HOW THE BRITISH MUSEUM THEFT WAS EXPOSED

 

In 2020, Danish antiquities dealer Dr Ittai Gradel began to suspect an eBay seller he had been buying from was a thief who was stealing from the British Museum.

More than two years later, the museum would announce that thousands of objects were missing, stolen or damaged from its collection. It had finally believed Dr Gradel - but why had it taken so long for it to do so?

A grey and white piece of a cameo gemstone featuring Priapus - the Greek god of fertility - was posted by a user called "sultan1966" for just £40. The listing was taken down after a few hours, unsold.

Priapus is one of the more memorable gods - often depicted with his oversized genitals on show. The seller may have hoped Priapus' brief appearance online had gone unnoticed - but alas not.

It was spotted by Dr Gradel, who says he was born with a photographic memory.

He says the unusual skill has helped him identify rare finds. In this case, it would also help him uncover the identity of a suspected thief. Dr Gradel had been buying gemstones from sultan1966 on eBay for almost two years. The seller had told him his name was Paul Higgins and that he had inherited the gems from a grandfather. They were being sold at bargain prices but Dr Gradel could tell many were very valuable.

This time, he knew he had seen the Priapus cameo before. He was sure it featured in an old gems catalogue he owned from one of the world's most famous institutions, the British Museum.

There was no doubt it was the same object and I was confused, he says.

The museum has since said in documents filed at the High Court that it believes the cameo had been taken from a storeroom in the Greece and Rome department by a senior curator, Dr Peter Higgs, just a week before it appeared for sale.

Within hours of removing the eBay listing in 2016, the museum believes Dr Higgs logged into its database and attempted to tamper with the Priapus cameo's catalogue entry.

An estimated 2.4 million items at the museum are uncatalogued, or partially uncatalogued, out of its total collection of 8 million. The museum, which has now brought a civil court case against Dr Higgs, believes he was mostly targeting these uncatalogued artefacts - and that, this time, he had made a mistake.

 

Dr Higgs would have been able to see the cameo was a catalogued item, searchable by the public and staff alike. It was even on the museum's website - it was not the kind of item that could disappear and not be missed.

If his tampering had been successful, says the museum in its court papers, it would have hidden the database photo of the cameo from view - but it says he failed.

The next day, Dr Higgs is known to have returned alone to the storeroom where the cameo was kept, the museum says. It believes this was so he could return it.

To read the complete article, see:
British Museum gems for sale on eBay - how a theft was exposed (https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpegg27g74d)

To read the complete article, see:
The FBI is looking at whether stolen items from the British Museum ended up in the hands of US eBay buyers: report (https://www.businessinsider.com/fbi-investigating-stolen-british-museum-items-sold-ebay-us-buyers-2024-5)

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