[MSN] New Zealand. Sculpture blackmailer fined $4000

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Sculpture blackmailer fined $4000
NZPA | Wednesday, 4 July 2007

A man found guilty of receiving a $250,000 sculpture and blackmailing its owners was today sentenced to 300 hours' community work and ordered to pay reparations of $4000, in the High Court at Wellington.

Brenden John Marshall, 39, was in May found guilty of receiving the three metre-by-three metre sculpture, stolen from outside a restaurant in Waikanae, north of Wellington.

He was also found guilty of blackmailing the owners, threatening to cut up the artwork and sell it to a scrap metal dealer if they did not pay a ransom.

In sentencing, Justice Simon France said Marshall was nearly 40 years-old and had made a concerted effort to sort his life out, by quitting drugs and alcohol.

The bronze sculpture Long Horizon, moulded and cast by Palmerston North artist Paul Dibble, was stolen from outside the cafe Swell on the Kapiti Coast on October 6, 2005.

During the trial crown prosecutor Kenneth Stone said Marshall made a video of the sculpture, delivering it to the owners via the editor of the local Kapiti Observer newspaper, Diane Joyce.

One of the sculpture's owners, Maggie Mouat, watched the film and agreed to pay $6000 to get it back.

Later, Marshall called her to increase the ransom by $4000 and some days later an exchange meeting took place. 

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