Stuff You Should Know - How hard is it to steal a work of art?

Episode Date: May 6, 2010

In general, stealing valuable items tends to be difficult and dangerous, but stealing works of art can be surprisingly easy. In this episode, Josh and Chuck cite recent art heists as they discuss why stealing art is relatively easy. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, to my left, Charles W. Bryant. To my right, Jerry the... The killer, Roland. Yes, thank you, Chuck. To your immediate, immediate right.

Yeah, within two inches, it looks like. Within sniffing distance, as she's pointed out. That is enough of that. Okay. Yeah, hey, so how you doing? Great, sir. Chuck. Josh.

Have you ever seen art? I hate art. Chuck, let's do something different. Yeah, that was nice, though, actually. Thank you. Chuck knows a guy who hates art. Yeah, what a guy who knows a guy who hates art. One of my friends, Redneck Cousin,

said that one time, I hate art, just art. Whatever. It just makes a lot of sense. Movies, poetry, film. Yeah. Sculpture. Sure. I hate art.

Yeah. Let's go ahead. Guy's name, Art. It's like that old joke about a guy hanging on the wall. Yeah, yeah. So go ahead. No, I'm not going to. Okay.

Actually, Chuck, we have, I think, come and gone on the 20th anniversary of the largest art heist in U.S. history. It happened in 1990 in Boston. Yes. Men. What was the name of the museum? Isabella Rossellini Art Museum.

The Isabella Stewart Godna Museum in Boston. And some dudes made out with $250 million in paintings. Rembrandts, they got sketches, and a Manet. Yeah, and they actually did it in high style. They dressed up in Boston police uniforms, dropped by the museum after hours. There were two security guards on duty, both of them college students.

And they went to the door and waved at the security guards who buzzed them in. And then, I guess, used some ploy to get them away from their desk, which held the alarm buzzer. Right. Overpowered them, duct taped them, and then spent 81 minutes in this museum pilfering it.

Yeah. But they think that these guys were local boys who didn't know what they were doing because they passed by, probably Southeast, they passed by some very, very expensive works of art and took those Degas sketches instead. But they still pulled it off. They pulled off the heist of the century.

I was reading an article in, I think, the Boston Globe with the FBI guy who was talking about, they, I guess, reignited the case or something now. Right. They're using new DNA techniques on the duct tape. Yeah, and billboards. Yeah.

Digital billboards in Boston going up, asking for information. But you know what? The statute of limitations of being involved in that crime ran out in 1995. So what does that mean? I don't know. They want that artwork back.

Right, sure. Yeah, bad. So that was an example of a very lo-fi theft operation. No, that's actually high-fi as far as art theft goes. Well, that was my point, though, is that art theft is very lo-fi. Yeah. Across the board.

A guy very famously made off with the Mona Lisa in 1911. Can I say how he did that one? Yeah. Yeah. He's a worker there at the Lyre and he hid somewhere in the museum, waited till the museum closed, came out, cracked it out of its frame, put it under a shirt,

and walked out. Yeah. That's how he stole the Mona Lisa. Yeah. Have you ever seen the Mona Lisa? Yeah. It's very small. It is surprisingly small.

Jerry just nodded like, yes, it is. A woman was actually recently arrested for throwing a mug at the Mona Lisa. Yeah. Because she was rejected for French citizenship. Yeah, I remember that. She was taken it out on all Mona. Although it's like behind all kinds of protection now.

A bulletproof glass. Yeah, but back then, the funny thing is it sat empty for a few days, a couple of days, without the museum doing anything. Because everyone just kind of assumed that someone knew that it was being cleaned or something. And someone knew about its whereabouts. And then finally, somebody eventually went, oh, wait a minute.

You don't have it? And you don't have it? So then they alerted the cops, of course. Which actually, when we were doing research in this article, and this is, by the way, part two in the series of how easy is it to steal blank. Sure. Right, we started with nuclear weapons.

Right, now art. Now art. And what I found from researching this article is it's extremely easy to steal art. Yeah, compared to like a bank or like a diamond jeweler or something like that. Yeah. It's not like the movies.

They don't have the laser beams with Catherine Zeta-Jones shimming and sliding around under the laser beams. Right, yeah. I'm not entirely certain that was Catherine Zeta-Jones. Body double. Yeah. But you can very easily walk into a museum with a gun, as was done in 2004 in Oslo, Norway, when somebody walked in

with a gun and stole the scream. Yes. Edvard Munch's The Scream. Yes, and that is the second time that that's been stolen in the past 15 years alone. Right. And in the past 20 years, there have been dozens and dozens of major paintings, including 20 works by Vincent van Gogh

from a single heist in Amsterdam in 1991. Yeah. And as we're going to tell you, there's a weird law. In 2000, next year, those very paintings may be available legitimately on the open market. No. No? It'll be 10 years from next year.

Oh, is it 20 years? It's 20 years for any art. And the Netherlands is the only country that has this law. Right, Chuck? I thought it was 10 years, yeah. No, it's 20 years for any work of art. 30 years if it's stolen from a public collection, like a museum, or if it's registered

as a national heritage item. Right. But in the Netherlands, after the 20 or 30 years passes, transfer of rightful ownership goes to the thief. So these guys, if they're smart, they're just going to hang. Hopefully, they're young, and they're just going to hang on to them. And then sell them for boatloads of cash. Right.

Does Dutch wacky, wacky Dutch? But there are ways around this. The Dutch just recently busted a group of art thieves who had stolen some works of art from a private gallery. And after 20 years, we're coming forward with the art. And they were set up by this private detective. It was like a movie. Right.

They were set up by this private detective and the Dutch National Police. And he was going to help them blackmail the gallery owner's family or whatever. Right. But he actually handed them over to the police who caught them. And the statute of limitations had run out.

But the works of art were still listed as stolen. So they got them for handling stolen goods and laundering money. A Dutch gumshoe and a Dutch loophole. Yeah. Love it. Can I tell you about one of my favorites? In 2000?

Yeah. The Swedish National Museum, these dudes came in with a machine gun, stole a Renoir and a Rembrandt. But this is where it gets smart. They didn't just walk in with a gun and leave. Before the robbery, they laid out spikes on the roads. So the cops would get flat tires. Yeah.

Too sweet. And right before the robbery, they had accomplices in other parts of the city, two other parts that set off bombs to just instill a bunch of chaos going on. Not a bad idea. No, it's really not. Although if your bomb blows somebody up, you got a murder rap tacked on as well.

Well, yeah, true. Very true. And can I tell you one about Zurich too? This was just two years ago. This was another gun deal. Three dudes broke into the, I'm sorry, they didn't broke in. They waltzed in to the E.G. Birle Foundation Museum in Zurich. And they basically walked in when it was wide open,

full of people, and pulled their guns and said, everybody freeze, everybody get down on the floor. Nobody move, nobody get hurt. Right? Yes, that was my raising airs on reference of the show. Nice. Remember the old guy? Well, which is it?

You want us to freeze or drop? So they basically just got the four paintings closest to the door, all on one wall, still in their protective cases. They walked out, included a Cezanne, a Monet, a Degas, and a Van Gogh. And they found two of these in the back of a car nearby a few days later. And they just figured that they were too heavy. So they just kind of just dropped two of them.

But they were smart enough to keep the most expensive one, right? Yeah. Well, lucky they think that they grabbed it because they think they just grabbed the four closest one. That was a Cezanne, the boy in the red waistcoat. So you can just walk into a museum with a gun or gallery with a gun. You can set off some bombs. You can put down road tax.

That kind of thing. That's one way to do it. Sure. There were some guys in 2001 who drove their jeep through the front door of a museum and made off with some paintings worth four million. You could wage a war. Who did that? Oh, it happens in every war.

There's actually been a huge push for art. Sure, there's a huge push that's been ongoing to return what's called Holocaust era art. Really? To the heirs of the rightful owners. Oh, that's awesome. A lot of times the Nazis were like, give us this and we won't kill you. And then you gave it to them and then they killed you anyway. Right.

And then that art gets matriculated into the underground and then legitimate art world. But there's actually a type of cultural law that's developed. And there's these lawyers making tons of cash in threatening to sue or filing suit against people who own Holocaust era artwork to return it to their rightful owners. Good. Often this is museums as well. Right. Sure.

Do you remember what is it the, was it artwork from Machu Picchu? I don't know. The guy from Yale went down to Peru, I believe, and got something from Machu Picchu or a bunch of stuff from Machu Picchu, took it back to Yale and Yale basically refused to hand it back over to Peru for decades and just finally recently did it. Who do they think they are? Yale. Yale-ies.

Wow. Have you ever stolen art? Yeah. Shut up. That used to be part of the game. I, on my recent vacation, I don't think I told you about this. I went to a gallery in Sausalito, across from the, across the bay in San, or across from San Francisco, and there was a gallery right next to my little inn that had original Dr.

Seuss paintings. Wow. Had like 10 of them. Really, really cool. How much were they? I think they were like, they were under 10 grand. What? Yeah.

I seem to think they were under 10 grand, or around 10 grand. That's awesome. They were really cool though, and I really wanted to steal them. Yeah. Because I don't have 10 grand. Or you could just write a bad check. Hell, that's a good point. Sure.

I should have done that. Check kiting. It doesn't carry quite as much of a penalty as art theft. And then Chuck, do you remember in the zoo episode where I said that Toledo has a surprisingly good art museum? Yeah. There was a pretty famous heist in 1996 with a bunch of paintings that were en route to the Guggenheim, and they were on loan from the Toledo Museum of Art.

Really? Yes. And there were some professional art transporters that had their truck and were transporting this art, and it parked overnight at a motel in Strasburg, Pennsylvania, and the people just looted the truck. Wow. Made off with the paintings. I think they were recovered.

Yeah, I was at the Guggenheim a couple of years ago, and I was kind of there at a bad time, I think, said a lot of their really good stuff that was being transferred. It might have been during that thing. But they were sitting there in their big boxes that they used to ship them, just kind of right there, and there was no one watching them. I mean, they were huge, like I couldn't have just walked out, or maybe I could have if I would have had a machine gun. Yeah, everybody get down.

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No long-term commitments or contracts. Just go to stamps.com, click on the microphone at the top of the page, and enter our code STUFF. So, Josh, this is all well and fine and fun, but why would you steal art? What can you do with a Van Gogh that you have stolen? Well, first off, we should say that ArtTheft, the trade of stolen art, ranks third in the world as far as illicit activities go in generating money, estimated $6 billion annually. Well, that's because art is really, really, really expensive.

Sure, yeah. And it's right behind drugs and then arms. Not bad. No, it isn't bad. Well, it is bad, right? Yeah. Yeah. So, I would say money is the big reason why.

The thing is, is when you are stealing, actually, I would say money is the only reason why. Yeah, but how do you unload art is my thing. I'm getting to that. I'm getting that settled down. I know the answer. When you steal art, you're going to get maybe a tenth of its legal market value on the black market. Sure.

But if you get a $20 million painting, that's pretty good scratch. Sure. That's $2 million right there. Boom. Right? Yeah. Yes. And you're going to get a tenth of, you're going to get a tenth of its value two different

ways. One, you're going to sell it to an unscrupulous dealer. It's so funny. They always use the word unscrupulous. It's part of the art world. When they're talking about ArtTheft, the word unscrupulous always comes before somebody who is knowingly buying or it's not evil or low moral, yeah, shady. Yeah.

It's like saying they have no tact whatsoever. Exactly. An unscrupulous art collector or dealer will buy it, but is going to buy it for 10%. Sure. And you can also sell them as fakes, high, high quality fakes and those usually are replicas we should say, as they say in the art world. And those usually fetch about 10% of the market value. That's probably a lot easier too.

But they were saying that there's, from 1980 to 2010, an estimated 100,000 objects of art have been stolen. Yeah. Just in the last 30 years. I know. They think of a lot of these stolen pieces of art are in the, are in legitimate collector's collections. Right.

Who unknowingly think that they're replicas. Well, yeah, that's one of the keys. If you get an art, a piece of art that is less known, maybe it's not the Mona Lisa. You can sell it and then that gets sold and it's sort of, I think they put it in the article like art laundering. The first dealer kind of dumps it quickly for a lowish price and then they'll sell it to someone, the other person will sell it. And by the time it gets around two or three places and maybe it goes off the auction,

the auction thinks it's a legit, you know, because it comes from a verified owner. And that happened to one Steven Spielberg. It did. I remember when this happened. He had a, he found out he had a stolen Norman Rockwell in his, in his collection. Of course he would have a Norman Rockwell. That just figures, um, you know, Switzerland is notorious apparently for holding illegitimate art auctions.

They were, they're legitimate. These are legitimate auction houses, but they're knowingly selling questionable or stolen art and the very fact that it's passed through this auction house and been purchased legitimately, there's some sort of legitimacy attached to that stolen art now. Right. Yeah. So it befuddles, um, claims of due diligence. There's this thing called, um, buying a piece of art in good faith, right?

Where you're like, I didn't know it was stolen and I bought it legitimately. So it's mine. Right. And the, um, international police community who deal with art theft have kind of come up with these rules that are carried out in the court and first among them is due diligence. You have to go look to see if the paintings stolen. Right. Um, if you're, if your work of art is stolen, there's certain steps you have to follow.

You have to learn the authorities. You have to, um, you know, put it on the, uh, stolen art register. Right. Um, and so if it's stolen, you do, you take certain steps. If you're buying a piece of art, you have to take certain steps, but first among them was something that you mentioned was quick art sale. Right. If you want to buy something in haste, that should be a red flag to you.

Sure. Somebody's just trying to unload it. Let's just do this. I just want to get rid of this Rembrandt real quick. Exactly. So, uh, if they find out that you made a quick sale, your claim of due diligence is out the window and you can't say that you bought it in good faith and you're probably going to lose your money and the piece of art.

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