Priceless

Juno, on the other hand, played it smart. He knew we had a solid case against him, and he knew he could shave years off a prison term by pleading guilty and cooperating.

Two days after my conversation with the father, we filed the superseding indictment against both Pritchards.

Within a month, the Pritchard son and his attorney came to the FBI office in Philadelphia. He met with me, Goldman, and Heine to give a proffer statement, a private off-the-record confession, the prelude to a plea agreement.

Over two hours, Pritchard confessed to everything, and even dimed out his dad. Proffer sessions and confessions are incredibly stressful for defendants. They have to look their accusers in the eye—the very prosecutor and agents who’ve been hounding them for years, dragging their name into the newspaper, embarrassing their families, scandalizing their friends—and admit that yes, indeed, they did it. They did it all. Proffers are rarely pleasant and sometimes contentious. I’ve seen defendants leave a proffer session looking as if they’ve aged a couple of years. Pritchard? He didn’t look mussed at all.

When it was over, he walked over to shake Goldman’s hand, gripping the prosecutor’s elbow with his left hand, an old politician’s trick to keep the other man from pulling away.

“Mr. Goldman,” he said, “I want to thank you for bringing my act to an end. This is good for me. I’m glad you’re bringing these charges against me.”

Goldman raised his left eyebrow, broke away, and gave Pritchard a hard stare that said, “Don’t bullshit me.”

IN 2001, THE year Pritchard and Juno pleaded guilty, Harrisburg’s redbrick $50 million, sixty-five-thousand- square-foot National Civil War Museum celebrated its grand opening. It featured state-of-the-art displays and dioramas with genuine artifacts of war, including the kepi hat that Pickett wore at Gettysburg.

Like the Picketts, most families didn’t get their treasures back. The courts concluded that despite the frauds, the descendants no longer enjoyed legal title to the artifacts Pritchard had sold. The mayor of Harrisburg successfully argued that the city, too, was a victim of Pritchard and Juno, and that it was not required to return the items it acquired for its museum.

The Pritchard father would go to trial on the single charge related to the uniform scam, lose, and be sentenced to six months in a halfway house. Juno also got a few months in a halfway house. The Pritchard son would get a year and a day in prison and be ordered to pay $830,000 in restitution.

Despite the relatively light sentences, Goldman and I were thrilled with the outcome. The Antiques Roadshow investigation sent several important messages, and I couldn’t help but think of my father and all the other honest antiques dealers down on Howard Street in Baltimore, working to make a living on small margins. To them, the case demonstrated that someone cared, that someone was watching this unregulated industry—and that unscrupulous dealers faced public shame and possible imprisonment.

The public response was even greater than we’d hoped. In the collecting community, the Antiques Roadshow investigation represented such a watershed that one of the major trade publications printed the Pritchard indictment word for word. Surfing the wave of publicity the case brought, I received a torrent of tips that led to more important recoveries, including a Confederate regiment’s battle flag and a priceless sword presented to a Union hero of the great Monitor-Merrimack battle, missing since its theft from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1931. Goldman and I followed up the Antiques Roadshow prosecution with another indictment that shook the collectible world, charging two prominent Midwestern dealers with using fake appraisal documents to con a wealthy businessman into grossly overpaying for four antique firearms. One of the weapons in evidence was the world’s first Magnum revolver, a six- shot, .44-caliber Colt, the very handgun that Samuel Walker, the famed Texas Ranger, carried into his final, fatal battle against Mexican guerrillas.

But long before the Antiques Roadshow scandal wound toward its conclusion and Pritchard reported to prison, I was already turning my attention to my next case, my first international art crime investigation. Within months, I hoped, I’d be stalking stolen art in South America.

Chapter 13 A HOT HAND

Rio de Janeiro, 2001.

IN A CABANA ON IPANEMA, ASSISTANT U.S. ATTORNEY David Hall and I sipped milk from coconut shells. Before us, Brazil’s trendiest beach buzzed under brilliant sunlight. Barefoot kids kicked up sand, playing volleyball with their feet. Rollerbladers in short shorts cruised the sidewalk. Bronzed hunks in Speedos preened, chatting up young ladies in thongs. The Latin pulse from a boom box dueled with the reggae beat from cafe speakers. At the opposite end of Guanabara Bay, a scarlet sun hovered over Sugar Loaf Mountain.

It was a Monday afternoon in early December, the heart of summer in South America. Blue skies, a pleasant breeze, seventy-five degrees. Back in Philadelphia, temperatures were falling and my FBI colleagues were bracing for a formal inspection by bureaucrats from Headquarters.

I swirled the straw in my coconut and dug my toes in the soft, yielding sand. After landing in Rio that morning following a ten-hour flight jammed shoulder to shoulder in coach, the stress was flowing out of me, down through my toes into that luxuriant sand. I felt well rested and invigorated by the beach scene. A deeply tanned, nearly nude couple pedaled by on a bike. I shook my head and raised the coconut in toast to my traveling partner.

The federal prosecutor hid behind his shades and Penn baseball cap, silent.

I said, “I can’t believe your bosses thought this was some sort of boondoggle.”

That drew a wry smile. And then a frown. “You know we’ve got a weak hand.”

I nodded. Hall was right. We held few cards.

We were in Rio to try to solve a cold case, one that had frustrated the FBI for more than two decades—the theft of $1.2 million worth of Norman Rockwell paintings stolen from a gallery in Minneapolis in 1978. It wasn’t a well-known art theft, but it was one that resonated with me. How could we fail to go after thieves who stole the works of an iconic American artist?

The U.S. government and the FBI routinely helped other nations retrieve stolen art and artifacts smuggled into our country. But the Rockwell case, if we pulled it off, would mark the rare repatriation of American artwork from a foreign country. We were only three months removed from the September 11 attacks, and we felt a special duty to recover these classic pieces of Americana. The most valuable of the stolen paintings, The Spirit of ’76, depicted a fife-and-drum corps of multiracial Boy Scouts from northern New Jersey, marching with the Stars and Stripes, the faint image of Manhattan and the twin towers in the background.

Our target was a wealthy Brazilian art dealer who claimed that he’d purchased the paintings in Rio in the 1990s and therefore legally owned them under Brazilian law. The dealer was said to be politically connected and shrewd. Hall and I had spent two years working through diplomatic and legal channels to arrange a meeting with him, and that meeting was now set for Wednesday, in two days’ time.

We weren’t sure what to expect, largely because the United States and Brazil had recently ratified their first mutual legal-assistance treaty and our case would mark the inaugural joint criminal investigation between the two nations. There were a lot of uncertainties. We still didn’t know, for instance, if we would be allowed to directly question the Brazilian art dealer, and if so, whether he would be compelled to answer. In many countries, American prosecutors and FBI agents must put questions in writing or submit them to local magistrates for approval. I had also heard that it was not uncommon for witnesses in foreign countries to invoke the local equivalent of the Fifth Amendment and refuse to cooperate with American inquiries. If that happened here, we’d be screwed, and probably would be met with scorn by colleagues when we returned to Philadelphia tan but empty-handed.

I didn’t know how the week would play out, but I was quickly settling in for a good challenge, an away game with mysterious rules. I enjoyed the uncertainty of it all.