Art Thief Painted as Immigration Offender

BY CLAUDIO MARTINO

A Manhattan Supreme Court judge on Tuesday sentenced the European fashion publicist turned art thief to no jail time but his immigration status kept him in lock-up

Phivos Istavrioglou, 29, fulfilled the requirements for conditional discharge when he pleaded guilty in February to the daring daylight theft of a Salvador Dali watercolor from a Madison Avenue art gallery last June and paid restitution of $9,100.

The immigration action he faced remained unclear.

On June 2012 Istavrioglou made away with “Cartel De Don Juan Tenorio,” a 1949 watercolor painting by the Spanish surrealist, now worth $150,000.

Istavrioglou was caught on video blatantly stealing the piece from the Venus Over Manhattan gallery on Madison Ave. Not only did he manage to walk away from the gallery unnoticed, he left the country.

Despite the successful heist, Istavrioglou returned the painting in a cardboard tube by mail from Greece only a few days later. A detective lured the defendant back to the United States by posing as an art gallery manager who was offering him a job and he was arrested at the airport.

Photo: Art thief caught in action.