A collection of pricey life-sized tiger statues meant to be sold for charity were brazenly looted from the Manhattan mansion of an out-of-town real-estate mogul and loaded onto a flatbed trailer in front of his stunned neighbors, The Post has learned.
The thieves broke into Paolo Zampolli’s luxurious Gramercy Park palace last Thursday — while he was schmoozing at Art Basel in Miami — and made off with 18 of the fiberglass felines, law-enforcement sources said.
The tiger statues on the flatbed truck. (
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PREDATORS: Audacious art bandits load costly tiger statues (above) on a flatbed truck (right) from an entrepreneur’s Gramercy home, in photos taken by a neighbor. (
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Celebrities had been paying as much as $100,000 each for the 80-pound striped statues, designed by some of the biggest names in the art world. The thieves’ haul is worth an estimated $635,000, Zampolli said.
“It is very sad that someone would steal art made for such a special cause as saving the tigers,” Zampolli told The Post.
The late-afternoon heist, which wrapped up before sunset, was even caught on camera by a suspicious neighbor.
Zampolli had commissioned renowned modern artists to decorate some 75 tigers to be sold off to fund his nascent Global Tiger Fund, a wildlife-conservation project.
He had displayed 30 of them during Art Basel last week while the purloined 18 remained at his $22 million East 17th Street manse, which is undergoing renovations.
The theft is being investigated by the FBI and the NYPD’s art-theft unit, law-enforcement sources confirmed.
Just last week, former Giants star Jeremy Shockey shelled out $200,000 for two of the tigers designed by contemporary artist Domingo Zapata.
Investigators already have a person of interest, said Zampolli, who founded ID Models before going into the real estate business. That person had approached Zampolli previously and asked to buy some of the tigers directly rather than wait for the planned auction.
Inspired by the 13-year-old global Cow Parade, a public art exhibit of bovine statues that raise money for charities, Zampolli planned a “Tiger Parade.”
Among the stolen statues were two by famed collage artist Peter Tunney worth $150,000. One of them was made up primarily of New York Post headlines and front pages.
“When [Zampolli] asked if I could paint two of the tigers for charity, I agreed — as long as every penny of the sale went to the charity,” Tunney said. “I put a lot of work into them.”
Zampolli, 42, planned to exhibit them at the United Nations, where he has diplomatic status as a representative for the Caribbean nation of Dominica, and then hold the auction for his Global Tiger Fund.
Among the other stolen tigers:
* Two Domingo Zapata tigers worth $120,000.
* A tiger painted by reggae legend Bob Marley’s son Rohan worth $75,000.
* A tiger painted by violinist Miri Ben-Ari worth $50,000.
“What kind of sick person would do something like that? This makes me so sad,” roared Ben-Ari.
Additional reporting by Chuck Bennett and Doug Auer