LONDON: A British man has escaped jail after a jury found that he tried to sell apparently "lost" tapes of the Beatles final recording sessions for about $460,000.
Nigel Oliver, 55, from Slough, west of London, faced two charges of handling stolen goods for attempting to sell 504 tapes of the historic Get Back sessions for the legendary group's final album Let It Be, released in 1970.
A jury at Southwark Crown Court, south London, on Thursday found that Oliver committed the acts as charged. He had previously been found unfit to enter formal "guilty" or "not guilty" pleas.
Sentencing him at the same court yesterday, judge Jeremy McMullen said that if Oliver had not been suffering from a mental impairment for many years and had been convicted at trial, he would have been sentenced to four years in prison.
Instead, he ordered him to be subject to be supervised in the care of mental health practitioners for two years.
Oliver, who worked for the Beatles nearly 37 years ago, was caught in 2003 in an international undercover sting operation set up by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry to recover the tapes.
He was said to be the "middle man" in the operation, organising the sale of the tapes from two unknown men in Amsterdam to undercover officers Sammy and Billy.
Police arrested him in a forest near Windsor Park, Slough, on January 10, 2003 while he was waiting for his payment. His cut was thought to be about 150,000 pounds.
