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Edouard Manet's 'Chez Tortoni,' one of the paintings stolen in 1990 from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Man thought linked to Boston art heist faces sentencing

Tom Hoepf
Tom Hoepf

Edouard Manet's 'Chez Tortoni,' one of the paintings stolen in 1990 from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Edouard Manet’s ‘Chez Tortoni,’ one of the paintings stolen in 1990 from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) – A 76-year-old reputed mobster faces sentencing in a weapons and prescription drugs case that revealed the FBI’s belief he has information about the largest art heist in history.

Robert Gentile of Manchester is scheduled to be sentenced Thursday in federal court in Hartford. He pleaded guilty in November to illegally possessing and selling prescription drugs and illegally possessing guns, silencers and ammunition as a convicted felon.

A prosecutor said last year the FBI believed Gentile had some involvement with stolen property related to the 1990 theft of a half-billion dollars’ worth of art from Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.

Gentile’s lawyer, A. Ryan McGuigan, has said Gentile cooperated with authorities but knows nothing about the theft and denies the mob allegation.

No one has been charged in the heist.

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AP-WF-05-06-13 0809GMT

ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE

Edouard Manet's 'Chez Tortoni,' one of the paintings stolen in 1990 from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Edouard Manet’s ‘Chez Tortoni,’ one of the paintings stolen in 1990 from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.