[MSN] The thief wanted tools and lawn equipment, not King George III-era furniture, jewelry and ornaments, detectives said. So the career criminal sold his million-dollar booty of English antiques for a mere $300.

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Pricey antiques sold for $300: Thief busted
Leon Fooksman
South Florida Sun-Sentinel

April 6, 2007

WEST PALM BEACH -- The thief wanted tools and lawn equipment, not King
George III-era furniture, jewelry and ornaments, detectives said. So the
career criminal sold his million-dollar booty of English antiques for a mere
$300.

Two months after a trailer carrying the 4,000 pieces disappeared from a
hotel parking lot near West Palm Beach, authorities began recovering many of
the missing items from a Lee County home, a West Palm Beach warehouse, a
Riviera Beach-area canal and empty fields off the Bee Line Highway.

"We thought this was a well-organized ring, but it turned out to be one of
our local thieves looking for a trailer with lawn-service equipment that
could be taken to pawn shops," Palm Beach sheriff's Detective Walter
Robinson said Thursday. "These pieces were way out of his league."

Detectives plan to bring theft charges against the man accused of stealing
the 16-foot-long, 9-foot-tall dark-blue trailer Jan. 23 from the Hampton Inn
on Vista Parkway South. They also will pursue charges against another West
Palm Beach man who bought the antiques from the thief and sold many of them
for another $300 to a third man near Fort Myers.

Authorities declined to name the three men, saying their investigation is
still open. The original thief is in jail on unrelated charges.

It was the Fort Myers man, an electrical contractor, who broke the case,
Robinson said. He called the collection's owner, Lake Forest, Ill.-based
Wellesley House Ltd., last week after realizing the value of the stolen
items. Andrew Vogel, the company's president, notified detectives who
quickly connected the people involved in the theft. The items had Wellesley
tags on them.

"We're blessed and very fortunate that it worked out the way it did," Vogel
said.

Vogel's collection was taken while he was in Palm Beach County for the
Winter Antique Show in West Palm Beach. When he looked out his hotel window,
the antiques from the 1700s to 1900s that took him 13 years to accumulate
were gone.

Investigators recovered a $22,000 tortoise shell vanity kit from 1820, a
$15,000 tortoise shell stationery and folder set from 1860 and $2,300 Cuban
mahogany candleholders from 1820. They found 11 oil paintings with beach
themes.

But several pieces of furniture, including ornate dressers, were destroyed
after they turned up in a canal in Riviera Beach.

The South Florida Sun-Sentinel is a Tribune Publishing newspaper.