Two men guilty over £4.8m Blenheim Palace heist

A gang has been convicted over the theft of a £4.8m gold toilet from an art exhibition at Blenheim Palace.

Thieves smashed their way in and ripped out the functional toilet, hours after a glamorous launch party at the Oxfordshire stately home in September 2019.

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. He 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.

Five men were seen on CCTV carrying out the heist, but only two – Sheen and Jones – have ever been caught.

Within days the artwork, called America, had been broken up and sold on, the court heard. None of the gold has been recovered.

Sheen, from Oxford, pleaded guilty last year after police found his DNA at the scene and gold fragments in his clothing. He was described in court as the “common denominator” – having been charged with planning and transferring criminal property, as well as burglary.

The 40-year-old, who has previous convictions for fraud, theft and a firearms offence, was arrested four weeks after the heist, on suspicion of planning it, but he was released on bail.

He continued his crime spree, including a similar raid eight months later at the National Horseracing Museum in Newmarket, Suffolk, where he stole 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, 39, from Oxford, 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.

The BBC has discovered they exploited a series of security flaws at the palace – where there were no guards patrolling the exhibition or the grounds. Overnight, the artwork was locked behind a thin wooden door and was not monitored by CCTV.

External CCTV showed the gang were inside for less than three minutes. Palace chief executive Dominic Hare told the BBC the “facts speak for themselves”.

“We took possession of this precious item and managed to lose it within a day,” he said, because the thieves simply “drove through the gates, smashed through the window, they picked it up and they went”.

Police arrived within five minutes of the alarm sounding but the thieves had already left.

As a work of art, the toilet weighed 98kg (216lbs) and was insured for $6m (£4.8m). Gold prices at the time would have meant the metal alone was worth £2.8m, the court was told.

It is not known exactly when the gang broke the toilet into smaller pieces, or whether they melted the gold themselves. But the court heard within two days of the heist, Sheen was looking for buyers, offering gold at about £25,500 per kilo.

He contacted Fred Doe, and, in a series of coded voice messages, asked for help in selling it.

Doe, 36, from Windsor and also known as Fred Sines, admitted trying to help Sheen sell the gold but said he had no idea it was stolen.

Jurors heard the pair arranged to meet with jeweller Bora Guccuk, and visited him at his shop in Hatton Garden – London’s famous jewellery quarter, negotiating a price for about 5kg of gold.

Mr Guccuk, 41, from west London, denied he knew it was stolen and the court heard negotiations broke down and no sale took place. He was cleared by the jury.

However, Sheen admitted selling some of the stolen gold in Birmingham, within a fortnight of the heist.

A photograph found by police on his phone showed a carrier bag stuffed with cash, which was sent on WhatsApp with the message “520,000 ha ha ha”.

Four weeks after the heist – on 16 October 2019 – Sheen was arrested. But he was released on bail and over the next eight months was involved in at least 12 more crimes, including the burglary at the National Horseracing Museum.

He was only later charged when police confirmed his DNA on a sledgehammer found inside the palace, and in a stolen car abandoned nearby. Fragments of gold were also found some time later on clothing at his home.

Thames Valley Police said the forensic analysis of Sheen’s clothing and DNA was “complicated work, which often takes time”, adding that as a result there was not enough evidence to charge him at the time of arrest and they could not continue keeping him in custody.

His offending only came to an end when he was recalled to prison in June 2020 for breaching the terms of an earlier release. He had been let out of prison on licence in 2017, halfway through a 14-year sentence for his role in the shooting of two innocent bystanders.

Sheen and his brother had chased another family through the streets of Coventry in 2009, firing a shotgun from the window of their Range Rover.

A young couple on their way home from a night out were caught in the crossfire. One still has pellets lodged in their face. The victims said they were “haunted” by that day more than 15 years later.

In a statement to the BBC, the victims and their families said Sheen was “a serious danger to the public and should never be allowed out of prison again”.

Despite spending about half of the past 20 years in prison, Sheen has personally made about £2m from his crimes, not including the golden toilet heist. Gangs he led have made more than £5m profit, according to archived court records accessed by the BBC.

In the months before and after the Blenheim heist, Sheen was leading another group of thieves that made more than £2.6m by blowing up cash machines, stealing high-value farm machinery and other thefts across the south and east of England, including the Newmarket museum raid.

He was sentenced to 17 years for these offences in 2022, more than a year before he was charged with the Blenheim heist. After that trial at Oxford Crown Court, a judge ruled Sheen had personally made £900,000 from the crimes – but was ordered to pay back just £1.

Thames Valley Police said it obtained a confiscation order for a “nominal sum” of £1, which allowed a “parallel financial investigation” to be carried out. It said that – five years after the crimes – financial investigations were “actively ongoing… for a significant amount in assets”.

Former home secretary David Blunkett said Sheen was “making a monkey of the system”, adding, “we can’t allow that to continue”.

In 2002, Lord Blunkett introduced the Proceeds of Crime Act – a flagship Labour policy that was supposed to show that crime did not pay by giving police and courts new powers to recover criminals’ assets.

But the peer said the act was failing, and believed it was because police, enforcement agencies and the judiciary have never been given adequate training or funding to properly implement the law.

“The only thing that will deter a prolific offender who’s doing very well out of the proceeds of crime is to get those proceeds back, it’s as simple as that,” he said.

Following the verdicts, Shan Saunders of the Crown Prosecution Service said the raid 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,” he added.

“While none of the gold was ever recovered – no doubt having been broken up or melted down and sold on soon after it was stolen – we are confident this prosecution has played a part in disrupting a wider crime and money laundering network.”

Det Supt Bruce Riddell of Thames Valley Police said it had been a “complex investigation”.

“It is clear that Sheen has only one intent, and that is to do whatever he can to steal money and property regardless of the impact it has on others and communities.

“Jones was clearly keen to assist Sheen in the burglary, carrying out the recces on his behalf and it is our case that he benefitted financially from the crime and we believe he also was present at the raid.”

Figures obtained by the BBC showed Sheen’s case was not an isolated example.

We asked each police force in England and Wales for their 10 biggest proceeds of crime investigations from 2024 where there had been convictions. Thirty forces responded, providing a snapshot of 300 high-value cases.

In total, in the 300 cases, criminals had made more than £300m – but had been ordered to repay just 10% of that figure. Many who had made millions of pounds from crime were ordered to pay back just tens of thousands – often as little as £1.

The Home Office said its criminal asset recovery system was regularly reviewed, adding that the Crime and Policing Bill – which is being considered by Parliament – would “bolster the current system” and “improve the recovery rate of assets”.

It said when police could not find a criminal’s assets, courts could grant confiscation orders for a “nominal sum” – often £1 – but this could be increased if assets were ever uncovered.

Thames Valley Police said it was committed to “bringing offenders to justice” and had carried out a “thorough and extensive investigation” into the Blenheim heist.

It added that a “financial investigation will be conducted alongside our partners to recover any assets from the theft”, but said this could only begin now the trial had finished.

Sheen, Jones and Doe will be sentenced at a later date.

Additional reporting by Jonathan Eden and Mary O’Reilly