Pritchard III Gets A Year; Ordered To Pay $830,539
By Deborah Fitts
August 2002

PHILADELPHIA, Pa.: Despite protestations of his good character by family and friends, nationally known relic dealer Russ Pritchard III, 39, of Bryn Mawr, Pa., was sentenced July 11 to one year in prison for defrauding his victims of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Pritchard was also ordered to pay $830,539 in restitution to those victims, who included the great-great-grandson of Confederate Gen. George Pickett.

In a memorandum prepared for the sentencing hearing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Goldman noted that Pritchard had often preyed on descendants of Civil War veterans. He characterized the relic dealer as "a businessman run amok in the course of an intentional conduct to deceive, defraud, and profit at the expense of the trusting consumer."

"With a Boy Scout smile on his face," Goldman wrote, "Pritchard repeatedly looked his victims in the eye, promised their families perpetual honor in a national museum, and stole the hopes of descendants of men of distinction."

The two-hour hearing was held in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia before Judge Petrese Tucker.

Pritchard pleaded guilty in December to nearly two dozen counts of fraud, theft, making a false statement and witness tampering. He was the second of the three principals of the former American Ordnance Preservation Association (AOPA) to be sentenced in connection with relic fraud.

On May 24 his father, Russ Pritchard Jr., 61, of Memphis, was ordered to spend six months in a halfway house and pay $35,000 in restitution. Their associate, George Juno, 40, of Allentown, Pa., faces sentencing Aug. 1.

Pritchard III's hearing involved a parade of witnesses, including his wife, his children, and friends, who testified to his good character and his exemplary behavior as a father. A New York City police officer praised Pritchard III's role in organizing a post-Sept. 11 Toys for Tots campaign.

But Goldman urged Judge Tucker to focus on the facts of the case. He recalled how Pritchard III had won the confidence of his victims, in many cases telling them falsely that the relics they possessed would be put on permanent public display in Harrisburg's new National Civil War Museum.

Among those testifying in favor of a prison sentence was George Pickett V, the great-great-grandson of the Confederate commander whose name is linked with one of the greatest charges in American history. He described to Tucker how Pritchard III had befriended him in the course of several visits to his North Carolina home, even joining his family on the beach.

AOPA purchased relics and papers of Gen. George Pickett for $87,500 and sold them two weeks later to Harrisburg for $880,000.

After the hearing, Pickett said Pritchard III’s prison sentence was “weak, and the sentence his father got was incredibly weak. But at least he got federal prison time, and the [relic dealing] community should take notice.”

Pickett won a civil suit against Pritchard III and AOPA in June 1999, a case that triggered the federal investigation.

In his memorandum to Tucker, Goldman noted that Pritchard III and Juno had not only lied in depositions for the civil case, but they paid others to lie on their behalf, including one man who Goldman said was paid $10,000 to state falsely that Pickett had been trying to peddle his ancestor’s relics before Pritchard III arrived on the scene.

In fact, Pickett said he had never dreamed of selling them, and had scarcely explored the aluminum trunk that his mother had bequeathed him.

“If he was willing to lie that far,” said Pickett of Pritchard III, “all this nicey-nice stuff that was paraded before the court, that was made up too. And all the nicey-nice things he did — the Toys for Tots, his kids’ private school — it was all paid for with stolen property.”

Pickett was awarded the largest amount of restitution, $442,000. He had won a judgment of over $700,000 in the civil case, but he said Pritchard III claimed he had no money, and Pickett received only some cash, along with “a sword and a flag and a bunch of junk.” With his own and his attorney’s expenses totaling about $200,000, Pickett said, he just broke even.

Also testifying before Judge Tucker was Elaine Patterson, who together with her late husband Don had amassed a significant Civil War relic collection over two decades. After her husband’s death Pritchard III talked her into selling “hundreds” of items with the understanding that they would form the “Don and Elaine Patterson Collection” at the Harrisburg museum.

Pritchard III paid Patterson only a fraction of the value and then sold the items to private dealers. He took a Confederate greatcoat, which Patterson called “the gem of the collection,” told her it was worthless, and then sold it.

Tucker ordered that $71,000 of the restitution go to Patterson to compensate for the greatcoat. Her insurance company, Nationwide, was also awarded $71,654.

“There’s no amount of jail time that will compensate for the loss to me and my family,” Patterson said after the hearing. She recalled how her late husband had longed to buy the overcoat but felt the family couldn’t afford it. She secretly took out a loan and purchased it as a surprise, and it became “his pride and joy,” the first item in the collection that he would show to friends and guests.

“The pain will go on,” said Patterson. “I can’t really describe it, the emotional strain.” She said she sensed that Pritchard was without remorse, only regretting that he'd been caught.
Her three children, who had grown up accompanying their parents to antique stores and relic shows as the collection grew, “didn’t get the inheritance they deserve,” she said, and have lost an irreplaceable family connection.

Pritchard III “stole from other families,” Patterson said, “in order to give his family the lifestyle he wanted them to have.”

Goldman told Judge Tucker that substantial incarceration for Pritchard III was necessary in to deter others in the industry from succumbing to an attitude that “anything goes — you lie and cheat and make misrepresentations to make a deal.”

Before the sentencing hearing Goldman had sent Judge Tucker two tapes from PBS’s “Antiques Roadshow” series featuring Pritchard III as an expert appraiser of antique weapons. The prosecution had shown that Pritchard III and Juno staged phony appraisals, supplying weapons to acquaintances who would be discovered in the crowd and pretend to be amazed at the value of the items.

“Subsequent to his new-found television fame,” Goldman wrote to Judge Tucker, “Pritchard, confident in his manner and heralding his expertise in the military collecting field, conned heirs to military legends to relinquish their cherished family heirlooms.

“The resulting deception … has rained havoc on victims who handed over their family’s history based upon the assurance that their ancestors would be duly honored at a national museum. In reality, the victims were merely persons to be deceived so that the defendants could achieve fame in their industry and benefit financially.”

Also to receive restitution was: Meade Easby of Philadelphia, a direct descendant of Union Gen. George Meade, who was awarded $200,885. According to Goldman, Pritchard III convinced Easby to part with a pistol presented to Meade in April 1864 by assuring him it would go on display with other Meade items in the Harrisburg museum.

Pritchard purchased the pistol from Easby for $184,115 and sold it to a private collector in Chicago two days later for $385,000. Goldman said he was “hopeful” that the pistol will be returned to Easby, in which case the restitution will go to the collector.

And $45,000 was to go to John Sexton of Stone Mountain Relics in Georgia. Sexton was the first in a chain of dealers and collectors to buy from Pritchard III the uniform of Confederate Lt. Col. William Richardson Hunt. A descendant of Hunt had asked Pritchard Jr. and his father to authenticate the uniform, and was eventually told that it was a worthless costume and had been given to Goodwill.

Meanwhile, Pritchard III had gold stars added to the collar and sold it to Sexton for $45,000. It was ultimately purchased by a Tennessee museum.

Goldman also cited Pritchard III’s theft of a Union Zouave jacket from the Harrisburg museum in 1997, and his replacing it with one of “negligible value.” The theft came at a time, Goldman recalled, when Pritchard III and AOPA were purchasing myriad items on behalf of the new museum, and “receiving millions of dollars in profits.”

In addition, Goldman noted that Pritchard III and Juno had “plotted and paid witnesses to lie” in court cases. Finally, “Even after their criminal enterprise had been detected by the victims and the government,” the two men “destroyed corporate records after receiving a grand jury subpoena for their production.”

Goldman said no fine had been imposed on Pritchard III, in order for the victims to be able to recoup as much as possible. “At present,” he said, “Pritchard states that he does not have the ability to pay.”

Once Pritchard III is released from prison and finds a job, Goldman said, his probation officer will set a payment schedule for the restitution. “Or if he comes into money by any other means,” Tucker’s sentencing order “represents a judgment against him” that will force payment.

Tucker gave Pritchard III 30 days to report to a prison, which was to be designated by the federal Bureau of Prisons. He was also given three years’ supervised release following the prison term.

Goldman said he ordinarily does not comment on sentences. But he said he was “very pleased” that Pritchard III will be going to prison.

“Anything less would have lessened the seriousness of the offense,” he said. “The scope of the fraud and the violations of the judicial system were outrageous.”