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A gang has been convicted over the theft of a £4.8m gold toilet from an art exhibition at Blenheim Palace in September 2019.
According to BBC, Michael Jones was found guilty of planning the burglary. Fred Doe was convicted of conspiring to sell the gold, while Bora Guccuk was cleared of the same charge.
The BBC can now reveal the full criminal history of the heist gang’s kingpin James Sheen who was the gang’s “brain”, has been jailed at least six times since 2005 and has led organised crime groups that made more than £5m from fraud and theft – money authorities have largely failed to recover.
The precious artwork, called “America”, had been broken up and sold on and the gold has been recovered.
40 -year-old Sheen pleaded guilty last year after police found his DNA at the scene and gold fragments in his clothing. He has a rich criminal record for fraud, theft and a firearms offence and he was arrested four weeks after the heist, on suspicion of planning it, but he was released on bail.
Sheen stole from the National Horseracing Museum in Newmarket, Suffolk, gold and silver trophies worth £400,000, none of which have ever been recovered.
The court heard how the gang had meticulously researched the burglary at Blenheim Palace – a UNESCO World Heritage Site to the north of Oxford.
Jones visited the palace for a second time the day before the heist, and took pictures of the golden toilet, a lock on the door and a nearby window. Later that day, the artist Maurizio Cattelan hosted his launch party.
A few hours after guests left, the gang used two stolen cars to ram through palace gates, smash a window, wrench the toilet from its fittings and roll it out of the building, the court heard.
Source: BBC
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