Plea Deal Reached In Greenwich Art Theft Case Worth $600,000

GREENWICH, CT — A former employee of a Greenwich and New York art collection management company pleaded guilty Thursday to charges he stole $600,000 worth of art from the business which he sold at a flea market in Manhattan, according to Acting United States Attorney Joon H. Kim.

Queens, NY resident Leon Zinder, 48, pleaded guilty to the interstate sale of stolen property in connection with his theft and attempted sale of more than a dozen works of art.

Three of the works of art were stolen from the company's Greenwich facility: a Fang Reliquary Guardian Head statue valued at approximately $85,000; a Native-American Mask valued at approximately $75,000; and a Pende mask valued at approximately $5,000, according to Kim.

"As he admitted today, Leon Zinder stole works of art worth more than $600,000 from his former employer, which he then sought to sell through a flea market in Manhattan," wrote Kim in a statement. "Thanks to the hard work and dedication of the FBI, nearly all of these works have been recovered, and will be returned to their rightful owner."

Added FBI Assistant Director William F. Sweeney Jr., "Today’s plea marks the end of Leon Zinder’s tall tales of discovering treasured art pieces that were really in fact stolen from his employer with the goal of reselling to profit himself. We applaud the art dealer who brought this case to our attention after realizing Zinder’s stories behind the art were really too good to be true."

According to Kim, the charging documents filed in the case, court statements:

From approximately July 2010 through April 2012, Leon Zinder was employed as an art handler by a New York-based company that manages an extensive art collection consisting of thousands of individual artworks, including an extensive collection of Native-American and African ethnographic artwork (the “Company”). During that time, Zinder stole more than 70 works of art from facilities maintained by the Company.

Beginning in approximately September of 2015 through October 2016, Zinder sold, or attempted to sell, the stolen artwork through a consignment relationship with an art dealer who conducted his business through an outdoor flea market in lower Manhattan (the “Dealer”). As part of his efforts to sell the stolen artwork, Zinder falsely claimed he had obtained the works from the elderly widow of a sheriff in Phoenix, Arizona, and from a storage-unit close-out sale.

Zinder attempted to sell more than a dozen of these works, worth more than $600,000, through the Dealer. This included at least three items that Zinder had stolen from the Company’s Greenwich, Connecticut, facility and transported to Manhattan: a Fang Reliquary Guardian Head statue valued at approximately $85,000; a Native-American Mask valued at approximately $75,000; and a Pende mask valued at approximately $5,000.

Eventually, the Dealer became aware that several of the artworks he had helped Zinder to sell had been reported stolen by the Company. At that point, the Dealer contacted the FBI and began assisting in the subsequent investigation, including turning over the majority of the stolen works to the FBI.

Zinder faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a maximum fine of $250,000, or twice the defendant’s gross gain or twice the victim’s gross loss resulting from the defendant’s conduct, whichever is greater, according to Kim.

The statutory maximum penalties are prescribed by Congress and are provided here for informational purposes only, as the defendant’s sentence will be determined by a judge. Zinder will to be sentenced by U.S. District Judge Kimba M. Wood on a date to be determined.

Kim thanked the FBI’s Art Crime Team for its outstanding work on this matter. The case is being handled by the New York U.S. Attorneys Office's Money Laundering and Asset Forfeiture Unit, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Noah Falk is in charge of the case.

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