A hot tip about the largest art heist in US history could earn you a cool $10 million — but you’d better hurry.
The end of 2017 is the deadline to call the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston with information about the decades-old theft of 13 masterful works valued at $500 million.
“Right now we’re laser-focused on this deadline,” said spokeswoman Kathy Sharpless about midnight Dec. 31. “Clearly there’s a sense of urgency on our part. We want our paintings back.”
For years, the museum had offered a $5 million reward, but trustees upped it to $10 million in May.
The museum and FBI investigators hoped the amount would bring in a flow of tips about the 27-year-old mystery.
“We’re really not interested in theories as much as in good, credible information and facts,” Sharpless said. “It only takes one good piece of information to help solve this puzzle.”
The crime occurred on St. Patrick’s Day in 1990 when two men dressed up as Boston cops got into the museum by telling the security guard they were responding to reports of a disturbance.
After letting them in, he and another guard were handcuffed and locked in the basement as the thieves made off with incomparable works by masters including Degas, Manet, Rembrandt and Vermeer.
There are still empty frames up on the walls of the gilded museum where the great works were once displayed.
In 2015, the FBI announced that two suspects – Boston criminals with ties to the mob – had died.
Investigators said they thought the paintings had moved in organized crime circles to Connecticut and Philadelphia, where the trail went cold.
Federal prosecutors say Robert Gentile, an 81-year-old reputed mobster from Connecticut, is the last person of interest alive.
The five-year statute of limitations on crimes associated with the actual heirs expired years ago so even if the thieves are captured, they can no longer be prosecuted.
Authorities said they’re willing to consider offering immunity to anyone who can help them recover the stolen works.
With Post wires