Art theft is big business. According to the FBI, art and cultural property crime have estimated losses running as high as $6 billion annually. Although such crimes have been investigated by the FBI for some time, it wasn't until 2004 (after the horrific looting of the National Museum of Iraq) that the Bureau established the rapid-deployment Art Crime Team. The director of that team was gracious enough to drop by at a recent meeting of the Chesapeake Chapter of SinC and speak about art theft.
An archaeologist by trade, Bonnie supervises 12 special agents who are part of other field offices, often in the violent crime unit, but who receive specific training at Quantico and have collateral duty, reporting to her whenever there is information that could lead to the recovery of a property or the arrest of the thief. Agents rotate off after awhile, but it's a fairly popular gig, as Bonnie recently had 67 applications for 8 open slots.
It's a tricky field. Art doesn't require a bill of sale, so unlike a car or house, you can't necessarily conduct a title search. Most collectors don't keep records of their collections or documents proving ownership. Stolen works often enter legitimate markets, and scholars and specialists often find them by accident at sales and auctions. In order to pursue a case, the FBI has to prove the person selling or in possesion of a work knew it was stolen, and it has to have been transported across state lines. Also, the FBI can't open a case until a U.S. attorney opens it first. Fortunately, three special prosecutors were assigned to the unit who can work anywhere in the U.S.
Most art thefts are residential, although the museum thefts are what grab headlines. Theft from museums are more of a problem outside the U.S., with 80% of those perpetrated by insiders, taking place in store rooms where pieces are stored for years. Often, museums don't even know about the thefts until the item shows up at Sothebys. Sothebys and Christies often have auctions at the same time, and Bonnie told of one incident where the same painting showed up in both auction catalogs simultaneously. Obviously, one was a fake (by notorious forger Ely Sakhai), so they had to pull both until they could determine the genuine article. (Sakhai was later arrested, placed in jail for 41 months and fined $1.5 million and forced to pay restitution.)
Bonnie maintains the National Stolen Art File, compiled from police departments, which covers paintings, Native American artifacts, statues, musical instruments, scientific instruments, maps, manuscripts, cultural icons, etc. She also established the FBI Top Ten Art Crimes list (which you can find on the Art Theft home page link above).
She has a lot of interesting stories to tell, such as the man who tried to sell what he said was a rare fifth Mayan Codex he'd dug up in his back yard; a Panamanian General Consul who brokered goods stolen from Peru but avoided prosecution due to diplomatic immunity; thieves who staged a daring daylight robbery from the Swedish National Museum by puting nails in the road to stop chasing cars and escaping by boat, until a wiretap in Los Angeles led to a showdown at a Copenhagen hotel with FBI agents playing brokers (the missing Renoir was recovered); a stolen Norman Rockwell painting which the FBI put on its web site and was eventually found in the collection of Steven Spielberg (who came by it honestly).
So far, the efforts of Bonnie and her agent team have led to the recovery of 850 stolen works valued at over $134 million (the amount on the FBI web site needs to be updated). A lot of their efforts depending upon tips, so--if you're suspicious about that Gaugin "print" in your weird neighbor's basement, drop them a line.
If you're interested in art theft crime fiction, you might start with a series by Iain Pears which follows the adventures of art historian Jonathan Argyll and two members of the (ficitious) Art Squad of the Italian police, beginning with The Raphael Affair (1991) up through The Immaculate Deception (2000). Pears (born in 1955) is an English art historian and a Getty Fellow in the Arts and Humanities at Yale University, who also worked was a reporter for the BBC.
For more art mysteries, check out the following links:
Overbooked Art Fiction List (includes mysteries)
Art-Related Novels (compiled by Elise Smith at Millsaps U)
Art Mysteries (from Wakefield Public Library)
Art, Artists, and the Art World (from Madison Public Library)
Art Mysteries (from Readers Advice)
And for more links to art theft law enforcement and information web sites, click on "Crimes by Type" under THE LIST on this blog.
