British Museum thief has been operating for ‘two decades’ selling items worth thousands for ‘just a few hundred pounds’
23 August 2023, 07:29 | Updated: 23 August 2023, 07:34
A serial thief has been operating at the British Museum for at least two decades, it has been revealed.
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Gold jewellery and gemstones are said to have been stolen from the British Museum in what is believed to be an inside job that has been going on for years.
Reports suggest the items stolen were not on public display and often not properly catalogued, which the offender is thought to have known about and taken advantage of.
A police source said: “We believe they sold many of these things for just a few hundred pounds. Some things were simply melted down. In one case, a ring was taken but the gem was prised out so all that was left was the gold.”
It comes after it was revealed on Tuesday that the total value of the missing artefacts may amount to millions of pounds and that the number of artefacts missing is “closer to 2,000”.
Speaking to the Times, the source added: “Some of them would have been very, very valuable — tens of thousands of pounds — if it was known they were from the British Museum. But they couldn’t be sold like that.”
The outlet also revealed that is thought the thief had been operating for at least two decades.
It comes amid reports that the museum was first alerted to the thefts two years ago, in February 2021.
Ittai Gradel, an expert in Roman antiquities, emailed the museum after he happened upon a fragment of Roman jewellery as well as two other items listed on eBay.
Read more: British Museum missing nearly 2,000 artefacts worth millions of pounds in ‘horrifying’ revelation
He said: “I alerted the British Museum on 28 February 2021. I was - shall we say - not pleased with the reaction or lack of reaction that I had from them.”
However, his warning was dismissed five months later after Jonathan Williams, the deputy director, told Mr Gradel a “thorough investigation” had been carried out and “there was no suggestion of any wrongdoing”.
Mr Gradel suggested the suspect was choosing artefacts that did not appear in the museum’s online catelogue so it would be harder to prove their origin.
It comes after it emerged last week that a former curator for the British Museum, Peter John Higgs, was sacked.
Mr Higgs was a curator of Mediterranean cultures, and worked at the museum for more than 30 years. He has denied any wrongdoing following his dismissal, according to his family.
His son said: “It couldn’t have been [him]. He worked there for — what? — [30] years without any incidents.”
The British Museum refused to reveal the number of items stolen, or any information about the artefacts themselves, but reports suggest some of the missing items are 3,500 years old.
The thefts are being investigated by police but no arrests have been made so far.
Rev Prof Martin Henig, a leading expert on Roman art at the University of Oxford, said the scale of the losses was “horrifying” and “totally unforgivable”.
He said: “This is the worst case that I’ve come across like this because it involves not just selling the odd object, but also destruction. This is totally unforgivable.”
