"America, a fully-working solid gold toilet, created by artist Maurizio Cattelan, is seen at Blenheim Palace on September 12, 2019. (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images)
America, a fully-working solid gold toilet, created by artist Maurizio Cattelan, is seen at Blenheim Palace on September 12, 2019. Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images.

Four men in England have been arrested and charged for the 2019 theft of a golden toilet sculpture by Maurizio Cattelan worth about $6 million.

Thames Valley Police listed the four men in a news release as 39-year-old James Sheen, 38-year-old Michael Jones, 35-year-old Fred Doe and 39-year-old Bora Guccuk.

Sheen, of Wellingborough, was hit with the most charges. He has been charged with one count of burglary, one count of conspiracy to transfer criminal property, and one count of transferring criminal property. Jones, of Oxford, was charged with one count of burglary, while Doe and Guccuk, of Ascot and West London respectively, were each charged with one count of conspiracy to transfer criminal property.

They are each expected to appear before the Oxford Magistrates’s Court on November 28.

Earlier this year, authorities were reportedly on the brink of charging seven suspects for the theft of the sculpture installed at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire. Police had arrested two suspects in the immediate aftermath of the theft, a 66-year-old man and a 36-year-old man who were later released. Another three suspects were arrested the following month, and police suspected at the time the toilet was melted down.

The current state of the toilet was not immediately known.

The 18-carat gold functional toilet, named America and weighing about 55 pounds, debuted at New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 2016 before making its way across the pond for the artist’s first solo show in the U.K.

It was stolen the morning after the opening party for the exhibition. The thieves caused significant flooding when they removed it because the work was attached to the plumbing in a restroom once used by Winston Churchill. At the time, the insurance company working to secure the return of the sculpture offered $130,000 for information leading to its recovery.

“We are extremely pleased that, four years after the theft of Maurizio Cattelan’s artwork America, charges are now being brought against a number of individuals,” a spokesperson for Blenheim Palace told the New York Post.

 

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