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Comment by hash872 | Hacker News Reader

What is the end goal for the thieves? Seeing as you obviously can't sell stolen artwork on the open market- how many insanely wealthy private collectors can there be out there, who are willing to risk substantial prison time to own a stolen painting? I think many or most people who have that much money probably made it legally and don't have that kind of risk tolerance. And I doubt many mob boss/Tony Soprano types really have an appreciation for fine art.... So what's the market like?

(And if there is a market for shady wealthy stolen art buyers, how do you get connected with them? Seems like every node in a web of underground connections is someone the police can potentially arrest & flip, etc.)

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Interestingly as I understand it part of the point is that by stealing the original you are able to create both better counterfeits and a market for them.

Think about it — obviously no one will buy a counterfeit "Starry Night" or whatever if it's hanging in a museum. But if it's stolen, all of a sudden there's the possibility that they can buy the original.

Not only that, but the counterfeit, created with extensive access to the original, is likely to be almost indistinguishable from it except by experts.

So the thieves steal the original, make a few copies, sell those for millions saying each is the original, then return the original to the museum. The best part is, the people who bought the counterfeits can't exactly go to the police. It's the perfect crime!

Sound crazy? This is what is speculated to have happened to the Mona Lisa some time ago.

The "Tony Soprano types" are probably more common - and perhaps less savvy - than you might expect. The type of person who thinks one can buy a hot van Gogh for a few million bucks is a pretty ripe target for counterfeiters.

The irony in that comment is that one of the Soprano actors is actually an artist (painter) and big art buff and scored big on finding a painting at a dealer that "didn't know what he had"..

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/sopranos-actor-discovers-1...

That's funny. I know it shouldn't be, but it is always surprising when actors turn out to be very unlike those they portray. Infamous villains played by famously kind people, violent goons played by erudite and talented members of the arts community, etc.

I don't know, being a baroque Italian art collector sounds just like Furio to me!

This is the plot of _From the Mixed Up Files of Ms Basil E Frankweiler_

All I remember from that book was that the kids botched seperating their laundry. It was a real snoozer, but it planted a persistent seed of doubt whenever I have to do laundry.

(the actor that played Furio Giunta)

It's not that easy to sell counterfeit artwork. Anyone who's paying millions for an artwork will have the painting examined by a specialized consultant. The easiest way to spot a fake is to examine the pigments and whether a particular one was available by the time the artist lived. This is how the Rosales scandal was exposed in 2013.

Where are you going to find a specialized consultant expert enough to judge if its fake who also doesn't know that the painting he is looking at was recently stolen from a museum?

I don't think it's that hard to buy discretion if you're willing to pay a hefty fee. Besides how could anyone prove that you actually own the painting? I hire you, I fly you half the way around the world to a remote place where you're to examine the painting for a couple of weeks, you're paid and bye-bye.

I'm not saying that I know for a fact that this is how it's happening, but it doesn't seem far-fetched. What I do know is that a lot of what's happening in the art world is shrouded by a veil of secrecy.

The consultant doesn't need to prove it. The prosecutor does, if it gets to that point – but first there would be a police investigation, and the police have a variety of investigative techniques at their disposal.

Unusually tricky right now. Plus the number of people who can validate authenticity is quite limited and easily identifiable. A Van Gogh would be hard to forge but not that hard. There's recipes for paint/pigment manufacture going back centuries.

Are you implying that if they do recognize the original, they would report it as stolen?

It's an interesting question, and there are rewards for recovery so it's probably under the same trust calculus of any other criminal venture: pay enough that they don't.

Why do they need to not know that it was recently stolen from a museum?

Their ignorance is not required, they certainly should be aware it was stolen if they're any good at their job. All you need is someone who's willing to accept cash.

These are oil paintings. I don't have much expertise in that but I think it'll be impossible to counterfeit the smallest details.

With High res imaging of much major art a la google art project now, it's going to be literally impossible for many of them.

Can't fake the inorganic chemist that the museum hires to date paint compositions.

Thank you for posting this - I'd had pretty much the exact thought about creating a market for multiple copies earlier today when I first saw this story, and presumed (in my typically arrogant and self-regarding human fashion) that I'd had a somewhat novel thought.

Of course I hadn't! :)

Couldn’t museums and other art holders create their own authenticated market of accurate clones by giving copiers access?

Nobody wants to pay a million bucks for an authenticated accurate clone. The entire idea of the fraud described above is that people think they're buying the original.

Prints already exist, but nobody is paying big bucks for one.

Well people pay large sums for prints of the Great Wave, of which many thousands were made and are still being made. (Of course the trick is to know which prints are the earliest ones)

The trick is convincing people that earlier prints should be somehow worth more.

I think there's a genuine reason for them to be worth more since they are closer to the original painting. There's a fantastic (and long) series on Youtube about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAhiMCSvtCc

Some museums do sell prints of public domain art, or licensed reproductions including oil painting reproductions. https://shop.famsf.org/collections/monet-the-late-years-art-...

Not quite the same thing as an accurate clone

You can get 3D printed reproductions, too:

- https://gizmodo.com/heres-how-to-get-your-own-picasso-for-un...

- https://www.digitalmeetsculture.net/article/van-gogh-museum-... (probably a bit higher in quality and price, but I can’t find a link for it)

- https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/business/van-gogh-museum-edi... (probably even better, but likely also very pricey)

Interesting that Starry Night is a bestseller for the start-up, but not available from the Van Gogh Museum in either collection.

The ethics of such a practice would be dubious at best.

If the original is now public domain and the replica is not advertised as the original, I'm not sure what the ethical issue is?

I do see a financial issue though, cheap clones are CHEAP - and if you want something that can nearly pass as authentic (which I'd argue is a work of art on it's own) you'd be looking at a very narrow market of buyers.

Again, as long as replicas/clones are labeled as such and the original is in the public domain.

Why? This is just like selling high-quality prints of the paintings, which is already done and nobody complains about.

Perfect reproductions are a goal both for museums and researchers. See, for example: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337848225_Gloss_Col...

I don’t see why if they’re clearly indicated as clones.

From what I've read it's stolen to order.

Super rich person really wants that particular painting to hang in a private room where they can enjoy it.

And they go through a couple connections for plausible deniability -- buying it from some kind of "dealer" they can "assume" is "legit", and the "dealer" then connects with actual criminals to steal it.

If ever caught (unlikely), the thieves and "dealer" take the fall, not the rich person. Also the rich person may be halfway around the world in a country where there's literally zero chance of being caught/extradited.

But the thieves and dealer are going to make a helluva lot of money, obviously, for the risk they're taking.

I don't think plausible deniability works on one-of-a-kind artwork. Even if you assume your dealer is legit, any cursory research will tell you it was stolen. It would be like buying the secret formula for Coca-Cola and claiming you didn't know it was stolen because it went through multiple middlemen.

These aren't paintings that are on display to the public after they're stolen. They're kept in houses and families for generations, and by then, time has laundered their provenance. If you read art news, it's not uncommon for museums to have paintings donated to them by the grandchildren of the person who bought the painting, only to learn half a century later that the painting was stolen.

And if someone doesn't like their stolen painting after a while, there are plenty of dealers who will hook you up with a similarly amoral buyer. The fee is higher, to go with the risk.

There's an entire class of rich people who sometimes go by the label "globalist" who believe they are above national laws, and nations, themselves. They see themselves as "citizens of the world" and sometimes even think they shouldn't need passports to travel because their egos tell them they're so fabulous, and have the money to back it up.

I read a magazine or newspaper article about it last year. Many of them attend that big meeting of super-rich people and the politicians they've bought in Davos each year.

> ... sometimes even think they shouldn't need passports to travel

well, I technically don't disagree with them there..

> ... and by then, time has laundered their provenance.

This is poetry. <3

I mean I have no idea what a judge would think.

But I'm not sure it's entirely outlandish. The buyer just spins a story to the judge: "the dealer said he could acquire a van Gogh from someone's private collection, I loved its appearance, so I paid them to do that." The buyer could insist the dealer said the painting was unnamed, that they would have had no way of ever knowing it was the same one stolen from a museum, etc. (That they certainly never bothered to take a photo and upload it to Google Image Search because why would they?)

To complicate things even further, you can even say you assumed it was a different original version. Just Google "multiple versions of van gogh" and you'll see that the artist would make multiple versions of the same painting.

Obviously the buyer in this case does know what going on -- they initiated the whole thing. But as long as there are no records of communication and the dealer has been paid off to take the fall, they can play dumb in front of a judge if it ever came to that. With a good lawyer, they might very well get away with playing the victim.

If you have enough money to finance an art heist or buy a priceless Van Gogh from a "dealer", you probably have enough money to not go to jail over an art theft. The collector pays a replica price on paper but in reality pays much more to the dealer. If caught, you just say you thought it was a replica, the dealer says they thought it was a replica, their dealer says the same, and so on until no one ends up with any jail time.

> If you have enough money to finance an art heist or buy a priceless Van Gogh from a "dealer", you probably have enough money to not go to jail over an art theft. The collector pays a replica price on paper but in reality pays much more to the dealer. If caught, you just say you thought it was a replica, the dealer says they thought it was a replica, their dealer says the same, and so on until no one ends up with any jail time.

But that story just beggars belief. Sure it's a story, but one that makes no sense at all unless you're willing to entertain the ludicrous premise that someone would steal painting just to sell it as a cheaper replica. Furthermore, a professional art dealer could probably be expected to be able to tell the difference between a replica and a genuine painting. Otherwise, who would buy genuine paintings from him?

I think a prosecutor would be able to quickly identify an individual in the chain of custody who clearly should have known the painting was stolen, and is thus be guilty of receiving stolen property:

https://www.criminaldefenselawyer.com/crime-penalties/federa...

You can always claim to have purchased a "professional-quality" reproduction from a "reputable" dealer.

happens all the time that you ask for a replica and the dealer secretly plants a multi million dollar artwork in your bedroom. Seems legit. :D

And you've just decided that the "replica" was so good that you paid stolen-art-on-the-black-market money for it, not "good replica painter" money for it...

The thing is your books say "good replica money" and only your crypto wallet or offshore account or shell company slush fund or pile of gold have the 'stolen-art-on-the-black-market' money removed from the balance sheet. Smart accountants are payed a lot of money to figure out exactly how to hide this from overworked and underpaid auditors.

To be fair... if you did steal a one of a kind and needed a buyer, you could sell it as the worlds best replica.

You could claim you were hustled!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Hustle_episodes#Series...

Hustle, S08E02: "Picasso Finger Painting"

Ash and Mickey have tried to capitalise on the theft of a rare Picasso by selling a fake to a well-known collector, Petre Sava (Peter Polycarpou), a vicious Eastern European gangster. They learn too late that Sava who owned the stolen original. Mickey is taken prisoner by Sava, leaving Ash and the others with just a few hours to return the real stolen painting, otherwise Mickey is a dead man. With their usual contacts unable to give any clues, except only the word that a Scottish crew were behind the theft, the gang visit renowned Picasso forger Dolly Hammond (Sheila Hancock) (the one who helped to create the fake). She points them in the direction of the McCrary brothers, the thieves in question, and are told that they stole the original painting for another renowned gangster, Harry Holmes (Martin Kemp). Time is ticking and Mickey is edging closer to death; if the group can't find the real painting, Ash will have to devise a plan that can get him back...

>Oh, i was sure that i was buying a great reproduction!

The timing of this is interesting. Are they merely taking advantage of most places having a skeleton staff during the pandemic, or is it something worse like the thieves anticipating the museum will be destroyed by starving mobs soon so they’re stealing the things they like the most before it’s too late? Also, could the museum director have allowed it to happen for a price? His reaction seems strange.

> Are they merely taking advantage of most places having a skeleton staff

This. Art thieves don't care for conservation, they are just extremely opportunistic. I expect this is just one instance we learnt of, simply because of the author's name being known to the mainstream. There is probably much more stuff getting stolen right now in Italy and Spain, which we won't know about for months or years - or even at all, unless we read specialist media.

There are also "backroom" sales, where these sorts of items can be sold in countries who have been embargoed. You trade this type of painting for a ridiculous amount of an embargoed country's goods or something and then you can smuggle this into Russia or China to trade for a non embargoed currency with an oligarch, since oil prices have plummeted. They, in turn, can hold on to it for a few generations, and sell it in grey markets for a good profit and some time.

I feel like this is one of those things people imagine happens, but actually never happens. If it did happen, eventually someone would get caught and we'd see evidence of said secret room and the painting would be recovered from a mansion or something. Instead, they're always recovered from warehouses or behind walls to in attics of crooks.

Yeah, after paying off the local officials to frame it that way. A rich person being accused of theft will tank their reputation, and if they spent $250M for the painting, they'll easily spend $10M to cover it up.

This is pure fantasy, who would spend $250m to acquire a stolen painting that they cannot resell? If it really is rich people buying them the purchase price is going to be a fraction of a percent of the amount you're talking about.

When your net worth is in the hundreds of billions, you can spend a couple hundred million to impress your "friends," and many billionaires do. Yeah, it's disgusting, but that's only because the modern global economy allows such disgusting levels of wealth.

The number of people with net worth in the hundreds of billion right now is... 1. The second-richest person is Bill Gates, at only $96.5 billion. By #10, we're at $50 billion. Fewer than 200 people are worth $10 billion. Granted, this only includes people with known net worths, but by the time you're hitting tens of billions, it's hard to hide that much wealth.

It really makes a huge impact on this conversation to say "billions" and "2.5M" and "200k," so thanks for pointing all of this stuff out. Leave it to HN to get buried in a pedantic technicality that has no effect on the points being made.

The "modern global economy" allows it? I suggest you look up the wealth (adjusted for inflation) of many, many historical business and political figures. Extreme wealth for a few is nothing new and if anything modern global economics and markets have done a massive leveling up of standards of living for many more people who aren't incredibly rich.

That aside, how should something like your subjective notion of "disgusting" levels of wealth guide how much of what they earned people should be able to keep?

Seems like you took my statement "the modern global economy allows it," and inferred that I meant every system other than the modern one does not allow it. Of course not. Of course there are many systems that existed in the past that also allowed for gross levels of wealth disparity, but did I ever claim otherwise?

> massive leveling up of standards of living

For who? Impoverished workers in China and India? How have American labourers benefitted from globalism and Keynesian economics? They haven't, at least not in the last 50 years.

> That aside, how should something like your subjective notion of "disgusting" levels of wealth guide how much of what they earned people should be able to keep?

I think you're just pretending you're naive, but you can feel free to look up many of the proposed solutions. UBI, wealth tax, limits on how much money can be passed through inheritance, etc. There are many solutions that have been _proposed_, but the problem is that with massive wealth comes massive power, and the individuals who possess disgusting levels of wealth will never let these solutions come to be.

> what they earned

Jeff Bezos has not earned 100 billion dollars. You could probably convince me that he's earned at least 1 billion dollars, but there is absolutely no way one man can generate that much wealth in one lifetime. He has stolen his wealth through asymmetrical agreements with powerless individuals, who chose to work for him rather than starve due to a lack of accessible jobs.

We've created a system that makes individuals dependent on large corporations for healthcare and rent, and then we wonder why poor individuals can't start businesses or change jobs freely (hint hint, it's due to food security and access to healthcare). If I point a gun at you and take your money, I haven't earned anything, have I? But if I starve you out, and tell you you can't see a doctor, then I can rob you of the value of your ideas and labor. For some reason our system allows that.

Bezos got a $300k interest-free loan from his mother to start his business. Are you telling me he earned that? No, it was given to him by birthright, and it's a luxury the vast majority of people don't have.

Bezos did not earn 100 billion dollars, he stole it.

Bezos doesn’t even have $100B, so the premise of your argument is nonsense.

Owning shares of something isn’t the same as liquid cash. And valuing 1 share at the most recent market closing price the same as a founder liquidating their whole investment is also nonsense.

FYI, all those worlds richest lists are clickbait.

> Bezos doesn’t even have $100B, so the premise of your argument is nonsense.

Oh, so that's how you're going to handwave this argument today. Got it, I wouldn't have bothered writing all of that up if I knew you were just going to stick your head in the sand.

Here's what happens when your boy Bezos gets too much power:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-30/amazon-wo...

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/5dmeka/whole-foods-employ...

There need to be more checks and balances on individuals who possess this much power, or they need not be allowed to attain so much power in the first place. Your technicalities do nothing to fix this problem which affect tens of thousands of workers in this country, who are being forced to expose themselves to a deadly virus (or go hungry) so Bezos can buy another mansion and bang some more models. But I don't care that much, I suppose. If it isn't done democratically it won't be long before heads are rolling.

You just don't need to spend that much, it would be grossly overpaying.

So the rich being selfish fucks. They want to own something and deprive the rest of us of that enjoyment.

Michel Van Rijn was a 'famous' Dutch art smuggler. He explained that a lot of art was ordered. The extreme wealthy of the underground just buy it because they want it.

A Vice article about him: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ex5qj4/how-i-became-one-o...

Edit: the Vice article doesn't mention the thefts and looting. There are other sources for this. It is also unclear if he really is a former smuggler.

Edit 2: The other reason is it's relatively easy to steal art. And most thieves focus on that part. The selling part is difficult and is also why a lot of stolen art is later recovered.

Apparently they can be used as collateral between criminals for loans. They can also be used as an insurance policy if the criminal is ever caught. Offer to exchange the art for a lesser sentence. A literal get out of jail free card.

This was the certainly the case in the Gardner Museum heist in Boston in the 90s:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabella_Stewart_Gardner_Museu...

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/gardner-heist-suspect-rele...

Those police sketches of the thieves look an awful lot like Mario and Luigi...

Thanks, I was familiar with the anecdote but couldn't remember the source. I did a quick search but didn't find it. I thought it may have happened with a major drug dealer as well? Not sure on that.

-A few years ago, months after Norway had witnessed a HEAT-style armed robbery during which a police officer was killed, Edvard Munch’s ‘The Scream’ and ‘Madonna’ were stolen from the National Gallery to divert resources away from the ongoing manhunt after the HEAT robbery.

Didn’t work.

> Offer to exchange the art for a lesser sentence. A literal get out of jail free card.

Has that ever happened? I'd assume this would be super controversial.

A guy out of Boston did that...for paintings he actually stole.

I think the book was the art of the heist

Perhaps it was stolen to order? Essentially the market would be ready-made for the thieves.

“Your Postmate is picking up your order from RIJKSMUSEUM. It should be ready for delivery on: the next quiet, moonless night.”

If you can get the goods to the Middle East (Qatar, UAE, Bahrain) I assure you there are filthy rich princes and sheikhs who (1) want to give the impression of a respect for fine art, and (2) are at absolutely no risk of prosecution, and (3) would drop the money just for fun / social posturing, not even as an investment.

Oligarchs, shady statesmen, (cyber)criminals, druglords, warlords. I'm sure there are plenty of people in the market for stolen work from one of the most famous painters.

They might even be under the impression that they are negotiating with / buying from a rightful owner.

You have examples of other stolen art they possess?

I don't know what it's like in Northern Europe, but in Italy the motives can be more trivial than you'd expect.

In at least one case we know of, about 20 years ago, a local gangster had some beef with a bishop, so he got his men to break into the main church and steal a prized artwork. The painting was never found (afaik); the boss was later imprisoned for other reasons and basically admitted to his role in the heist, but can't remember what eventually happened to the artwork.

In another case, which was reported pretty recently, a long-stolen painting was found in a small hole in the external wall of the actual building it was stolen from. Motives were never explained by the suspected thief, and the theft happened so long ago that the statute of limitations impedes a prosecution anyway. The theory is just that "opportunity makes man a thief", as they say there: this guy might have seen an opening in the security procedures and might have gone for it, without really thinking about (or underestimating) subsequent steps; eventually he simply returned it (there is no chance that the painting could have survived for years in that hole with nay a scratch, clearly it was placed there very recently) once he knew he couldn't be punished for it.

Let me preface this by stating that I don't actually have any special knowledge of the art or criminal world beyond what I've seen in the movies, so the following is pure speculation.

I could imagine that if a thief's motive were purely financial, he/she could ransom the painting. "This is a priceless piece of world heritage that is heavily insured. Send XXX BTC to this wallet or I'll burn up the painting and send you its ashes."

If you don't think there are loads of shady rich people in the world, you need to wake up.

There are loads of shady poor people. Those of us in cities see them daily. Makes sense that there would be shady rich people, too.

As a rich art collector, you can buy a real Van Gogh for a fraction of its price. Can you risk jail? Sure, but who will know you own it anyway? It's not like you're going to expose it in your living room anyway.

Not only that, but as soon as you know there can be at least one person in the world willing to buy that stolen piece of art, it becomes a great asset to own even if you're not the said art collector. Let's say I'm a bad guy and I want to give another bad guy 2 million dollars but I don't want to be seen with or have to travel with a suitcase full of banknotes or with my own weight in gold bars. Just carrying a lightweight, low-profile cardboard tube containing those 2 million bucks as a painting is very convenient.

And don't forget the end customer is not necessarily someone living in the same country. What if he's a rich prince living in a rich country, far far away? He would be mostly out of reach.

I don't disagree with your comment. There are probably collectors who think like that. But I guess most collectors really like to show off their collections. Why having a good art collection if you cannot show it to anyone?

You can just enjoy it for yourself, in a private room. I'm not that much of an art fan, but I'd love to have an authentic Van Gogh in front of my bed. I guess a rich art fan who doesn't care about ethics would be thrilled as well.

At that point is probably not the art that you love, but knowing that you can get a way with stealing a master piece. More like a trophy.

It is effectively a kidnapping. The kidnapper gets a ransom. Otherwise known as a reward for “information leading to the return” of the stolen painting.

Check out The Thomas Crown Affair (1999), the classic is good too.

Interesting fictional perspective on the super wealthy and thinking they can have anything they want. legal or not. I expect it's not far from reality for some.

"I love my haystacks."

Great movie.

Eventually new technology exposes a counterfeit. There was a recent NOVA about fake dead sea scrolls and the competition between counterfeiters to create better fakes and forensic experts to weed them out. At the time the episode was filmed about a third of the scroll fragments owned by the Museum of the Bible were proven fakes. Now the rest of them have been proven false.

A lot of wealthy collectors who buy prestigious art never exhibit it in public. So anyone could get that thing and place it in a private vault. Other than that, my guess is that whoever stole it already has a client waiting to buy it. We could safely assume that the job is pretty much commissioned.

>Seeing as you obviously can't sell stolen artwork on the open market- how many insanely wealthy private collectors can there be out there, who are willing to risk substantial prison time to own a stolen painting?

There's zero risk involved if you're a Russian oligarch - the Russian constitution absolutely prohibits extradition and the Russian state has no interest in prosecuting wealthy, powerful and well-connected men for crimes that don't meaningfully harm and arguably benefit the Russian state. Much the same can be said for a number of Middle Eastern and Latin American jurisdictions.

This is a serious problem for stolen artworks. Back in the day the IRA stole several. The most use they ever were was as collateral to other illegal organisations. If you can find a decent history of them, it’s fascinating but the long and the short of it is that even to a large, well connected organisation they just proved more trouble than they were worth,

The truth is, the aesthete billionaire collector beloved by movies doesn’t much exist. Most truly expensive artwork is bought either as a store of value or to show off. Both require you to be able to publicise you have it.

Paul McCartney had his original Hofner Bass stolen and wondered the exact same as you.

He had a really funny theory about this that if you visit some German castle way up in the hills of Bavaria, after dinner the host will invite you into a room where his bass is hanging over the mantlepiece. [1]

I'd be willing to bet that in cases like this painting, the thieves were probably hired by a billionaire client. So, the buyer was the one who initiated the heist in the first place.

[1] https://youtu.be/5Pf19jV1NYw?t=849

Here's an interesting idea, although it may be far fetched. Given the original, if a thief could produce a high quality counterfeit in van gough's style, they could possibly use parchment/ink from the true original in creating it. Then they'd have a "lost van gough" which could pass some basic age analysis. This lost painting would be worth more than the original, and they could sell it on the real art market, not a black market.

Or this may just a crappy movie plot. I don't know much about art.

> I doubt many mob boss/Tony Soprano types really have an appreciation for fine art.

Why? It's perfect. Cartels/mobsters love extravagant things, art is convenient for money laundering, and they already DGAF about the law.

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/3-drug-kingpins-art-adored...

This is a great read from the New Yorker about a serial art thief, which gives a bit of insight into the psychology of it all: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/01/14/the-french-bur...

> I think many or most people who have that much money probably made it legally

You're already becoming so technical(ly true) here that it should be obvious that the people you're speaking of are functionally amoral. Once you approach a certain wealth ceiling, the chances that you're caught in any real way approach zero.

> how many insanely wealthy private collectors can there be out there, who are willing to risk substantial prison time to own a stolen painting?

Plenty. Think Drug Cartel Bosses. Over half-a-dozen in Mexico, Columbia and Venezuela alone. Nett worth in Billions.

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/17/magazine/what-is-the-valu...

art theft also makes for good journalism (about the same theft, heist story) https://www.nrc.nl/kunsthal-en/

and its still profitable, for people who are good at it. https://www.gq.com/story/secrets-of-the-worlds-greatest-art-...

war is a little different, but leads to similar results https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2014/04/degenerate-art-corne...

finally, not so much direct theft, but Art World Satan (his own self curated image) Stefan Simchowitz is interesting in his own right, buying up all of someones paintings before they are famous, and flipping them, once he hypes them up enough as the next big thing. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/magazine/the-art-worlds-p... https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/08/is-silicon-valley-de... https://hyperallergic.com/452852/the-notorious-stefan-simcho... https://hyperallergic.com/172910/stefan-simchowitz-isnt-as-c... https://www.lamag.com/longform/man-art-gallery-owners-love-h... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-12/hot-new-a... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-02-06/art-flipp... https://www.vulture.com/2014/03/saltz-on-the-great-and-power...

>Ulman had not yet heard all the stories about Simchowitz’s generosity and its fatal attraction for young, penniless artists whom he lured into Faustian bargains. He would provide them with “all those adult things” they needed and so often lacked: room, board, materials. In exchange for extraordinary support, Simchowitz asked not for his artists’ souls but for their art, a deal that many of his protégés lived to regret.

one more about the girl whos legs got destroyed in the grayhound accident https://outline.com/LgJMGd

I've read that often art thieves are effectively ransoming their stolen art in hopes the victimized museum's pay up.

Paintings are insured. Thieves should be able to sell the paintings back to insurance companies for 10% of their value right?

Easy - sell for cash to drug cartels.

It may not be presented to prospective buyers under truthful conditions.

"I promise this is the OTHER Van Gogh by the same name, not the one that comes in news stories about the theft when you Google it."

Prison time isn't generally a risk for someone with enough wealth and connections to even catch wind of the offer to purchase a stolen Van Gogh painting.

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