"Two men admit stealing £46 scrap and selling it as £500,000 Henry Moore sculpture"

From The Daily Mail:

Two men have admitted stealing scrap worth just £46 and passing it off as a Henry Moore sculpture worth up to £500,000.

At St Albans Crown CourtLiam Hughes, 22, and 19-year-old Jason Parker, from Coltsfield, Essex, both pleaded guilty to stealing old car parts and welding them together into the shape of a sundial sculpture and the sculpture's bronze plinth.

The Sundial, created by the two in 2011 as a working model to test the gullibility of stately home owners, was delivered to the grounds of the Henry Moore Foundation in Much Hadham, Herts, on July 10. The sculpture's bronze plinth was delivered on July 15 this year. Hughes and Parker, both of pleaded guilty to two counts of fraud when they appeared at St Albans Crown Court yesterday.

Prosecutor Ann Evans said: "These two worthless items were delivered on separate occasions by these defendants, even though the parts had been taken from a scrap dealer. He had hoped to sell the parts used for the sundial for £46 and the parts for the the plinth for £200. These defendants had a pretty good idea of what they would be worth if passed off as a Henry Moore. When they were arrested by the police they said they had found the items in a dustbin behind Bonhams.

"Clearly the sculpture, a never-seen-before Henry Moore would be priceless. The director of the foundation initially valued it between £250,000 and £500,000. Henry Moore in his will said no cast of any of his works could be created, so there was great joy when it was 'returned' because it could never have been replaced. The scrap dealer also had no idea what he could have sold his old machine or car parts for. He was hoping for a couple of hundred quid at best."