Stolen Art Watch, Shakespeare Stolen Folio, The Plot Thickens !!

http://stolenvermeer.blogspot.com/2007/05/harry-potter-magic-brings-stolen-book.html

A little bit of referencing has revealed the following;

A story from last year gives a clue to the gang behind the Shakespeare folio theft:


Happy ending for stolen rare book

By JAMES WILLOUGHBYN

A RARE book, worth more than £2,000, stolen five years ago from an Alnwick bookshop has been returned home – all the way from America.

George Adams Senior’s 1746 title – Micrographia Illustrata, First Edition – was swiped from Barter Books in 2002 and later taken across the Atlantic to an Alabama antiques store.
But, the store’s owner Axel Hein became suspicious of the Barter Books bandit as he was looking “shifty and changing his story a lot”.

Mr Hein looked on the Antiquarian Booksellers Association website, which notifies browsers of stolen books, and matched the description of the lost book to the one he had seen in his store.
Barter Books had described the book as: “Edges soiled. In need restoration. First four plates are loose and damaged.” Mr Hein subsequently alerted Interpol, the international police organisation.

Barter Books owner Stuart Manley said: “The condition of the book and the way the man acted led Axel to believe that it was our book. He alerted Interpol who then contacted Northumbria Police. Then in June last year, we received a call from the police telling us they had found it.”
The book, which, if in mint condition can fetch up to around £11,000, is one of the earliest books on microscopes and there are only about half a dozen in the world.
Barter Books had placed the title under the “very special books” category in their appeal for its return.

Because of this, Micrographia – along with other titles – was kept in a glass case in the shop.
Stuart said: “There was no damage to the case so he must have distracted a shop assistant and taken the book. The price of the book was £2,200. We didn’t know straight away and we thought it had gone forever at that point. We registered it on the website but we heard nothing for four years.

“To get the book back was an unexpected surprise because we didn’t expect to see it again. It has been all the way to Alabama and back.”

The thief, Paul William Powell, 60, from the Trimdon area of County Durham, subsequently served a year’s probation. Stuart added: “We have already thanked Axel and we are going to send him a $200 cheque – and a copy of the Gazette when it comes out!”

Last Updated: 03 May 2007

Art Hostage comments:

Cannot believe the Harry Potter connection was not made for this good news story.

As Alnwick Castle, the masterpiece of the Northumberland English town of Alnwick, and is the scene of many of Harry Potter's exploits, filmed at the castle, I am sure some of the Harry Potter magic has contributed to this wonderful turn of events and Young Potter's magic must be given credit.

New Comment about truth behind stolen Alnwick book recovery

Well my dear friends I appreciate being linked to Harry Potter. Now the truth about the return of the book.

Interpol had very little to do with the recovery of the book.

The FBI and US Customs are responsible. Mr Powell was not convicted on the book because no one from the UK side would identify the book and testify for the US gov.

Mr Powell was convicted in the US for smuggling ivory and other items. For this he received 2yrs probation in the US.

The thief Paul William Powell has many more items, books , paintings jewelry in the US; but US authorities can not get the co-operation of UK authorities .

There are probably many more items that were owned by UK citizens but they will never be returned due to the lack of co-operation of UK authorities.

I have never received a thank you from the bookshop. Currently Mr. Powell has filed suit against me in a US court for 3000.00 USD.

I am still in possession of some of the property he brought to this country which are probably also stolen.

But I will not do the research to find the rightful owners.

Alnwck Book shop Has never thanked me in anyway.

Not that it matters ,I would have done that for anyone.But due to the expenses ,I can not continue to spend the time to find the rightful owners of the paintings,art objects and jewelry.brought to America by Mr. Powells little international enterprise.

Food for thought !!

Latest comment throws new light on this Powell chap


Thank you Mr. Manley of Barter Books.

He did as he said he would he did thank me and sent the 200.00 cheque. It is appreciated.I apologize for getting ahead of him.

He is a man of his word and honorable.A large part of the credit for the return of the book also goes to Special Agent Cary Straub of the FBI and Senior Agent James .

Also I was informed today, by another antique dealer that Mr. Powell is back in business trying to import items back into the US. He is currently seeking another patsy in the US.

So dear friends in the UK watch youre belongings and merchandise Powell is on the prowl again!!!

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Follow-on from Paul William Powell 2007, Ray Scott 2008:

http://arthostage.blogspot.com/2008/07/stolen-art-watch-shakespeare-first.html

http://arthostage.blogspot.com/2008/07/stolen-art-watch-elaborate-extortion.html

Art Hostage comments:

Now, Ray Scott 51 the man accused of handling the stolen Shakespeare folio, from above story, and he hails from the same area in England as Paul William Powell 61. Similar age group, both deal in antiques, books etc, both caught in America with stolen artworks/books.

By joining the dots these two are in cahoots and I am certain they know each-other very well.

As I said before the whole Shakespeare folio charade was an attempt to extort money from the University by way of preventing a costly legal action to determine the rightful owners.

Gathering from what has been said about Paul William Powell by the previous comments I declare these two are part of an organised gang that steals and sells stolen artworks/books in the United States of America.

Blimey, better than playing Cluedo !!

Stolen Art Watch, Da Vinci Madonna, Stories and Comments Removed !!

Da Vinci Madonna

To whom it may concern.

Art Hostage would like to offer unreserved apologies.

All Da Vinci Madonna stories and comments have been removed.

Art Hostage has removed all references to the Da Vinci Madonna case and will not be making any further comments until after the trial.

Stolen Art Watch, Gardner Art Heist, Anthony Amore Unplugged !!!

Art Hostage Interviews Anthony Amore

(1) What is your favourite colour

Anthony Amore: That’s easy: the Azzurro of the Italian national soccer team.

(2) What is your favourite curse word

AA: I have too large a stable to choose from to pick just one.

(3) When you reach Heaven what would you like God to say to you

AA: Anthony, you did your best.

(4) The public reward offer made by the Gardner Museum contains the line “in good condition” can you elaborate on this because some of the stolen Gardner paintings were cut from their frames, therefore their condition could not be described as good.

AA: The Museum’s Board of Trustees is aware that two of the stolen paintings were cut from their frames and were damaged in the process.

This fact was taken into account when the verbiage surrounding the reward offer was crafted and the fact that the paintings were cut from their frames will not adversely affect an individual/s eligibility to cash in on the $5 million reward if the stolen artworks are returned in otherwise good condition.

(5) Can you confirm the amount of stolen artworks from the Gardner museum as there have been indications the list is not completely true, i.e. Eagle was not stolen

AA: I can definitively confirm that thirteen works of art were stolen. The Napoleonic finial which rested atop the flag of Napoleon’s first regiment was indeed among the art objects that were stolen during the heist. Some early newspaper accounts incorrectly stated that twelve pieces were stolen and that reporting error is still perpetuated in articles now and then.

(6) It is common knowledge within the stolen art world, both the Criminal underworld and those who recover stolen art, that Mark Dalrymple and Dick Ellis both met with Gardner Museum Director Anne Hawley and subsequent to those meetings both Mark Dalrymple and Dick Ellis came to the conclusion the reward offer was not sincere, can you please put the record straight once and for all.

AA: If your readers can take away only one message from this interview, it is that Anne Hawley is a woman of the utmost integrity.

For more than 18 years, Hawley has stated publicly that the Museum is offering a reward of $5 million for information leading directly to the recovery of the all 13 pieces in good condition.

She would not make this statement if it were not absolutely true. Further, Anne’s commitment is echoed and fully supported by the Museum’s Board of Trustees.

It also bears mention that the Board of Trustees re-authorized the reward this past November – and all of us at the museum look forward to the day when the stolen artworks are returned to the museum and to an awaiting public where they belong and can make good on the $5 million offer.

(7) To prevent any stings and arrests at the actual recovery of the stolen Gardner art, do you agree a neutral place should be chosen and then authorities, or better still Anthony Amore, is directed to the location to collect the stolen Gardner art?

AA: The museum can ensure confidentiality to anyone with information leading to the recovery of the stolen artworks. My hope is that whoever is in possession of Mrs. Gardner’s art will come forward in a manner that best protects the condition of the artwork.

(8) If you agree with a neutral location to receive the stolen Gardner art, do you also agree a Catholic Church confession box would be ideal, not least because of the symbol of absolution and also because a Catholic church confession box prevents any trace as to who handed back the stolen Gardner art.

AA: In an absolute best case scenario, I believe it best that the art not be moved at all so that the museum’s conservators can handle any movement, thus protecting the art in the best possible manner. In line with this, I would remind those in possession of the art that it should be stored at 70 degrees Fahrenheit and 50% humidity.

My hope is that an individual/individuals with information that will help us locate the stolen artwork will come forward – and that he or she will come forward in a manner that best protects the condition of the artwork. Again, the museum can ensure complete confidentiality of anyone with information leading to the recovery of the stolen artworks.

(9) Geoff Kelly, lead FBI Agent in charge of the Gardner Heist investigation is clearly a thoroughly decent and honest hardworking FBI Agent, how will the FBI react if they are not included in your recovery of the stolen Gardner art, will they allow it to happen, will they stand aside.

AA: Special Agent Kelly has proven to me that his main concern is the return of all of the art in good condition. The FBI and the United States Attorney’s Office, have given me every reason to believe that they are, as is the museum, seeking a successful resolution to this tragedy, not credit.

(10) There have been many references to Ireland during the Gardner Heist investigation can you confirm your findings

AA: As an open, active investigation, I cannot speak to any specific theories or leads in the case – other than to say that the museum follows each and every lead and encourages anyone with any information about the stolen artworks and/or the investigation–no matter how seemingly small – to contact me, Anthony Amore, Director of Security, directly at 617/278-5114 or theft@gardnermuseum.org .

The museum is offering a reward of $5 million for information leading directly to the recovery of the stolen artworks in good condition, and can ensure confidentiality.

(11) Dick Ellis claims he obtained an immunity agreement from the Boston D.A. in 2002, have you obtained an immunity agreement, if so, would it be possible for Art Hostage to post it on the blog so the public, and those in control of the stolen Gardner art can review it.

AA: Because the matter is in the hands of the Federal government, your question would pertain to an immunity agreement from the United States Attorney for Massachusetts. I have no information about such an agreement, although, I can say that United States Attorney Sullivan has in the past expressed a willingness to grant immunity (depending on the circumstances, of course) in this matter.

(12) We have, and the criminal underworld have, seen the Lawyers and private detectives who handed back the Da Vinci Madonna arrested and indicted, what assurances can you offer to allay the fears of those with the stolen Gardner art they will not suffer the same fate

AA: The Museum’s sole concern is the recovery of all of the art in good condition. The Museum is offering a reward for $5 million for information leading to the recovery of the stolen artworks in good condition – and can ensure confidentiality. Anyone with information about the theft or the location of the stolen artworks can contact the museum – and me directly via theft@gardnermuseum.org or my direct line, 617 278 5114. Matters related to arrests and indictment are the responsibility of Federal law enforcement authorities.

(14) Some people have said over the years they thought the Gardner art was really insured and the $5 million reward offer is coming from the insurance payout, can you confirm whether the Gardner art was really insured, and if not, where has the $5 million reward come from and is it sitting in an account waiting to be paid.

AA: The Gardner art was most definitely not insured. These stolen artworks are invaluable and irreplaceable. The $5 million reward is indeed real, and the Museum is eager to disburse the full $5 million the reward for information that leads directly to the return of the stolen artwork in good condition.

(15) How do you intend to pay the reward, have you obtained permission from the FBI and the Boston D.A. to pay the reward without informing them.

AA: The reward is being offered by the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, not the FBI or the D.A. and will be paid by the Museum at its discretion on the receipt of information that leads to the return of all of the stolen artworks in good condition. The reward will be awarded at our discretion.

(16) Do you intend to keep FBI Agent Geoff Kelly informed as to your negotiations, or will you work without a net, so to speak.

AA: Special Agent Kelly has expressed his willingness to support me and the museum’s efforts to recover our art. He respects our working relationship and the museum’s needs to pursue its interests directly

(17) Would you be prepared to recover the stolen Gardner art covertly and face the wrath of law enforcement post-recovery.

AA: I don’t foresee facing “the wrath of law enforcement.” I see law enforcement as an understanding partner in my efforts to recover the Gardner’s stolen artworks – and to return them to the museum, and an awaiting public, where they belong.

(18) Would you be prepared to break the law, even go to jail, in recovering the stolen Gardner art.

AA: Absolutely not.

(19) If you were able to only choose one stolen Gardner painting to recover, which one would that be, Art Hostage would choose the Vermeer.

AA: I am well aware of Art Hostage’s love for the Vermeer, and it speaks to your good taste in art! We at the Museum see all 13 pieces as parts separated from the entirety of Mrs. Gardner’s collective work. She placed each of the thousands of pieces of work in the Museum in an exact location in order to create a larger work of art. With even one piece gone, her work is incomplete.

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(20) How do you react to those (Mark Dalrymple) who accuses you of being nothing more than a civil servant pen pusher who has no authority and experience in recovering stolen art.

AA: Mr. Dalrymple and I do not know each other. I’ll assume that this accusation—if truly made—was taken out of context.

(21) Rocky has been working for the Gardner Museum for a few years now and has received payment for his work, how do you react to those (Mark Dalrymple) who say Rocky is just scamming the Gardner Museum without any realistic prospect of recovering any of the stolen artworks.

AA: I cannot confirm that your depiction of Mr. Rokoszynski’s relationship with the Museum is accurate. I can say that I know Mr. Rokoszynski very well. He is an investigator with a record of remarkable success in his distinguished career with Scotland Yard. I trust him and consider him a close friend and valued mentor. In my years of dealing with him, he has acted with honor and integrity. I seek his counsel regularly, and the Museum welcomes his guidance and assistance in our recovery efforts

(22) Finally Anthony, imagine Art Hostage could convince those with the Gardner art to hand the Vermeer back via a Catholic Church confession box, how would they get paid the reward.

AA: I don’t know that it serves the Museum or those in possession of the art well to disclose publicly how the reward would be handled, other than to say that it would be handled legitimately and discreetly. Further, there are myriad ways in which the reward could be paid out, so it is difficult to speak to this with any useful specificity.

(23) Alternatively, lets take it step by step, Anthony could you take us through each step of your proposed recovery of the stolen Gardner art, avoiding arrests and ending with the reward payments made.

AA: Art Hostage, I welcome you to ask me that question again after the recovery!

Thank you for the opportunity to address these important matters – and for the work you do.

Breaking news

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Apparently, and it is yet to be confirmed, Charlie Hill or Michel Van Rign have told Interpol, who in turn told the Canadian Mounted Police in Toronto Canada, that Whitey Bulger was holed up at an address in Toronto with the Gardner art in his possession.

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Needless to say the Canadian Mounted Police in Toronto raided the address earlier without luck.

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Furthermore, the Toronto Canadian Mounted Police arrested a man locally in a diner who turns out not to be Whitey Bulger, so far !!

More to follow.........................................

Update !!!

An ex-colleague of Charlie Hill claims Charlie Hill told Interpol his sources were Mr Sheridan from Essex and Mr McGinley from Letterkenny Ireland on the Toronto location for Whitey Bulger and the Gardner art.

More gossip, sorry, News developing.................................

Stolen Art Watch, Stradivarius is Sound of Music for Von Johnson's !!

Art Hostage has learnt from Otto Von Johnson that old Roddy von Bennigsen, whilst at his London home, suffered a dramatic loss last Friday at his Hanover manor house back in Germany.

On a hit list for some time due the lack of security, the Manor was approached over farmland by thieves driving 4x4's.

A simple lifting of sash windows was all that was needed, no alarms, then once inside the thieves headed for the the prize, a Stradivarius violin.

However, as the thieves were not experts they also took other violins to make sure they got the Stradivarius.

These included violins by Olgemalde and a couple of Silberleuchter's.

The Stradivarius is worth upward of $3million and could be valued at $10 million for insurance.

The other violins are worth a couple of million dollars $2 million.

The thieves left through the window and fled across the fields in the 4x4's, making good their escape.

After a period of being laid down locally the Stradivarius will be offered in the Underworld as collateral before heading to a criminal venture capitalist, who will have a long term investment view.

Perhaps the Balkanisation of these violins initially ??

The Bennigsen Stradivarius joins the Oistrakh, Ames, Lamourex, Davidov-Morini, Colossus, Le Maurien, and Lipinski Stradivarius violins that have been stolen or thought missing as with the Lipinski.

To be continued.............................................

Stolen Art Watch, Donnie Brasco in Rescue Attempt of FBI Agent on Trial for Murder !!

'Donnie Brasco' refuses to testify in Connolly trial
http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2008/10/donnie_brasco_r.html

By Shelley Murphy, Globe Staff

MIAMI -- He infiltrated the Mafia for six years as an undercover FBI agent. He wrote a book about it that was turned into a 1997 movie, "Donnie Brasco," starring Johnny Depp. His photo is all over the Internet, most recently on a blog promoting his alleged efforts to solve the 1990 theft of $300 million worth of artwork from Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

But today, Joseph D. Pistone, refused to take the witness stand at the state murder trial of his longtime friend, former FBI Agent John J. Connolly Jr., because the judge rejected his request for an order prohibiting the media from filming or photographing him as he testified.

Pistone, who was slated to testify for the defense, made it as far as the Miami-Dade county courthouse. He wore large brown-tinted sunglasses as he ate lunch with Connolly's lawyers in a busy cafeteria on the first floor.

Judge Stanford Blake offered to let Pistone take the stand wearing a hat and sunglasses, but defense attorney Manuel L. Casabielle said that wasn't good enough because Pistone had told them that his wife didn't want him to be photographed at all.

Casabielle explained that after Pistone infiltrated New York's Bonanno family in 1976 and helped put away numerous mobsters, the five New York Mafia families had allegedly put a contract on his life.

"He's not in witness protection,'' said Blake, noting that in the decades since he went undercover Pistone has been a very public figure, promoting his two books, appearing on television, and all over the Internet -- his face clearly recognizable.

Holding a recent photograph of Pistone that had been pulled from a website, Blake said, "Unless his disguise was combed back thinning hair and glasses that were so crystal clear you couldn't see them, there does not appear to be any disguise.''

Blake said he just couldn't justify an order barring photographs of Pistone. However, the judge said he would find Pistone in contempt if he refused to comply with a subpoena from the defense seeking his testimony. But, Connolly told the court he didn't want to force Pistone to take the stand.

"He's a friend of mine,'' Connolly told the judge. "His wife is a friend of mine. I know his children. If something happened to him I couldn't live with myself.''

Sixty-eight-year-old Connolly is charged with murder and conspiracy to commit murder for the 1982 gangland slaying of Boston business consultant John B. Callahan. Connolly is accused of leaking sensitive information to his longtime informants, James "Whitey" Bulger and Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi, that prompted them to enlist hitman pal, John Martorano, to kill Callahan.

Callahan's bullet-riddled body was found Aug. 2, 1982 in the trunk of his Cadillac at Miami International Airport.

The defense had planned to call Pistone to talk about the Mafia, FBI informant relationships, and some of his dealings with Connolly.

One night in the mid-1980s, Pistone was introduced to Bulger and Flemmi during a dinner with Connolly at the Peabody home of an FBI agent, according to testimony in earlier court proceedings in Boston.

And after Connolly was convicted of federal racketeering charges in 2002, Pistone wrote a letter to the sentencing judge urging leniency.

"John Connolly should never have been singled out to take the hit for the admitted flawed policies of a government that benefited from his skills, courage and dedication," Pistone wrote.

Connolly is serving a 10-year prison term in that case.

Art Hostage comments:

The blog in question, is of course this one, Stolen Vermeer, see link to original post from March 2008:

http://stolenvermeer.blogspot.com/2008/03/stolen-art-watch-with-tom-and-joe-it.html

The truth of the matter is there was no intention of Joe Pistone giving evidence in the Zip Connolly trial.

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It was all a ruse to introduce the name and reputation of Joe Pistone (Donnie Brasco) into proceedings and to try and convince the jury the Undercover work of Zip Connolly can be likened to that of Joe Pistone and therefore the possibility of a conviction beyond reasonable doubt is much harder.

Joe Pistone is aware of his photo being used on the Internet, why he is trying to smoke out the stolen Gardner paintings held in Ireland by offering a Hollywood movie to those who could help recover the Gardner Vermeer and co. "Donnie Brasco goes to Ireland"

Nice try Joe, shame those with the Gardner art have seen through this attempt.

It remains to be seen if this Donnie Brasco charade in the Zip Connolly trial ultimately gets an acquittal.

Stolen Art Watch, Stolen Smart Sells Right Under the Noses of Law Enforcement !!

Christie’s sells miniatures stolen from public gallery

http://www.theartnewspaper.com/article.asp?id=16284

The auction house consulted stolen art databases but was not made aware of theft

Martin Bailey and Brook Mason 2.10.08 Issue 195

LONDON. Fourteen stolen portrait miniatures were inadvertently sold in Christie’s King Street saleroom on 10 June, because their loss from a UK public gallery had not been publicised. The works were part of a private collection on display at Abbot Hall Art Gallery in Kendal, Cumbria, two years ago.

Abbot Hall is a grand house built in 1759 which was converted into an art gallery in 1962 to display British art from the 18th century to the present. The theft took place on the evening of 31 August 2006, when thieves broke into the museum and smashed an 18th-century glass-fronted cabinet, stealing 69 English portrait miniatures. The works were on loan from a distinguished local collector, whose family had collected them a century ago.

The theft was not publicised in the press, and the loss was not recorded with the Art Loss Register, which routinely checks catalogues of the major auction houses, including Christie’s. It was, however, registered with Trace, the other main computerised database of stolen art (Trace was bought in 2006 by the company MyThings), but without images. It is not known why neither Abbot Hall nor the police supplied images.

A Christie’s spokesman said: “This catalogue, like all our catalogues, was sent to both the Art Loss Register and Trace, but the stolen items were not picked up.” A Trace spokesman agreed that the miniatures had been registered and the catalogue searched, saying that the matter “is now under investigation with Christie’s”. He suggested that the lack of images from Abbot Hall had caused difficulties.

Fourteen of the 69 miniatures were offered in the Christie’s sale. These included works by John Smart, £25,000 and £30,000 ($45,000 and $54,000); Richard Cosway, £17,500 ($31,500); and Horace Hone, £15,000 ($27,000). It was only after the sale that it was realised the works were stolen.

The Art Newspaper understands that the vendor acquired and offered the works through Christie’s in good faith. The police have traced the miniatures through a chain of several buyers in the intervening two years.

Abbot Hall’s chairman Dr Adam Nailor has told us that they are “optimistic” that all 69 miniatures will now be recovered. This suggests that the others have remained with the Christie’s vendor and that only a small proportion had been put up for sale.

The whole collection had been insured when it was put on display at Abbot Hall. It is expected that the private lender will return the insurance money in exchange for the recovered miniatures.

Art Hostage comments:

Oops, someone dropped the ball here.

To think these highly recognisable miniatures, stolen from a well known country mansion, slipped through the net at a top London auction house should beggar belief today in 2008.

Sadly, there is not a central govt funded database linked to the Police computer data bank that would automatically enter every single art and antiques theft.

If high profile stolen artworks like these can slip through the net, just imagine the lorry loads of stolen art and antiques from residential private houses that are filtered via the trade and auction houses every week.

During the 1970's, 80's and most of the 90's stolen art and antiques, especially "Headache stolen art" recognizable and publicized, could be sold with impunity at auction, mostly first via provincial auction houses who were only too pleased to be able to sell some cream choice high value pieces they would not normally be trusted with, even entered in false names and then payout in cash.

The only stolen art and antiques list was produced by Sussex Police Art and Antiques Squad, who would circulate the stolen list to all the dealers. The dealers in turn would check the list and any stolen art and antiques that did not appear would be safe to put through auction.

Then we had Trace around 1990 and the Art Loss register.

Today any stolen art and antiques that are properly reported to the Art Loss Register will normally not appear at auction and will be restricted to being passed around the trade before being sold to an "end user" This "end user" is normally a person who has made allot of money from legitimate business but retains their working class roots.

To this new money the thought of a £100,000 stolen painting hanging on their wall for a price of £10,000 is appealing, even better if it is for £5,000, 5%.

As to them getting caught, well their business may be legitimate and they do not commit any crime other than handling stolen high profile art therefore they would not show up on the radar of law enforcement.

I bet the Police investigation will show the chain of selling these items will lead back to the last one saying they bought them at an antiques fair or market from a man who "Walks with a lisp and talks with a limp !!" a dead end.


More on this subject to follow............

Stolen Art Watch, Three Stooges Caught with Stolen Renoir !!

Italian police recover stolen Renoir, arrest 3

http://www.ansa.it/site/notizie/awnplus/english/news/2008-09-26_126264056.html

ANSA) - Rome, September 26 -

Italian art police have recovered a painting by Impressionist master Pierre-Auguste Renoir stolen from a private collection in Milan in 1975.

The owner of an art gallery in Riccione and two suspected accomplices were arrested after they contacted prominent art critic Vittorio Sgarbi for an appraisal.

Sgarbi suspected the painting might have been stolen and called the police.

The small oil painting of a naked woman with her back to the viewer has a reported commercial value of some 500,000 euros ($730,000).

It is a late Renoir which is not listed in the artist's official catalogue.

Police said the painting was stolen from a Milanese family after the owner, who has since died, took it to a laboratory to be restored.

The owner's daughter recognised it from the mark of a ball she accidentally hit it with in the early 1970s.

Police said it would probably be returned to the family.

Sgarbi was also asked for his opinion on a second Impressionist painting, which turned out to be a forgery of a work by Eduard Manet.The fake Manet will be confiscated, police said.

photo: art critic Vittorio Sgarbi

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Art Hostage comments:

Something does not add up here.

First, under Italian law if this painting had been bought through an auction house the person buying it would get legal title, so perhaps that would be the ruse and it may take a court case to decide if the Renoir should go back to the original owner.

My guess is the Old bird, the 68 year old woman art gallery owner was trying to cash it in.

However, the art critic could be in on the act and now will try and claim a reward for his efforts ??

Sgarbi suspected the Renoir had been stolen and called the police, some memory this Sgarbi has.

Funny thing is, you wait thirty years to find an honest person in the art trade, and then several come along at once, yeah right !!!

This case is far from cut and dried and we may find out later this was a case of double cross.

Next we may hear this Sgarbi has got one in the back of the head if no money is forthcoming.

Stolen Art Watch,Textbook FBI Sting, A Fitting Curtain Call to Robert Wittman's FBI Career !!

French art thief gets 62 months in prison

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/broward/breaking-news/story/699684.html

A French art thief who lived quietly in a Cooper City neighborhood and admitted stealing and trying to sell valuable Claude Monet and other paintings will serve more than five years in U.S. prison.

A federal judge in Miami imposed a 62-month sentence Wednesday on 56-year-old Bernard Jean Ternus. He pleaded guilty in July to conspiracy to steal paintings by Monet, fellow Impressionist George Sisley and 17th-century master Jan Brueghel the Elder.

Ternus has multiple convictions for felonies in France, but he lied about them on his visa application when he flew into Miami on July 5, 2007.

One month later, on Aug. 5, five armed, masked thieves stormed the Museé des Beaux-Arts in Nice, France. In minutes, the thieves made off with four paintings valued at more than $6 million in front of shocked museum staff.

The stolen paintings were Cliffs Near Dieppe by Monet, The Lane of Poplars at Moret by Sisley and Allegory of Water and Allegory of Earth, both by Brueghel.

With the paintings in hand, the thieves needed a buyer. That's where Ternus came in. According to court documents, Ternus' role was to set the thieves up with wealthy buyers. He was not involved in the actual heist, prosecutors said.

Ternus approached two undercover FBI agents on Oct. 8, 2007, and told them that he could sell them the paintings. They met with him again repeatedly over the next few weeks, in hotel suites and on yachts in Europe and South Florida.

Court documents reveal that the thieves were getting anxious to be paid. '[Ternus'] associates are calling him all the time, asking if he has a buyer yet for the Nice paintings.'' They agreed on a $100,000 fee to pay for Ternus' team's expenses, like flights and house rentals.

Ternus also told the agents that he could sell kilos of cocaine in France, Italy and Spain. The plea deal doesn't say whether the agents negotiated any drug deals with Ternus, who was not charged with any drug-related offenses.

In January 2008, the agents and Ternus flew to Barcelona to meet with the thieves and agreed on a price: $3 million euros, roughly $4.7 million.

The money would be turned over to Ternus in Miami, and the paintings given to the agent's ''representatives'' in France.

But there was a problem. The skittish art thieves only agreed to sell the two Brueghels at first, holding onto the Monet and the Sisley as leverage in case anyone was arrested after the sale.

They told the undercover agents that they would hold the canvases hostage and threaten to rip them up if the police arrested anyone.

It took several more months of trans-Atlantic negotiation and meetings to get the thieves to agree to sell all four paintings in a single deal. The agents agreed to exchange both the money and the artwork in France.

On April 18, 2008, two FBI agents, two of the thieves and Ternus all met on a boat docked in Broward County to hammer out the final details of the sale. When the meeting ended, the criminals and the undercover agents hoisted glasses and they ``all toasted for good luck, `` according to court documents.

But Ternus' 10 months of planning collapsed on June 4, 2008, the date of the sale. Instead of collecting almost $5 million, Ternus was arrested at his Cooper City home.

Art Hostage comments:

As Bob Wittman was the architect of this recovery he should get the credit.

A fitting case to ride off into the Sunset with, straight to the private sector gravy train, much deserved in Bob's case.

Still find it hard to believe people, who show cunning and intelligence when stealing high value art, are so stupid and really think the so-called buyer of stolen high value art is not an Undercover cop.

Anyone with access to high value stolen art who is then approached by someone promising cash for the stolen art has only themselves to blame when the fairy godmother turns out to be an Undercover cop.

This was not an attempt to hand back the stolen art for reward, it was a pure and simple criminal transaction that turned out to be an FBI Sting.

Art theft, forget about it !!

Stolen Art Watch, Let's Go Dutch !!!!! Update !!

Dutch police recover stolen 17th-century paintings
3 hours ago
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g1rcUwsONCzSA3EZTYLp-5Y4lX-gD937VVOG0

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) — Dutch detectives have recovered five 17th-century paintings, including a Jan Steen, more than six years after they were snatched from the Frans Hals Museum, the museum and police said Tuesday.

The Golden Age works, worth millions of dollars, were found after an 18-month investigation by Dutch police who used undercover agents to crack the case and worked closely with Britain's Serious and Organized Crime Agency.

The paintings include Steen's "Charlatan on the Market," as well as works by Cornelis Bega, Adriaan van Ostade and Cornelis Dusart, police said in a statement.

Museum spokesman Louis Pirenne said three of the works had been damaged, but all would be exhibited from Wednesday at the museum in Haarlem, just west of Amsterdam.

The works were done by artists from a movement that aimed to depict daily Dutch life in the 1600s, often with a moral message.

Steen's "Charlatan on the Market" portrays a quack doctor selling medicines of dubious value to naive market-goers.

Of two paintings by Van Ostade, one titled "The Contented Drinker" is considered the greatest masterpiece of the five. The other Van Ostade is also titled "Charlatan on the Market."

At the time of the theft the paintings were insured for a total of US$4.3 million, though Pirenne said their historical importance made their value "impossible to express in euros."

After they were stolen, museum staff said the paintings would be impossible to sell on the open market because they were too well-known and documented.

Two Den Bosch men, aged 23 and 69, were arrested Saturday at a hotel in Eindhoven and another, aged 54, was arrested close to his home in Den Bosch, police said. Their identities were not released, in line with Dutch privacy laws.

All three are being held on suspicion of receiving the stolen paintings.

Police said they seized cars, including a Ferrari and a Range Rover, at one of the houses along with handguns, body armor, designer watches, drugs and an undisclosed amount of cash.

Art Hostage comments:

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Serious Organised Crime Agency, S.O.C.A. where have we heard them mentioned in the background before ??

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Interesting story of how authorities made their way through the Underworld to get these paintings back.

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O'h, and guess who was the dishonest, double crossing, agent provocateur ??

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More to follow.................................

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Update:

Apparently, the ransom money went walkabout last Friday and the authorities did not have the prize picture, the Jan Steen.

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This was recovered Saturday along with other luxury items such as Ferrari, cash etc., the ransom money may be written off, nudge, nudge, wink, wink !!!

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Were those arrested the original thieves, No

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Were those arrested involved in the handling of these stolen paintings, No

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Those arrested were a middleman, who funny enough was celebrating his sixty-ninth birthday on Saturday, his lawyer and another possibly his son.

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They were trying to hand back the stolen art and got caught up in the web of deceit and fell pray to yet another entrapment.

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To find out how to facilitate the return of stolen art without getting arrested and having a chance at getting a reward contact Art Hostage, for everything else, use Cash, MasterCard and plastic money is fast becoming extinct .

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Stolen Art Watch, Stolen Dutch Masterpieces Recovered, Arrests, The Lawyers of Course !!

Lawyer Arthur van der Biezen Arrested for Art Thief

http://nunetherlands.wordpress.com/2008/09/16/lawyer-arthur-van-der-biezen-arrested-for-art-thief/

The Dutch authorities have solved a major art robbery at the Frans Hals Museum in the town of Haarlem. Five masterpieces, including Jan Steen’s The Quack, were stolen from the museum six years ago.

Police seized the paintings in a raid on a house in the southern city of Den Bosch at the weekend. Three suspects were arrested and several cars and motorcycles were impounded.

Leading lawyer Arthur van der Biezen was reportedly involved in the robbery. His lawyer confirms that Mr Van der Biezen is suspected of fencing the stolen paintings, but insists that his client is innocent. Mr Van der Biezen is the lawyer of one of the co-defendants in the trial of alleged crime boss Willem Holleeder.

Art Hostage comments:

Comments to follow.................

Stolen Art Watch, L.A. Art Heist, Maid's Connection to Gangs Holds the Key !!

Reward offered for return of stolen art in LA

http://www.examiner.com/a-1578047~Reward_offered_for_return_of_stolen_art_in_LA.html

LOS ANGELES (Map, News) - A $200,000 reward was offered Tuesday for the return of as many as 12 paintings by Marc Chagall, Diego Rivera and other masters that were stolen from a San Fernando Valley home.

The stolen paintings were worth millions of dollars, said Los Angeles police Detective Donald Hrycyk. who did not have an exact value. It could be difficult for thieves to sell the works without proof of their authenticity.

The owners were offering the reward for information leading to the recovery of the artwork and the capture of the crooks.

The paintings disappeared Aug. 23 from the home of an elderly couple. One of the residents, who is bedridden, was home at the time. The other was asleep, so neither was aware of an intruder, police said.

The thief entered the house through a service door and took the paintings from the walls of two adjacent rooms.

"Normally there would be people with the victims at the home," Hrycyk said. "If it is a dangerous stranger that just happens off the street, they were very lucky to pick the time that they did."

Nine pictures by Chagall, Rivera, Hans Hofmann, Chaim Soutine, Arshile Gorky, Emil Nolde, Lyonel Feininger, and Kess van Dongen were stolen, and three others appeared to be missing as well.

The stolen paintings were among a collection amassed over the past 60 years or so.

Video report linked below:

http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/local/los_angeles&id=6379578

Art Hostage comments:

On face value this seems to be a Gang related heist with the inside intelligence given by the maid.

Alternatively the thieves will use some of the paintings as collateral against drugs, possibly Gang drug dealers, and here is where the first break could come.

MS 13 are a notorious gang, but many other gangs operate in California.

I believe the paintings are still close by and the window of opportunity to recover the paintings will be open for the next month.

Then you have the six month window, then it will become years.

No doubt the FBI Art Crime Team in L.A. will be at heart of the investigations, however, it might pay to consult the L.A.P.D. Gang squad to see if they can come up with a break.

Stolen Art Watch, Whitey Bulger Reward Doubled to $2 million, Breaking News below !!

The FBI are to announce the doubling of the reward for the capture of Whitey Bulger to $2 million.

Today being Whitey Bulger's 79th birthday seems ironic, but this is all starting to take shape.

The word is someone is prepared to drop a dime and give up Whitey Bulger but they wanted more than the original $1 million offered.

They told the FBI as much and wanted the FBI to go public with the new reward offer.

The FBI have reluctantly agreed to make public the new improved $2 million reward offer for Whitey Bulger hoping the informant will now be satisfied and finally give the location where Whitey Bulger can be found.

This was all meant to happen before the end of August without the FBI having to publicly state the reward offer being doubled.

So, expect Whitey Bulger to be arrested shortly, and the circumstances surrounding the arrest and the subsequent reward claim will be just as amazing.

Where will it be, Donegal, Galway, Bantry Bay, Spain, or did Whitey Bulger escape to South Africa recently ??? ssh, or could Whitey Bulger be in the UK down the road on the South Coast, even across the English Channel in France, behind the beard ??

Update:

Whitey Bulger has been sporting a full facial beard just like that of Radovan Karadic, the Serbian war criminal.


Funny thing, when Radovan Kardzic was first arrested authorities were not sure if Whitey Bulger would appear from under the full facial white beard, still when captured Whitey Bulger may indeed still have the full facial white beard, no wonder he has been able to slip the net recently !!

Breaking news
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Memo to Joe Pistone !!
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Joe, please remember Ireland and to a lesser extent Spain are not New York and one of the guys you spoke to has been mouthing off whilst drunk about how he is going Hollywood when you arrest Whitey Bulger and recover the stolen Gardner Art.
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Joe, you put on a good show but be careful as you may only get a copy of the Vermeer and a Whitey Bulger look-alike.

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Now the demonisation in the eyes of the criminal underworld has taken place by the FBI revealing Whitey Bulger is also wanted on child molestation charges, the person who is already in negotiations can justify informing on Whitey Bulger as getting a child predator off the streets. All going to plan then.

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However, some in Holland may tolerate these accusations against Whitey Bulger as they too have an unhealthy interest in children.

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to be continued..............................................

Stolen Art Watch, Boston Masterpiece Stolen, Thrown in Garbage Just a Ruse to try and Smoke out the Thief !!

A masterwork goes missing

http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2008/08/27/a_masterwork_goes_missing/

Wellesley College museum's cherished Leger is lost, and the crate that held it may have been trashed

A prized 1921 painting by the French cubist Fernand Leger has been lost - perhaps unintentionally thrown out - by Wellesley College's Davis Museum and Cultural Center.

That would be a costly mistake. Last year, the average Leger painting sold for $2.8 million.

"Woman and Child" is part of an important series by Leger that applied jagged, geometric strokes to a familial theme. John McAndrew, then director of the Davis, gave the oil on canvas to the museum in 1954, and it has hung on the walls of the Davis for most of the time since.

"It's very sad and upsetting that it's gone," said Wellesley art historian Patricia Gray Berman, who brought her students to look at the Leger every semester. "It's a great painting, and I hope it comes home."

College and museum officials declined to comment, other than to release a pair of short statements this week. Police have been informed of the missing painting, and the museum's insurer has already paid off its claim.

In the statements, the museum provided a timeline leading up to the Leger's disappearance. The painting, which measures 25 inches by 21 inches, was taken down early in 2006, in advance of the museum's renovation that May. It was sent to the Oklahoma City Museum of Art along with 31 other works for an exhibit that ran from March 2, 2006, through April 8, 2007.

The Oklahoma City museum returned the works a week after the show closed, but they remained in crates for months because the Davis construction project was still underway. A crate believed to contain the Leger sat in the museum's fifth-floor galleries through last fall, when it was moved to a vault elsewhere in the building. In November, museum administrators discovered the painting was missing when they were compiling a digital catalog and sought to include information about the Leger, according to one of the statements.

A few days later, Davis registrar Bo Mompho called Oklahoma City Museum of Art registrar Matthew C. Leininger.

"She asked me, 'Do you have our Leger, by chance?' " Leininger recalled yesterday. "I said, 'No, why are you asking?' That's when she said they couldn't find it. I said, 'Oh, boy.' "

Leininger scoured his museum's crate room and vault. But, he said, he already knew the painting had been shipped back. When the museum's exhibit ended, he followed policy by cataloging each work as it was packed. The Leger had been put into a crate with two other works, an Armand Guillaumin oil on canvas and a László Moholy-Nagy oil on linen.

On April 16, 2007, two trucks left Oklahoma City with two crates of art and an accompanying Davis museum preparator, according to Leininger. All of the other shipped works have been accounted for, both the Davis and Oklahoma City museums confirm.

During that November call, Leininger asked Mompho if she and her staff had checked their vaults. They had.

"I said, 'Where are the crates?' " Leininger said. "And she said, 'They were sent off to be destroyed.' "

Mompho did not answer requests for comment yesterday.

Museum officials also did not respond to questions about the Davis's standard procedures for cataloging incoming artworks, or whether they were followed in this case.

Late last year, in a meeting with anxious Wellesley art historians, Davis Museum director David Mickenberg said that the painting may have been destroyed along with the crates, according to three faculty members who attended the meeting. He also speculated that it could have been stolen sometime after leaving Oklahoma City. The painting has been reported as missing to the Art Loss Register, an online database of stolen or lost works. A Wellesley Police Department spokesman confirmed yesterday that investigators are working with college police on the case, though there is nothing to report.

Mickenberg did not return repeated phone calls this week. Other museum staff members referred calls to Davis spokeswoman Barbara Levitov.

Founded more than 120 years ago, the Davis is central to Wellesley's educational mission, and puts on such substantial shows as "Global Feminisms" and "On Edge: Contemporary Chinese Artists Encounter the West." The museum reopened last September, but as word of the missing painting spread, it put a damper on that good news.

"We've all wondered about it," said Jacqueline Marie Musacchio, associate professor of art at Wellesley. "It's a tremendous loss for the college, but, beyond that, we just don't have a lot of information."

Matthew Affron, a University of Virginia art history professor with expertise in Leger, described "Woman and Child" as an important work in the artist's 50-year career.

"He was well known at the time for a style that had hard edges, bright colors, and strong geometry that stood for order and precision, but in a work like this he combined that very static style with a very timeless subject," Affron said.

Carolyn Hill, director of the Oklahoma City museum, said she imagines that Mickenberg and his staff are heartbroken by the loss.

"What I can't imagine is that they get through the checklist, why wasn't it discovered that that painting was not accounted for? That's just a question that's unanswered."

If the painting was, in fact, stolen, the likelihood of recovery declines with each passing day. Anthony Amore, director of security for the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, itself the victim of a 1990 theft of 13 priceless works, declined to comment on the Davis case specifically.

"I would liken it to a kidnapping," said Amore. "Those first few hours and days are vital."

While Travelers Insurance confirmed yesterday that it paid the museum's claim, officials at the Hartford-based company would not say exactly how much the Davis received. When asked how the payout compared with the $2.8 million average sale price of a Leger, a Travelers official conceded that the payoff was "in that area." The company is offering a $100,000 reward for the painting and is still investigating the case.

"It's the largest loss Travelers ever had," said Andrew Gristina, director of fine art insurance for the company. "It's incredibly unusual for a painting of this value and, frankly, of this quality to disappear without a trace."

Art Hostage comments:

So, how does one actually collect this supposed reward offer of $100,000 ?

Truth of the matter is investigators have a clear idea who may have taken this artwork, a worker, employee etc.

The line being spun about the artwork may have been thrown out in the garbage is just a ruse to allow the current handler of this artwork to try and hand back the artwork for the reward and claim they found it amongst garbage.

Where have we heard this before ?

Remember last year when Elizabeth Gibson said she found the stolen painting in a garbage skip, linked here:

http://stolenvermeer.blogspot.com/2007/11/stolen-art-watch-fair-reward-from.html

Because she had got her story right and authorities could not prosecute her, Elizabeth Gibson was allowed only a minimum amount.

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Also see this story of another who tried to say they just found a stolen artwork:

http://stolenvermeer.blogspot.com/2007/10/stolen-art-watch-moron-of-week-steven.html

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The outcome is linked here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/12/arts/design/12arts-SENTENCESING_BRF.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss five years jailtime !!

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Also see this story:

http://arthostage.blogspot.com/2008/02/stiolen-art-watch-warhol-wings-its-way.html

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The outcome is still awaited, but make no mistake no large reward will be paid.

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Now, authorities are hoping to fool the person in possession of this Wellesley Collage Leger artwork to come forward and hand it back using the same tactic as Elizabeth Gibson.

However, as soon as the painting surfaces whomever tries to claim the $100,000 reward will be arrested and even if they are not indicted they would face an uphill battle to get any reward offered.

Remembering also Elizabeth Gibson waited years before revealing she had the stolen Tamayo painting.

So, to sum up.

If you are the person in possession of this artwork you are hereby warned you will, I repeat Will never get the reward and also stand a good chance of getting arrested and indicted.

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The first thing you will be asked to provide is "Proof of Life", what is written on the back of the painting, a photograph etc. The reason for this is ensnare and hook you as demonstrating control of the painting.

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Then subsequently if you realise you are going to be stung and try to walk away, authorities can indict you for demonstrating control of this stolen painting by Leger.

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This will be used as leverage to make you go through with the recovery.

If you do not co-operate you will end up in jail.

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So by offering proof of life you implicate yourself.-

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Authorities will try and say they need proof of life to make sure they dealing with the right person, bullshit, it is to entrap anyone trying to negotiate the return of stolen art.

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However, if you want to return this artwork then just call Travelers and tell them where they collect the artwork, do not try and claim any reward, specifically, do not give any indication of your identity, walk away without reward, but with your Liberty intact.

If you disregard the advice of Art Hostage and try to negotiate the reward I can assure you it will end in tears and possibly end in jail time, but hey, take the chance if you wish, but don't say you were'nt warned.

Stolen Art Watch, FBI Icon Robert Wittman Retires September 2008, Sends Shudder Down Private Sector's Spine, Time to Clean Their Act Up !!

From the Art World to the Underworld

The FBI's Robert Wittman has spent his career chasing missing masterpieces. Now thieves are growing bolder -- and more violent.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121935066124361261.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

By KELLY CROW
August 22, 2008; Page W1

Shortly after 9 a.m. on June 4, three men drove to a seaside promenade near Marseilles, their van carrying paintings by Brueghel, Sisley and Monet. The art had been stolen at gunpoint from the Museum of Fine Arts in Nice last August. Now a Frenchman working for an American art dealer was supposed to show up and buy four works for $4.6 million in cash. Instead, nearly a dozen French police cars pulled up, led by a colonel for the gendarmerie who quickly took a call from Pennsylvania. "We got them!" Col. Pierre Tabel shouted into his cellphone.


The caller was Robert Wittman, an agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation who had acted as the American "dealer" and orchestrated the sting. Mr. Wittman thanked the colonel and celebrated alone, drinking a mug of coffee on his back porch while his wife slept.

Mr. Wittman is one of the world's top art-crime investigators. His specialty is going undercover. The 52-year-old has spent two decades impersonating shady dealers and befriending thieves. In all, he's tracked down $225 million in missing objects, including a Rembrandt self-portrait and an original copy of the Bill of Rights.

Skyrocketing values for art and endemic security flaws at museums are enticing a new generation of thieves and raising the stakes of his job. An increasing number of thieves have started taking art by force in broad daylight rather than by stealth, according to the International Council of Museums, a nonprofit that represents 1,900 museums and galleries around the world. Jennifer Thevenot, the council's program-activities officer, says, "Previously, it was all 'Pink Panther' -- guys in gloves slipping in at night -- but now they walk in with weapons."


The U.S. is the biggest buyer within the $6 billion black market for art, the FBI says. Last year alone, 16,117 artworks in the U.S. were listed by the London-based Art Loss Register as missing or stolen, up from 14,981 the year before. At the same time, worsening economies and shifting priorities are forcing governments to slash their budgets to combat art crime. New York City cut $4 million from its museum-security budget earlier this summer.

For years the FBI has relied solely on Mr. Wittman to play the undercover roles of gullible or greedy art lover, but now for the first time the bureau is upending tradition by training a nationwide squad to combat art crime. Prosecutors and law-enforcement officials are hailing the move but wonder whether any of the dozen-odd agents in the FBI Art Crime Team will be ready to take over Mr. Wittman's covert work before he retires later this year.

The recent sting in France illustrates Mr. Wittman's approach to undercover work. The operation began after the Nice museum was robbed last August. The FBI's Miami office got a tip that a shaggy-haired career criminal named Bernard Jean Ternus was discreetly shopping masterpieces to art dealers near Fort Lauderdale. Mr. Wittman flew in and introduced himself to Mr. Ternus as a Philadelphia art dealer who liked to buy Impressionists and Dutch Old Masters and didn't care where they came from. The two men held several meetings, including one on a yacht where they drank Champagne. In January, the pair met in Barcelona, Spain, so the rest of the crew could size up Mr. Wittman. By late spring, Mr. Wittman got so chummy with the group -- one man ran a motorcycle shop, another rented bulldozers -- that he was able to introduce his so-called sidekick, actually an agent for the French police. That agent promised to bring the money to Marseilles on June 4. The sting was set. (Mr. Ternus later pleaded guilty to conspiring to sell stolen art and will be sentenced in Florida on Sept. 18; the other men arrested with the art in Marseilles are awaiting trial in France.)

Mr. Wittman says such work can be "incredibly stressful" because "unlike actors, you only get one shot and you have to remember everything you ever said." Col. Tabel, who investigates art crimes for the French government and followed Mr. Wittman's chess-like maneuvers throughout the 10-month sting, is more effusive: "To me, he is a living legend."

Yet within the FBI, Mr. Wittman has always been an anomaly because of his interest in chasing art thieves. Despite the public attention that follows major art thefts and any subsequent recoveries, the FBI has historically treated art crime like a tweedy backwater compared with offenses like terrorism, racketeering and drug smuggling. Cases involving looted artifacts were hardly a priority five years ago. Even now, New York's art cases are handled by a major-theft agent, James Wynne, who doesn't go undercover. But after the massive looting of Baghdad's National Museum five years ago sparked public outrage, Mr. Wittman realized the bureau might be persuaded to invest more in protecting U.S. museums.

The FBI quickly began working with U.S. Customs and governments throughout the Middle East to stem the flow of Iraq artifacts into the U.S. and still regularly posts images of missing pieces on its Web site. The bureau made its first Iraq-related recovery when a Marine turned in eight ornately carved stones that he bought on duty as souvenirs, not realizing until later they had been stolen.

Mr. Wittman, who had been the FBI's only undercover art agent for about 15 years, began petitioning his superiors shortly after the Baghdad looting to create its own art-crime team. The idea won the support of several other art-crime fighters outside the bureau. Rather than pull agents from other squads, their plan was to train around a dozen agents who could be posted at field offices throughout the country and be allowed to pursue art cases as their regular caseloads permitted. Should a major theft occur, the group could be sent to the scene immediately, their roles already defined, or work with police agencies around the world if invited to help out.


It helped Mr. Wittman's lobbying efforts to point out that far smaller countries already had art squads, even if some have lately suffered under recent budget cuts. Scotland Yard in London has four art detectives, down from 14 during their squad's heyday two decades ago. France has 30, and Italy boasts 300 art-hunting carabinieri, including investigators who use helicopters to patrol the country's myriad archaeological dig sites.

The team, assembled in large part by Mr. Wittman, was allotted an annual operational budget, aside from agent salaries, of around $100,000. The members quickly began tackling a variety of art cases. In St. Louis, Frank Brostrom, who joined the group after working as a bomb technician and surveillance expert, caught a man three years ago who tried to peddle a forged Rembrandt for $2.8 million by masquerading as a Saudi sheikh in full ceremonial garb.

Among the FBI's rank and file, art crime remains a tough sell, agents say. Geoffrey Kelly, who works art crimes out of Boston, says he "gets a lot of ribbing" from co-workers for lining his cubicle with books on Renaissance painters as well as crime-scene photos; Mr. Brostrom says agents on his former violent-crimes squad in St. Louis bought him art books as gag gifts when he joined the art team. "I actually use those books," he says.

By and large, the agents signed up for the team either because they are intrigued by art or because they respect the careers of Mr. Wittman and Mr. Wynne, a former banker who investigates art cases in New York. Some members, like Christopher Calarco, a former prosecutor in Los Angeles, joined after only having six years' experience at the bureau. None had any prior expertise in fine art. After Mr. Calarco was tapped, he says he tried to brush up by digging out his notes from a college art-history course.

To take on major art cases, Mr. Wittman needs the team to have a delicate understanding of the art world -- and underworld. That means being able to discern the difference between etchings and aquatints, palettes and provenance, genuine masterpieces from expert forgeries. (One clue: The varnish on a 300-year-old painting will be laced with tiny cracks, which fakes rarely have.)


Mr. Wittman grew up working weekends at his family's antiques shop in Baltimore, where his father taught him "how to haggle and how to appreciate old things," he says. When he joined the FBI in 1988, he was assigned to Philadelphia's eastern-district field office where he initially investigated crimes like truck hijackings and jewelry-store robberies. He quickly expanded his caseload to take on art crimes, though, and over the years, he built up a reputation for making quirky cultural recoveries. In 1999, for example, he caught an Atlanta lawyer trying to sell Geronimo's feathered headdress for $1.2 million despite the federal ban on selling bald-eagle feathers. Two years earlier, he confiscated a 2,000-year-old piece of gold Peruvian armor that had been smuggled into the U.S. by a Panamanian diplomat.

These days, he works in Philadelphia but tries to call the team members every week or so to keep abreast of their caseloads. Occasionally, he fields their art-related questions. Once he had to politely correct an agent who described Picasso as an Impressionist: "I didn't want to embarrass him, so I just said, 'People usually call him a great modernist.'"

The group has spent time together in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Santa Fe in order to learn the basics of art crime as seen by museum security directors, art dealers, and academics. When the group showed up at the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe last year, the museum's director of operations, Amy Green, spotted them immediately in the crowd: "We're pretty casual here, and they were the only ones wearing ties."

Brian Brusokas, a cybercrimes expert with the FBI in Chicago, says he was surprised to learn that about 80% of museum thefts are orchestrated by insiders, not burglars. He and the other art agents have started visiting their regional museums and acquainting themselves with people like custodians and visiting scholars who enjoy extra access to the museum's collections. They've also changed up their crime-scene techniques. Since dusting works for fingerprints can damage their surfaces, they rely on handheld fluorescent lights to find the prints instead.

Mr. Calarco got his best on-the-job art training three years ago when the FBI's organized-crime squad in Los Angeles arrested an Eastern European man who kept a stolen Renoir in his safe at a local pawnshop. Mr. Calarco researched the painting and learned it had been taken five years earlier from Stockholm's National Museum of Fine Arts, along with a $36 million Rembrandt self-portrait. The man caught with the Renoir agreed to help the FBI track down the painting's thieves in Sweden in order to "buy" the Rembrandt in a sting. Mr. Calarco called Mr. Wittman, who stepped in as middleman for an Old Masters collector willing to pay cash, no questions asked.

That fall, the cops and robbers converged at a Copenhagen hotel. Mr. Wittman met one of the thieves in a room and showed off a satchel containing $200,000 in hundred-dollar bills. Mr. Calarco, nervous, sat in the hotel room directly overhead and watched the footage from a hidden camera. A short time later, the thief returned carrying the Rembrandt in a duffle bag, still in its museum frame. When Mr. Wittman signaled that the painting was authentic -- by using the phrase "Done deal" -- police stormed the room and Mr. Wittman grabbed the painting. Seconds later, he met Mr. Calarco in the stairwell outside. Mr. Calarco saw the artwork and remembers thinking, "This is exactly what I got into this job for."

But Mr. Wittman is having trouble stemming the farm team's high rate of turnover. So far, at least half the original art-crime team has been promoted to positions or offices outside the team's scope, forcing them to drop or reassign their art caseloads.

Mr. Wynne, the New York-based agent, says it may be unrealistic to train the entire squad to hang out, incognito, with art thieves. He thinks their investigative training matters more. "I've just never thought that undercover was the end all, be all," he says. "I meet the bad guys when I interview them."

After a lifetime in pursuit, Mr. Wittman knows his job is more gritty than glamorous. He doesn't mind. In fact, he delights in revealing the real face of art crime. In April, he spoke to a few major donors at the Philadelphia Museum of Art on the condition that they wouldn't take his photograph. At one point he held up a few images of Hollywood's gentlemen thieves like Cary Grant in "To Catch a Thief" and Pierce Brosnan in "The Thomas Crown Affair," followed by a real-life rogue's gallery of arrested art thieves, their hair sloppy and faces sour. Grinning, he said, "Sorry, ladies."

Write to Kelly Crow at kelly.crow@wsj.com

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Comments to follow.......

Stolen Art Watch, Da Vinci's Mona Lisa Stolen August 21st !!

Mona Lisa Stolen !!

On August 21, Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, one of the most famous paintings in the world, was stolen right off the wall of the Louvre (famous museum in Paris, France). It was such an inconceivable crime, that the Mona Lisa wasn't even noticed missing until the following day.

Who would steal such a famous painting? Why did they do it? Was the Mona Lisa lost forever?

The Discovery

Everyone had been talking about the glass panes that museum officials at the Louvre had put in front of several of their most important paintings. Museum officials stated it was to help protect the paintings, especially because of recent acts of vandalism. The public and the press thought the glass was too reflective.

Louis Béroud, a painter, decided to join in the debate by painting a young French girl fixing her hair in the reflection from the pane of glass in front of the Mona Lisa.

On August 22, Béroud walked into the Louvre and went to the Salon Carré where the Mona Lisa had been on display for five years. But on the wall where the Mona Lisa used to hang, in between Correggio's Mystical Marriage and Titian's Allegory of Alfonso d'Avalos, sat only four iron pegs.

Béroud contacted the section head of the guards, who thought the painting must be at the photographers'. A few hours later, Béroud checked back with the section head. It was then discovered the Mona Lisa was not with the photographers. The section chief and other guards did a quick search of the museum -- no Mona Lisa.

Since Théophile Homolle, the museum director, was on vacation, the curator of Egyptian antiquities was contacted. He, in turn, called the Paris police. About 60 investigators were sent over to the Louvre shortly after noon. They closed the museum and slowly let out the visitors. They then continued the search.

It was finally determined that it was true -- the Mona Lisa had been stolen.

The Louvre was closed for an entire week to aid the investigation. When it was reopened, a line of people had come to solemnly stare at the empty space on the wall, where the Mona Lisa had once hung. An anonymous visitor left a bouquet of flowers.1


"[Y]ou might as well pretend that one could steal the towers of the cathedral of Notre Dame," stated Théophile Homolle, museum director of the Louvre, approximately a year before the theft.2 (He was forced to resign soon after the robbery.)
The Clues

Unfortunately, there wasn't much evidence to go on. The most important discovery was found on the first day of the investigation. About an hour after the 60 investigators began searching the Louvre, they found the controversial plate of glass and Mona Lisa's frame lying in a staircase. The frame, an ancient one donated by Countess de Béarn two years prior, had not been damaged. Investigators and others speculated that the thief grabbed the painting off the wall, entered the stairwell, removed the painting from its frame, then somehow left the museum unnoticed. But when did all this take place?

Investigators began to interview guards and workers to determine when the Mona Lisa went missing. One worker remembered having seen the painting around 7 o'clock on Monday morning (a day before it was discovered missing), but noticed it gone when he walked by the Salon Carré an hour later. He had assumed a museum official had moved it.

Further research discovered that the usual guard in the Salon Carré was home (one of his children had the measles) and his replacement admitted leaving his post for a few minutes around 8 o'clock to smoke a cigarette. All of this evidence pointed to the theft occurring somewhere between 7:00 and 8:30 on Monday morning.

But on Mondays, the Louvre was closed for cleaning. So, was this an inside job? Approximately 800 people had access to the Salon Carré on Monday morning. Wandering throughout the museum were museum officials, guards, workmen, cleaners and photographers. Interviews with these people brought out very little. One person thought they had seen a stranger hanging out, but he was unable to match the stranger's face with photos at the police station.

The investigators brought in Alphonse Bertillon, a famous fingerprint expert. He found a thumbprint on the Mona Lisa's frame, but he was unable to match it with any in his files.

There was a scaffold against one side of the museum that was there to aid the installation of an elevator. This could have given access to a would-be thief to the museum.

Besides believing that the thief had to have at least some internal knowledge of the museum, there really wasn't much evidence. So, who dunnit?

Rumors and theories about the identity and motive of the thief spread like wildfire. Some Frenchmen blamed the Germans, believing the theft a ploy to demoralize their country. Some Germans thought it was a ploy by the French to distract from international concerns. The prefect of the police had his own theory:


The thieves -- I am inclined to think there were more than one -- got away with it -- all right. So far nothing is known of their identity and whereabouts. I am certain that the motive was not a political one, but maybe it is a case of 'sabotage,' brought about by discontent among the Louvre employees. Possibly, on the other hand, the theft was committed by a maniac. A more serious possibility is that La Gioconda was stolen by some one [sic] who plans to make a monetary profit by blackmailing the Government [sic].3
Other theories blamed a Louvre worker, who stole the painting in order to reveal how bad the Louvre was protecting these treasures. Still others believed the whole thing was done as a joke and that the painting would be returned anonymously shortly.

On September 7, 1911, 17 days after the theft, the French arrested Guillaume Apollinaire. Five days later, he was released. Though Apollinaire was a friend of Géry Piéret, someone who had been stealing artifacts right under the guards' noses for quite a while, there was no evidence that he had any knowledge or had in any way participated in the theft of the Mona Lisa.

Though the public was restless and the investigators were searching, the Mona Lisa did not show up. Weeks went by. Months went by. Then years went by. The latest theory was the that the painting had been accidentally destroyed during a cleaning and the museum was using the idea of a theft as a cover-up.

Two years went by with no word about the real Mona Lisa. And then the thief made contact.

In the Autumn of 1913, two years after the Mona Lisa was stolen, a well-known antique dealer, Alfredo Geri, innocently placed an ad in several Italian newspapers which stated that he was "a buyer at good prices of art objects of every sort." 4

Soon after he placed the ad, Geri received a letter dated November 29 (1913), that stated the writer was in possession of the stolen Mona Lisa. The letter had a post office box in Paris as a return address and had been signed only as "Leonardo."

Though Geri thought he was dealing with someone who had a copy rather than the real Mona Lisa, he contacted Commendatore Giovanni Poggi, museum director of the Uffizi (museum in Florence, Italy). Together, they decided that Geri would write a letter in return saying that he would need to see the painting before he could offer a price.

Another letter came almost immediately asking Geri to go to Paris to see the painting. Geri replied, stating that he could not go to Paris, but, instead, arranged for "Leonardo" to meet him in Milan on December 22.

On December 10, 1913, an Italian man with a mustache appeared at Geri's sales office in Florence. After waiting for other customers to leave, the stranger told Geri that he was Leonardo Vincenzo and that he had the Mona Lisa back in his hotel room. Leonardo stated that he wanted a half million lire for the painting. Leonardo explained that he had stolen the painting in order to restore to Italy what had been stolen from it by Napoleon. Thus, Leonardo made the stipulation that the Mona Lisa was to be hung at the Uffizi and never given back to France.

With some quick, clear thinking, Geri agreed to the price but said the director of the Uffizi would want to see the painting before agreeing to hang it in the museum. Leonardo then suggested they meet in his hotel room the next day.

Upon his leaving, Geri contacted the police and the Uffizi.

The Return

The following day, Geri and Poggi (the museum director) appeared at Leonardo's hotel room. Leonardo pulled out a wooden trunk. After opening the trunk, Leonardo pulled out a pair of underwear, some old shoes, and a shirt. Then Leonardo removed a false bottom -- and there lay the Mona Lisa.

Geri and the museum director noticed and recognized the Louvre seal on the back of the painting. This was obviously the real Mona Lisa.

The museum director said that he would need to compare the painting with other works by Leonardo da Vinci. They then walked out with the painting.

Leonardo Vincenzo, whose real name was Vincenzo Peruggia, was arrested.

The story of the caper was actually much simpler than many had theorized. Vincenzo Peruggia, born in Italy, had worked in Paris at the Louvre in 1908. Still known by many of the guards, Peruggia had walked into the museum, noticed the Salon Carré empty, grabbed the Mona Lisa, went to the staircase, removed the painting from its frame, and walked out of the museum with the Mona Lisa under his painters smock.

Peruggia hadn't had a plan to dispose of the painting; his only goal was to return it to Italy.

The public went wild at the news of finding the Mona Lisa. The painting was displayed throughout Italy before it was returned to France on December 30, 1913.

http://history1900s.about.com/od/famouscrimesscandals/a/monalisa_3.htm

Art Hostage comments:

How many of you missed a heart-beat before realising this is just the 97th anniversary of the infamous Mona Lisa theft of 1911 ???