The Art of the Heist
It's not The Thomas Crown Affair, but theft of artwork is a big-bucks business
Stolen art can pop up at thousands of auction houses, flea markets, and estate sales across America. In an industry where business is often done anonymously, by private contract or in backroom dealings, the auction is the most public and transparent forum, an unofficial system of checks and balances. "Everything we're going to sell is available online [and] from time to time, people will call in and say, 'Wait a minute! That's my property,' " says Jo Backer Laird, senior vice president and general counsel in Christie's New York office.
After the massive looting of archaeological sites in Iraq, the FBI expects stolen antiquities to soon flood the U.S. marketplace. "People don't even really know what's being stolen," says David Shillingford, who runs the Art Loss Register's New York office. "If something is being dug out of the ground, you don't even know it was stolen because the first person to see it for 6,000 years is the thief."
Partly in anticipation of an influx of Iraqi artifacts, the FBI fielded an art crime team last year (previously, art was lumped into the broad category of property theft). Wittman shepherded seven agents through a mini art school to teach them "the difference between a Rembrandt and a Picasso." Unlike the Italian carabinieri or the Spanish art theft squad, which boasts hundreds of art cops, Wittman remains the FBI's only full-time man on the job.
"Whoever would have heard of a baseball card going for $500,000?" asks Wittman, shaking his head. "It's become treasure, get-rich-quick stuff. [And] as the value goes up, so does the fraud."
View Of Auvers-Sur-Oise. This C e zanne was taken from the University of Oxford ' s Ashmolean Museum. Value: $3 million.
The Madonna. Thieves stole a version of this Munch work in Oslo. Value: $15 million.
The Storm on the Sea of Galilee. Rembrandt ' s seascape. Value: Unknown.
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