Man Gets 4 Years for One of 'Largest Art Heists in LA History'

A man who was arrested last year for trying to sell millions of dollars worth of paintings that had been stolen from a home in Encino, in what authorities called one of the largest art heists in Los Angeles history, pleaded no contest recently to receiving stolen property.

Raul Espinoza, 45, was immediately sentenced to four years and four months in state prison upon entering his plea, which included an admission that the crime involved the taking of more than $500,000.

Espinoza met with undercover FBI agents and agreed to sell them nine paintings for $700,000, telling them the works were valued at more than $5 million. The artworks -- along with three other paintings that have not been recovered -- were stolen from an Encino home in 2008, according to Deputy District Attorney Marna Miller.

The paintings have recently been appraised as being worth between $13 million and $23 million, according to a district attorney’s spokesman.

A thief or thieves entered a real estate investor’s Encino home through an unlocked kitchen door and made off with works that included Marc Chagall’s “Les Paysans” and Diego Rivera’s “Mexican Peasant.”

The case went cold until last Sept. 2, when Detective Donald Hrycyk of the Los Angeles Police Department’s art theft detail was tipped off to a man in Europe known as “Darko,” who was soliciting buyers for the stolen works, the Los Angeles Times reported last year.

Darko “indicated that he was merely a middleman for an unknown person in possession of the art in California,” Hrycyk wrote in a search warrant obtained by the newspaper.

Espinoza was arrested last Oct. 24 during the FBI undercover sting at a West Los Angeles hotel.

• City News Service

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