It was enough to trace Robert Mang’s telephone, and yesterday the man known as a “gentleman thief” received four years in jail for stealing the 16th-century golden salt cellar sculpted by the Italian master. Known as the Saliera, it is the only fully authenticated work in gold by Cellini and is valued at about £40 million.

Tears flowed from Mang’s eyes as sentence was pronounced by Judge Walter Stockhammer. But that did not stop almost a hundred women from surging towards the convicted art thief from the public gallery of the Vienna court.

Mang, 51, the owner of a security company, has become a celebrity in Austria. More than a thousand women have sent him letters in prison, many enclosing photographs of themselves in bikinis, and fan websites have been set up.

This popularity is partly down to his bronzed good looks and smooth playboy manners, but mainly it is admiration for his audacity.

Susanne Waidecker, the state prosecutor, said yesterday that Mang had the Cellini sculpture — made for King Francis I of France — in his sights during several visits to the Art History Museum in Vienna. On the evening of May 11, 2003, he climbed up the scaffolding outside the museum, pushed open a window, dodged the alarm system and bagged the artwork.

For two years Mang kept it under his bed. Last October he contacted the company that had insured the sculpture and demanded €10 million (£6.8 million) for its return. He enclosed gold scrapings to prove that he was not bluffing.

For Frau Waidecker the robbery was a calculated operation by a man who understood the weakness of alarm systems. She will appeal and insists that Mang is jailed for ten years. For Mang the theft was mere sport, a drunken adventure. “It was an impulse after I had had a bit to drink. I wanted to see whether it could be done,” he said. Yes, he conceded, he had visited the museum beforehand, but only to follow a group of attractive Italian schoolgirls rather than to size up his future loot.

“It wasn’t difficult,” he told the court. “Every one of us here would be able to do it. There were these movement monitors inside, the likes of which we were removing from clients’ homes already 15 years ago. They look like old speakers.”

In passing a lighter sentence than that demanded by the prosecutor, Judge Stockhammer said that he had taken into account Mang’s remorse and shame. But as Mang got into his stride yesterday there was not much sign of remorse. “I thought to myself, ‘This can’t be true’,” he said. “Average homes have better security.”

Mang came a cropper when he prepared the ransom procedures. In a message to the insurance company he insisted that one person should take the cash on a bicycle to an agreed street corner for instructions by mobile phone. On that day last November, Mang used several different mobile phones and sent police on what appeared to be a wild goose chase. To avoid being traced, each telephone was used only once. After many hours of making the messenger criss-cross Vienna, Mang saw some unmarked police cars. Angry, he used a new mobile phone to send his text message calling off the ransom handover. The telephone was traced to a shop where Mang was identified from a hidden video camera.

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