`GoldenEye` extra jailed 18 months for theft

An author and actor was jailed for 18 months today for “callously plundering” one of Britain’s biggest picture libraries, reports The Scotsman.

“Cunning thief and cheat” Adrian Rigelsford, 34, was one of the most trusted visitors to the archive owned by Associated Newspapers.

He told staff he was doing research and, because he was such a regular, was allowed unfettered access to the massive collection.

Rigelsford – whose screen appearances include the role of an agent alongside Pierce Brosnan and Dame Judi Dench in the 1995 film "Goldeneye" – was sentenced today.

He told staff he was doing research and, because he was such a regular, was allowed unfettered access to the massive collection. But London’s Blackfriars Crown Court heard he repaid their kindness with an eight-year betrayal, smuggling out tens of thousands of mostly irreplaceable prints belonging to the publishers of the Daily Mail and Evening Standard.

Rigelsford – who ghosted biographies on actors Peter Sellers and Brian Blessed and is regarded as an expert on the cult TV series Dr Who – then pocketed £75,000 from selling most of them to a couple of specialist dealers.

He was unanimously convicted at an earlier trial of a single all-embracing count of theft between 1994 and 2002.

Judge Deva Pillay told him: “In my judgment you are a thief, a cheat and it seems to me, on the evidence I have heard, a man lacking in courage."

The three-week trial heard the disgraced author, of Laws Crescent, Brampton, Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, was first permitted “supervised access” to the Kensington-based library and its millions of “unique and priceless” photographs 10 years ago.

Thanks to `Scott` for the alert.

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