Chilluminati Podcast - Midweek Mini: Are Heists Back in Style?

Episode Date: July 15, 2026

This Minisode was originally uploaded with Episode 347: The Gardner Museum Heist Part 2 - some of the topics discussed might be outdated. Subscribe to our Patreon to listen and watch the Minisodes as they release every week! http://patreon.com/CHILLUMINATIPODMike Martin - http://www.youtube.com/@themoleculemindset Jesse Cox - http://www.youtube.com/jessecox Alex Faciane - https://www.youtube.com/@StarWarsOldCanonBookClub/Editor: DeanCutty Producer: Hilde @ https://bsky.app/profile/heksen.bsky.social Show Art: Studio Melectro @ http://www.instagram.com/studio_melectro Logo Design: Shawn JPB @ https://twitter.com/JetpackBragginLinks:The Return Of The Stolen Books: https://gothamist.com/news/plot-twist-rare-books-worth-3-million-stolen-decades-ago-resurface-in-manhattanHeists Are Becoming More Popular: https://www.ms.now/opinion/magnani-rocca-italy-art-heist-ai

Notice, notice, this midweek mini was recorded several months ago and may not be up to date with current events. For fresh minisode uploads with every episode, head to patreon.com slash Chaluminati pod. Welcome. Hi guys. Oh, yeah, brother. Okay. Hey. We're back on the show.

And we're back. Do you want to just talk about the scientists? Is that what we want to talk about? Or did we say what we want to say? Can I do a thing really quick then? No. Before you do scientists. Go ahead.

So our episode, the last two, was about art theft, right? And yes, major discussions about like, how would you return it? Well, a brand new article from Gothamist, gothomist.com by Ben Fjured. Wait, Ben, what? Fjord. Yard? Yeah, that was close to something not so great. Almost punch you right in the nose, sucker.

Well, you know, take it up the man, Ben. More than two dozen rare books, including a bound collection of love letters by poet John Keats, was stolen at some point between 1982 and 1989 from the Long Island Estate of John Hay Whitney, a wealthy New York publisher who once served as president to the Museum of Modern Art. The location of the books mostly remained a mystery for decades. But in 2025, the Manhattan District Attorney's Office said 17 books resurfaced when a young man tried to sell them to a rare book dealer in Manhattan. The man, who has not been identified, said he inherited them from his grandfather,

according to the DA's office. The dealer's contact to the office, which secured the search warrant and the seizure of them. What's interesting about this is they had been trying to, tracking these for a while trying to find them. They simply couldn't. And what I think is very funny is they just turned up. A kid was trying to sell them. And they asked the district attorney, I'm like, okay, so what do we do about this? And the district attorney, Matthew Bogdanos, said the man who tried to sell the books has not been accused of any wrongdoing. The individual who sees the books from wasn't even born at the time of the theft. So he definitely didn't do it.

that's so so like they they they got even you do you get arrested like if you had them and you're yeah he said the boy said that he got it from his grandfather which you know where'd he get it from and the grandfather's dead so like nothing you can do about it nothing you can do yeah but they got it back eventually which is crazy honestly that happens frequently is art will vanish and then 50 years later show up after like everyone involves dead That's the only way. It's actually, it's actually quite crazy.

And then someone who has no knowledge of it will try to sell it or try to be like, what is this? So we just walked right into a store again. Yeah, dude tried to sell 17 books. Are these worth anything? That's fucking crazy. Look, in the modern age, you get a bunch of old-ass books. You're probably going to sell it to some dude who's like a book guy, you know?

All right. Well, since Jesse's talking about heists, let me just get in here before we talk about the, dead scientists. I don't know what we were going to say, but we will. The MS Now website published an article on April 4th, talking about the fact that on Sunday, March 22nd, four masked men forced to open the front door to the Magnani-Roka Foundation. It was a private art collection, very similar to the Gardner collection, nestled in the

fields of northern Italy in less than three minutes, which is the normal amount of time that a heist takes. The thieves climbed the stairs, turned left, entered the French room, where they grabbed three paintings off the wall. Le Poisson, 1917 by Pierre Auguste Renoir, Still Life with Cherries, 1890 by Paul Cézanne, and Odalisque on the terrace by Henri Matisse, 1922. They intended to keep going. They found another Renoir that had been taken down, but the alarm sounded forcing the thieves to abandon their work and flee by climbing over offense. That is the first two paragraphs of this article, but the article is actually about why the fuck is this happening so much? 2025 was a record year for art theft. That's another

crazy thing that happened. If you guys remember the Louvre robbery that happened in broad daylight, like in October that they got like a hundred million dollars with a jewelry from the Louvre, just in the middle of the day, uh, there was. also the, forgive me about some of these pronunciations because I don't know them. The Drenz Museum lost some golden Romanian artifacts that were returned a couple weeks ago. Some of them were returned a couple weeks ago. The Adrienne du Bochet National Museum lost some Chinese porcelain works. The French National Museum of Natural History lost some gold nuggets.

The Bristol Museum lost 600 objects. The Denny Diderot Museum lost 2,000. thousand gold and silver coins. The Oakland Museum lost a thousand things. The National Museum of Damascus lost Roman statues. The Bibliotheca Mario de Andrade lost Matisse engravings. All of that. Just in the last year that's happened.

And so there's three reasons why they think this might be on the uptick, according to Walker Schultz Schneider from MS now. And here they are. First thing, poor security. nobody funds museums because they're not a sexy thing to fund nobody wants to fund the security system of a museum and put their name on it rather than like some dope thing in a museum that's one problem also museums are always in like fancy buildings so they like you don't want to fuck them up by doing like non beautiful things um and so it leaves a very outdated vibe in most museums the password to the lube's cc TV network was Louv. Stop. Next, next reason is because of like what's going on in the world today.

So metals and gemstones are up because they're much more reliable than like the economic sort of money, economic based market base money. They're just like stones. So it's easy to steal them and melt them down. That's probably what the deal was with the Louvre heist was that it was just so worth it to steal them now that it was time. Same thing with the gold artifacts. Same thing with the gold nuggets.

But that does not explain... Is it down the artifacts? Is there a theory? Maybe. Yeah. But that doesn't explain the Magnani Rockaheis from a couple weeks ago where it was all paintings. So why paintings? Well, the

value of paintings, because we were talking about this so much in the previous episode has to do with collateral in black market deals it's like a real nfts right it's like actually not something that a picture of is equal to like it's an actual painting so it can like be moved around as physical wealth in a way that other things can't uh same thing bargaining chip for law enforcement same thing you can contact the director of the museum and ransom it back to the museum those are all reasons why people have stolen paintings in the past, but the main reason why people are stealing paintings in 2026 is because of AI. What? AI entered the market in the late 2010s and it has carved

out a share for itself and it is definitely something that makes money sometimes. Christy's held an auction for AI art only in 2025. But the sort of flip side of that is that, like, blue chip quote unquote art is like absolutely the opposite of AI and cannot be reproduced by AI and is sort of like the anti-AI, like its value has gone up because it's now rarer because like no, there's no, there's not, Like, because everybody can do AI art with prompts and stuff, actual real hand-on art that's especially stuff with a pedigree where it's like the Mona Lisa or the whatever, it's so much more valuable as a real piece of art that was made by a person in a place at a time

that literally, and I'm not joking you, worldwide sales, legitimate sales of Impressionist Works and modern art has increased by 30% up to 4.2 billion. in 20. Interesting. That in a way makes sense, though. Like, I can see that. I can see, though, the, how A causes B. Over 120,000 works sold for over $10 million. Damn.

I'm saying each one of the works sold for over $10 million. Old Masters, that's 1,300 to 1800, 40% up. Post-warrent contemporary, 2.5% up to $4.1 billion. So it makes sense if you think about it. Because whether you like it or not, AI is here. And it's pretty clear that people who really care about art, like don't give a fuck about AI art. Like it only makes the real shit that much more legit.

And that's really why in a modern day, art theft is such a big deal. And why these like crazy smash and grab quick jobs are going to be only more frequent until we figure out something to do about it and until we fix the world. It's just a great way to see how crime can just like leap out of pretty pictures.

And we're going to start fixing the world right here on this podcast. That's our job. I make no promises. Patreon.com slash illuminati pod. Help us fix the world. I don't know. I know we got to talk about these scientists. I don't know what there is to say, man.

Like it's weird, more weird things are happening. if we want to jump into it. Alex, have, like, have you caught yourself up on it? I don't know that much about it, like in a, like, detail, detail, detail way, but I've been tracking, like, sort of the developing story.

I've tracked like, oh, another one, another one, another one. And I've heard the stories that a lot of them are, like, grabbing a gun and running into the wilderness. I heard that one of them was found dead in a car, burnt. I heard that, you know. Esprich's texts are surfacing now with her friends. They're their friends are releasing the text. that she had with them.

And one of the texts the day before she died said, whatever you hear, I did not commit suicide. Like, I don't like, you know, not going to kill myself because she was working. And the pattern of all of them isn't, like I said, it isn't UFOs because, but they're all working in propulsion, exotic matter, exotic propulsion, anti-gravity was her big thing. She was waiting for NASA to approve her study that she wanted to publish and all this stuff. And all of these people are kind of attached to this kind of thing, I guess.

is the way to put it. I think it's the TikTok, bro. Well, I think the TikTok, I think, well, we've said this a lot on the show. Some of the UAPs are definitely manmade.

Like, I absolutely think they're definitely manmade. And one of the more recent ones was a new, a guy Matthew James Sullivan, who was 39 and former Air Force intelligence officer. We realized, we soon, recently found out he died in 2024,

right before he could testify in a federal whistleblower case. That was connected to the UAP phenomenon. on, which is not, and he, his, uh, death is simply listed suicide without any details at all. Um, and these just keep coming out with escorts, talking about like, uh, weapons and she's just kind of a targeted of harassment. All of this stuff, for whatever the reason, it's all around just, uh, what do you call it? Just like exotic propulsion mechanisms. Because if it's another thing we talked about with UFOs and UAP in general is like, if a country,

figures out anti-gravity just for a lack of a better word for it a way to move without having combustion engines that can move without at speeds that we don't understand they win

it is a civilization level technology like if you can move your plane anywhere on the surface of this planet with an under a minute because you can manipulate gravity and it explodes the sciences it collapses the petrol doll

Like all of these things, if this is true, like, and we do have it, the reason I can see it being hidden, especially as we watch our world around us today is the dollar, is money, right? Like, it collapses. We are looking at the straight of four moves alone showing how powerful and how much this world runs on the petro doll and like on oil. And if that vanishes overnight, entire economies fucking collapse, including Americas. And like, if that technology exists and there is zero point energy and this ability to manipulate gravity or however they go about it, that is civilization like ending and dominating and defining technology. Why would anyone who's currently running the world the way it's being run want any of that

out? Like, I don't think it's alien related. Maybe we, maybe there's a fraction of like, we started researching this because of UAP phenomenon or whatever. But I think it's a much more logical read to say this is world politics, technology politics at play with the economy and the in the powers that be not wanting the way they hold power to collapse. That's what makes sense to me. I don't know what your thoughts on it are. But like you said earlier in the other episode, though, like there is now an official FBI investigation with the combined with the DOE, the Department of War, whatever they fucking call it now.

and a couple other departments, like, they're opening up an investigation into this, however much we want to even trust that shit, you know, today with our government. But it's, it's weird, you know, and as these, like, family and friends of Eskridge are releasing texts they had with her leading up to her death, it's like, it's very clear, like, she was being targeted for a long time and whatever she was working on, you know, it's, it's bizarre. I don't know what to think of it. I think there's just, I hate to say it, but I just think there's, greed, humanity's greed is probably at the center of these people going missing.

Yeah, I mean, it's starting to feel just real. It's starting to just feel like some people getting killed for some reason. Yeah, like it, um, I, I, I guess I don't know enough about what each person was working on, but it does, it is weird for sure. But I like, it's, I, the connectors, the connective tissue, I don't know how much is real. But I do know that all these people are like, yo, I'm not, I'm not going to kill myself. So like, don't believe that shit. And then they're dead. So, and that is weird.

But so, but so too did David Wilcox say that. And he just. Yeah, he's another one. David Wilcox is one. There's like, I am not suicidal. On the next day he was dead. He said on video they did before and the day, the day after he was dead. And there's the other aspect, too, that muddies it.

He's, he's like, by the way, not a expert scientist. He is a, like, UFO, like disclosure specific UFO. I mean, that's why I'm wondering about the connective tissue, because I feel like there might be some disparate things happening. Yeah, it might be. And that's, and the other thing that makes it muddy, too, is there are some of the scientists who were killed, like specifically the guy, the guy was shot on his front lawn, that they're looping into this that are not related to this,

that are just happenstance, random acts of cruelty and crime that caused it. And there may very well be someone there that are suicides, like legit suicides, but it's the patterns of like the people who take their guns and nothing else in the leave. People like Eskridge and Wilcox who are like, I'm not suicidal,

like they were trying to get things published or whatever, and then they die. It's just, it's a weird thing. And that's really all there is to it. Because what else can you even say? Like, I don't know what else there's to say.

It's notable and it is real. And that's really it. Where the connective tissue stops and where it begins, we don't know. Like Jesse said, and I think none of us can say that we know enough about what they were doing within the government to warrant why they would be targeted that way. We'll never know that as much as we would like to know.

I don't think we'll ever know. I'm trying to look even like in any of these listings and it being like specifically anything that they said that links to anything that they're doing. doing anything that's like they are trying to kill me because XYZ, there really isn't that. Right. No, only Eskridge's texts have anything like that. Where she thinks is because of her anti-gravity research that she's waiting for NASA's approval to publish or something.

And she was, yeah, there's a whole thing with her where she's like one group of people was saying it's fine. You move forward to the other group of people saying, you know what happens to people who try to do this. And like, it's crazy. It's crazy. So we will keep updating you as like things come out or if this goes by the wayside and it disappears like the drone thing did. It's something.

It's something. Whatever it is, we're seeing it. It's crossed the point where it's literally like, you know, not real. Like we're not, we're not, you know, playing pooh sticks now. Yeah, exactly. There's something. Something is there is happening. So just keep your eyes on it.

Who knows? And obviously do you like do your research. with the FBI on it. I mean, it's a fucking, it's Cash Patel's FBI. So like, let's not. Not for long, baby. Yeah, yeah, he's, he's imploding as we speak. We'll see. Um, yeah, but that's it. He,

he fucked up so bad. They all will at some point. He opened the DOJ by, with this lawsuit, man. When we cover, the DOJ to like depositions over whether or not he's good at his job. It's almost like, he, like, it's like the most, it's like the most,

it's like the most self-owning know what he's doing. It's like the most self-owning thing he could have possibly done in this situation. He's just going to basically get a bunch of people in court saying he sucks. He basically was going to happen. Anyway, that's it. That's it for us. We're out of here. We'll be back next week with a brand new Minnesota. We appreciate your support at patreon.com slash shulminati.com. We'll see next week. Goodbye. Blab and Danzu. Bye.