Two men jailed for stealing $6 million golden toilet from Churchill's birthplace
LONDON (Reuters) -Two men were jailed on Friday for stealing an 18-carat golden toilet that had been on display as an artwork in an exhibition at Winston Churchill's birthplace.
The fully functioning toilet, a work titled "America" by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, was stolen from the Churchill family seat of Blenheim Palace in southern England, a major tourist attraction and UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Prosecutor Julian Christopher told jurors at the start of the trial at Oxford Crown Court in February that a group of five men had driven two stolen vehicles through locked wooden gates into the palace grounds before dawn on September 14, 2019.
They broke in through a window, smashed down a wooden door, ripped the toilet from the wall and left after five minutes in the building.
The toilet, weighing 98 kilos (216 pounds) was insured for $6 million. Prosecutors say it was probably divided into smaller amounts of gold to sell it off. None of the gold has ever been recovered.
James Sheen, 40, had pleaded guilty before trial to burglary, conspiring to convert or transfer the gold and converting or transferring the gold.
Michael Jones, 39, was found guilty of burglary by a jury, having pleaded not guilty.
Judge Ian Pringle said the pair had played important roles in the "bold and brazen heist", though the judge said he could not be sure that Jones was present during the burglary.
Sheen was sentenced to four years in jail, with the sentence to begin at the end of a separate jail term of nearly 20 years he is currently serving for a series of thefts.
Jones was sentenced to 27 months in prison.
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Heading to a Protest This Weekend? Lock Down Your Phone First
PCMag editors select and review products independently. If you buy through affiliate links, we may earn commissions, which help support our testing. This week, people are protesting all across America. Before you head out to join them, take a few minutes to assess your digital safety. Your phone is a treasure trove of information about you. Even if you have nothing to hide, you don't want to accidentally give law enforcement officials any information you didn't intend to share. Follow these tips to lock down your phone before a protest or other peaceful assembly. When we tell people that their best defense at a protest is just to turn off their phones, they always seem disappointed. But it's true. The best way to keep from being surveilled is never to be on the grid in the first place. Unfortunately, this isn't practical advice. For one thing, mobile phones are useful for staying safe and coordinating with your friends and fellow protestors. For another, protestors document events and amplify their message by sharing photos, videos, and live streams in the moment. While shutting your phone off will certainly make you harder to track, it could also leave you without important tools to protect yourself. Your phone is powerful because it combines cellular, GPS, and Wi-Fi information. That great power is also a weakness: they're highly trackable. For example, federal and local law enforcement use Stingrays and other IMSI catchers to track and identify protestors. These devices can trick your phone into connecting with them instead of a cell tower, then intercept information (such as SMS messages) without you necessarily realizing it. They can also extract information from your phone and track your movements. Even without fancy devices, though, law enforcement may be able to obtain information on your movements and activities from your wireless provider. Even Apple and Google may be willing to give up information about you. The companies have cooperated with law enforcement by handing over customer data in the past, though both companies typically challenge or reject information requests that are legally objectionable. Keep in mind that you probably won't know that you're being monitored or tracked until much later, if at all. Intercepting and processing individual messages from hundreds of thousands of people is doable, but not easy. Law enforcement or government agencies want to know who is at an event, who they are with, and what information can be extracted to monitor them later. Many smart devices track your location through multiple means. This is useful for getting directions and finding things nearby, but it can also allow law enforcement to extract your movements after the fact. For example, pictures you take with a smartphone frequently include their physical locations, and Google Maps maintains records of your movements in its Your Timeline section. Shut off Wi-Fi. Disable location services until you absolutely need them. Ditto Bluetooth. If you don't need to use your data connection, switch it off, too. However, this may hamper your ability to use encrypted communications. Again, if you can, leave your phone at home. If not, at least shut it down. You can also be tracked without your phone, even in a large crowd. Facial-recognition technology coupled with AI-powered detection can pick out and track individuals in groups. Airborne surveillance using anything from conventional aircraft to small radio-controlled quadcopters to military-style drones can monitor the movements of individuals and track them over time. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) maintains an excellent primer on identifying those surveillance systems, which can include police bodycams, automated-license-plate-reader cameras, and more. Over the years, social media has played a large role in organizing protests and amplifying demonstrators' messages. However, the information posted to these platforms can also be used as open-source intelligence for anyone trying to track who attends demonstrations. Sharing photos and videos from protests can amplify the message, but this information could also be used to implicate you or others. The EFF recommends taking steps to remove metadata from images. Remember that even if you are comfortable being identified in images, others may not be. Consider framing your camera to show as little of people's faces as possible or blurring faces when you share photos or videos. And it never hurts to ask before sharing someone's face online. If you're concerned about being identified for any reason, consider covering identifiable tattoos and wearing inconspicuous clothing. Obscuring your own face can be useful as well. If you bring a phone to a protest, know that it could be confiscated by law enforcement or stolen by someone in the crowd. Either way, once it's is out of your hands, it could be unlocked, and its contents dumped for future analysis. Most modern devices unlock with biometrics (such as facial recognition or thumbprint scanning). Biometric systems may put you at a disadvantage, though, when you're dealing with law enforcement. In its guide for protestors, the EFF writes: "Under current US law—which is still in flux—using a memorized passcode generally provides a stronger legal footing to push back against a court order of compelled device unlocking/decryption." It's better to disable biometrics and enable password or PIN logins before a protest. You may also want to do this when traveling, too. Modern Apple and Android devices support modes that temporarily disable biometrics. However, once you unlock your phone, it reverts to using biometrics. If you don't have the time to fully disable biometrics beforehand, on Android, hold the power button and select lockdown. 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