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SALVADOR DALI
Salvador Dalí. Phivos Istavrioglou is accused of stealing a watercolour by the artist, Cartel de Don Juan Tenorio. Photograph: Kammerman/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images
Salvador Dalí. Phivos Istavrioglou is accused of stealing a watercolour by the artist, Cartel de Don Juan Tenorio. Photograph: Kammerman/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images

Greek accused of 'surreal' Dalí painting theft in New York

This article is more than 11 years old
Phivos Istavrioglou allegedly took picture from gallery 'in full view' of security cameras and then posted it back

A Greek man has been accused of the bungled theft of a Salvador Dalí work from a New York gallery, taking the painting as security cameras rolled and later, in a panic, posting it back.

Phivos Istavrioglou left fingerprints that helped detectives track him down – another misstep in a botched caper that even he found foolish, according to an account of a confession in court papers.

As soon as Istavrioglou left the Upper East Side gallery last summer with the Dalí watercolour , he was "scared and couldn't believe what a stupid thing he did", the papers say.

Istavrioglou, 29, from Athens, pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to grand larceny during a brief court appearance in Manhattan where a judge set bail at $100,000 (£65,000).

Prosecutors accused him of stealing the painting, Cartel de Don Juan Tenorio, in broad daylight while visiting New York. After pulling it off the wall, he stashed it in a shopping bag and flew back to Athens with it, authorities said.

"It was almost surreal how this theft was committed – a thief is accused of putting a valuable Salvador Dalí drawing into a shopping bag in the middle of the afternoon, in full view of surveillance cameras," the district attorney, Cyrus R Vance Jr, said.

Shortly after learning authorities had distributed security photographs of him that were seen around the world, Istavrioglou took the $150,000 work out of its frame, rolled it up in a cardboard tube – "in a manner befitting a college dorm poster" – and mailed it back without a return address, prosecutor Jordan Arnold said.

New York police department detectives lifted fingerprints from the shipment that matched one from a juice bottle that they say Istavrioglou shoplifted last year from a Whole Foods market, giving them a name, said the police commissioner, Raymond Kelly. An investigator posing as an art gallery owner tricked Istavrioglou into returning to New York by offering him a possible position as a consultant.

Federal agents intercepted Istavrioglou at John F Kennedy international airport last Saturday. While speaking to detectives that afternoon, court papers say, he "indicated he knew the theft would catch up to him and wants to make [the] situation right".

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