A judge sentenced two men who stole Maurizio Cattelan‘s 18-carat gold toilet during a 2019 raid at England’s Blenheim Palace, according to a release from Crown Prosecution Service.
The 227-pound toilet, titled “America” (2016), was dismantled in a five-minute raid only two days after it was publicly displayed in England. The piece, which first appeared at the Guggenheim Museum in New York several years earlier, was featured in an exhibition of the artist’s work at the 18th-century castle and family home of Winston Churchill.
James Sheen was convicted of the theft and received a four year prison sentence, while Michael Jones, who staked out the palace, received a 27-month prison sentence.
A jury at Oxford Crown Court previously found Jones guilty of burglary and Frederick Doe guilty of conspiracy to convert or transfer criminal property. Sheen, a builder who employed Jones, previously pleaded guilty to burglary.
Sheen was previously sentenced to 21 months in prison, suspended for two years, and ordered to do 240 hours of community service.
“Given the level of planning that enabled the raid to be carried out within five minutes, it was unusual that the offenders left such a trail of evidence in their wake. From phone messages to DNA traces found in a stolen car and on the sledgehammer used in the burglary, this wealth of evidence ultimately enabled us to secure their convictions,” Shan Saunders for the Crown Prosecution Service said in a statement.
Jones allegedly visited Blenheim Palace twice: once prior to the toilet’s exhibition and again after it was installed to take photos of the scene.
On September 14, 2019, around 5 a.m., Sheen and the accomplices drove two stolen vehicles through the palace’s locked gates. As captured on CCTV, the group used sledgehammers and crowbars to break into the palace and remove the toilet. They then loaded it into the back of one of the vehicles before escaping.
Sheen contacted Doe in the days following the burglary about selling the gold using coded messages. The pair discussed a pay out of £26,500 ($34,500) per kilogram of the stolen gold.
“We reviewed nearly 30,000 pages of evidence as we built our case, including a significant amount of material from James Sheen’s phone. We examined text messages, images, and hours of voice recordings, many of which implicated other individuals. Sheen and those he communicated with used code and slang, and it required careful analysis to decipher these messages to understand how the raid was carried out and how the stolen gold was disposed of,” Saunders continued.
“Three of the individuals involved in this crime have now been sentenced, and we believe this prosecution has played a part in disrupting a wider crime and money laundering network,” he added.
Insured for approximately $6 million, the toilet still has not been recovered.
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