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Comment by InclinedPlane | Hacker News Reader

This is actually an interesting entire family of crimes. Steal a unique, highly valuable item, sell fake copies for full-price now that it's plausible to be the real thing (especially if you set up a sale before the actual theft takes place), then return the original if you care enough. Nobody will turn you in because they'd be admitting to attempting to buy stolen goods.

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This could be really dangerous if you aren't careful who you sell to.

It worked brilliantly in this case since they did their business in the US, overseas from where it was stolen.

I imagine it is a hell of a lot more dangerous now, and the guy willing to spend millions on stolen artwork is likely the guy who could have you killed without thinking about it ;-)

According to the article, this scheme was probably just a fabrication by a journalist who wanted a juicy story:

"Here at last was a criminal brain worthy of the Mona Lisa. The only problem is that Decker almost certainly invented him. There is no external evidence for Decker’s story, nor even for the Marques’ existence. A century later, none of the six supposed copies has surfaced. Most likely, Vincenzo Peruggia stole the Mona Lisa single-handed, largely because she was small."

(Also, this is somewhat off-topic, but the typography and layout on ft.com are really superb. This is one of the few websites that doesn't make me immediately turn to readability.)

http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_bloom_the_origins_of_pleasure....

...for the Han van Meegeren version of it.

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