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So logically there is a market. This scheme wasn't opportunistic, it was planned and involved some investment. The perpetrators therefore aren't complete morons
by scrumper 8y ago
So logically there is a market. This scheme wasn't opportunistic, it was planned and involved some investment. The perpetrators therefore aren't complete morons; they have surely thought about what they'd do after making their getaway. I would like to know something about this market for stolen unique treasures.
- DmenshunlAnlsis 8y agoIts not hard to imagine some Russian oligarch, Saudi prince, or American billionaire getting off on having these in their private collection.
- cies 8y agoOnce they have 'm they can copy it very well several times and then catapult their profits!
- yellowcherry 8y agoI always assume there's a buyer lined up before these things ever happen. But then, when they stole The Scream a while back they clearly had no exit strategy, so who knows?
- r00fus 8y agoHow do they know they got the original back?
- acjohnson55 8y agoAssuming there are copies, "the original" is the one everything believes to be the original. If the one actually created by Munch is a different one, it's not worth a whole lot if people don't generally believe that to be the case.
- Someone 8y agoNitpick: it is a bit weird to talk of the original or even of the Scream. Munch created four versions, two paintings and two pastels (in addition, about 45 prints of a lithograph were made, a few of which were hand-colored by Munch) It seems we don’t know for sure which is the oldest. One of the paintings and one of the pastels both are from 1893. It’s natural to assume the pastel was a study for the painting, but we don’t know for sure. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scream https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scream)
- mrdmnd 8y agoI saw an article on here a few days ago that suggested you could detect isotopes present in "more recent" forgeries that came about as the result of the nuclear testing age that would not be present on the originals.
- dharmab 8y agoYou can test the pigments in the paint to see if period-correct materials were used. A lot of forgeries use pigments that wouldn't have been invented or otherwise available at the time.
- lb1lf 8y agoThe last time The Scream was stolen, it was meant to create a diversion; Norway had recently had a Heat-style armed robbery in which a police officer was shot dead; The Scream was stolen in an effort to divert resources from the robbery investigation. (IIRC)
- rapnie 8y agoExactly. In 2012 seven priceless paintings (Picasso, Gauguin, Matisse, Monet) were stolen from Kunsthal museum, Rotterdam. Speculation about 'the art theft of the century' all over the place.. Appeared they were extreme amateurs that just smashed a window, carried away the paintings in the back of their car to Romania. Didn't know what to do with them, and when one of the robbers was caught, his mother burnt them all in the fireplace. read: https://www.nrc.nl/kunsthal-en/ https://www.nrc.nl/kunsthal-en/ At least, I guess, these guys here could meld the gold and sell the stones individually on the black market.
- 51 8y agoWow, I hope she went to jail too
- marmshallow 8y agoIt appears she did indeed go to jail, but is probably now out. > Olga Dogaru was convicted of transporting and hiding stolen property (two years). http://www.criminalelement.com/the-romanian-connection-the-kunsthal-rotterdam-heist/ http://www.criminalelement.com/the-romanian-connection-the-k...
- pnloyd 8y agoYa.. that was really hard to read and I'm not even an art fan.
- tw1010 8y agoIf anyone can find a good book about this (heavy on detail, not just a single anecdotal heist story), I'd love to hear about it. In fact, I'd love even more something super academical and theoretical. Sounds like an interesting change of pace.
- justaguyhere 8y agoI read about a Canadian thief, who was exceptionally good (can't remember his name now). He stole some priceless stuff, and just kept them in his basement. He did it for the thrill (one of the details I remember - he parachuted into a heavily guarded museum). He only got caught because of his arrogance. Not saying these guys are thrill seekers, but apparently there are people who do it just for "fun" and don't care about selling their loot.
- nervousvarun 8y agoGerald Blanchard. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Blanchard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Blanchard https://www.wired.com/2010/03/ff_masterthief_blanchard/ https://www.wired.com/2010/03/ff_masterthief_blanchard/
- goldenkey 8y ago> "On March 22, 2017, Blanchard was arrested in Burlington, Ontario for stealing electronics from a local Best Buy. [5]" You can't make this stuff up..
- wahern 8y ago2004 break leading to original conviction: "Seeing a dolly and other odd equipment inside, he took down the license plate number. Police ran it. The vehicle had been rented from Avis by one Gerald Daniel Blanchard." 2017 arrest: "[O]fficers used video surveillance footage of the parking lot and traced the suspect’s licence plate to a car rented in Blanchard’s name." Being a successful, repeat criminal must be so exhausting. Before the 2004 incident the guy already had several fake identities he presumably could have used. I guess there's no end to how much effort you can put into covering your tracks and eventually you just have to roll the dice.
- nemetroid 8y agoNot really. The only planning apparent is "had an escape vehicle", which does not meet the requirements for "not morons". > In 2013, a crown and sceptre used in the funeral of Sweden’s 16th-century King Johan III were stolen from Västerås, another city on the shore of Lake Mälaren. They turned up a few days later in two large rubbish bags at the side of a highway after a tip-off to police.
- zipwitch 8y agoObviously the thieves weren't after them for any mundane value they possessed. <insert story about occult conspiracy theory here> (Back when I ran tabletop RPGs, this is exactly the sort of thing the PCs would have done.)
- labster 8y agoI toured Castle Edinburgh a couple of days ago, and I had this exact thought when looking at a wand amongst the Scottish Crown Jewels.
- irrational 8y agoSomebody really sucks at their job of protecting Swedish crowns.
- Nr7 8y agoJust because that's the only part of their planning that we know of doesn't mean that it's the only planning that they actually did.
- dopamean 8y agoSince they successfully absconded with the jewels I'm going to guess they had more of a plan than simply "have an escape vehicle."
- lb1lf 8y agoSwedish journalist Anders Rydell wrote a book called 'Plundrarna: Hur nazisterna stal Europas konstskatter' a few years ago; with any luck it has been translated into a language you're comfortable with. It deals with how the nazis looted art prior to and during the war, but also devotes a few chapters to what happened after the war - dealing in artworks of dubious provenance, legal issues when heirs to the original owners wanted the looted art back &c. Perhaps not quite what you had in mind, but most interesting and well researched.
- sandworm101 8y agoThey arent going to sell it. These things have uses to criminals. For example, if ever caught for something else, knowing the location of a missing cultural treasure is a great chip during plea bargaining.
- cies 8y agoDid not think of this. Big insight... How did you get to this train of thought if I may ask? :)
- sandworm101 8y agoIt is common knowledge in law enforcement. In Europe, the larger crime families have traditionally kept caches of valuable art. These jewels will be under someone's floorboards, perhaps for generations. Something similar happened with lower-ranking German officers towards the end of the war. Art, like gold, transcends boarders and language.
- kpil 8y agoI highly doubt this. Not the type of planning typical criminals in Sweden are good at. Also, there is no plea bargaining in Sweden.
- sandworm101 8y agoIt isnt staying in sweeden.
- pvaldes 8y agoMaybe there is a market, maybe not. Other possible goals could be also to attack the swedish crown distroying a symbol of their power, to humiliate the police, to seed insecurity and fear in the population and blame foreigners. Maybe the thieves where paid in advance... Is not easy to guess the real motivation currently.
- cies 8y agoThe plot gets waay better like this. Now if they only donated a significant part of the proceeds to some cool charity. They's be the robin hoods of modern day. side note: I'm not a fan of the endless protection of private property of the super rich, that is paid for in taxes that come disproportionaly more from the not-super-rich.
- jen729w 8y agoI'm no scholar, but aren't the royal jewels effectively public property anyway? "The crown" owns them, not this particular king or queen.
- cies 8y agoNo idea. For what I know the royal family owns the whole nation and all the "serves" on them. They --on paper-- only allow the democracy to do its thing until the decide it is enough. That they are afraid to do so because of an imminent revolution, it just speculation. On paper it is clear, they still own our asses, the land, and all what we own. And less then half the swedes supports them.
- tjoff 8y agoNot at all, the royal family in Sweden doesn't have more power than any other celebrity. Though the king has parliamentary immunity (that be said the consequences of obvious wrongdoing would be swift and severe). Sure, the king is also a military general. But as with everything about the royal family it is mostly ceremonial.
- 8y ago
- 4043D 8y agoFor things like this and high end art it's normally stolen to order.
- coldtea 8y ago>The perpetrators therefore aren't complete morons; they have surely thought about what they'd do after making their getaway. Why would they be "complete morons"? They successfully completed a quite difficult heist. Even if they don't have a buyer lined up, this takes a lot of skill and smarts.
- jnurmine 8y agoIt was hardly a quite difficult heist. As an example of such check the helicopter robbery in Västberga in 2009 (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%A4stberga_helicopter_robbery https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%A4stberga_helicopter_ro...). This was a smash and grab of a church with some thought used for finding a quiet spot for the smashing part and to make a faster escape with bicycles. It was admittedly clever to have a boat ready, since it's easy to vanish to Mälaren, make a landfall, dump the boat and switch to a getaway car. Svenska kyrkan really needs to do a risk assessment and take this seriously, since it is not the first time and won't be the last either and relying on the good will of people is not a strategy for preventing theft of historical artefacts.
- mabbo 8y agoThe simplest plan now is to wait a week, then send an anonymous email to every newspaper in the country with a picture of the items over the day's newspaper and say "X bitcoins to this address for this item, Y bitcoins for this one". Reasonable prices, mind you. Aim for a year or two's salary for each thief maybe. The police and government would know that the investigation will cost more than that amount. They'll look stupid to pay the money, but they'll not even bother trying to recover even one of them.
- dev_dull 8y agoDon't you know? Once you've paid the danegeld, you'll never get rid of the dane.
- vanderZwan 8y agoYeah, the insurance companies that "mysteriously" find the missing jewelry for cheaper than the insured price.