A judge at Oxford crown court in the UK has handed a businessman a 21-month suspended sentence for his role in the theft of Maurizio Cattelan’s $6 million golden toilet.
Frederick Doe, who was photographed celebrating outside the court with his father after the verdict, played a middle-man role in the 2019 heist of the artwork, titled America (2016), from Blenheim Palace. The 18th-century stately home and UNESCO world heritage site is the former home of the late British prime minister Winston Churchill.
Judge Ian Pringle KC also ordered Doe to do 240 hours of unpaid work. During the sentencing, he told the court that Doe was previously a good character and that his fellow conspirators may have taken advantage of his good nature.
“You had a limited function, you had no personal gain, you had no wider involvement, and you were involved for a short period,” the judge reportedly told him.
The toilet, which was part of an exhibition of Cattelan’s work at the palace, is believed to have been broken into pieces and disposed of. None of the gold has been recovered. It was plumbed in at the time of the crime.
Doe was convicted by a jury of conspiring to transfer criminal property. The chief evidence was a recording of a phone call in which he can be heard telling a criminal that he could sell the working 227-pound, 18-karat-gold toilet “in two split seconds.”
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In March, two other men, Michael Jones and James Sheen, were found guilty of planning the theft. They are due to be sentenced next month at Oxford Crown Court.
Before the heist, Jones allegedly visited Blenheim Palace twice—once prior to the toilet being on display and again after it was installed. On the first visit, Jones took photos from inside the building of the window that the thieves used to enter the palace. On the second, the day before the theft, he took photos of the toilet, the lock on the toilet door, and additional pictures of the same window from the outside.
Around 5am on September 14, 2019, 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.
In the days following the burglary, Sheen contacted Doe about selling the gold using coded messages. The pair discussed a payout of $34,462 per kilogram of the stolen gold. The toilet has never been recovered.
“This was an audacious raid which had been carefully planned and executed—but those responsible were not careful enough, leaving a trail of evidence in the form of forensics, CCTV footage and phone data,” said Shan Saunders from the Crown Prosecution Service. “It has been a complex case to prosecute, involving a nationwide investigation with many lines of inquiry to identify those who were subsequently charged in relation to the theft.”
