London - (Trick or Treat Mess): Leading UK auction house Sotheby's has said it often tests the waters on suspect clients like the US envoy to London Robert 'Katie' Holmes Tuttle by locking them up overnight at their Mayfair premises.
The statement comes following reports that Tuttle, his wife and five bodyguards were mysteriously locked up overnight at the auction house last week during a covert operation by UK cops focusing on international art forgery, theft and associated money laundering.
"We've been trick and treating them like this ever since our New York branch adopted innovative investigation tactics gleaned from the CIA's McCarthy era operations manual," a spokesman said today.
Tuttle has long been a suspect.
His role in influencing UK Prime Monster Gorgon Brown to issue public immunity from prosecution certificates to notable Russian art sources resulted in the current Royal Academy's staging of hundreds of stolen works from the heady salad days of Joseph Stalin's reign of terror.
At his Regent's Park residency today Tuttle is still visibly shaken by the ordeal.
"Just wait until he finds out we bugged his entire household since his arrival in London," a New Scotland Yard spokeskman said today.
