What Tools Would a Thief Use to Break Into a Museum and Steal a Priceless Piece of Art
Have information technology from a former FBI amanuensis who made a career out of busting art thieves: The reason crooks steal priceless paintings like the two Van Gogh works that were recently recovered in Italian republic is because they're priceless.
It'southward not because the thieves are smart.
"The true art in art theft is not in the stealing, it's in the selling," Robert Wittman, who led the FBI's Art Crime Team, told NBC News. "Merely when somebody steals a globe famous painting, they quickly detect it'south too famous to fence. And they're stuck with something they can't sell."
That is probably why, Wittman said, the Naples-based Camorra offense clan discovered to be in possession of the "Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church building in Nuene" and "View of the Ocean at Scheveningen" was however holding on to the paintings some 14 years afterward they were stolen from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam in 2002.
"I guarantee you that the reason they were found is that somebody was trying to market place them and the police found out," Wittman said. "They e'er have to come up to market at some point."
So why do thieves persist in purloining Picassos and other well-known art when it's and then hard to unload them?
"Criminals are better thieves than businessmen," said Wittman.
Also, the vast bulk of fine art thieves deport nada resemblance to the dapper billionaire played past Pierce Brosnan in the heist movie "The Thomas Crown Affair," who has to get around high security at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City to make off with a Monet.
"It's distortion," Wittman said. "There aren't any professional person, top notch fine art thieves. The guys who stole the Van Goghs used a ladder to become inside the museum."
Anthony Amore agreed and he would know. For the last decade, he has been director of security at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, which in 1990 became the victim of the largest art theft in history.
Two men posing every bit cops barged into the museum later on it was closed, overpowered the guards, and made off with xiii pieces worth $300 million that have never been plant.
"Fine art thievery is a curt-sighted crime," said Affection, writer of "The Fine art of the Con." "Thieves are sure they're going to make loads of coin. Then it hits the press and they realize this is going to get them in problem."
Amore said he is convinced that is the reason why the Rembrandt, Degas, Manet, Vermeer and other paintings stolen from his museum have not been recovered.
"My best guess is they're being held by somebody who can't figure out how to monetize them," he said. "We're offering a $v 1000000 advantage for the paintings. So equally far as the thieves are concerned, we're the but game in town. Just that means coming frontward to us."
Security expert Anthony Roman said no reputable art dealer volition affect hot goods like these — and even a black marketplace dealer will think twice well-nigh trying to sell off a stolen Renoir, Modigliani or Gauguin.
"Art thieves oft meet this equally a crime of opportunity," he said. "They may not take established networks for getting rid of the art."
Stealing a Matisse is not like stealing a Mazda, said Syracuse University professor Robert Thompson, an good on pop civilisation.
"It'southward such an irrational act," Thompson said. "When you rob a bank you spend the money. When you steal jewelry who pawn it off. When you steal a car y'all drive information technology. But what do you lot do with a famous stolen painting? You can't prove it off similar a status symbol."
Nevertheless, he said, "in that location's the glamour of stealing something at that place's only 1 of."
James Ratcliffe, manager of the Art Loss Annals, said art thieves are "mostly motivated by the perceived opportunity to take something of significant value."
"What people don't realize is that value doesn't exist when something is stolen," he said. "They're worth a tiny proportion of that on the black market, if anything ... Who's going to purchase it? You can't put it on your wall."
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Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/here-s-why-art-thieves-steal-paintings-they-can-t-n657656
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