Arrested Manchester Man in Position to Give up Info -- If He Has It -- on Art Theft

A federal prosecutor says the FBI has recordings of convicted felon Robert Gentile, 78, of Manchester trying to sell some of the artwork from what many have called the most notorious heist ever, the Hartford Courant reported.

Gentile thought he was talking to someone who might arrange to buy some of the works stolen in the 1990 theft from Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum — but he was talking to an FBI operative instead, the prosecutor said. In an unrelated case, Gentile was arrested on Friday on an accusation that he sold a gun to a convicted felon — who turned out to be yet another FBI operative.

A prosecutor disclosed the recordings Friday at Gentile’s arraignment in federal court in Hartford. Gentile reportedly made statements in the recordings in the last several months, according to a Boston Globe report. The value of the stolen works by old masters has been estimated at $500 million and includes works by Rembrandt, Vermeer and Degas.

Gentile’s attorney, Ryan McGuigan, has said Gentile knows nothing about the Gardner heist, and Gentile has previously denied having any inside knowledge about it, according to the Courant. If Gentile was able to trade information about the heist to get a reduced sentence, the time to do so would have been at his last conviction in 2013, McGuigan told the Boston Globe. Gentile served about two years of a 30-month sentence for possessing a firearm and selling prescription drugs to an undercover FBI informant.

The Courant reports that some (unnamed sources) think Gentile may have been trying to scam a buyer when he was recorded.

Gentile failed a lie detector test in 2012 when he denied any connection to the art heist, and a mobster’s widow said her late husband may have sold some of the artwork to Gentile, according to the Boston Globe.

An affidavit from an FBI agent said that when Gentile sold the .38-caliber revolver, he took it out from under a couch pillow in his Frances Drive home in Manchester, the Courant reported.