New York Cameo Switch

The New York Cameo Switch was a 2003 substitution in which two counterfeit copies of the missing Castor cameo were sent to claimants in place of the genuine jewel. Its significance lies not only in the theft but in the false trail it created: Charles de Castelmont and the D’Anjou family each received what appeared to be the same recovered heirloom, while the original remained out of sight. The truth surfaces much later, when a distinctive scratch exposes the copies and an FBI superior confronts John Robbart about his role in having them made.

The cameo and the problem of identification

Before the switch could be recognized, the family jewel was already an uncertain object. Régis D’Anjou’s investigation had begun with a damaged carving: an old scratch obscured the figure, leaving open whether it depicted a mythological being or a real person. Close inspection revealed traces of attributes, clothing, and style, while Régis’s research into stone carving led him to date the piece to at least the eighteenth century, possibly the seventeenth, and to identify its workmanship as Italian. He concluded that the figure must be one of the mythological twins Castor and Pollux—and, by extension, that the jewel belonged to a pair.

An eighteenth-century catalogue had placed a pair of Castor and Pollux cameos in the collection of the Duke of Orléans, later the Regent. The catalogue did not trace their later passage, and the royal inventory made during the French Revolution did not list them. Their subsequent history was therefore a question of provenance rather than a settled chain of ownership. When Régis later saw an exhibition in Paris, photographs and an old engraving showed the paired figures facing one another, each holding a horse by the bridle and a spear. The exhibition record described five-layer onyx, with a dark upper layer, and said the pair had separated after the Revolution. The Castor cameo was presumed lost amid the upheaval.

The 2003 substitution

The later account identifies Robbart as a participant in the counterfeit operation. When a senior FBI official called to reprimand him, he accused Robbart of committing a crime in 2003 and putting the Bureau at serious risk by having two counterfeits made. The official also said that personnel at the Port of New York had failed to notice the deception. His instructions were now to recover the genuine cameo, which, according to the CIA, was in the hands of a Satanist sect in Florida.

Robbart’s former CIA associate, Chris, was identified as the person who had proposed making the counterfeits in the first place. The two men had discussed the operation’s implications, but the surviving account does not spell out every step by which the authentic jewel left New York or came into the sect’s possession. It does establish the central fraud: two imitations were prepared, and New York authorities sent them onward as though they answered the claims for the jewel. The matching deliveries multiplied the false appearance of recovery while concealing the original’s location.

The scratch exposes the fakes

The substitution came back into view when Charles examined a clear printed photograph sent with other images of the cameo. He recognized the Castor figure and the old scratch—the same jewel he believed he had received from New York in 2003. But enlarging the mark changed the interpretation: the scratch visible in the photograph was recent and had been imitated, probably from a photograph of the older damage. The mark that had once complicated Régis’s identification now served as a test of authenticity. It was not enough for a copy to resemble the family relic; it also had to reproduce its history of wear.

Charles concluded that the D’Anjou family had received the same counterfeit as he had. That discovery did not settle whether the cameo preserved by the D’Anjou ancestor was itself the authentic missing Castor. Instead, it returned both family claims to uncertainty. Charles reasoned that New York must have sent out two false copies because someone had taken the valuable original and substituted reproductions. In his view, sending both fakes was a clumsy fraud: simply withholding news of the find would have attracted less attention. This explanation is presented as his deduction, not as a complete account of who replaced the jewel or how the original was moved.

Consequences and continuing uncertainty

The matching fakes reset the dispute rather than resolving it. Charles initially treated their delivery as evidence that the genuine cameo must have been found; he then confronted the more troubling possibility that the D’Anjou family might be related to the Castelmonts if the ancestor’s jewel were authentic. Yet the counterfeit sent to him could not establish that relationship, and the old family object remained unverified. He considered enlisting Victor Bourdieu and Pierre de Mirbeau, as well as his Masonic connections, to trace the original.

By the later confrontation, the fraud had also become a liability for Robbart. The FBI official framed the 2003 act as a crime that had endangered the Bureau, and Robbart understood that his career and freedom might be at stake if he failed to retrieve the real jewel discreetly. He contacted Chris, who was posted in Miami, and considered either breaking into the sect’s premises or infiltrating it. The switch thus extended beyond a counterfeit passing as an heirloom: it set off a delayed recovery operation, drew government agencies into the search, and left the cameo’s chain of custody unresolved. The copies made the object seem returned; the copied scratch revealed that the return itself was counterfeit.