Juno Sentenced to Halfway House
By Deborah Fitts
September 2002

PHILADELPHIA, Pa. — Nationally known relic dealer George Juno was sentenced Aug. 1 to six months in a halfway house, bringing to a close a long-running saga of fraud, perjury and witness tampering that rocked the field of Civil War collecting.

Juno, 40, now of Fort Lauderdale, also paid $70,000 in restitution and was fined $30,000 fine in Federal District Court in Philadelphia. After his term in the halfway house, where he can request work-release during the day, he faces three years’ probation.

Noting Juno’s nationwide reputation as an antique-arms dealer, Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Goldman said the case sent a warning.

“It is no exaggeration to say that in a field that unfortunately attracts charlatans, con men and carnival hucksters,” Goldman wrote in a memorandum to the judge, “the sentencing of Juno is being followed closely by those who hope for a cleansing of the industry, and by those, like Juno, who need clear notice that their business-as-usual tactics will not be tolerated.

“Only a sentence of incarceration can punish this defendant for his years of crime, restore the confidence of the victims, and deter others in the collecting industry who regrettably believe that integrity is not a requirement for men of business.”

Juno entered a guilty plea in May 2001 to three counts of fraud and perjury. He cooperated in the government’s case, supplying information against his two former partners in the now-defunct American Ordnance Preservation Association (AOPA), Russ Pritchard III and his father, Russ Pritchard Jr.

Three men in the collecting field spoke on Juno’s behalf at the Aug. 1 sentencing hearing before Judge Petrese Tucker. John Buxton of Dallas, an appraiser on PBS’s “Antiques Roadshow” and a director of the International Society of Appraisers; collector Peter Tuite of Courtland Manor, N.Y.; and Revolutionary War collector Donald Koleman of Portsmouth, N.H., testified to Juno’s “great integrity” and fair prices in their dealings with him.

Goldman countered their testimony by recalling Juno’s behavior under pressure, when you see “the true measure of a man.”

He said Juno committed a wide array of criminal acts, among them:

• Luring new victims by staging fraudulent appraisals when Juno and Pritchard III were serving as experts on “Antiques Roadshow” (the show has since removed them).
• “Defrauding families of their treasured family heirlooms.”
• Committing perjury during a civil suit that was brought successfully against AOPA by George Pickett V, great-great-grandson of the Confederate general. AOPA bought his ancestor’s relics for one-tenth their value and sold them two weeks later for $880,000.
• Paying a witness $10,000 to lie in the Pickett case; “As a result, the integrity of our federal judicial system was seriously compromised.” Pickett V appeared as a prosecuting witness at the hearing.
• Destroying corporate records and computers after receiving a grand jury subpoena for them; and destroying subpoenaed records of an associate, Georgia dealer John Sexton.
• Creating a “false document” relating to AOPA’s under-value purchase of a sword from descendants of Union major Samuel Wilson.
• Counseling Pritchard III “on which potential victims to seek out, the objects to be procured, and the amount of money to be paid for the desired objects”; selling items “stolen or obtained by fraud’ by Pritchard III; and “equally sharing in the money proceeds of Pritchard’s deceptions.”

The defense argued for probation rather than incarceration. But Tucker said Juno’s conduct was too egregious to warrant probation. She cited his flouting of the justice system, and the importance of sending a message in the industry.

But some believed Tucker didn’t go far enough. William Synnamon, co-owner of the Union Drummer Boy relic shop in Gettysburg, was disappointed. “I thought all three got off very lightly, considering they cheated people out of millions of dollars, perjured themselves under oath, paid witnesses to lie, and destroyed evidence,” said Synnamon, who settled a civil suit for defamation and breach of contract against AOPA in 1998.

Synnamon praised the prosecutor, Goldman, and the investigation by the FBI. “The only person who dropped the ball was the judge,” he said.

Goldman noted that under the federal sentencing guidelines, Juno could have been sentenced to a year to 18 months in prison. Because he cooperated with the prosecution’s case against the two Pritchards, however, the judge was allowed to depart from the guidelines.

In his sentencing memorandum, Goldman said Juno had shown “no remorse.” Even within the past year, when he was indicted and had pleaded guilty, Juno made $180,000 in the relic business, according to Goldman.

Goldman noted that on Juno’s own web site, “which continued to operate until two weeks before sentencing,” he boasted of his “Roadshow” appearances and represented himself as the “best and most famous man in military appraisal in the world.”

In a photo displayed on the site, “a beaming Juno sits before the Zouave uniform stolen by Pritchard III [from the National Civil War Museum in Harrisburg] and then sold by Juno to a collector in Pennsylvania.”

“Apparently, not even a very public fraud conviction and admission of perjury will diminish Juno’s stature in a business where collectors plagued with acquisition fever readily flock to Juno,” Goldman wrote. “Probation, a sentence that Juno has repeatedly boasted to others in the industry that he will receive, cannot even be deemed a slap on the wrist for this unrepentant dealer.”

The FBI has retrieved the Zouave uniform and the Wilson sword, according to Goldman.

“We’re working on an arrangement” to get back a presentation pistol belonging to Union Gen. George Meade, which Pritchard III purchased from a Meade descendant, Meade Easby of Philadelphia. Pritchard III paid $184,115 for the pistol and promised Easby it would go on display in the Harrisburg museum with other Meade items. Juno sold it two days later to a Chicago collector for $385,000.

Pritchard III pleaded guilty in December to nearly two dozen counts of fraud, theft, perjury and witness tampering. He was sentenced in July to a year in prison and ordered to pay $830,539 in restitution to his victims.

In January, Pritchard Jr. was convicted by a federal jury of stealing a Confederate uniform from a museum. He was sentenced in May to six months in a halfway house and $35,000 in restitution.

After Juno’s sentencing hearing, Goldman declined to say whether the sentence brings to a close the probe of relic fraud. “We continue to work on other aspects of the collectible field,” he said.