SEBASTIAN — Four months after being arrested and charged with five criminal counts for failure to keep the transaction records required by law, the owners of Sebastian Antiques both pleaded guilty to a single count of failure to keep records.
Elizabeth and Mark Karpinski are now back open for business.
“If it weren’t so easy for thieves to sell stolen property to people like the Karpinskis they probably wouldn’t be breaking into homes and taking things,” said Leslie Abbott.
Abbott should know because last June a thief broke into her and her husband’s barrier island home on Pebble Bay and took antiques worth thousands of dollars – including framed letters signed by Aaron Burr.
The suspected thief, Carole Ellis, who grew up on the barrier island, then sold the Abbot’s family keepsakes to the Karpinskis at Sebastian Antiques on US 1 in Sebastian.
Ellis is serving a one-year jail sentence in Brevard County for stealing a gun in Brevard and is awaiting trial in Indian River County for crack cocaine and oxycodone possession charges in addition to awaiting trial for the Abbott break-in and that of another barrier island home. Ellis’ fingerprints were found in both homes and she confessed to both break-ins, say police.
Besides the Burr letters stolen from the Abbotts last June – alone valued at thousands of dollars – Ellis also sold the Karpinskis a silver-backed hand mirror, a gold lighter, an antique match holder, several silver spoons and serving pieces and a set of gold demitasse cup holders, along with antique barometers and a carriage clock — all stolen from the Abbotts.
The Karpinskis paid $300 for the Burr letters and $80 for everything else.
Within days, they resold the Burr letters for $600 to a man they called “an unnamed guy from Palm Beach.” The gold and silver antiques were sold to a local gold dealer for an unknown amount to be melted down.
After the Karpinskis bought the stolen antiques from Ellis in June and resold the letters without the paperwork mandated by statute, police warned them that they had to keep the records required by law.
Police visited Sebastian Antiques several times, according to their reports, to give the Karpinskis forms and informational materials on how to comply with record-keeping laws.
Deputies from the Indian River County Sheriff’s Office also tracked other the thefts of gold jewelry and valuable items in Vero Beach to Sebastian Antiques, and in early December they sent an informer to the shop with gold jewelry to sell.
When the Karpinskis bought the jewelry without requiring the necessary IDs and without keeping the records required by law, police arrested them and charged them with the five counts.
Their penalty for pleading guilty to one count of buying gold and antiques without getting the IDs and information required by law: a misdemeanor record and a total payment of $1,220 in fines and court costs.
“The Karpinskis got off easy,” said Leslie Abbott. “Their loss is so much smaller than ours.”
