Spiderman art thief gets eight years for €100 million heist of works including Matisse and Picasso

While Tomic tried to pass himself off as a modern day Arsène Lupin - the legendary, and impeccably dressed, French thief - during the trial, the prosecution said he bore "nothing of a gentleman" even if his "professionalism verges on excellent".

The Paris court handed Jean-Michel Corvez, 61, the antiques dealer who orchestrated the theft, a seven -year sentence. 

Prosecutor Anaïs Trubuilt had described him as having "a total absence of guilt".

A third defendant, Yonathan Birn, 40, who stored the paintings and told the court he had thrown them in the rubbish out of fear of getting caught - a claim dismissed by the prosecution - screamed at the judge when he sentenced him to six years in prison.

The paintings - by Picasso, Matisse, Modigliani, Braque and Fernand Leger - have not been seen since the dramatic 2010 heist.

Ms Trubuilt told the court that the trio "know very well that the day they leave prison, the paintings won't have lost their value and that they can resell them".

Tomic, who has 14 previous convictions, and his accomplices were also ordered to pay a fine of €104 million (£88.5m) - close to the estimated value of the works - to the city of Paris, a civil plaintiff.

William Bourdon, lawyer for the Paris town hall, said that the loss of the paintings was "something unspeakable".

David Olivier Kaminski, lawyer for Mr Tomic, had called for clemency, saying that his client was a mere "cat burglar" who had "acted alone" and got carried away when he realised that there were gaping holes in the museum's security system.

Despite his climbing skills, all Tomic had to do was break one pane of glass and a padlock to carry out his daring heist.

Peimane Ghalez-Marzban, the presiding judge, lamented the "disconcerting ease" in which the athletic thief evaded "defective" security to steal the masterpieces.

Three guards were on duty inside the sprawling museum on the night of the theft but due to a faulty alarm system the thief was able to move around freely. The guards said they had switched off the alarms two months previously, and informed their superiors, as they kept going off at the slightest movement.

During questioning, Tomic told police he had initially broken into the museum only to steal a Fernand Léger work - the 1922 painting titled Still Life with Candlestick - but once inside was "surprised" when the burglary alarm failed to sound.

Being a "veritable art lover," he told them he then wandered around for another hour, eluding 30 closed circuit cameras that were so bad individuals were unrecognisable to cherry pick four other masterpieces.

He took Picasso’s Dove with Green Peas (painted in 1911), Pastoral by Henri Matisse (1906), Olive Tree near l'Estaque by Georges Braque (1906), and Woman with Fan by Amedeo Modigliani (1919) before finally making his escape.

Mr Tomic was arrested in May 2011 after an anonymous tip to the police about a tall, athletic individual hanging around the museum in the days leading up to the heist.
Police said he quickly confessed to the theft but refused to give the name of the person who ordered it. Corvez, was accused of ordering at least one of the works, the Léger, in exchange for €40,000 for Mr Tomic.

Birn, a rare watch dealer and repairer, was accused of hiding the five paintings. During questioning Mr Birn broke down in tears, claiming he had thrown the lot in the bin out of panic.

"I thought I was being followed by the police, convinced I was being filmed or spied on. I told myself that I couldn't get out of the building with the paintings and committed the irreparable," he said.

However, in court even his co-defendant, Corvez, suggested that Birn was "far too crafty" and too much of an art-lover to "degrade himself by destroying the works".