were sentenced Friday to more than two years in a British prison.

The satirical commentary on consumer culture, titled ‘America’, by Italian conceptual artist Maurizio Cattelan, had only been on display for a couple days when five burglars swiped it from Blenheim Palace – the country mansion where British wartime leader Winston Churchill was born – in September 2019. The purloined potty was never recovered and was believed to have been chopped up and sold. “This bold and brazen heist took no more than 5, 5 minutes to complete,” Judge Ian Pringle said in Oxford Crown Court. “America has never been seen again.” James Sheen, 40, a roofer who pleaded guilty to burglary, conspiracy and transferring criminal property, was sentenced to four years in prison. Michael Jones, 39, who worked for Sheen and was convicted of burglary at trial, was sentenced to two years and three months.

The toilet weighed just over 215 pounds (98 kilograms) and was worth more than its weight in gold. The value of the bullion at the time was 2.8 million pounds (USD 3.5 million), but it was insured for 4.7 million pounds (more than USD 6 million). The piece by Cattelan, whose work of a banana duct-taped to a wall was sold in 2024 for USD 6.2 million at auction in New York, poked fun at excessive wealth. It had previously been on display at The Guggenheim Museum in New York. When US President Donald Trump asked the museum to loan him a Van Gogh painting during his first term in office, the Guggenheim cheekily offered the toilet instead. The White House did not accept the offer. (Jamaica Gleaner)