A member of a theft ring that stole numerous objects—including works by Andy Warhol and Jackson Pollock—from museums over a 20-year span was sentenced to eight years in prison on Thursday (13 March).
Thomas Trotta is the fourth person sentenced out of nine total who have been charged in relation to the heists. He previously pleaded guilty to one count of theft of major artwork. Trotta was “the main burglar, he was the one that went into the institutions and burglarised them”, Trotta’s lawyer told the Associated Press reporter Mark Scolforo. He also said that Trotta was the main government witness against three of his co-conspirators. In addition to prison time, Trotta was ordered to pay over $2.7m in restitution.
The thefts in question occurred between 1999 and 2019 at museums across the country, mostly in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York. Trotta has confessed to stealing a number of items including a Tiffany lamp, sports awards (championship rings and belts, plaques and trophies), antique firearms, a mining museum’s gold nuggets and works by Warhol, Pollock and Jasper Francis Cropsey.
The thieves melted down many of the metal objects before selling them for much less than their original value as memorabilia. They also burned the Cropsey painting, Upper Hudson (1871), in an attempt to thwart detection by the authorities. While some of the firearms have since been recovered, the Warhol and Pollock works remain at large.
The thieves stole Warhol’s silkscreen La Grande Passion (1984) and Pollock’s painting Springs Winter (1949) from the Everhart Museum in Scranton, Pennsylvania, in 2005. The Pollock alone is estimated to be worth $12m. The works were long feared to have been destroyed, but in 2023 new information came to light that led authorities to believe they may be safely stowed away. Trotter’s lawyer told the Associated Press that his client thought he knew where the pieces were in Newark, New Jersey: “He thought he did, but when the authorities went to the place he thought it was, they couldn’t find them.”
Federal charges were brought against all nine alleged burglars two years ago. The last of them surrendered in January 2024 after almost seven months on the run.