Retired FBI agent: Theft ring suspects 'better criminals than businessmen'

Jun. 16—The championship rings Yogi Berra collected during his career were worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. The metal in them fetched a mere $10,300.

The 19th century painting by Jasper Cropsey, one-of-a-kind and irreplaceable, had an estimated value of $500,000. It was burned.

The individuals charged this week by federal investigators for their roles in a decadeslong burglary spree that spanned multiple states and targeted museums, sports halls of fame and other institutions fell into a common trap, a retired FBI agent who specializes in the recovery of stolen art said Friday.

Although the suspects are accused of stealing artwork, sports memorabilia and other distinctive items worth millions, they had no chance of selling them for anything close to their true value, Robert K. Wittman said.

"That's the problem," said Wittman, former senior investigator and founder of the FBI's National Art Crime Team. "They are better criminals than businessmen. They don't realize they can't do anything with it."

U.S. Attorney Gerard M. Karam announced Thursday that a federal grand jury in Scranton had indicted four men — Nicholas Dombek, Damien Boland, and brothers Alfred and Joseph Atsus — for conspiracy to commit theft of major artwork and other charges.

Five other people — siblings Thomas and Dawn Trotta, Daryl Rinker, Ralph Parry and Francesco "Frank" Tassiello — were charged through criminal informations and are expected to plead guilty.

All are residents of Lackawanna County.

They are charged in connection with 18 heists across six states between 1999 and 2019, including high-profile thefts locally of Christy Mathewson memorabilia from Keystone College in 1999, artwork from Everhart Museum in 2005, and Art Wall Jr. trophies from Scranton Country Club in 2011.

Investigators said many of the stolen items, including sports trophies, rings and belts, were melted down and sold in New York City.

That was the fate of 16 rings, including nine World Series rings, that once belonged to New York Yankees legend Berra that were taken from the Yogi Berra Museum & Learning Center in Little Falls, New Jersey, in 2014.

In a statement, the museum acknowledged the loss of the rings but said it does not diminish the legacy of Berra's remarkable baseball career and his standing as a national treasure.

"My family is grateful that those responsible for the theft have been apprehended, and deeply saddened that none of those pieces of sports history will be recovered," said Lindsay Berra, Yogi Berra's granddaughter and a member of the museum's board of trustees.

It was a sadness shared by officials at the Roger Maris Museum at West Acres Mall in Fargo, North Dakota, who learned the slugger's 1960 American League MVP plaque and 1961 Hickok Belt were also melted down.

The two items, stolen during a 2016 burglary, were among the most historically valuable pieces in the museum's collection, Chris Heaton, senior vice president for property management for West Acres Development, said Friday.

"You always hold out hope that someday they'll come back, that they'll be found and returned," Heaton said. "It's sad to know that's not likely to happen here."

Especially in cases like the thefts of the Berra and Maris items, where the crimes have been widely publicized, it's not unusual for the thieves to melt the loot down, said Wittman, whose art recovery firm, Robert Wittman Inc., is based in Chester Heights in Delaware County.

"What happens is they can't turn around and sell these items because everybody knows they're stolen," he said. "So what else are they going to do?"

The 1871 painting by Cropsey, "Upper Hudson," which was stolen in 2011 from Ringwood Manor in Ringwood, New Jersey, was burned sometime afterward by Dombek to prevent law enforcement officials from recovering it and using it as evidence against him, the indictment says.

Wittman called that an investigator's worst nightmare. From a law enforcement perspective, you have to pursue the perpetrator, but you always want to recover the artifact, he said.

"That's the terror that art investigators have, that these criminals realize they can't do anything with them, so they try to get rid of them rather than have the evidence out there when they get caught," he said.

He decried as shameful the deliberate destruction of a stolen artifact, whether it's a valuable piece of art or a World Series ring.

"These crimes are not just property crimes," Wittman said. "They are a destruction of our heritage and our history. They go way beyond a simple property crime."

Contact the writer: dsingleton@timesshamrock.com; 570-348-9132.