A federal judge sentenced the leader of a two-decade art and memorabilia theft ring Thursday to eight years in prison.
Senior U.S. District Judge Malachy E. Mannion, clearly angry after listening to victims testify, also ordered Thomas Trotta to serve three years on supervised release after he gets out and to pay $2,759,073 in restitution. The money will go to the 20 museums and other venues he burglarized.
Mannion said he doubts Trotta will ever be able to repay that much but ordered measures to chip away at the total anyway.
He said half Trotta’s pay as an inmate — minus an allowance for phone calls — will go toward restitution. So will $300 a month of any pay Trotta earns after his release.
The judge rejected Assistant U.S. Attorney James Buchanan’s request for a four-year sentence because of Trotta’s cooperation, guilty plea and prison time served in separate but related state cases.
What Trotta did, Mannion told the thief, was “pretty terrible.”
Mannion sent Trotta back to prison where he’s been since last year because he violated terms of his pre-sentencing release.
The background
Trotta pleaded guilty to theft of major artwork in July 2023 and agreed to cooperate in capturing other ring members.
Trotta admitted leading a ring that lasted 20 years. Its local targets included the Everhart Museum and Lackawanna Historical Society in Scranton, the Country Club of Scranton in South Abington Twp., and Keystone College in LaPlume Twp.
The ring planned thefts together that Trotta then carried out, almost always alone. He stole an unauthenticated Jackson Pollock painting and an authenticated Andy Warhol painting from the Everhart; a 100-year-old Tiffany lamp from the historical society; famed professional golfer Art Wall Jr.’s trophies and other awards from the country club and Baseball Hall of Famer Christy Mathewson’s jersey and two of his player contracts from Keystone.
Trotta also stole nine World Series rings and seven other championship rings belonging to baseball hall of famer Yogi Berra from the Yogi Berra Museum & Learning Center in Little Falls, New Jersey. From the International Boxing Hall of Fame in Canastota, New York, Trotta stole championship boxing belts that belonged to middleweight champions Tony Zale and Carmen Basilio.
None of the loot was recovered and the belts and rings were melted down and sold for cash.
The ring unraveled when police arrested Trotta for drunken driving in 2019. By then, he admitted to suffering from an addiction to painkillers.
Where the case stands
Federal prosecutors charged Trotta and eight others as ring members in June 2023. After a month-long trial, a jury found three — Joseph Atsus, Damien Boland and Nicholas Dombek — guilty of various crimes on Feb. 7. They’re all awaiting the completion of background reports before they’re sentenced.
The jury acquitted Alfred Atsus, Joseph Atsus’ brother, of all charges the same day. Trotta testified against all four, all friends since childhood.
Three others pleaded guilty to single counts, including Trotta’s sister, Dawn Trotta, a mother of two who lives in Covington Twp. Mannion sentenced her to 15 months in prison and $200,000 restitution Wednesday and ordered her to report April 4. To cover the restitution, she must forfeit half her inmate income and pay $200 a month after her release.
Last month, Mannion sentenced two others who had lesser roles.
- Frank Tassiello, 52, of Scranton, six months in prison with credit for 104 days served in related cases in New Jersey and Rhode Island. He must report April 4. Mannion also ordered three years of supervised release after Tassiello gets out.
- Ralph Parry, 47, of Covington Twp., three years probation. Parry drove Trotta and Boland on only one job, a planned Washington, D.C., theft that museum guards thwarted.
Dawn Trotta, Tassiello and Parry pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit theft of major artwork, concealment and disposal of major artwork and interstate transportation of stolen property.
The other ring member, Daryl Rinker, pleaded guilty to the same count in June 2023, but died of natural causes last April.
'A perverse upbringing'
Trotta’s lawyer, attorney Joseph D’Andrea, acknowledged his client “lived a life of crime” that “hurt and affected many lives,” including victims in the courtroom who consider him “a scoundrel.”
D’Andrea also offered a different portrayal – Trotta as a son of a corrupt former police officer father jailed for burning down a building for the Mafia, a father who turned to burglary and counted $40,000 in stolen money in front of his son, a father who used his 11-year-old son as a walkie-talkie-carrying lookout on thefts.
“He had a very, very perverse upbringing,” D’Andrea said. “Tommy’s innocence really was over as a kid ... Though he looks like a monster for what he did ... that innocent kid didn’t have a chance in life.”
Trotta, 49, of Moscow, referred to himself as “a scumbag” and said he learned first-hand the pain he inflicted while watching victims cry as he testified at the trial.
“I seen how much pain I caused you,” he said. “I also made my family victims in this ... I know I don’t deserve it, but I pray that one day you guys can forgive me for what I did.”
Victims let Trotta have it
With Trotta often looking down and downcast as they spoke, his victims showed no mood for forgiveness.
Greg Wall, Art Wall Jr.’s son, said he knew of no one who worked as hard to become a great golfer than his father. One by one, he recounted his father’s golfing achievements – two Pennsylvania amateur golf tournament titles, winning the 1959 Masters Tournament and the 1975 Greater Milwaukee Open when he was 51 and others.
Each time, Wall, standing at a podium at the front of the courtroom, looked directly at Trotta and remembered the melted-down stolen trophies.
“They were melted down into little bits of silver, so you had a little cash to spend,” Wall said, using a similar line for each trophy.
At Ringwood Manor in Ringwood, New Jersey, Trotta stole paintings, guns and other goods. Museum historian Susan Shutte described the theft as “an incalculable loss of a historic collection.” She called Trotta’s theft “appalling, ignorant and arrogant.”
“These objects are not mine, they’re not yours,” she told Trotta. “They belong to everyone.”
Mental anguish among her and her staff followed the physical loss, she said. Staff members suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome and nightmares and suspect visitors who ask questions, thinking they might be planning thefts, she said.
Trotta damaged the museum’s reputation and hers because some people wondered if the theft was “an inside job,” she said, choking up at times.
Yogi's granddaughter draws contrast
Lindsay Berra, the baseball player’s oldest grandchild, remembered him as someone who people instantly liked, always saw the good side of things and ignored ethnic and physical slurs to always make “lemonade out of lemons.”
“He chose, every day of his life, to consider himself the luckiest guy in the world,” Berra said.
The thieves chose differently, she said.
“They chose to disrespect, disregard and destroy,” Berra said.
She saw a contradiction between their “intelligence and wherewithal” in planning the thefts and evading capture for 20 years and their “blatant stupidity” in stealing goods they could never sell and melting them down to earn a fraction of their worth.
“It’s a preposterous business model and leads me to believe they simply got a kick out of stealing things that were culturally important and got an ego boost out of destroying the evidence of men better than themselves,” she said.
Berra said she refused to choose being consumed the by these thoughts and said she instead concentrates on her late grandfather’s reaction to the thefts.
“Well,” he said. “I know I won those things.”
Boxer's relatives show rage
Wearing a black T-shirt with Tony Zale: The Man of Steel in white letters, Haley Zale, the boxer’s great-niece, wept and dabbed her face with a tissue as she described the years she spent scouring the internet, distributing fliers and “cold-calling pawn shops” trying to find the stolen belts.
In trial testimony, Trotta said the belts were only gold-plated, not real gold, so the $400 the gold sold for cost the ring more than was spent on the theft.
Zale said the remnants were sold in New York City’s Diamond District, only about 11 blocks from her apartment where she mounted her searches.
Zale said she halted her acting career as the theft induced anxiety and depression and scorn from Boxing Hall of Fame backers who blamed her for criticizing the hall for failing to aggressively search.
“I became public enemy number one,” she said. “My life was changed because or your senseless crime.”
Zale’s mother, Deborah Zale, remembered Trotta testifying the thieves lost money on the theft.
“If you’re such a hotshot, how did you not know that they were only gold-plated?” she shouted at Trotta. “Then, you have the gall to sit there on the stand and say ‘that one cost us money.’”
She said she and her husband have spent 1,000s of dollars traveling to and from Michigan to Scranton to attend case-related hearings.
“You cost us money,” she said. “Shame on you, Mr. Trotta, shame on you.”
Before issuing his sentence, Mannion called himself “flabbergasted” that Trotta appeared on the television program “60 Minutes” and gave interviews to Sports Illustrated and The Atlantic magazines as he awaited sentencing.
Mannion highlighted the thief’s “chutzpah” in granting interviews that essentially mocked the victimized families.
“I found it offensive,” he said.
He said he considered Trotta’s upbringing, but said the burglar will soon turn 50.
“You’re not some kid who’s just 11 years old,” he said. “You’re a grown man ... You were the actual one who did ... every one of these burglaries.”
Dawn Trotta's sentencing
At the trial, Dawn Trotta testified she let her brother store stolen goods at her home, accepted a stolen stove for personal use, rented cars and trucks for thefts and drove ring members to pick up rental cars.
At her sentencing Wednesday, Dawn Trotta, 53, a mother of two who lives in Covington Twp., Lackawanna County, told Mannion she felt “outside” herself when federal authorities announced they broke the ring in June 2023.
“My heart sank for the victims,” she said.
She thought about writing them to apologize, but didn’t.
“I did not know what to say to them because they lost a lot,” she said.
“There’s nothing I can do to fix this situation,” she said. “What we did was horrible, terrible. People’s lives were destroyed. I certainly understand that. I wish I could travel back in time, but I can’t. I can just move forward and do the best I could.”
Attorney Shelley Centini, Dawn Trotta’s lawyer, and Christine Buglione, Thomas Trotta’s wife, spoke on her behalf. Both read letters advocating for mercy for Dawn Trotta from her colleagues at St. Joseph Center in Dunmore.
St. Joseph’s cares for severely disabled people.
Centini said one colleague called Dawn Trotta “a wonderful addition to the team” who regularly “goes above and beyond” for residents. Another said Trotta is always to work extra shifts to help residents. Another called her “one of the most ... compassionate and generally supportive people I know,” Centini said.
“She’s always trying to see the good in people,” the co-worker wrote, according to Centini.
Buglione, also a mother, spoke of Trotta’s attention to her daughter who “was in need of this kind of love and affection.”
“And I could always count on Dawn to give it to her,” she said.
Buglione read a statement of support from her own mother, Valerie Buglione, who wrote that Trotta “has seen the error of her ways” and shown “remorse for her actions.”
The Bugliones and other family members sat in the courtroom for Thomas Trotta’s sentencing, but did not speak.
Mannion, noting his mother worked for St. Joseph’s for 50 years, said it’s “an extraordinary place where extraordinary people work.”
“I’m hoping when you are all done that there’s a position for you there,” he said.
But the ring lasted for 20 years, and although her role was limited, he couldn’t help remembering a video of a stolen purported Jackson Pollock painting, he said.
Thomas Trotta recorded video of the still-missing painting sitting in his sister’s basement.
“I think it’s a pretty fair guess that it’s in an ash heap at this stage,” Mannion said, a reference to the destruction of a painting the ring stole from Ringwood.
The thefts not only cost museums items they’ll never get back, but the public was also deprived of seeing them again, he said.
He referred to Trotta’s guilty plea last year to stealing $84,000 from clients of her title company because of a gambling addiction. She received a seven-year probationary sentence but has paid back little of the money while earning a “decent salary,” he said.
“That really concerns me,” he said.
Moments later, he sentenced her to prison.
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported Frank Tassiello's sentence.
