Jeweller who tried to sell £4.8MILLION gold toilet stolen in stately home ram raid dodges jail due to his ‘good nature'
Jeweller Frederick Doe, 37, got caught up in the heist after a ram-raid on Blenheim Palace in 2019.
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The audacious theft saw the loo — installed as an artwork called America — taken from Winston Churchill's Oxfordshire birthplace in just five minutes.
Doe facilitated the attempted sale of the gold to dealer Bora Guccuk — who was cleared of knowing it was stolen — in London's Hatton Garden.
The deal didn't go ahead and none of the gold has been recovered. Doe, also known as Fred Sines, admitted using the code word 'cars' for the gold bars but said he didn't know it was stolen.
He celebrated with his family after avoiding jail.
He told the trial at Oxford crown court: 'To me, gold is gold. I don't know good gold from bad.'
Doe, who said he had not expected to profit from the sale, was found guilty in March of conspiracy to transfer criminal property.
Judge Ian Pringle KC yesterday accepted that the businessman, of Windsor, Berks, was of previous good character.
He sentenced him to 21 months' jail — suspended for two years — and 240 hours' unpaid work.
The court heard that Doe was a dad of four whose wife is suffering from a severe but undiagnosed medical condition.
He also runs a boxing club for underprivileged youngsters in his home town and was said to have had his good nature 'taken advantage of'.
Two gang members will be sentenced for their parts in June.
Guggenheim Museum gold toilet which was turned down by Donald Trump to be installed at Blenheim Palace
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Add to this the way he domestically abused his wife, once giving her a black eye, and how he beat his servants with broomsticks and shut them in the cellar all night, and you get a new, deeply unattractive picture of the controlling Pepys beneath the surface of his cheerful bustle. I'm sure lots of men were at it, in those far less enlightened days, but that does not excuse him. He suffered from aching remorse – but that doesn't let him off the hook either. The scales have fallen from my eyes.
