A fashion label publicist was busted at JFK for allegedly swiping a $150,000 Salvatore Dali painting from an Upper East Side gallery last year, sources told The Post.
Phivos Lampros Istavrioglou, 29, who is in charge of international media relations at the French-owned Moncler clothing company, was slapped with handcuffs by NYPD detectives at about 1:15 p.m. Saturday after he walked off an American Airlines flight from Milan.
Sources said undercover cops posing as representatives from a well-heeled gallery owner lured Istavrioglou back to New York by promising him a lucrative consulting gig.
Istavrioglou was initially held on a bench warrant for allegedly separately swiping a steak from a Whole Foods in Tribeca last Jan. 9.
The alleged thief was indicted by a grand jury in the Dali case last week and was arraigned on a grand larceny charge in the second degree in Manhattan Criminal Court today. Bail was set at $100,000.
He is accused of taking the “Cartel Des Don Juan Tenorio 1949” last June – a theft that made international news.
Several days after the theft it was mailed back to the US from Greece.
Sources said Istavrioglou admitted to the theft, claiming he did it because “there was a lapse in security at the gallery and he wanted to point it out.”
Istavrioglou allegedly slipped inside Venus Over Manhattan at 980 Madison Ave., strolling right in during business hours.
He snatched the Dali painting off a wall in the exhibition area, dropped it inside a shopping bag and strolled out of the gallery, police said.
A week later, he stuffed the painting inside a cylinder and mailed it back to the gallery. Detectives were able to lift his prints off the cylinder and match it to those already on file for the Whole Foods arrest, according to law enforcement sources.
It was unclear if he had retained an attorney.
“It was almost surreal how this theft was committed – a thief is accused of putting a valuable Salvador Dalí drawing into a shopping bag in the middle of the afternoon, in full view of surveillance cameras,” said Manhattan DA Cy Vance.
“This brazen heist from a Manhattan gallery is the latest in a string of cases involving theft or fraud in the art world that my office has prosecuted. Today’s indictment brings us one step closer to bringing an international art caper to a close.”
Additional reporting by Rebecca Rosenberg