The tale of the stolen gold toilet has come to a close.
Two men who stole an 18-carat commode from Blenheim Palace in England in 2019 were sentenced on Friday to two to four years in prison for their roles in the theft.
The sentencing came after four men were accused of stealing or trying to sell the $6 million fully functioning toilet, an artwork titled “America” by the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, which was believed to have been chopped up so the gold could be sold.
James Sheen, 44, described by prosecutors as the mastermind behind the theft, pleaded guilty in April 2024 to burglary, transferring criminal property and conspiracy to transfer criminal property. On Friday, he received a four-year sentence.
Michael Jones, 39, was sentenced to 27 months in prison. Prosecutors said he made reconnaissance trips to Blenheim Palace near Oxford in advance of the theft. He was found guilty of burglary after a trial in March.
“This was an extraordinary case in many respects,” Shan Saunders, a solicitor for the Crown Prosecution Service, said in a statement. “It is not every day that we prosecute high-value burglaries of stately homes, let alone the audacious theft of an 18-carat gold toilet.”
Just as unusual, he added, was that despite the level of planning that went into the theft, “the offenders left such a trail of evidence in their wake.”
During the trial, prosecutors told the court that the theft took five minutes.
Around 5 a.m. on Sept. 14, 2019, the group used a car and truck to smash through wooden gates at the perimeter of the palace, Winston Churchill’s ancestral home, and then used sledgehammers and crowbars to break a window before entering.
The men then made their way to the toilet, ripping it off the floor and causing a small flood in the room.
Surveillance video from the palace showed several men rolling a large item toward the car and putting it in the trunk.
The police and investigators said they found a wealth of clues at the crime scene, including a sledgehammer with Mr. Sheen’s DNA. Investigators also found hundreds of gold fragments on a pair of his sweatpants.
Prosecutors said they also built their case with evidence from Mr. Sheen’s phone, which also implicated other people in the crime.
“Sheen and those he communicated with used code and slang, and it required careful analysis to decipher these messages to understand how the raid was carried out and how the stolen gold was disposed of,” Mr. Saunders said.
Prosecutors said they believed the artwork, which weighed more than 200 pounds, was “split up into smaller amounts of gold” and sold.
After a three-week trial at Oxford Crown Court in March, a jury also found Fred Doe, 36, guilty of conspiracy to convert or transfer criminal property. He was sentenced in May to 21 months in prison and 240 hours of community service.
A fourth defendant, Bora Guccuk, 41, a London jeweler, was found not guilty of conspiracy to convert or transfer criminal property.
The golden toilet, which Mr. Cattelan has said was a statement about inequality, became a social media sensation in 2016 after it was installed at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York.
Mr. Cattelan is perhaps best known for “Comedian” — a fruit-stand banana taped to the wall that sold at an auction last year for $6.2 million.
Jonathan Wolfe is a Times reporter based in London, covering breaking news.
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