggi, they remained friends and Nitke's brother in law and business associate Bedros Bedrossian was formerly business partners with with Muhammad's sister, Nabila Khashoggi in the mid-80's. http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1985-06-10/business/8501230280_1_computer-foreign-visitors-smith-gallery
Nitke was a guest on the Khashoggi yacht for a cruise in 1982.
The Gardner Museum doubled the reward right before Khahsoggi died after a long illness on June 6, 2017. #LOCALTOUGHS
Interesting that the announcement for doubling the reward to ten million came out 5/23/17 as Adnan Khahsoggi was dying of Parkinsons Disease. He died 6/6/17.
He had a very elaborate network set up for stolen fine art transit.
"In addition, more than thirty paintings, valued at $200 million, that Imelda Marcos had allegedly purloined from the Metropolitan Museum of Manila, including works by Rubens, El Greco, Picasso, and Degas, were being stored by Khashoggi for the Marcoses, but it turned out that the pictures had been sold to Khashoggi as part of a cover-up. The art treasures were first hidden on his yacht and then moved to his penthouse in Cannes. The penthouse was raided by the French police in a search for the pictures in April 1987, but it is believed that Khashoggi had been tipped off. He turned over nine of the paintings to the police, claiming to have sold the others to a Panamanian company, but investigators believe that he sold the pictures back to himself. The rest of the loot is thought to be in Athens. If he is found guilty, such charges could get him up to ten years in an American slammer."
Some of the Gardner art may have reached the Middle East, making it much harder to recover. Some of the Gardner art may be in terrible condition preventing any recovery because any reward would be negated by this, see Gardner museums conditions of recovery in "Good condition"
The Gardner case has been a political tug of war, with all sides refusing to give an inch. Food for thought: If they believe the thieves are deceased why did they only just recently stipulate that the thieves are not eligible for the reward?
From this article: "Plagued by the deaths of suspects, defiant mobsters."
Beat that local toughs theory into the ground Boston Globe. Last month the FBI said the know who the guy in the video is, but they're not saying if he was there for a legitimate reason or not. So obviously he wsa there for an illegitimate reason. And he most certainly is not a local tough so the whole local tough or any kind of mafia type theory is thoroughly discredited.
Abath has no known associations with local toughs and this guy talking to ABath is not a local tough or any kind of mafia type. Kurkjian reported in November of 2015 that four security guards said it was retired Lt. Colonel and Gardner Security supervisor Larry O'Brian, which is ridiculous, but it points to the fact that by his haircut, clothing, and comportment, this was a guy who could be mistaken for a security supervisor. Could Donati, or DiMuzio, or Reissfelder, be mistaken for a security supervisor by security guards on a surveillance video? I don't think so.
There has never been a scintilla of evidence supporting that theory. The whole theory was just a full employment for program FBI agents and their friends in journalism. And the dead suspects were just convenient props who would not be able to stand up for themselves, be publicly vetted or file a lawsuit.
From the New York Times in March of 2015 by Tom Mashberg:
Notice that Mashberg doesn't say they look like the police sketches. Nor does Kelly get quoted saying that. How absurd? It's like trying to translate the Soviet house organ Pravda into Russian.
In the Globe's article about the Powerpoint 3/17/15, a couple of weeks later, Shelley Murphy, evidently couldn't bring herself to mention Leonard DiMuzio by name. Can you blame her? DiMuzio, the victim of an unsolved homicide, was an honorably discharged Marine Corp corporal, and a Viet Nam vet. He does NOT resemble the police sketch. The New York Times described him as a "skillful burglar" which probably means they had not caught him yet.
Reissfelder, a bad check writer, who liked to talk like a tough guy spent 16 years in prison for a robbery/murder he did not commit and was exonerated. After he got out in 1982, he slept with the lights on.
But get ready for the real "CATCH" from this article by Murphy about Reissfelder
"The catch: Reissfelder was 50 at the time of the heist, and the guards estimated one thief was in his late 20s to early 30s and the other was in his 30s. However, Kelly said he doesn’t believe the age estimates were reliable."
So Kelly says he thinks that two guys in their twenties one a 27 year old with a Master's Degree from the New England Conservatory can't differentiate between someone in their 30's and a 51 year old drug addict who had spent half of his adult life in Walpole State Prison.
And Robert Gentile is the only "defiant" mobster. He says he didn't do it. Stephen Kurkjian says he wasn't involved. Kurkjian's name is on this article. How is Gentile's defiance any kind of "plague?"
The I.T. Revolution did not end yesterday morning and it is not ending tomorrow morning. Get real. The paintings may or may not come back but the truth about who did it is coming out. It was not local toughs.
The Boston FBI conducted the "investigation" the way they were told from higher up, in Washington from the beginning. It's time for Washington to leave Boston alone on this now.
“The place is so wonderful now that we tend to forget what a horrendous thing it was to have happened,” [back then Governor Michael] Dukakis recalled recently. “The wearing of police uniforms always bothered me, and then the SEEMING difficulty of being able to identify them.”
Hawley too, he said, has shared with him and his wife, Kitty, a very close friend, her frustration that the FBI has been unable to recover any of the stolen pieces. “She’s frustrated, HIGHLY SKEPTICAL about a lot of the stuff,” he said. “She’s gotten tired with everything. Enough already.” from Master Thieves by Stepehn Kurkjian
Dear Washington: Enough already!!!
This was not made public until 2013:
"We also were threatened by criminals who WANTED attention from the FBI Nobody knew really what kind of a cauldron we were in." Anne Hawley 12/4/13 https://youtu.be/WwnQs1BvvlU?t=44
What kind of criminals WANT attention from the FBI?
I don't know what kind of cauldron we're in, but from the smell of it, I think I know what it is we're sharing it with.
Who cares? I mean it is bad, but they already know who did it. This seems like a diversionary, gaslighting, in-emergency-break-glass, non-story designed to regain control of the narrative by pumping up pointless data with media steroids and pumping it out into the information stream on this.
CNN was somehow compelled or persuaded to re-write an article about the Gardner Heist reward being doubled to ten million written by Charney. They didn't acknowledge any errors, but they did put in this disclaimer:
You can see Charney on American Greed Season Two Episode Nine "Unsolved: $300 Million Art Heist / Preying On Faith" on Hulu matter of factly contradicting the FBI's Geoff Kelly who appears on the same episode to discuss the Gardner Heist https://www.hulu.com/watch/46551#i0,p5,d0
Then on Friday Emily Rooney smeared Charney at the end of the show, describing this established art theft expert incompletely as an art novelist, and one who is indifferent to facts, and whose original story had "ten egregious errors." But Rooney has not said what any of the errors were and CNN is not doing a correction. So all we have for egregious errors in the public domain is Rooney's description of Noah Charney's professional background, character and ability to render facts on paper for a news story. https://youtu.be/jmfXv-MT8nM?t=344
And the Gardner Heist story is one place where this rivalry is playing itself out. It is a prelude to what appears to be just how things are going to be for a while and getting rid of Trump is not going to solve it.
Charney's story (the current version) suggests that raising the reward is an act of desperation. One thing we know is that the suggestion of a Boston Globe editorial from the time of 25th anniversary is unlikely to be considered no matter how hopeless things get in this 27 year old saga:
Art Hostage Comments: Arthur Brand, claims in the article on Bloomberg, below he is negociating with former IRA members to recover the Gardner art. These leads are Irish drug dealers who work out of the Netherland. Furthermore, Arthur Brand claims a Dutch criminal had photo's of the Gardner art back in the 1990's and was trying to sell them in Europe. This criminal was Michel Van Rijn and he sold them to Irish criminals, but sadly they were copies/fakes and Michel Van Rijn scammed the buyers, who could not get them authenticated for obvious reasons. These fake Gardner artworks have been passed through many hands over the years and if they are ever recovered it will become clear very quickly they are good quality fakes. Therefore no reward would ever be paid out and the reason given will be because they are copies, true or false. However, this is not to say some of the original Gardner artworks might be held by Irish people, but this latest attempt by Arthur Brand is chasing the fake Gardner art sold by Michel Van Rijn.
Cracking the Biggest Art Heist in History
For nearly three decades, detectives have sought to solve the theft of $500 million of artwork from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. They think the end is near.
By
Nina Siegal
It’s still regarded as the greatest unsolved art heist of all time: $500 million of art—including works by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Degas, and Manet—plucked from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston on March 18, 1990, by two men posing as police. The museum had offered a $5 million reward for the return of all 13 pieces in good condition. Last month, the bounty was suddenly and unexpectedly doubled to $10 million. For such a long-unsolved case, the investigation is surprisingly active into the disappearance of the artworks, which include paintings, a Chinese vase and a 19th century finial of an eagle. Anthony Amore, the museum’s director of security, says he works on the case every day and is in “almost constant contact” with FBI investigators. Tipsters still call all the time, with leads that range from the vaguely interesting to the downright bizarre. Among them: a psychic who offered to contact the late Mrs. Gardner’s spirit, and a few self-styled sleuths who reckon the paintings can be found with metal dowsing rods. Most of those go nowhere. Whether the works will ever be recovered, or if they still exist at all, is one of the great questions that has divided the art world. “Those paintings are gone,” said Erin Thompson, professor of art crime at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. “Either because they were destroyed immediately after they were stolen, or because they’ve already been beaten up so badly by being moved around in the back of cars.” But there is one outside detective respected by Amore—Arthur Brand, a Dutch private investigator—who believes not only are the artworks still intact, but also that he can bring them home. This year. “It’s almost certain that the pieces still exist,” Brand told me. “We are following two leads that both go to the Netherlands, and we are now negotiating with certain people.” Brand, 47, has become one of the world’s leading experts in international art crimes. A British newspaper once called him the “Indiana Jones of the art world” for his combination of crack negotiating skills and uncanny instincts for finding stolen art. In the past few years, Brand has posed as the agent of a Texas oil millionaire to help Berlin police find two enormous bronze horses from the German Reichstag. He worked with Ukrainian militia members to secure the return of five stolen Dutch masters to the Westfries Museum in the Netherlands. He negotiated with two criminal gangs for the successful return of a Salvador Dali and a painting by Tamara de Lempicka, together valued at about $25 million, to the now-closed Scheringa Museum of Realist Art, also in the Netherlands. Brand acts as something of a liaison between criminals and the police. Controversially, he’ll try to make deals that allow the culprits to go free, because he says his primary goal is saving the art from the trash heap. “There are very few like him who understand the reality of this sort of crime,” Amore said.
René Allonge, the chief art investigator with the Berlin State Office of Criminal Investigation, said his team had been searching for Hitler’s bronze horses since 2013. He contacted Brand at the end of 2014, met him in 2015, and they conducted the investigation and searches jointly, “as far as it was legally possible.” Ultimately, Brand played a crucial role in the discovery of the bronze horses, as well as other populist bronzes from the Nazi era, he said. “He succeeded in penetrating a very closed scene of collectors of high-quality Nazi devotionalia, where we finally found the sculptures that we were searching for,” Allonge wrote in an email. Brand’s reward in some of these high-profile cases is often the glory and nothing more. Scheringa had originally offered a €250,000 bounty ($280,000) for the Dali and Lempicka, but the museum had shut down by the time they were recovered. Brand was paid an hourly fee and had his expenses reimbursed, though he declined to say by whom. For finding Hitler’s horses, he got no cash at all, just a lot of free publicity, he says. “He’s not the guy to charge you for every hour he works,” said Ad Geerdink, director of the Westfries Museum, for which Brand recovered five old-master paintings from a militia group in Ukraine. “He knew that we are a small organization with not many resources, so the fee was very, very friendly.” The biggest bonus Brand’s ever received for solving a case was about €25,000, he says. He adds that he’s investigating the Gardner case for the glory. “It’s the Holy Grail in the art world,” he said.
It’s estimated that only 5 percent to 10 percent of stolen art is ever recovered, largely because the works are impossible to sell publicly.
“People will steal art first and then think about what to do with it second,” said Thompson, the art crime professor. “Often they’ll destroy the work of art to get rid of the evidence.” Shortly after seven paintings by Picasso, Monet, Van Gogh, Gauguin, and others, valued in the tens of millions of dollars, were stolen from Rotterdam’s Kunsthal museum in 2013, they were burned by the mother of one of three Romanian thieves arrested and charged in the burglary. She confessed to investigators that she was scared after police began searching her village. Alternatively, paintings are used as bargaining chips in criminal cases. That’s how Italian police recently located two stolen Van Goghs. In 2002, thieves broke into the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam with a sledgehammer—just because they saw a weakness in the museum’s security, not because they knew what they were after. The opportunists sold the works for €350,000 to alleged Italian mobster Raffaele Imperiale. (The art was said to be worth tens of millions—although it never came to market, so it’s impossible to know.) In a seaside town near Naples, Imperiale stored the canvases in his mother’s kitchen cabinet for a dozen years until prosecutors closed in. In August, Imperiale disclosed their location in an attempt to improve his standing with the courts, his lawyers, Maurizio Frizzi and Giovanni Ricco, told me. Prosecutors subsequently reduced his sentence by about two years, they said. But often, the thieves are only persuaded to let go of works if they think they’re going to sell them on the black market. This is where someone like Brand can come in. In 2014, he created a character to help solve the case of the missing Reichstag bronze horses. He pretended to be an agent for “Dr. Moss,” a fictional American collector who had gotten rich in the oil business, loosely based on the character J.R. Ewing from the TV show Dallas. He has also posed as the representative of princes and sheikhs, or even as a criminal himself. “Whatever works, works,” he said. He draws the line at wearing costumes. Brand says he almost never deals with the original thieves. Stolen art tends to move through many hands. Sometimes, the ultimate recipient doesn’t know that what they have was stolen. “In many cases, I have to deal with a person who has a problem: They’ve been screwed by another criminal group,” Brand said. “They can either pass art along to another criminal group, or they can burn it. That’s even worse. What they won’t do is take the work to the police and say, ‘We found these Van Goghs.’ Because the police will ask where they got them.”
That’s where Brand has an opportunity to become the middleman. He can promise the sellers they won’t get in trouble, then get assurances that the police won’t make arrests. Brand’s style works particularly well for snaring amateur crooks, said Noah Charney, founder of the Association for Research Into Crimes Against Art. A lot of people who steal art assume there are collectors out there who buy on the black market, like characters in heist movies. In fact, almost none exist, he said. “People have always collected art to show their erudition and to advertise their wealth,” he said. “If you buy something that you know or suspect was stolen, you can’t show it to anyone.” Criminals don’t always know that. “They get desperate and then turn to someone like Arthur Brand,” someone they are willing to believe is the real deal, Charney said.
Six-foot-two, with a shock of blond hair and bright blue eyes, Brand could be played in the movie of his life by Liam Neeson or Ralph Fiennes. His sleuthing is an adjunct to his primary and less dramatic job—helping buyers who have been swindled, conned, or overcharged for art.
“About 70 percent of what I do is just in the office, visiting clients, visiting dealers, talking to people, and saying, ‘Give him his money back!’” he said. “The other 30 percent is walking around talking to criminals, talking to police, informants, and going undercover sometimes.” Brand first became connected to the art world as a student, through collecting ancient Roman and Greek coins. “I found out that there were a lot of fakes out there, and I didn’t want to spend my hard-earned money buying fakes,” he said. In 2002, Brand received the first of many tips, rumors, and leads about the Gardner case. He heard that back in 1991, people in Holland had photographs of the paintings in storage. By following up, he became convinced that the paintings were never sent to the Netherlands, but photographs were being circulated by people trying to sell the paintings to someone there. Sometime around 2010, he heard that the works had ended up in the hands of former members of the Irish Republican Army. But he soon suffered a setback with the death of one of his top sources, a former IRA member. Brand believes the original thieves were small-time burglars who sold the pieces to a criminal gang in the U.S. before they were killed in the early 1990s. At some point in the mid-1990s, he thinks, the works were shipped to Ireland by boat and ended up with top-ranking IRA commanders. For the past 12 years, Amore and the FBI have worked around a theory that local gang members in the Boston area may have been involved. They are fairly certain that the two thieves who committed the crime died shortly afterwards, Amore said. But Amore believes the works are still in the U.S. “Art that is stolen in America tends to stay in America,” he said. “I’d be happy to be proven wrong.” The statute of limitations on the theft ran out in 1995, and the Office of the U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts has considered offering immunity for information that leads to its return. The museum mostly cares about getting the works back, Amore said. That’s partly why they raised the reward. “It was important for the museum to show its commitment,” he said. “We’re telling the public this is how serious we are.” Brand says the higher reward may help speed things up. He isn’t convinced, though, that the criminals involved will trust the FBI to live up to the deal, despite his assurances. “For me, it’s not about getting people arrested,” he said. “We’re not talking about murders here. If a big criminal has them or the Pope, it doesn’t matter. The important thing is to get them back.” Brand says this case could be cracked within months. He won’t elaborate, but if his leads are good, he’ll have to work fast. Amore also says that he and the FBI may be close to solving the case, and they have leads that are “making the haystack smaller.” He, too, declined to share specifics. “We feel we’re on the right path,” he said. The FBI is more measured. “The investigation has had many twists and turns, promising leads and dead ends,” said Kristen Setera, an agency spokeswoman in Boston. “It has included thousands of interviews and incalculable hours of effort. The FBI believes with high confidence that we have identified those responsible for the theft, even though we still don’t know where the art is currently located.” Brand is confident he can find out. “Somebody I’m talking to knows something,” he said. “These people are not idiots. They know that they can’t just hand them over and walk away with impunity. They think even if they’ve been offered immunity, the police will have some tricks up their sleeves. What I can do is I can provide them a way to return the works without ever having contact with the police. I can even promise them that they can get the reward.” Would Brand really hand over $10 million? “If I can be the one who can bring them to the museum,” he says, “give me a good glass of Guinness, and that’s reward enough.” —With assistance from Hugo Miller.
Brighton Antiques Knocker Boy Lee Collins appeared at Portsmouth Crown Court on June 23rd 2017 where he was convicted on two counts. He received two years six months for the first count and eighteen months for the second count. A total of four years in prison.
One of them, Dick Ellis, told The Mail on Sunday: ‘What was very apparent to me was that the robbers had a very good understanding of the layout of the property and good knowledge of the Bulmers themselves. It was very well planned and orchestrated.’
He said his first move was to place an advert in the Antiques Trade Gazette, offering a £50,000 reward for information.
In June this year, 2015, Mr Ellis received a phone call from Mr Hill to say that ‘he had been contacted and told that someone he knew, knew somebody else, who knew somebody else who had information’. What followed was a period of tense negotiation. Mr Ellis said: ‘It is not an easy process. But you can be assured that the money went to those whose information led to the recovery, not the raiders themselves.’
Before the money was wire-transferred, Mr Ellis had to authenticate the pictures at a secret location and the Bulmers were finally given the good news two weeks ago.
Gang in court charged with £2.5m art and silver heist at home of Bulmer Somerset cider dynasty
File photo of Esmond Bulmer with his wife Susie and dog Echo outside their home "The Pavilion" in Bruton, Somerset.
A group of men appeared in court today in connection with a multi-million pound heist at the home of a cider dynasty.The 12 are: Liam Judge, aged 41, of Foley Close, Tuffley in Gloucestershire; Matthew Evans, aged 40, of Coral Close, Tuffley in Gloucestershire; Mark Regan, aged 45, of no fixed address; Skinder Ali, aged 38, of no fixed address; Donald Maliska, aged 63, of Abbey Place, Priory Road, Dartford; John Morris, aged 55, of Cowper Gardens, London; Jonathan Rees, aged 62, of Village Close, Weighbridge, Surrey; David Price, aged 52, of Virginia Court, London, London TBC; Ike Obiamiwe, aged 55, of Perryn Road, Ealing, London; Nigel Blackburn, aged 60, of Frederick Street, Hockley, Birmingham; Azhar Mir, aged 64, of Halstead Grove, Solihull; and Thomas Lynch, aged 42, of St Benedict’s Road, Small Heath, Birmingham.
The suspects face charges relating to a £2.5 million robbery of art and silver at the stately home belonging to Susie and Esmond Bulmer.
Twleve men were due to appear but a European arrest warrant was issued for one defendant, John Morris, 55.
He booked a one-way ticket out of UK after being charged last month, Bristol Magistrates’ Court was told.
The eleven defendants appeared at court and denied involvement in the raid, in Bruton, Somerset, eight years ago.
They also deny having anything to do with valuable stolen goods as recently as 2015.
Facing a charge of conspiracy to rob, Liam Judge, 41, and Matthew Evans, 40, both of Tuffley, Gloucester, denied the accusations.
They were released on unconditional bail, along with co-defendant Thomas Lynch, 42, of Birmingham, who was accused of assisting in the realisation of stolen property.
Also accused of conspiracy to rob was Skinder Ali, 38. He denied the charge, along with another of assisting in the realisation of stolen property, relating to 19 paintings.
Mark Regan, 45, denied the same charge of assisting in the realisation of criminal property.
David Price, 52, of London, and Donald Maliska, 63, of Dartford, Kent, both denied conspiring to defraud an insurance company and assisting in the realisation of 19 stolen paintings.
Ike Obiamwe, 55, of Sutton, denied the same allegations.
Jonathan Rees, 62, of Weybridge, Surrey, denied perverting the course of justice by giving a false statement to police during an interview on November 25, 2015.
He also denied assisting in the realisation of stolen property, and conspiracy to defraud.
The defendants appeared before District Judge Lynne Matthews at Bristol Magistrates’ Court.
A European arrest warrant for Morris was applied for by prosecutor Ben Samples, who said: "A postal-requisition was sent on July 19.
"Police tell me he bought a one-way ticket out of the country on July 19 and left the country. We believe he is in Europe."
All were sent for trial at Bristol Crown Court and their next court appearance will be September 22.
Bulmers cider family art robbery: Eleven men in court
Eleven men have appeared in court charged in connection with a multi-million pound raid at a cider-making family's luxury home in Somerset.
Esmond and Susie Bulmer's home in Bruton was targeted in 2009 and the couple's housekeeper was allegedly tied to a banister. A total of 15 paintings worth £1.7m, and £1m of jewellery were stolen. All the defendants deny any wrongdoing and are due to appear at Bristol Crown Court on 22 September. Those charged are:
Liam Judge, 41, of Crypt Court, Tuffley, Gloucester, accused of conspiracy to commit robbery
Matthew Evans, 40, of Coral Close, Tuffley, Gloucester, accused of conspiracy to commit robbery
Skinder Ali, 38, whose address was listed as HMP Full Sutton in Yorkshire, accused of conspiracy to commit robbery and conspiracy to receive stolen goods. He appeared by videolink
Jonathan Rees, 62, of Village Close, Weybridge, Surrey, accused of conspiracy to receive stolen goods, conspiracy to defraud and committing a series of acts intending to pervert the course of justice
Donald Maliska, 62, of Old Brompton Road, London, accused of conspiracy to receive stolen goods and conspiracy to defraud
Mark Regan, 45, whose address was listed as HMP Long Lartin in Worcestershire, accused of conspiracy to receive stolen goods. He appeared in court by videolink
David Price, 52, of Virginia Court, Camden, London, accused of conspiracy to receive stolen goods and conspiracy to defraud
Ike Obiamiwe, 55, of The Drive, Sutton, Surrey, accused of conspiracy to receive stolen goods and conspiracy to defraud
Thomas Lynch, 42, of St Benedict's Road, Small Heath, Birmingham, accused of conspiracy to receive stolen goods
Nigel Blackburn, 60, of Broad Street, Birmingham, accused of controlling criminal property
Azhar Mir, 64, of Bufferys Close, Hillfield, Solihull, West Midlands, accused of controlling criminal property
At Bristol Magistrates' Court, all 11 indicated through their lawyers that they would be pleading not guilty to the charges. A 12th defendant, John Morris, 56, of Cowper Gardens, Enfield, London, did not attend court and a warrant for his arrest without bail was issued by the judge. He is accused of conspiracy to receive stolen goods.
Irish National Pleads Guilty to Rhino-Horn Smuggling Scheme
An Irish national pleaded guilty in Miami on Friday to participating in a plot to smuggle a libation cup fashioned from the horn of an endangered rhinoceros.
A statement from the Justice Department on the conviction of Michael Hegarty, 40, offers no insight as to whether Hegarty belongs to a gang of Irish Travelers called the Rathkeale Rovers who were accused by Europol of a conspiracy to plunder tens of millions of dollars worth of rhino horn and other priceless Chinese artifacts from British museums.
Reporting on the UK case from the Irish Times and The Independent mentions a man with the same name as the defendant, but describes him as older. In separate 2016 articles, the Times called this Hegarty 43, and The Independent put his age at 46.
The 40-year-old Hegarty who pleaded guilty Friday in Florida admitted that he and a co-conspirator joined a Miami resident in mid-April 2012 at an auction in Rockingham, North Carolina, where they entered a winning bid for the libation cup made of rhinoceros horn.
Though no full name is given for the Miami resident or Hegarty’s co-conspirator, the Justice Department identifies the bidder just as “Sheridan.”
It is unclear whether this Sheridan is the same individual as Patrick Sheridan, an Irish national who was extradited to the United States in 2015 on charges of rhinoceros horn trafficking.
After picking up the cup with Hegarty in Florida, according to a statement from the Justice Department, Hegarty’s “co-conspirator then smuggled the libation cup out of the United States in his luggage.”
Metropolitan Police arrested the co-conspirator, along with two other Irish nationals, in London, while attempting to sell the same rhinoceros horn libation cup to a Hong Kong native.
Prosecutors say a government forensics laboratory in Ashland, Oregon, confirmed that the libation cup was fashioned from the horn of a great Indian rhinoceros, which is protected by the Endangered Species Act.
Hegarty was extradited to the United States from Belgium after he was arrested through an Interpol red notice. His co-conspirator is currently incarcerated in England meanwhile; the government notes he was convicted there on unrelated charges and is still wanted to face wildlife-trafficking charges in the Southern District of Florida.
U.S. District Donald Middlebrooks accepted Hegarty’s guilty plea and will conduct sentencing on Nov. 14, 2017 at 2:20 p.m.
Hegarty faces up to 10 years in prison and a maximum fine of $250,000, or up to twice the gross gain.
Europol says the Rathkeale Rovers have been involved in an epidemic of raids on museums in Europe involving the theft of rhinoceros horns. The group allegedly leverages the rising price for rhinoceros horns on the black market to be used for traditional medicines and carving.
Some Chinese people believe that drinking from rhinoceros horn cups with bring good health. The giant, prehistoric beasts are protected by U.S. and international laws. More than 90 percent of wild rhino populations have been slaughtered illegally since the 1970s, because of the price their horns can bring, the Justice Department says.
America’s multiagency crackdown on the illegal rhino trade is known as Operation Crash, a nod to the term for a herd of rhinoceros.
The only predator of the rhinoceros is humans. Prosecutors said increasing demand is partly responsible for fueling a thriving black market that includes fake antiques made from recently hunted rhinoceros.
Among members of the gang who have been charged with smuggling crimes in the United States are Michael Slattery Jr. and Patrick Sheridan.
Another Irish traveler, Richard Kerry O’Brien, sued Bloomberg Businessweek in 2014 for reporting that he belonged to the Rathkeale Rovers.
O’Brien was a resident of Rathkeale in County Limerick but said there was nothing criminal about his business of importing antiques from China.
Cartier diamond ring among missing museum treasures worth over £1m
More than 600 items worth more than £1m have been either stolen or misplaced from collections at UK museums, figures reveal.
Image:Dippy the Diplodocus may have gone from the Natural History Museum but curators know where he is, unlike hundreds of other artefacts
More than £1m worth of artefacts have gone missing from some of Britain's most famous museums.
Figures obtained by Sky News reveal over 600 items have been lost, stolen or misplaced from collections including the Science Museum group, the British Museum and the Natural History Museum. The Science Museum group, which includes the Science Museum in London, Manchester's Museum of Science and Industry and the National Railway Museum in York, told us they have a further 5,315 "unlocated" artefacts. This means curators believe they are in storage, but don't know exactly where. The Science Museums group's deputy director, Jonathan Newby, said: "Any object that we can't locate is unfortunate but this does come down to the record-keeping of museums. "In the past, record collections started with a card index hand-written, then transcribed into databases that are now not what you would expect from a modern system." The other problem is that museums don't have enough space for their collections. The Science Museum has only 5% of its 400,000 artefacts on display, the rest are kept in storage facilities.
Image:This rare piece of quartz went missing from the National Museum of Scotland
Among the items missing from the museum are an old tin of talcum powder and an old-fashioned Hotpoint washing machine. Other items lost include a rare piece of quartz from the National Museum of Scotland, an important black tie from the Imperial War Museum collection and perhaps most staggering of all, a £750,000 Cartier diamond ring from the British Museum. A freedom of information request by Sky News reveals 947 artefacts have been reported lost or missing since 2010, and £80,000 worth of objects have been stolen. But those in charge of museum security insist the systems are secure. The Arts Council head of national security, William Brown, said the figures are not cause for concern.
Image:The Imperial War Museum's missing black tie
"I liaise nationally and internationally with other security experts from around the world. Our systems are the envy of many. The government indemnity scheme and the DCMS actually support visits to venues, and fund myself and a team through the Arts Council to ensure collections are safe." Britain's biggest museums receive £435m of government funding every year, and all museums rely on donations from the public and benefactors. Some say they have a responsibility to improve security. Professional art recoverer Christopher Marinello said: "It's an obligation to the public, the public who fund these museums through very high taxes, and we have a right to be able to know where our objects are. "If there is a loss it needs to be reported to the police almost immediately so we can put the object onto a database try to find it as quickly as possible."
Art Dealer for Celebrity Artists Goes to Prison After Swindling His A-List Clients for Nearly 30 Years
Jonathan Poole was a dealer for high-profile clients that included musicians Miles Davis, John Lennon, and the Rolling Stones' Ronnie Wood.
Jonathan Poole. Courtesy of Jonathan Poole. It’s four years behind bars for British art dealer Jonathan Poole, who pled guilty to 26 charges of fraud and theft. The 69-year-old, who specialized in selling artwork for celebrity musicians, confessed to stealing both art and money from his high-profile clients for nearly three decades, between 1986 and 2013. Among Poole’s notable victims was Ronnie Wood, guitarist for the Rolling Stones and a prolific painter who studied at London’s Ealing Art College and will publish a book, Ronnie Wood: Artist, next month. Poole poached a number of Wood’s portraits, featuring fellow celebrities such as Stones frontman Mick Jagger, musicians Bob Dylan, and Ringo Starr, and actress Marilyn Monroe, according to Reuters,
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Poole also represented the estates of jazz musician and artist Miles Davis and musician John Lennon. He admitted to stealing works by the former Beatle, as well as works by contemporary German artist Sebastian Krüger and 19th-century French sculptor Auguste Rodin. Most of the stolen pieces depicted celebrities. In some of his scams, he also took a larger percentage than he was due from some of his art sales. Altogether, Poole, who worked out of two galleries in the Cotswolds in rural south central England, is said to have earned over £500,000 ($664,000) from his illicit dealings. He told the court his business had faced financial difficulties due to Internet competition. Poole was sentenced on Tuesday after pleading guilty at an earlier hearing.
According to the Guardian, prosecutor James Ward compared Poole’s crimes to the 1999 film The Thomas Crown Affair at trial. “[B]oth Thomas Crown and Jonathan Poole stole the paintings in broad daylight,” he said. “Whilst Thomas Crown stole as a challenge because his world had become too safe, Jonathan Poole stole either to fund a gambling habit, or to stash away money for later life.” Poole isn’t the only art world professional to run into legal trouble with his celebrity clients. In New York, the case between art advisor Darlene Lutz and her former client, pop star Madonna, is currently awaiting a hearing. The singer claims that a planned auction of her personal effects featured objects that were stolen from her by Lutz.
Police appeal for witnesses after 2000 pieces of silver stolen from Kent antiques dealer
An antiques dealer and Kent Police are calling on the trade to be aware of stolen silver items from a shop in Tenterden in Kent.
Richard Brunger’s Re-Memories Antiques was burgled earlier this week and it is believed more than 2000 items of silver were taken including carriage clocks, jewellery, dishes and cutlery. Although there are concerns that much of the jewellery will be melted down, Brunger said every item has a small sticker with the letters RB and a serial number. Brunger has asked the trade to look out for items that the thieves may try to sell on including a Bernard Freres brass carriage clock, a miniature silver hallmarked 1900 eight-day French movement clock with embossed Art Nouveau decoration, a Christopher Dresser style toast rack hallmarked early 1890s and a 1929 silver cigarette case engraved with a shipping route of SS Crynssen. The robbery took place overnight between September 25-26. The thieves removed the back door and frame to the shop before moving a cabinet to gain entry and carefully removing a collection of character jugs and placing them on the floor in an alleyway. Seven silver cabinets were emptied and the contents are believed to have been placed in a wheelie bin. Anyone with information should contact Kent Police on 01843 222289 quoting crime reference 26-0245. Alternatively contact Kent Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555111.
Hatton Garden watch dealer jailed for selling over 100 stolen watches after the ALR’s Watch Register identifies stolen Rolex
Rolex GMT Master ‘Eye of the Tiger’ watch, valued at £13,500, stolen from Swiss Time Machine in London in 2016 and identified two months later by the Watch Register when offered for sale with 50 others stolen ones by Nadeem Malick Detective Constable Kevin Parley of the Metropolitan Police Flying Squad A man has been jailed for dealing in high-value watches after the Art Loss Register’s (ALR) specialist service for watches – the Watch Register – identified his attempt to sell a stolen Rolex. On Friday 23 June 2017, Nadeem Malick, 45, a dealer from Greater London operating around Hatton Garden, was sentenced to 18 months’ imprisonment on two counts of Concealing and Converting Criminal Property. On 21 March the previous year, the ALR had identified him selling a stolen Rolex worth £13,500 to a Hatton Garden dealer, who had checked the watch against the Watch Register before purchase. The watch was listed on the database as having been stolen during a brazen smash-and-grab in Mayfair, London, on 6 January 2016, when four men broke into the luxury watch store Swiss Time Machine brandishing knives, hammers and an axe, which they used to break open display cases, grabbing the expensive timepieces inside. They made off on mopeds with 81 watches valued at £1.1 million. The thieves fled the scene on motorcycles but while being pursued by officers, one of the men was seen to discard a bag. When officers recovered the bag it was found to contain 41 watches from the robbery valued at £650,000. The man who discarded the bag of watches is currently serving a seven-year prison sentence for the robbery. Shortly afterwards, the store owner supplied details of the outstanding 40 stolen watches to the Watch Register. After checking the Rolex and hearing the news of its stolen status, the Hatton Garden dealer brought the watch and Malick to the Watch Register’s offices. The Watch Register called the Metropolitan Police Flying Squad, who had been investigating the theft. Following a brief initial questioning, they arrested Malick and seized a further 27 watches that he was carrying in a plastic shopping bag. Later that day the Police searched Malick’s property and found a further 60 watches. In total, 50 of the watches seized from Malick that day were identified as stolen, with a value of £113,450. Over the course of the next year, Detective Constable Kevin Parley of the Metropolitan Police obtained records of the watches that had previously been sold by Malick. He began to investigate the provenance of these watches with the close co-operation of the ALR, whose multi-lingual staff assisted in contacting watch manufacturers and police forces abroad, in addition to checking their own database to establish whether the watches had been registered. The searches carried out on these watches showed 56 of them to be stolen, with Malick having been paid £180,000 for their sale. The actual retail cost of the watches would have been considerably higher. DC Parley stated, "Despite purporting to be a small-time player on the watch dealing field, I compiled overwhelming evidence of handling stolen goods against Malick.” No provenance checks ever seem to have been carried out, and watches usually seem to have been purchased by Malick in cash with no invoice. Malick had fenced watches from all types of thefts, including smash-and-grabs, residential burglaries, snatches and credit card frauds, with a significant quantity of the watches being sold by Malick between 1-14 days after the original offence. This was the largest discovery of stolen watches ever seen by the ALR in their 27 years’ experience in dealing with stolen property. DC Parley concluded, "Each of the 106 stolen watches that he handled represents a victim of crime and I am pleased that the sentence handed down today reflects that.” For the Metropolitan Police report please see: http://news.met.police.uk/news/man-who-sold-stolen-high-value-watches-jailed-248174 For more information on the smash-and-grab from Swiss Time Machine see: http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/632038/armed-thieves-Mayfair-Time-Machine-watch-shop
Night at the museum: Why the great skylight caper at the MMFA remains unsolved, 45 years later
Thieves made off with dozens of works in the spectacular 1972 heist
Landscape with cottages, dated 1654 and attributed to Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn, hasn't been seen in 45 years. (Wikipedia)
The year was 1972 and under the cover of darkness, three men descended into the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts through a skylight, tied up several guards, and made off with $2 million in stolen art, precious jewels and artifacts. Among the loot, a canvas attributed to Dutch master Rembrandt van Rijn valued at a cool $1 million. The heist, regarded as one of the largest in Canadian history, remains unsolved; any and all leads on suspects or the fate missing art evaporated decades ago.
It was past midnight on the night of Sept. 3rd, when the thieves, clad in ski masks and hoods, crept on to the roof of the museum. "It was a very cinematic theft," said Catherine Schofield Sezgin, a Montreal-born writer and contributor to the Association for Research into Crimes against Art. In 2009, while taking an association course in Italy, Schofield Sezgin decided to research the skylight caper. She returned to Montreal for the first time in years to dig through stacks of paper archives and conduct interviews. Her blog faithfully chronicles the heist and its aftermath.
Bill Bantey, the museum's then spokesperson, speaking with CBC after the 1972 heist. (CBC Archives)
The thieves were careful in their execution, striking at a moment when the roof skylight was being repaired and the alarm covered by a plastic sheet. Police believed the robbers accessed the roof by climbing an adjacent tree or propped a ladder up against the building. Once inside the museum, the three men jumped a first guard as he was making his rounds, then two more, all of whom were bound and gagged. They threatened the guards with guns, firing two warning shots from a 12-gauge shotgun into the ceiling. Then they set about their work. "They were discriminating thieves and had a fairly good idea of what they were looking for," the museum's spokesperson, Bill Bantey, told CBC at the time.
The thieves broke in through a skylight in what is now called the Michal and Renata Hornstein Pavilion. (Wikipedia)
Along with the Rembrandt, the thieves made off with works by Jean-Baptiste Corot, Gustave Courbet and Pierre-Paul Rubens. The Rembrandt, Landscape with Cottages, was originally purchased by Canadian railroad baron William Van Horne. It was given to the museum by his daughter years later. Also stolen was a 18th century French gold watch that once belonged to the wife of Jacques Viger, Montreal's first elected mayor. The whole robbery took about 30 minutes.
All was going according to plan for thieves — until an alarm was triggered at the service door they planned to use for their escape. Instead, according to Schofield Sezgin, they had to hurry off on foot with 18 canvases and 39 other items in tow, leaving behind a stack of 20 paintings they couldn't carry. When interviewed by police, the guards were not able to give descriptions of the thieves, except for noting they had long hair and that two spoke French and the other, English.
Corot's 1865 painting, Jeune fille accoudée sur le bras gauche, was among the other works to go missing.
Schofield Sezgin spoke at length with Bantey about the skylight caper before his death in 2010. "Everyone forgot about the theft except for the insurance companies," he told her. "Like a death in the family, you have to let it drop."
What happened to the art?
Despite calling in the international police agency Interpol to help track down the thieves, the stolen art was never recovered and the insurance companies were forced to pay the museum's claim. No suspects were ever arrested and the trail of the missing art has long since gone cold. That's one thing that Schofield Sezgin still can't quite reconcile: "What's really fantastic is that three people conducted this theft and got away with it, and nobody after all this time has gotten the bragging rights." Two days after the robbery, the Montreal Gazette reported that it was, in fact, the second lucrative art heist to take place that week, with $50,000 in paintings having been stolen earlier from the Oka home of Agnes Meldrum. Police said the two incidents bared similarities: both involved three hooded, armed men, two of whom spoke French and the other, English. In the Meldrum case, thieves scaled a 600-foot cliff from a waiting motorboat on the Lake of Two Mountains to access the home. Following the museum break-in, officials circulated information about the stolen paintings far and wide, hoping to notify international sellers and buyers about their provenance.
It's estimated that most of the pieces have dramatically increased in value since 1972, especially the Rembrandt, which some art experts believe could be worth 20 times more than it was when it was stolen.
This Assyrian bas-relief was stolen from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 2011, but was later recovered. (Canadian Press)
And while a haul like that may seem like a golden parachute for the thieves, some experts warn that selling this kind of high-profile material on the black market isn't so easy. High-profile stolen works often need to lay low for years before they can be transported and sold, said Alain Lacoursière, a former art investigator for Montreal and Quebec provincial police.
Lacoursière, known as the "Colombo of art," made the skylight caper something of a pet project during the 1990s. He was never able to crack the case, but entertains some theories about what happened. "There were rumours at the time that members of the Mafia here were trying to construct a ship and that the canvases would be rolled up and put in the hold during construction," Lacoursière told Radio-Canada. "They are probably decorating the home or palace of a Russian, Italian or French Mafia member who may have exchanged them for drugs, weapons."
Not all attempts pay off
This wasn't the first or last attempt made on the Montreal museum's collection.
Alain Lacoursière, a former art crime investigator, suspects the stolen works ended up in the hands of organized crime. (Radio-Canada)
Schofield Sezgin's research turned up reports of two other attempted robberies years earlier. In 1933, a thief passed a dozen paintings through an open bathroom window, eventually holding them for ransom. In 1960, thieves were foiled while trying to rob a Vincent van Gogh exhibition.
More recently, two valuable antiquities were stolen from the permanent collection in broad daylight. The 2011 robbery took place during visiting hours on the anniversary of the 1972 crime. One of the pieces, a fragment of a Persian bas-relief dating from the 5th century BC, was recovered by the Sûreté du Québec in Edmonton three years later. The second piece, a Roman marble statuette dating from the 1st century AD, was never recovered.
Gambling butler jailed for stealing millions of pounds' worth of goods from Prince Charles' friend
Simon Dalton has been put behind bars for crimes against the Hanbury family.
A butler who stole possessions ranging from Picasso artwork to Faberge eggs and £1.9m worth of jewellery from a friend of Prince Charles' has been sentenced to a six years in jail. Simon Dalton, 54, who worked for millionaire friends of the royal family, has been put behind bars after pleading guilty to six counts of theft from Major Christopher Hanbury and his wife Bridget. He used the proceeds to fund his gambling addiction. Major Hanbury, 73, is a family friend of the Prince of Wales and has previously hosted Prince Harry at his Argentinian polo estate. He is a former member of the Queen's Royal Irish Hussars and aide to the Sultan of Brunei. Among the stolen items are three pieces of artwork – a line drawing by Picasso, a Toulouse-Lautrec and a piece of art by singer Bob Dylan. They remain missing after Dalton has refused to reveal their whereabouts. Manchester Crown heard that Dalton, of Finchale Drive in Hale, worked for the Hanburys since 2009 and committed the thefts between 2010 and 2012. He was paid £19,000 after tax as house manager and lived rent free in a cottage with his wife on the family's estate in Loveslock House, Berkshire. Prosecutor David Harley said that Dalton managed the Hanbury's finances and had access to their accounts and safe. Dalton left the family and his wife suddenly in 2012 without explanation. The only thing he left behind was a note which read: "I can't take it anymore, I'm going to Scotland to clear my head for a few months." Despite the family making attempts to contact Dalton as they were worried about his well being, they heard no response. It was said in court that the family had "doubts" about their butler and proceeded to check their possessions to see if anything had been stolen. They found that many valuables were missing including the Picaddo and Toulouse-Lautrec paintings, both worth approximately £650,000 each, the Dylan painting worth £100,000, and three Faberge eggs – which are jewelled eggs created by the House of Faberge. Financial investigations found that Dalton had also stolen £725,000 from the family's bank accounts, gambling more than £570,000. Police also traced a pawnbrokers in Fleet Street, London, where the butler had pawned jewellery, watches and gems. Pawnbrokers became suspicious when Dalton tried to pawn three Faberge eggs and a Faberge stamp, subsequently cancelling the transaction. The items were later returned to the Hanburys. The court heard that Dalton fled to Lille in France on a ferry where he rented a safety deposit box. 1.9m of jewellery and watches were later recovered from a suitcase full of his clothes from the deposit box. Dalton was arrested on 3 January 2013 after returning to the UK. Defending Nick Cotter claimed that Dlaton was a heavy gambler and "obsessed with death". Now separated from his wife, Cotter apologised to the Hanburys on his client's behalf. Judge Martin Steiger QC informed Dalton that he would be "well served" at sentence if he revealed the location of the missing artwork. The judge said: "The defendant was the trusted steward of a wealthy family involved in all things when it came to finance."
Zurich admits to ‘losing’ nearly a thousand works of art over the years
The city of Zurich has misplaced more than 900 works of art from its public collection over the years, Swiss media reported on Tuesday.
Of the 34,500 works of art belonging to the city, the whereabouts of 946 are unknown, lost over the years due to lackadaisical management, reported Tages Anzeiger.
The most significant loss is a painting by Swiss-French artist and architect Le Corbusier, dating from 1927, which has an estimated value of 1.5 million francs.
Zurich city authorities obtained the painting in 1964. It was initially displayed in a maternity hospital, before being put into storage. It later disappeared, probably in the 1990s, authorities told the media.
Considerable effort has been made to find it, Marc Huber, a spokesman for the city’s construction department, which is responsible for the art collection, told the Tages Anzeiger.
In 2007 the city lodged a complaint with police, and the artwork was entered into an international database of lost and stolen artworks, but as yet it hasn’t been found.
After the piece by Le Corbusier the next most valuable is probably worth around 10,000 francs said Huber. He estimated the total value of the missing art to be around two million francs.
The artworks were most likely lost due to mismanagement, said the paper. Over the years many were loaned out without being properly documented or tracked.
It wasn’t until 2009 that the city took a proper inventory of its artwork, despite starting the collection a century earlier.
The authorities now have stricter controls which have prevented more going missing, and several dozen missing artworks have been recouped in recent years, six in 2017 alone, Huber told the Tages Anzeiger.
Zurich isn’t the only the place to suffer such embarrassment.
According to Le Matin some 2,000 works are missing from the Zurich cantonal collection, while the city of Bern has misplaced up to 200 artworks.
Other cities have remained tight-lipped about the extent of their art collections, said the paper.
Nearly 300 paintings stolen from the back of a truck in Los Banos
Read more here: http://www.mercedsunstar.com/news/local/crime/article181797386.html#storylink=cpy
Nearly 300 paintings and sketches were stolen from the back of a truck in Los Banos over the weekend and the artist is asking for the public’s help locating the art that represents more than six years of his life. Artist Maximo Gonzalez has been working on a project since 2011 aimed at raising environmental awareness through art. The paintings and drawings — about 268 in total — were being transported from Dallas, Texas to the Montalvo Arts Center in Saratoga, Gonzalez said in a telephone interview Monday. The artwork was stored in boxes in the back of a locked truck. The driver stopped to rest Friday night at the Maple Inn on East Pacheco Boulevard in Los Banos. On Saturday morning, he returned to the truck and found the artwork had been taken, Los Banos Police Cmdr. Ray Reyna said.
Read more here: http://www.mercedsunstar.com/news/local/crime/article181797386.html#storylink=cpy
Reyna said the artwork consisted of about 130 paintings and 138 drawings or sketches on canvass.
Persian Bas Relief Seized at European Art Fair
An ancient limestone bas relief of a Persian soldier with shield and spear was seized by police at the New York edition of The European Fine Art Fair at the Park Avenue Armory. The relief is worth about $1.2 million and was being offered for sale by Rupert Wace, a well-known dealer in antiquities in London, the New York Times wrote. The bas relief is a 51.5-square-centimeter piece of carved limestone that was part of a long line of soldiers depicted on a balustrade at the central building on the Persepolis site. It dates to the Achaemenid dynasty - the first Persian empire - and was made sometime between 510 and 330 BC. Wace said he had bought the relief from an insurance company, which had acquired it legally from a museum in Montreal, where it had been displayed since the 1950s. The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts displayed the work until 2011, when it was stolen. Three years later, the Canadian authorities recovered it from a collector in Edmonton and returned it to the museum, according to CBC News. But the curators opted to keep the insurance money and let the AXA Insurance Company take possession. The bas relief is the latest in a string of antiquities the Manhattan district attorney’s office has seized from art dealers and museums in New York City as part of a concerted effort in recent years to recover ancient works. Experts on artifacts from Persepolis say the bas relief was first excavated in 1933 by a team of archaeologists from the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. The Persian government passed a law in 1930 making it illegal to transport such antiquities out of the country. According to an earlier statement by Ebrahim Shaqaqi, the director of legal affairs at the Iran Cultural Heritage, Handcraft and Tourism Organization, the bas relief had been stolen from Persepolis decades ago prior to the 1979 Islamic Revolution. “Legal follow-ups are underway to first prove that the relic belongs to Iran and finally repatriate it,” said Shaqaqi. The European Fine Art Fair is an annual art, antiques and design fair, organized by The European Fine Art Foundation in Maastricht, Netherlands.
Stolen Stanley Spencer Painting Worth £1m Recovered From Drugs Den
Read more here: http://www.mercedsunstar.com/news/local/crime/article181797386.html#storylink=cpy
A painting by Sir Stanley Spencer titled Cookham from Englefield, that was stolen five years ago from the Stanley Spencer Gallery in Berkshire has been uncovered in a raid on a drug dealer’s home in Kingston- Upon-Thames. The work of art valued at over £1m has now been returned to the gallery, police have revealed. The robbery took place when a window was smashed at the Stanley Spencer Gallery in High Street, Cookham at 01:00 BST on a Sunday evening in 2012. The thief took the painting (dated 1948) by the artist once dubbed ‘the divine fool of British art’. The painting is privately owned and had been loaned to the gallery. It is now suspected to have been used as collateral by the gang. Harry Fisher, 28, was arrested on June 15, after police found a kilogram of cocaine and £30,000 in cash in his Mercedes. Fisher’s flat in Kingston-upon-Thames, west London, was then raided by officers who discovered the painting along with three kilograms of cocaine and 15,000 ecstasy tablets. After a search of Mr Fisher’s family home in Fulham, more Class A drugs were uncovered, making a total street value of £450,000, and £40,000 in cash. The defendant, of Seven Kings Way, Kingston, has been incarcerated for eight years and eight months at Kingston Crown Court on Friday. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to supply Class A drugs, acquiring criminal property and handling stolen goods. The judge also sentenced 32-year-old Zak Lal, of Columbine Road, Rochester, Kent, who admitted conspiracy to supply Class A drugs, acquiring criminal property and possession of an offensive weapon. He was jailed for five years and eight months A spokesperson from The Stanley Spencer Gallery said, “volunteers are immensely grateful to the various police sections who have contributed to the recovery of this remarkable painting which was stolen from us more than five years ago.” Sir Stanley Spencer CBE RA (30 June 1891 – 14 December 1959) was an English painter. Shortly after leaving the Slade School of Art, Spencer became well known for his paintings depicting Biblical scenes occurring as if in Cookham, the small village beside the River Thames where he was born and spent much of his life. Spencer referred to Cookham as “a village in Heaven”, and in his biblical scenes, fellow-villagers are shown as their Gospel counterparts. Spencer was skilled at organising multi-figure compositions such as in his large paintings for the Sandham Memorial Chapel and the Shipbuilding on the Clyde series, the former being a World War One memorial while the latter was a commission for the War Artists’ Advisory Committee during World War Two. As his career progressed, Spencer often produced landscapes for commercial necessity and the intensity of his early visionary years diminished somewhat while elements of eccentricity came more to the fore. Although his compositions became more claustrophobic and his use of colour less vivid he maintained an attention to detail in his paintings akin to that of the Pre-Raphaelites.
How London became a hotspot for art theft - the world’s third most profitable criminal enterprise
It’s pouring with rain when I go to meet Charley Hill in the café at The National Gallery, and the sky is so moody one might be tempted to call it ‘Rothko grey’. He is waiting for me with a white paper envelope and a golf umbrella, and has greying curly hair, kind crinkly eyes and round tortoiseshell glasses. In contrast to Hill’s usual meetings with gangland informers and kingpins of the criminal underworld, all that’s in my envelope are three postcards he’s bought for me from the Sir John Soane’s Museum where, 30 years ago, he foiled an armed attempt to steal two Hogarth paintings. Once DCI of Scotland Yard’s Art and Antiques Unit, Hill has worked as a private detective since 1997 and has contributed to some of the biggest art crime recoveries in history. ‘I don’t break the law but I do deal with people you wouldn’t want to talk to,’ he tells me in his soft, mid-Atlantic accent. ‘Using informants is the only way to get these things back.’ The ‘things’ he refers to have included Goya’s Portrait of Doña Antonia Zárate, which he discovered rolled up in a sports bag, Vermeer’s Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid, retrieved from a multistorey car park in Antwerp, and Titian’s £5m Rest on the Flight into Egypt, stuffed into a red and blue striped laundry bag and found at a bus stop outside Richmond station. One of the best stories he tells me — over two pre-lunch Screwdrivers — involves accidentally bumping Munch’s The Scream on the headrest of his associate’s Mercedes sports coupé, having gone undercover at an Oslo hotel to retrieve the masterpiece. ‘It’s just on a piece of cardboard so it’s like carrying a big packing box,’ he says of rescuing one of the most famous paintings in the world, valued at the time at £35m.
Art work: private detective Charley Hill Whether it’s an elaborate forgery of a Damien Hirst Spin painting, a Banksy swiped from an Islington flat by Airbnb-ers, or ISIS’s looting of historical antiquities in Palmyra, art crime is happening every day. It is now ranked the third highest grossing criminal enterprise, behind drugs and arms dealing respectively. In 2013, figures suggested that thefts of art and antiques in the UK alone totalled more than £300m. ‘London is an ideal site for moving art because of its position as a centre of the art world and global art market,’ explains Lynda Albertson, CEO of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art. ‘The British Art Market Federation reported that there were 48,500 people directly employed in the art and antiques market, and the UK has a 21 per cent share of the $56bn global art market, which gives you an idea of London’s muscle.’ Yet in August Scotland Yard announced that it had seconded the three remaining detectives from its specialist unit to the Grenfell Tower investigation, and there are fears that its Art and Antiques Unit might well be closed indefinitely. ‘The loss would be felt across the globe,’ says Vernon Rapley, who was in charge of the unit for 10 years before becoming head of security at the V&A in 2010. ‘We dealt with everything, from ancient Assyrian reliefs to contemporary painting to vintage wine — all sorts of things came through that office door. It takes a long time to understand these crimes, so having a small, specialist team frees up other officers’ time when these cases do come in.’ The Metropolitan Police did not respond to our queries about the future of the unit, but with police funding tighter than ever there’s a sense that picture-napping isn’t the most pressing concern.
Edvard Munch’s The Scream (Alamy Stock Photo) ‘I’m sympathetic to the view that knife crime is more important than art crime,’ says Saskia Hufnagel, a senior lecturer in criminal law at Queen Mary, University of London, who writes about art theft and forgery. ‘But when we think about how stolen art could be used as a currency to fund arms, drugs and terrorism, we’re talking about more than just losing cultural property.’ Although it’s the Thomas Crowne-style museum heists that make the headlines, art crime has now gone digital. This summer hackers stole sums ranging from £10,000 to £1m from nine galleries and individuals, including the Mayfair-based Hauser & Wirth gallery when they used an email scam to intercept payments between galleries and collectors. The notoriously unregulated art market, combined with large sums of money changing hands, make this type of con particularly lucrative. ‘You can’t buy a $1m condo without three weeks of paperwork and 100 checks and balances, but art dealers and their clients will wire $1m after a single conversation,’ says one US dealer who asked not to be named. Then there are the inside jobs and questions of provenance. ‘A lot of theft from museums will be an item taken from the archives which isn’t detected for years and is never reported,’ says Hufnagel. For the V&A’s Vernon Rapley the most pressing concerns are ‘fakes and forgeries — not just those objects directly penetrating the collections, but also the attributions or provenance of those objects. Sometimes the things coming in to our collection are more dangerous than the things going out. There was a point in the past when people were borrowing a tray of coins for “study purposes”, taking the most valuable ones out and replacing them with forgeries.’
Christopher Marinello From a nondescript office in Hatton Garden with a few watercolours on the wall, Julian Radcliffe runs The Art Loss Register, a global database of stolen art and antiques which has recovered over £100m worth of paintings, statues and sculptures since 1991. According to The Register (as it’s known in the trade), there are more than 500,000 stolen, fake or looted items floating around, including more than 1,000 Picassos — the most stolen artist. Clearly, criminals love a bit of fractured perspective. Radcliffe is a former risk consultant for Lloyd’s of London, who once specialised in kidnap negotiations, a skill that presumably comes in handy now he spends his days trying to talk back Old Masters. ‘We often get calls from individuals who say they know where an item is and that they want money for [that knowledge],’ he says. ‘We fill in the gaps between the police, the governments and the art industry.’ The company charges people £10 to register their lost or stolen item on the database and takes a percentage of an item’s ‘ultimate net benefit’ if it’s recovered. It had a turnover of £1m last year. In 1999, Radcliffe made $2million for reuniting a stolen Cézanne painting, Pitcher and Fruit, with its owner. (There are more successes but not for such large sums of money. For example, he recently made £100,000 after recovering some pictures that were part of an insurance fraud.) The sometimes murky distinction between paying rewards to informants, as opposed to ransom money to thieves which is illegal, means that the work of the private art detective can be controversial. In 2000, the Tate reportedly paid £3.5m to lawyers on behalf of informants with strong connections to the Serbian underworld, to retrieve two stolen Turners worth £20m. ‘There are a lot of disreputable companies operating in this grey area,’ says Christopher Marinello, who set up the non-profit register ARTIVE.org and the art recovery organisation Art Recovery International and has been dubbed the ‘Sherlock Holmes of Nazi-looted art’. ‘Paying criminals for information encourages art crime, and withholding information from victims or museums unless you get paid isn’t ethical.’ Marinello says he does a lot of pro-bono work, particularly for churches, museums and artists who can’t afford his fees. ‘I’m a sucker for religious artefacts,’ he says. ‘I recently recovered a Masonic sword which had been stolen and sold at a car-boot sale and ended up at an auction house in London. The auction house had done no due diligence whatsoever — if they’d even googled it they would’ve seen that it had been stolen.’
Titian’s Rest on the Flight into Egypt (Alamy Stock Photo) The idea of masterpieces being stolen to order for a criminal mastermind, such as the James Bond villain Dr No with his misappropriated Goya, is nearly always Hollywood fantasy. ‘It’s almost never stolen because it’s a beautiful object,’ says Vernon Rapley. ‘Rather, it’s a commodity that can be used as collateral for other illicit activity.’ He adds that to understand art crime you need to look at the bigger picture (pun, presumably, not intended). ‘There are trends — a few years ago Chinese gangs were stealing Chinese antiquities to use as currency,’ he says. ‘Similarly, when drugs were being bought from Turkey there would be peaks in the theft of art that would appeal to that market. At the moment we’re quite concerned about our collections which feature rhino horn — they might not be the most valuable items but they’re high risk because they are desirable [in Asia].’ Technology may have led to cybercrime and more sophisticated forgeries, but it is also being turned on the criminals. ‘There are new inventions being tried such as genetic fingerprinting for paintings, analysing cryptocurrencies and blockchain software to track provenance,’ says Lynda Albertson. ‘Recently, a team of undercover operatives and Syrian archaeologists applied a tracing liquid to antiquities which uses nanotechnology to encrypt data into water.’ A solution of small particles suspended in water is painted on to objects to track where they’ve come from; it can’t be removed and it’s only visible under UV light. For the most part, art crime cases are solved the old-fashioned way, and occasionally, quickly. Marinello recalls posing as a buyer for a job that took 15 days in total, from the time of the theft to the day the photograph — worth about £350,000 — was back on the wall of the museum it came from in Prague. ‘The stars aligned for that one,’ he admits. More often, though, unravelling the threads requires huge patience and skill. Julian Radcliffe recovered the Hooke manuscripts, original minutes of meetings at The Royal Society between 1677 and 1682, as recorded by scientist Robert Hooke, which were stolen 300 years ago. Charley Hill has been on the trail of the Mafia-inspired theft of a Caravaggio for 30 years. Will he ever give up? ‘Never — I’ll be doing this until I drop.’
'The right thing to do is return them'
Almost eight months after two Gottfried Lindauer paintings were stolen from a Parnell art centre, the centre's director has once again made a plea for their return.
Together, the paintings, depicting Chieftainess Ngatai-Raure and Chief Ngatai-Raure, are believed to be worth about $1 million. "The right thing to do is return them," says International Art Centre director Richard Thomson. "It would be nice to see, the nation wants them returned." Mr Thomson is speaking out, after an anonymous seller recently posted a listing on the 'dark web', selling what they claim is one of the stolen Lindauer works. The dark web is an untraceable part of the internet and special software is needed to access it. But Mr Thomson believes what's been advertised on the listing is fake. "I can tell by some of the photographs on it and the photoshopping," he says. "We know those paintings more than anyone. "Yes, it's the painting, but it's a copy of it - it's a printed copy." Arts, Culture and Heritage Minister, and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is taking the listing seriously and has asked officials for advice. "I've referred queries to the Ministry of Arts, Culture and Heritage, because I'm sure that there would be some way that they choose to respond to these kinds of issues - a policy on the way that they respond to stolen goods," she says. "So I've left that for their advice. It seems pretty bold for someone to list a stolen item and actually state that it's a stolen item the way they have." Art historian Penelope Jackson, the author of Art Thieves, Fakers and Fraudsters: The New Zealand Story, says whether the listing is authentic or not, it's brought the story back into the spotlight. "Perhaps it might jog someone's memory about something they've seen or a conversation they've overheard that could ultimately provide the police with the information they need to find the culprits and the works," says Ms Jackson. Mr Thomson says he's confident the paintings are still in New Zealand.
Mystery of the Admiral’s jewel: Remarkable story of Lord Nelson’s prized 300-diamond hat piece gifted to him after the Battle of the Nile that vanished from a museum 66 years ago
Nelson was gifted the stunning seven-inch chelengk by Sultan Selim III of Turkey
Hat decoration was sold in 1895 for £710 to ease the family's financial difficulties
It would end up in London's National Maritime Musuem until it was stolen in 1951
Career criminal sold the prized jewel to a gang who broke it into smaller pieces
The remarkable story of Admiral Lord Nelson's most precious jewel which vanished from a museum 66 years ago has been revealed in a new book.
Nelson was gifted the stunning seven-inch chelengk by Sultan Selim III of Turkey after the Battle of the Nile in 1798.
The hat decoration contained over 300 diamonds and a central diamond Ottoman star which was powered by clockwork to rotate and sparkle in candlelight.
Nelson was the first non-Muslim recipient of the chelengk and wore it on his hat like a turban jewel, sparking a fashion craze for similar jewels in England.
Lord Nelson (left) was gifted the stunning seven-inch chelengk (replica shown right) by Sultan Selim III of Turkey after the Battle of the Nile in 1798
London jeweller Philip Denyer has used 350 18th century diamonds to make an exact replica of the chelengk to coincede with the book launch of Nelson's Lost Chelengk
It remained in his family for generations before it was sold in 1895 for £710 to ease the family's financial difficulties.
The chelengk was then bought for £1,500 by the Society for Nautical Research in 1929 following a national appeal and placed in London's National Maritime Museum.
But it was stolen in 1951 by career criminal George Chatham, who sold the jewel for a 'few thousand' to a criminal gang who he believes broke it up into little pieces.
The fascinating history of the jewel has been researched by historian and jewel expert Martyn Downer for his new book Nelson's Lost Chelengk.
To coincide with the book launch, London jeweller Philip Denyer has used 350 18th century diamonds to make an exact replica of the chelengk.
The jewel, worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, is on display in the Victory Gallery at Portsmouth's Historic Dockyard alongside a black felt cocked hat.
The jewel was stolen from the National Maritime Musuem in 1951 by career criminal George Chatham, who sold the jewel for a 'few thousand' to a criminal gang
For the replica (left), a goldsmith copied a newly discovered drawing (right) of the chelengk which had been hidden away in the library at the College of Arms in London
The goldsmith copied a newly discovered drawing of the chelengk which had been hidden away in the library at the College of Arms in London.
The drawing was commissioned by Nelson's niece Charlotte who inherited the chelengk after his death.
She asked Thomas King, a Norfolk-born officer at the College of Arms, to paint it alongside Nelson's other orders and decorations for a planned history of Great Yarmouth.
His watercolour is the most accurate record of the chelengk as it appeared during Nelson's lifetime, showing in unprecedented detail the delicate white enamelling on the petals of the flowers and a single ruby radiating from the jewel.
By the time the chelengk passed into the hands of the National Maritime Museum in 1929, its enamelled flowering and clockwork mechanism had been removed.
Martyn Downer, 51, said: 'Nelson knew it was an extraordinary jewel and asked for permission from the king to wear it on his hat as part of his official uniform.
'I visited the College of Arms last year and by pure serendipity King's fabulous drawing of the chelengk was unearthed in an album in the library.
'Forget Trafalgar... the Battle of the Nile was Nelson's finest hour'
The Battle of the Nile was one of the most significant clashes between Nelson (pictured) and his counterpart Napoleon
Many historians agree that the Battle of the Nile was more significant than Trafalgar, the battle in which Nelson died. It was during this conflict that Généreux was nearly taken by the Lord Admiral's men but the ship managed to escaped - only to be captured two years later.
In August 1798, the French were at anchor in Aboukir Bay in shallow water, using the shore to protect the south-western side of the fleet, while the north-eastern faced open sea.
Although the ships were chained together, Nelson believed the chain between the last ship in the line and the shore was sunk deep enough to let a vessel pass.
In a daring night-time manoeuvre, his fleet slipped through the gap and attacked the French on their unprotected side.
The battle established Britain as the dominant sea power during the French revolutionary wars and was immortalised in the poem Casablanca, known for its opening line 'The boy stood on the burning deck'.
Nelson's flagship during the battle was the Vanguard. Other British ships commemorated by surviving copses include the Minotaur, Defence, Swiftsure, Theseus, Orion, Bellerophon and Alexander.
Stephen Fisher of the National Trust said: 'The Battle of the Nile in 1798 was one of Nelson's most significant clashes with Napoleon.
'Forget Trafalgar, this was Nelson's finest hour and at the time was his most famous victory.'
Divers pull out a 200-year-old canon (pictured) from the ship wreck of the Orient, the French fleet's flagship during the Battle of the Nile, in 1999'The level of detail in the drawing has enabled the jeweller to make an exact replica of the chelengk using 350 18th century diamonds which have been salvaged from jewels of that era.
'The enamelling has been done in the same colour and every detail I've researched has been included in the jewel.
'It is an extraordinary object which is worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.'
During the heist, Chatham smashed the plate glass of the display case containing the Nelson relics and left a crowbar in the shards of broken glass.
Only the chelengk, the most precious object in the display, was missing.
Nothing else had been touched and the jewel's fitted case had been left behind.
Two ladders were discovered in an annex next to the gallery which had been used by Chatham to reach a window which he forced open.
A watch was immediately placed at ports and airports as there was speculation the chelengk had been stolen by an antiques gang to flog on the Continent or in America.
The replica jewel, worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, is on display in the Victory Gallery at Portsmouth's Historic Dockyard alongside a black felt cocked hat
The jeweller used 350 diamonds (pictured when removed from the ornament) to recreate the famous gem
Within hours, a reward of £250 was offered for information leading to the recovery of the jewel, but no one was arrested for the theft.
However, in 1994 Chatham confessed to the crime during a TV interview.
He said he sold the chelengk for a 'few thousand' before the jewel was broken up into little pieces.
Chatham had previous as in 1948 he stole two glittering diamond-encrusted swords in an exhibition of Wellington relics at the Victoria & Albert Museum in South Kensington, west London.
Mr Dormer, 51, of Cambridge, said: 'It seems remarkable now that a burglar who preyed on Mayfair's mansions was able to take it with such apparent ease.
'It certainly caused an enormous stink that such a special object had been left unguarded.
'Chatham appeared on TV and admitted he stole it and sold it for a 'few thousand'.'
Nelson's Lost Jewel: The Extraordinary Story of the Lost Diamond Chelengk, by Martyn Downer, is published by The History Press and coasts £20.
Prized ornament gifted to Nelson by Sultan Selim III discovered by police divers and sold for £70,000
An ornate scabbard chape belonging to Admiral Lord Nelson - discovered on the bed of the River Thames by a police diver in the 1970s - was sold at auction for £70,000 in 2015.
It is believed the six-inch long enamel and diamond decoration that fixed onto the bottom end of the naval hero's sword case was tossed into the water by thieves decades before.
It was discovered in 1973 purely by chance by a police diver searching for a weapon used in a crime.
This ornate scabbard chape belonging to Lord Nelson - discovered on the bed of the River Thames by a police diver in the 1970s - was sold at auction for £70,000 in 2015
The chape, like the seven-inch chelengk, was presented to Nelson by the Sultan Selim III of the Turkish Empire to commemorate the British victory over the French fleet at the Battle of the Nile in 1798.
It is decorated in diamonds with the star and crescent which matches the Ottoman Order of the Crescent granted to Nelson in 1799.
Five years before its discovery, an ornate locket with an identical decoration that was used on the top part of Nelson's scabbard was found during dredging work of the River Wey in Surrey.
The location was not far from the Thames at Windsor where the chape was found, nor from Nelson's palatial home at Merton.
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The chape was presented to Nelson to commemorate the British victory over the French fleet at the Battle of the Nile in 1798 (pictured in a painting)
Guy Wildenstein's lawyer Herve Temime (L) speaks to reporters after the verdictAFP
