New Indictments Filed Against Pritchards, Father & Son
By Deborah Fitts

PHILADELPHIA. Pa. - The criminal case against nationally known Civil War relic dealer Russ Pritchard III mushroomed in May with dramatic new charges of theft and fraud. And for the first time Pritchard's father, Russ Pritchard Jr., 61, of Memphis, a longtime figure in the Civil War museum world, was brought into the case. He was charged with stealing from a museum.

According to sources close to the FBI investigation, the new federal charges stemmed in part from information supplied to the government by the third defendant - the Pritchards' former business partner George Juno.

Juno and Pritchard III appeared frequently on public television's popular Antiques Roadshow program which fired them a year ago when it was disclosed that they had staged appraisals to gain air time.

On May 15, two days before a 22-count superseding indictment in the case was filed, Juno pleaded guilty to fraud and perjury (June Civil War News). According to the prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Goldman, Juno is now cooperating in the investigation.

The indictment, filed May 17 by U.S. Attorney Michael Levy, significantly broadened the allegations of fraud by Pritchard III against unsuspecting victims.

Among them, Pritchard III was accused of:
• lying to a descendant of Union Gen. George Meade about the value of a Meade pistol and later selling it for $200,000 more than he paid for it;
• stealing an enlisted man's overcoat and insignia from a Confederate officer's frock coat;
• informing a Memphis museum that a Confederate colonel's uniform he was asked to authenticate was fake and that he had given it away, later selling it for $45,000; and
• stealing a Union Zouave jacket from the National Civil War Museum at Harrisburg, switching it with a Belgian Zouave jacket, and selling the stolen one for $20,000.

The 37-year-old Bryn Mawr resident was first indicted on March 15 on multiple charges of fraud, making false statements and tampering with a witness. He pleaded not guilty and posted $300,000 bail.

Charged at the same time was Juno, 40, of Allentown. The 13-count indictment focused on two PBS Antiques Roadshow episodes, the Maj. Samuel Wilson sword and Gen. George Pickett artifacts. (See indictment coverage in May Civil War News.)

All three men were principals in the for-profit American Ordinance Preservation Association (AOPA) of Bryn Mawr, which was engaged in appraising, buying and selling military artifacts. AOPA operated from 1995 to '98; Juno, at least, continues to appraise and deal in relics from Allentown, Pa., under the name American Soldier.

The new, or "superseding," indictment incorporates the earlier charges and adds new counts of mail fraud and theft from museum against Pritchard. The indictment details instances where Pritchard III allegedly won the trust of unsuspecting individuals, drastically undervalued their relics or even dismissed them as fakes, and then sold them at huge profit.

A Cousin's 'Swindle' One case has left a Confederate veteran's descendants chagrined and outraged. It began in September 1996 when Pritchard Jr. was contacted by Bill Day, owner of the Hunt-Phelan house museum in Memphis. Day is the great-great-grandson of Col. William R. Hunt, member of a prominent family and commander of Confederate arsenals in Mississippi.

Day opened his museum (now closed) in 1996. As he went through cedar chests full of uniforms and other garments spanning several decades, his mother urged him to contact Pritchard, a distant cousin, in order to help identify and authenticate them.

Pritchard Jr. visited Day's home in October 1996, according to the indictment, and selected Col. Hunt's uniform and several others. "He said, 'I'll take these with me and have them authenticated. I'll send them to my son,'" recalled Day.
When weeks went by and Day did not hear back, he called Pritchard Jr. He was most anxious about his great-great-grandfather's uniform.

According to the indictment, in January 1997 the two Pritchards "falsely advised" Day "that the Hunt uniform was "a costume, not authentic, and had been given away to Goodwill Industries by Pritchard III."

But two months earlier, the indictment alleged, Pritchard III had repairs made to the uniform and placed "newly made gold stars" on the collar. In April 1998 he sold it to a Georgia dealer for $45,000, according to the indictment. Day said he learned of the fraud only when a niece stumbled on a Web site advertising "the finest Confederate uniform ever found." (See related story.)

Day has little sympathy for the Pritchards. "To literally swindle your own relatives - I can't believe anyone would be that dastardly," he said.

The indictment charges Russell Pritchard Jr. with one count of theft from a museum and one count of accessory after the fact. He faces penalties of up to 15 years in prison and a $500,000 fine.

Pritchard Jr. formerly served, from the late 1970s to the mid-80s, as executive director of the Civil War Library & Museum in Philadelphia, according to current Library president Michael Schwartz. Pritchard has remained on the museum board, but Schwartz said he asked for a leave of absence following the indictment, which the board accepted unanimously May 24.

"This is a very serious matter," said Schwartz. "He didn't make light of it, nor did we. I hope he is exonerated. He has been a very supportive board member."

The Meade Pistol In 1997, according to the indictment, Pritchard III approached a descendant of Gen. George G. Meade, living in Philadelphia, asking to buy an ornate Remington .44-caliber pistol in a mahogany case. The silver-plated gun, with its engraved ivory grips and gold-washed hammer and cylinder, was presented to the Union commander in April 1864 at the Metropolitan Fair in New York City, a benefit event in support of the U.S. Sanitary Commission.

The indictment alleges that Pritchard III "falsely" told the Meade descendant that he was buying the gun for the National Civil War Museum in Harrisburg. AOPA was, in fact, acquiring numerous items at that time for the museum, which was building its collection from scratch preparatory to opening in February of this year.

According to the indictment, Pritchard III "falsely appraised" the pistol between $180,000 and $200,000. He and Juno purchased it from the Meade descendant in October 1997 for $184,115. They sent a letter to the mayor of Harrisburg, who was spearheading the museum, "falsely advising" him "that the Meade descendant would not sell the firearm."

In fact, they sold it to a private collector in Illinois for $385,000. Prosecutor Goldman said the whereabouts of the pistol is known but he declined to elaborate.

The Patterson Collection Another instance cited in the indictment involves the widow of prominent Confederate reenactor commander Don Patterson. In June 1996 an employee of AOPA contacted Elaine Patterson to express an interest in buying the Civil War artifacts that she and her late husband had collected over a period of 20 years.

Pritchard III, "falsely representing himself as an agent" for the Harrisburg museum, selected a number of swords, pistols, uniforms and other items. Pritchard encouraged Patterson to sell several of the items, about 12 percent of the collection.
He told her that "The Donald and Elaine Patterson Collection" would be permanently displayed at the Harrisburg museum, with a plaque and lifetime admission for members of her family. Patterson recalled, "He said because of Don's prominence, and because reenactors thought a lot of him, it would be a drawing card" for the museum.

But none of the items ever went to Harrisburg. In December 1996 and May 1997 Pritchard sold them to private dealers for a total of $65,000, according to the indictment. He paid Patterson $50,025. During the initial selection of items, Pritchard III also took with him a frock coat that belonged to Lt. William Hanger of the 1st Virginia Cavalry. Don Patterson had willed it to a friend in Virginia.

"He said, 'I'm going to stabilize this,'" Elaine Patterson remembered Pritchard saying. "'I'll do it gratis - at no cost to you.'"
In February 1997, acc ording to the indictment, Pritchard III provided the coat, along with another Confederate frock coat that Pritchard owned, to a textile expert. He directed the expert to remove the quatrefoils - the ornate braid on the sleeves - from the Hanger coat and place them on the other coat.

A few weeks later Pritchard returned the Hanger coat, "diminished in value," to Patterson, and sold the other coat, now sporting the Hanger quatrefoils, to a private dealer.

When he brought the coat back, Patterson recalled, the sleeves were folded under. Even though she didn't notice the missing quatrefoils, she thought the coat looked different and even today she is uncertain if it was in fact the Hanger coat. But she put it in an attic chest till her husband's friend came to pick it up. When she retrieved it she was shocked to discover that the bottom of the coat was "flaking off," and appeared to have been carelessly conserved, if at all.

In May 1997 Pritchard III received a second grouping from the Patterson collection. Patterson said she told him that if the museum made an offer she might consider selling a few of the items, but otherwise they were not for sale. He was only to appraise and stabilize them.

Among these artifacts was a very rare Confederate enlisted man's great coat. In September 1997 Pritchard "falsely advised Mrs. Patterson that the enlisted man's overcoat was not authentic and had been disassembled" and that it "had no value," according to the indictment.

In November Pritchard III sold the coat which he had restored to a dealer in Georgia. The FBI has not yet established the amount of that transaction. Patterson has been told that a Confederate great coat with original buttons could fetch as much as $80,000.

Pritchard also asserted that a cavalry vest he had taken was not authentic, Patterson said. "He said he took the coat and the vest apart to prove his point."

Shocked, Patterson attempted to retrieve the collection. Despite numerous unanswered phone calls and even a face-to-face confrontation, she has never succeeded.

Patterson eventually received $5,750 more from AOPA, for a total of $55,775. An expert familiar with the collection before it went to AOPA estimates its value at between $800,000 and $1.2 million.

The Zouave Jackets Zouave uniforms - one an authentic Civil War uniform and one not - also play a role in the indictment. In early 1995 Pritchard and Juno bought the Civil War collection of Ronald Weaver, including a Union Zouave sergeant's jacket. In late spring or early summer they sold the collection to the Harrisburg museum for $1.8 million.

In March of 1997, according to the indictment, Pritchard bought another Zouave uniform that he believed to be authentic, but he "learned from an expert that the uniform was from a Belgian rather than Union military unit and … had negligible value."

That same month, the indictment alleges, Pritchard "stole the Union Zouave uniform from the museum's inventory and replaced it with the Belgian Zouave uniform."

The following fall, according to the indictment, Pritchard and Juno sold the stolen jacket to a private dealer for $20,000.

The Case From Here The new round of indictments incorporates the original charges, which included the staged appraisals carried out by Pritchard III and Juno on Antiques Roadshow in 1996. Among other allegations, the original indictment also charged Pritchard III and AOPA with defrauding the great-great-grandson of Confederate Gen. George Pickett of the value of his ancestor's relics, paying him $87,500 for the items and selling them two weeks later to the Harrisburg museum for $880,000.

And Pritchard III and Juno were charged with defrauding descendants of Union Maj. Samuel J. Wilson, paying them $7,950 for the major's presentation sword and claiming it would be on display in Harrisburg, and then selling it to a private collector for $20,000.

Sources close to the investigation indicated that the timing of the first indictment in March was due to the fact that a five-year statute of limitations was due to run out on one count of mail fraud in the Pickett case.

In fact, Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Goldman indicated that the FBI continues to sort out the tangled web of AOPA activities, in a sleuthing operation that will soon complete its third year. He declined to say whether further charges may be forthcoming or whether other individuals may be implicated. "We'll go wherever the investigation takes us," he said.
As for Juno, Goldman predicted that his sentencing would come at the end of summer, "at the earliest." At present Juno faces as much as 45 years in prison and a $2.25 million fine. But a federal judge is permitted to impose a fine lower than the sentencing guidelines if a defendant provides "substantial assistance" in the investigation or prosecution of another person.

"It's commonplace for defendants to seek to cooperate with the government in an attempt to reduce their penalties," Goldman said. But he asserted that his office had brokered no agreement with Juno regarding his sentence, and that the sentence would be up to the judge.

The new indictment sharply increases the charges against Pritchard III. He now faces a total of 11 counts of mail fraud, three counts of wire (telephone) fraud, three counts of interstate transportation of stolen property, two counts of theft from a museum, one count of false statement ancillary to a court proceeding and one count of witness tampering (both the last two relate to the Pickett case). If convicted, Pritchard faces a maximum of 130 years in prison and a fine of $5.25 million. Pritchard Jr. faces a maximum of 15 years imprisonment and a $500,000 fine.

The two Pritchards were expected to be arraigned after presstime in June, at which time a trial date was to be scheduled. A status hearing on the case was set for June 27.

The victims of the alleged frauds clearly extend beyond those from whom the Pritchards and Juno obtained the relics. The buyers of the various items now find that under U.S. law, anyone who purchases in good faith something that was acquired by theft or fraud cannot hold good title, and the victim can seek to recover it.

According to Goldman, defendants in a case such as this are typically ordered to make restitution to victims, above and beyond any prison sentence or fine. Even if defendants claim bankruptcy, he said, restitution can be taken from future earnings or assets. The full text of the indictment may be found on the Web site of the U.S. Attorney in Philadelphia, www.usao-edpa.com; click on "indictments."