A coordinated heist was put on to steal a solid gold, 216lb golden toilet from a museum exhibit in 2019. Now, several years after the original heist, the two main perpetrators have finally been brought in.
The toilet was part of an exhibition at Blenheim Palace, and it was even fully-functional when they stole it. And, though the perps had given police the slip for years, they found a ton of information on their phones that ultimately led to a conviction.
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Before stealing the toilet, one of them had even taken selfies with it. Authorities found that along with several other pieces of evidence there, leading to an open and shut case.
Men arrested in connection with multi-million dollar toilet heist
The toilet, worth £4.8 million (approximately $6.5 million), was stolen in less than six minutes according to police. Perpetrators James Sheen and Michael Jones booked time with the exhibit the day prior to their heist, scoping out the area before breaking into the Blenheim Palace.
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Sheen, the mastermind behind the heist, was convicted in 2024. His DNA was found at the scene of the crime as well as evidence that he sold the gold, including a picture of £520,000 in a duffel bag. He took it to brag about his ill-gotten gains through a text message.
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Michael Jones, the other man who participated in stealing the toilet, was arrested earlier in 2025 and was also found guilty of burglary.
One of the key pieces of evidence in this conviction was a selfie Jones took with the toilet in the background.
In the trial, Jones confirmed that he did, in fact, use the toilet, saying that he had a “splendid” experience.
“From phone messages to DNA traces found in a stolen car and on the sledgehammer used in the burglary, this wealth of evidence ultimately enabled us to secure their convictions,” said an officer working on the trial.
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They apparently had over 30,000 pages of evidence that were used to determine who committed the crime. These two were initially arrested in 2019, but were released until more evidence had been found that could definitively say they stole the toilet.
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This isn’t the only bizarre heist in recent memory, with a man who stole several thousand dollars in Magic cards being forced to write an apology letter to fans of the card game after he was caught.
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