In October 2014, thieves broke into the Yogi Berra Museum in Little Falls, N.J., and stole nine of the Hall of Fame catcher’s 10 World Series rings.
Unable to sell them without getting caught, the thieves went to a garage in Pennsylvania, where they melted down the gold and gemstones. They then brought it to the Diamond District in Manhattan and sold it all.
The nine rings, which the feds valued at more than $1 million, were sold — melted — for $12,000.
“As bad as it sounds, I didn’t look at it like rings,” mastermind Tommy Trotta revealed for the first time in an interview with “60 Minutes" on Sunday night. “It was money. It was cash.”
Lindsay Berra, granddaughter of the Yankees legend, couldn’t get over the crime itself, but also the idea of what was done.
“You go through all this trouble to plan for months,” Berra told reporter Jon Wertheim. “And then you sell the stuff that you steal for pennies compared to what it’s actually worth? And not to mention the fact that you’re destroying historical artifacts with significance so much beyond the gold and diamonds that they’re made of.”
Over 20 years, Trotta and his associates participated in 21 crimes throughout four states, including several sports heists. Trotta stole a 1905 Christy Mathewson World Series jersey from a college in 1999, Ben Hogan’s trophies from the U.S. Golf Museum in 2012 and four championship belts belonging to the great Carmen Basilio. The belts were melted down, too.
In 2019, Trotta was pulled over for driving erratically, and police found gloves in his vehicle related to an ATM heist. He was eventually charged with conspiracy to steal sports memorabilia and major artworks.
Trotta, who made a plea deal with the feds for 51 months in jail by giving up his partners, detailed for “60 Minutes” how he would go to museums and film where things were that he wanted to steal. He said he could have stolen Andy Warhol’s “La Grande Passion” and Jackson Pollack’s “Springs Water” blindfolded — which was important because it was pitch black when he entered the Everhart Museum in Scranton, Pennsylvania, through what he identified as its weak glass doors in the back.
Trotta and his accomplices never got to sell either painting, and they’ve now been classified as missing. He told “60 Minutes” he last saw them six years ago in house in Union, N.J., where they stashed some of the spoils. The feds valued the Pollack at $11.6 million, the Warhol at $100,000.
“I don’t think it’s destroyed,” Trotta said. “Nobody would be that stupid.”
Yet Trotta and his eight accomplices weren’t exactly brilliant. They stole incredible items that they couldn’t sell, and even when they melted them down to their parts, the items were sold far under their value.
Said Trotta: “How we justified it is, ‘Hey, nobody’s getting hurt. But I never looked it at like…emotionally, I destroyed people. I know this now."
Darren Rovell is the founder of cllct.com and one of the country's leading reporters on the collectible market. He previously worked for ESPN, CNBC and The Action Network.