A man has been sentenced to more than a year in prison for stealing a signed print of Banksy’s “Girl with Balloon” artwork in a smash-and-grab theft from a London gallery.
Larry Fraser, 49, was sentenced to 13 months in prison on Friday for stealing the 2004 print – worth £270,000 (about $355,000) – from the Grove Gallery in the British capital’s upmarket neighborhood of Fitzrovia last September, according to London’s Metropolitan Police.
Police said Fraser had pleaded guilty to one count of non-residential burglary.
“Met Flying Squad officers worked tirelessly to identify the suspect and managed to track him to a location several streets away, where he was revealed to be Fraser,” police said in a statement Friday. “They even caught him on CCTV loading the artwork into a van before fleeing the scene.”
The Flying Squad, a specialist unit within the Metropolitan Police tasked with investigating serious organized crime, recovered the artwork within four days, following Fraser’s arrest and “covert enquiries,” police said.
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