Results for “property”
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Heist
In the early hours after St. Patrick's Day 1990, two men dressed as police officers talked their way into the Gardner Museum and left with thirteen works of art. It remains the largest unsolved property theft in history. With a current value of $1 Billion.
The Stephen Shih Rodin Theft
On Thanksgiving Day 1988, Stephen Shih walked into Philadelphia's Rodin Museum with a handgun, handcuffed three guards, fired a warning shot, and strolled out with Rodin's 'Mask of the Man with the Broken Nose'. It was recovered four months later near a basement furnace.
Robert K. Wittman
Founder of the FBI's National Art Crime Team, Wittman spent two decades recovering stolen cultural property valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars. His undercover work spanned continents and helped establish art crime as a serious field of law enforcement rather than a romantic footnote. he also wrote a great book: https://www.amazon.com/Priceless-Undercover-Rescue-Worlds-Treasures-ebook/dp/B0036S4BRG?ref_=ast_author_mpb Here's a talk by Wittman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfnICrTyhHM
Banksy
Anonymous British street artist whose practice sits permanently on the legal edge — trespass, criminal damage, and property disputes — even as his works are removed from walls and sold for millions, raising unresolved questions about who owns illegal art.
Octave “Okkie” Durham - The Dutch Lupin
On December 7, 2002, Octave “Okkie” Durham and an accomplice broke into Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum, smashed a window and escaped with two paintings. The entire operation took around three minutes and forty seconds. No elaborate disguises or Hollywood-style gadgets—just a ladder, a hammer and a serious security problem. The stolen works were View of the Sea at Scheveningen (1882) and Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen (1884). DNA evidence helped identify Durham, who was arrested in Spain in 2003 and later imprisoned. He never revealed where the paintings were hidden. The Van Goghs remained missing until 2016, when Italian police discovered them during a raid on a property linked to Raffaele Imperiale, a figure associated with the Camorra criminal organization. After fourteen years in the underworld, the paintings finally returned to Amsterdam. Durham’s story took another turn when he began working with Dutch art detective Arthur Brand. In 2023, he helped facilitate the return of Van Gogh’s The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring, stolen from the Singer Laren museum in 2020. The painting was delivered to Brand in a blue IKEA bag. Art recovery, apparently, doesn't always require white gloves. Durham says he no longer steals art, instead using his underworld connections to help recover it. There’s a certain irony in a convicted art thief becoming an asset to investigators, but he knows how the stolen art world operates because he once worked inside it. He stole two Van Goghs in under four minutes. Getting them home took fourteen years. These days, he seems more interested in opening doors than breaking windows.
Three Decades On, the Gardner Reward Still Stands at $10 Million
The museum reaffirms its offer as investigators mark another anniversary of the unsolved 1990 heist.
From Condos to Condos
The Warhol Mistaken for Rubbish
A rare Andy Warhol silkscreen of Queen Beatrix, part of the 'Reigning Queens' series, was most likely thrown out with construction debris during town-hall renovations and destroyed at a waste facility.