Bath archaeological thief caught after Bellarmine vase spotted on eBay

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According to the Bath Chronicle, it was realised that three 17th-century stoneware bottles offered by seller James Vessey recently on eBay had been stolen four years earlier from the storeroom of the excavations carried out in 2008 during the development of SouthGate shopping centre in Bath. Vessey ha been  employed by the Museum of London Archaeology during this excavation.

The team uncovered three Bellarmine vessels dating back to between 1650 and 1700 [...], but the items disappeared before they could be delivered to the museum for analysis. They resurfaced last year when another archaeologist spotted one of the vases for sale on eBay and contacted the museum's project officer Bruno Barber. Police then executed a warrant at Vessey's narrowboat home in Oxfordshire. Bath Magistrates Court was told that Vessey, who admitted theft, had a history of stealing historical artefacts from archaeological digs which he was working on, and in 2001 had been jailed for 15 months. [...]  The court heard Vessey was no longer working as an archaeologist and had been dealing with the illness and death of both his parents at the points in his life when he had committed his crimes. He was given a four-month suspended prison sentence and ordered to carry out 270 hours of unpaid community work, as well as to compensate the man who had bought the v[essel] from him on eBay. 

 PCs Peter Hunt and Gemma Kirby presented
the recovered vases to Bruno Barber (l) and Stephen Clews (r).

Source:
"Bath archaeological thief caught after Bellarmine vase spotted on eBay", Thursday, May 30, 2013