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Stolen Art Watch, Art Of The Steal, Sunday Musings

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The Verdict If you’re a fan of Ocean’s Eleven-style heists – capers with a good sense of humor and a high dosage of fun – The Art of the Steal is right up your alley. The characters steal the show, much like they steal some damn fine art in the movie itself.

Amherst College, FBI reopen 1975 Mead Art Museum heist investigation

  • JASON PICARD<br/>Mead Art Museum Director Elizabeth Barker, left, and Director of Security Heath Cummings are seen in front of the Pieter Lastman painting "St. John the Baptist," which was stolen from the museum in February 1975 but recovered in January 1989. 
  • JASON PICARD
    Mead Art Museum Director Elizabeth Barker, left, and Director of Security Heath Cummings are seen in front of the Pieter Lastman painting "St. John the Baptist," which was stolen from the museum in February 1975 but recovered in January 1989.
Two of the paintings were recovered in 1989 following a federal sting operation in Illinois, in which a notorious art thief and bank robber from Massachusetts, Myles Connor Jr., was arrested. He had offered the two paintings as collateral in a drug deal set up by undercover FBI agents.
In a 2009 book, “The Art of the Heist,” in which he details his life of crime, Connor claims he stole both those paintings from the Mead.

But the third painting — a piece by Dutch artist Jan Baptist Lambrechts that is believed to date from the early 18th century — hasn’t been seen since vanishing from the museum Feb. 8, 1975. And Connor doesn’t mention it in his book.

Now museum officials, with the FBI, have reopened the investigation for the missing painting, titled “Interior with Figures Smoking and Drinking.” Though no new information has come to light about the work, museum staff said they have no reason to believe the Lambrechts is not still in decent condition, somewhere, and they hope that by publicly announcing the renewed search they’ll prompt some new leads, including tips from the public.
“I’ve been trying to do this since I came on here,” said Heath Cummings, the Mead’s head of security, who began working at the museum in 2006. “It was basically a matter of going back, looking at all the paperwork on the case, talking to people who had been involved in it, just slowly collecting data about it.”
Cummings examined museum files, college archives, and old newspaper accounts, and he also talked to various art experts and other law enforcement agents. Then he took the information to the FBI, which agreed to take a fresh look at the case, including assigning an agent in the bureau’s Springfield office to review past information on the missing painting to see if anything had been overlooked.
Special agent Greg Comcowich, media coordinator for the bureau’s Boston office, said the FBI is looking to generate additional publicity for the case beyond the Valley and Massachusetts.
“It’s not uncommon for art to resurface years or even decades after it’s been stolen,” Comcowich said. “It can follow some strange paths.”
He said the art can sometimes wind up with people who don’t realize the value of what they have.
“Anytime we get a request like this from the public, we want to do all we can to help out,” said special agent Geoff Kelly, who oversees art theft investigations for the Boston FBI office. “And today we have better resources for tracking stolen art than we did in 1975.”
He noted, for instance, that the bureau maintains a digital national file for looted art, on which the Lambrechts painting has been listed.
Elizabeth Barker, the Mead’s director, credited Cummings with doing all the “heavy lifting” on researching the case of the missing Lambrechts painting. The museum, she added, decided bringing the case forward again and seeking public input outweighed the embarrassment of reminding anyone that the paintings had been stolen in the first place, when museum security was not as tight as it is now.
“I think it’s important that we show we’re making a real good-faith effort to try and find this painting,” Barker said. 

Grim discovery
The theft was discovered in February 1975 after state police at the Northampton barracks got an anonymous tip. They contacted Amherst College police, who tracked footprints still visible in some fresh snow to a broken window at the Mead. Inside the museum, it quickly became evident that three Dutch canvasses — all of which the museum had obtained in the previous few years — had been stripped from their frames.
Aside from the Lambrechts painting, the missing art included “The Interior of the New Church, Delft” by Hendrick Cornelisz van Vliet (1611-1675) and “St. John the Baptist” by Pieter Lastman (1583-1633).
Museum officials did what they could, registering the stolen works with the Art Dealers Association of America in case someone tried to sell them, and the college overhauled the Mead’s security system. In 1982, insurance allowed the museum to purchase a replacement painting, another work by van Vliet, “Interior of Nieuwe Kerk, Delft.”
But the trail of the missing art soon went cold — until 1989, when the van Vliet and Lastman paintings were recovered during Connor’s arrest in the FBI drug sting. Both paintings were in pretty good condition, Cummings said, and were back on display in the museum that year.
However, Connor, who once stole a Rembrandt from Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts in broad daylight — then later used it as a bargaining chip for a reduced prison sentence — gave a new wrinkle to the Mead story in his 2009 book, in which he details his long list of crimes and prison sentences, including one for shooting a police officer.
In the book, co-written by crime novelist Jenny Siler, Connor claims he stole the van Vliet and Lastman paintings from the Mead on a whim after coming to the area with two partners to check out a South Hadley bank they were thinking of robbing. Connor, who enjoyed art and studied it in his spare time, stopped by the museum before heading to the bank.
Connor, now 71 and according to various news reports living in Blackstone, in Worcester County near the Rhode Island border, does not say specifically when he went to the Mead. But judging from the book’s timeline, his visit would appear to be in the mid 1970s, about the time the three paintings were stolen from the museum.
He writes that he didn’t care for the Mead’s atmosphere — “Small yet pretentious, with an overblown sense of itself” — but did appreciate its collection of Dutch oil paintings. Noticing one in the curator’s empty office, he stepped in for a quick look, only to have the curator reappear, irritated to find Connor there and dismissive of his inquiries about the painting, “immediately identifying me as someone of a lower caste.”
Feeling disrespected, and noticing there did not appear to be any alarm system connected to the window in his office, Connor resolved to come back that night with his partners to teach the curator a lesson. He claims the subsequent break-in, through the window of that same office, “wasn’t especially memorable” but personally very satisfying, “on par with the most daring heists of my career.”
Yet, among a number of items he claims he and his partners stole from the museum, Connor does not mention Lambrechts’ “Interior with Figures Smoking and Drinking.”
Asked if Connor had been questioned about that painting, or would be in the future, Geoff Kelly, the FBI agent, said he couldn’t comment on any specifics about the investigation but added, “Typically we will approach anyone who we believe may have knowledge about the case.”
It’s not clear what the Lambrechts painting might be worth today; Barker said that as a museum director, she’s ethically bound not to discuss the monetary value of artwork. But according to artnet.com, an online service provider for the international art market, other works by Lambrechts were sold in the past two decades for the equivalent of anywhere between $22,000 and $43,400.
People get disheartened sometimes with how long it can take to recover stolen art, Kelly said, “but they have to be patient — there can be a break in a case anytime.” He cited a 1978 case in which seven paintings worth millions of dollars were stolen from a private residence in Stockbridge — the largest residential theft in state history — and all the art was finally recovered by about 2010.
“There’s always hope,” said Kelly.
Anyone who may have information relating to the theft or location of the Lambrechts painting is asked to contact the FBI at 617-742-5533 or online at https://tips.fbi.gov

12-page list details drugs seized from apartment where stolen artifact sat for years


12-page list details drugs seized from apartment where stolen artifact sat for years

Simon Metke, 33, kept an ancient artifact worth $1.2-million on a bookshelf for two years.

EDMONTON - An RCMP officer helping in the search for a stolen $1.2 million artifact noticed a strong smell of marijuana within the south Edmonton apartment. In the first kitchen drawer he opened while looking for documents related to the Persian bas-relief sculpture, the officer found containers with what he believed to be marijuana, hash or heroin, psilocybin, and cocaine or methamphetamine inside, court documents say.
Alberta RCMP assisted Quebec RCMP’s Integrated Art Crime Investigation Team on Jan. 22 in recovering the artifact stolen from Montreal’s Museum of Fine Arts in September 2011. When RCMP entered the 14th-floor suite shortly before 9 a.m., Simon Metke showed investigators where the stolen artifact was in his bedroom, an application to obtain a search warrant says.
Metke, 33, previously told the Edmonton Journal the artifact, dating from the fifth century BC, sat on an Ikea bookshelf for two years, displayed above a plastic Star Wars spaceship, flanked by crystals and a small collection of stuffed animals. He bought the sculpture from the neighbour of a friend in Montreal for $1,400.
“I’m not really happy with the way that I found out what it was, but ... I’m really honoured to have been able to look after it,” he said.
As Metke and his girlfriend Jana Lang, 25, were escorted out of the apartment and taken to RCMP headquarters, officers began searching the suite for documents related to the stolen artifact. Police sought a second search warrant for drugs and seized what they believed to be 1.072 kilograms of marijuana, 11.1 grams of hash, one gram of heroin, 64.8 grams of psilocybin, 18.1 grams of opium, LSD, “score sheets,” scales, and packaging material.
The items found are detailed in a 12-page list.
Police also seized an undetermined amount of cash in 19 bundles and numerous unidentified drugs, including a plastic margarine container with various suspected drugs inside and unknown plant matter in small plastic baggies.
“I noticed two white coffee grinders on the kitchen counter in plain view,” wrote RCMP Const. Brent Clarke in an application to obtain a search warrant. One coffee grinder contained ground-up marijuana, and a kitchen drawer Clarke opened contained small containers with various drugs, as well as rolling papers, a metal grinder and scissors.
Clarke also noticed two pieces of paper, believed to be score sheets. “Score sheets record how much the drug trafficker is selling the drugs for and the amounts. I noticed code names and prices consistent with that of a cannabis marijuana trafficker,” the document says.
Metke previously told the Journal he had been working on getting his medical marijuana licence, and that the money seized by RCMP were donations and savings to start a business teaching children about ecology.
Metke and Lang have been charged with trafficking marijuana and possession of money obtained by crime. Metke has also been charged with possession of stolen property. They are slated to appear in Edmonton provincial court on March 19.

Man charged over Edinburgh antiques theft

Shapes auction house 
Antiques worth about £100,000 were taken from Shapes auction house in December
A 53-year-old man has been charged in connection with the theft of antiques from an auction house in the west of Edinburgh.
Gordon McIntyre appeared at Edinburgh Sheriff Court charged with theft by housebreaking.
He made no plea or declaration and was remanded in custody.
Police Scotland said about £100,000 worth of items were taken from Shapes on Bankhead Medway early on 7 December, 2013.
Officers confirmed they are still attempting to trace the stolen goods and have appealed for anyone with information to contact them.
The theft was investigated as part of Operation RAC, which was established to target housebreaking and other crimes against property.
Det Insp John Kavanagh said: "Since these items were stolen during a break-in last year, officers in Edinburgh have been pursuing numerous lines of inquiry to identify those responsible.
"These inquiries, undertaken as part of Operation RAC, have culminated in an arrest, while we continue with our efforts to trace the stolen antiques.
"Anyone who believes they have information that can assist with our investigation should contact police immediately."
Kingpin’ of Wafi Mall jewellery heist held



DUBAI: Dubai Police have confirmed the news reported by Kuna news agency from Madrid that the Spanish police arrested on Feb.3 a new member of the “Pink Panther” gang. The gang had robbed jewellery worth three million euros from a shopping mall in Dubai in 2007.

According to Kuna agency, the Spanish TV news quoted the Spanish police that they had arrested a 33-year-old Serbian, Borok Leinshitesh, one of the members of the “Pink Panther” gang, who is wanted in more than 20 countries and purportedly the gang leader.

The Spanish police confirmed that Leinshitesh was arrested in the city of Alkala de Henares in Madrid, while he was driving a rented car checking out of a hotel. They said he was sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment by the Dubai Police.

It is mentioned that this gang consists of 200 people, and they had committed more than 210 robberies all over the world, most recent of which was in the French city of Cannes, during the Cannes Film Festival.

A security source said they had already arrested about two members of the “Pink Panther” gang after their identity was revealed by the Dubai Police for the first time in the world, and they had issued charges against them on the request of Interpol.

An official arrest warrant against the suspects was issued by the Dubai Interpol Police since committing the theft in a famous jewellery store in Wafi Mall. An extradition order has been sent to the Spanish authorities to extradite the accused to the Dubai police.

It was noted that the Dubai Police had a great role to play in detecting the case of the jewellery store theft by four suspects, including a woman.

Dubai Police also revealed the identities of these criminals.

The police confirmed that the suspects were members of a gang which was called the “Pink Panther.”

The police chased them and they were able to detect the place where they hid the jewellery a few days after the theft, and arrested one member of the gang.

Fernando de Szyszlo painting stolen from museum in Arequipa, Peru

Three paintings were taken from the Arequipa Museum of Contemporary Art, among them “Cuadro de Auvers” by Peruvian artist Fernando de Szyszlo.


Fernando de Szyszlo painting stolen from museum in Arequipa, Peru
Three painting have been stolen from the Arequipa Museum of Contemporary Art, say museum officials.
The most well-known work taken by the art thieves is the “Cuadro de Auvers” by Peruvian abstract artist Fernando de Szyszlo. The two other paintings that were taken were “Aves de totorita” by Gerardo Chavez and “Sueño de Fuego” by Venancio Shinki.
Eduardo Ugarte, director of the Arequipa Museum of Contemporary art told EFE“We’re asking for international help in distributing [images] of the paintings so they won’t be sold, as we think what we’re dealing with is an international art trafficking network, because one of the criminals had a foreign accent.”
“These three painting are very important for us,” explained the director.
EFE reports that the burglary appears to have been a well-organized operation. “They studied the routine and [knew] how to do it,” said Ugarte.
According to EFE, the paintings were cut from their frames with a razor blade. Two members of the three-person team worked to distract museum staff while the third went alone to remove the paintings from their frames. They were able to leave before museum security realized what had happened.
EFE reports that Interpol has been notified of the theft.

Theft of $1.8 million in baroque paintings a blow to Guatemalan art world



ANTIGUA, Guatemala – Two weeks ago, thieves made off with six paintings by 18th century master Tomás de Merlo from the colonial-era church of El Calvario in La Antigua. Experts are devastated by the loss.
Late on the afternoon of Feb. 7, two men entered the historic church, tied up groundskeeper Feliciano Chávez hand and foot, and, joined by accomplices, cut the six paintings from their frames, one by one.
Experts have valued the paintings at about $300,000 each, or $1.8 million total. But for Miguel Torres, an academic fellow at the Guatemalan Academy of Geography and History, “it’s impossible to assign a monetary value to any of the paintings.”
“It’s ridiculous,” Torres lamented. “The paintings are part of our history.”

Benjamin Reeves/The Tico Times
The stolen works, which depict the Passion of Christ and were commissioned after the 1717 San Miguel earthquakes to adorn the walls of El Calvario, represent a crucial component of Guatemala’s 18th century art.
In a recent story in the daily Prensa Libre, historian Haroldo Rodas called the theft “intolerable,” while art historian Guillermo Monsanto said the “heart of baroque Guatemala was stolen.”
Art theft is sadly not uncommon in Guatemala, and the Museum of Colonial Art in La Antigua has targeted before. In 2004, a large painting by Cristóbal de Villalpando was stolen and cut into pieces. A museum guard was killed in that heist. Both halves of the painting were later recovered in Mexico.
Guatemala hosts vast quantities of cultural patrimony, from ancient Mayan artifacts to the treasures of the colonial Catholic Church. Much of the Central American country’s fine art, like De Merlo’s paintings in El Calvario, originally was commissioned by the Catholic Church, and it is still largely under the church’s purview.
But the theft of the De Merlo paintings was preventable, Torres said.
“I personally recommended that [they] put in an alarm [on each painting],” Torres said. Security firms were solicited for bids on an alarm system, but in the end, “we never got the money.”
While El Calvario did have an alarm, it was only activated when the church was closed, and individual paintings were not wired.


El Calvario, Antigua, Guatemala.
Benjamin Reeves/The Tico Times
Now, finger-pointing has begun, with the Guatemalan Culture Ministry pinning the blame on the local Catholic Church. According to Eduardo Hernández, who polices the illicit traffic of cultural goods for the ministry, the paintings were stolen because of a “lack of cautiousness” and a “dearth of finances for a new alarm.”
Even Torres has admitted that many experts in the art world, including himself, were naive in thinking the large scale of the paintings would prevent their theft.
Experts say the biggest markets for stolen colonial Guatemalan art are Mexico and Spain, and according to Torres, the De Merlo paintings are likely in the hands of a private collector. Investigators have alerted Interpol and major auction houses and museums.
Meanwhile, the investigation continues, and a crime-scene squad from the Prosecutor’s Office closed the church for a day last week. Investigators also have requested polygraphs for church employees, and the government is offering a $13,000 reward for information leading to the paintings’ safe return.
Police say anyone with information should call +(502) 2239-2100.
Benjamin Reeves is a freelance journalist based in Antigua, Guatemala. Follow him on Twitter and on his blog.
More of the stolen paintings:

Stolen Art Watch, Tony "Gizzy" Gearing, Gentleman Giant, Grandad, Gawd Bless Ya Gizzy !!

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Art Hostage was sent this photo of Tony Gizzy Gearing and asked to write a brief obituary in an honest manner about one of the very few Antiques dealers in Brighton that commanded respect from all quarters.

Tony, Gizzy Gearing, it must be said, was a true gentleman, respected by all and never had a bad word to say about anyone.

He rose above all the back biting, rivalry and everyday disputes to take his place as a genuine, decent family man.

His monumentos appetite for life was matched by his appetite for the well being of his beloved family, and he loved his dinner too !!

Gizzy was probably the most staunch of all the antiques dealers in Brighton and never, ever commented to other dealers, Police or anyone in authority.

When Art Hostage makes claims they are based upon facts, so it is a fitting tribute to Tony Gizzy Gearing to express the genuine sadness felt by all those right across the spectrum of the Brighton Antiques trade at the passing of  a true gentleman.

Apparently, when Gizzy got to the Pearly gates he was met by Micky Underwood, who greeted him with open arms, Tony Margiotta offered to buy Gizzy lunch and Ten Grand Stan Nelson was lurking in the background with a tip on the favourite.

Stolen Art Watch, Chris Marinello Announces Art Recovery A-Team

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The New Stolen-Art Tracker Opens Its Doors

On Monday, Art Recovery Group PLC — the brand-new competitor to Art Loss Register — opened its offices in Kensington, London, and announced an impressive line-up of staff members.

christopher-marinello-2-630x473x80-2

ARG, you’ll recall, was founded last fall after ALR came under intensified scrutiny for its heavy-handed practices. The New York Times laid them all out in an article headlined Tracking Stolen Art, for Profit, and Blurring a Few Lines, published last Sept. 20. In it, Christopher A. Marinello, who was often ALR’s spokeman, said he was quitting and would start his own firm — that happened, with the founding of ARG, last October.
Now Marinello is really open for business. I couldn’t find a website, per se, but it does have a Facebook page entitled Art Recovery International. Among its new staff are Mark Maurice, Executive Director, a corporate/wealth manager who has worked with dealers and collectors  worldwide and “has dealt with a number of high profile restitution and cultural patrimony cases involving complex cross border disputes,” and Dorit Strauss, who has been in the fine art insurance industry for more than 30 years, once as Vice President and Worldwide Specialty Fine Art Manager at Chubb & Son.
Here’s the rest of the press release, including details of the types of work ARG (or ARI?) will do — like “Location and recovery services involving stolen, missing and looted works of art” and “dispute resolution services in cases of defective title, illegal export and unclear authenticity.”
This service, as we know, is sorely needed. Let’s hope it can compete with ALR — competition is good.




Stolen Art Watch, Art Crime Snapshot March 2014

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Rembrandt Recovered in Southern France

PARIS — Investigators have announced the recovery of a Rembrandt painting 15 years after it was stolen from a museum in Southeastern France in the midst of a passing military parade.
An unidentified man, 43, claimed responsibility last week for the theft, according to the police. He said that it took place in the municipal museum in Draguignan during a break-in timed to a Bastille Day parade that masked the sound of security alarms. He turned himself into police in Southern France last Wednesday, a day after detectives arrested two men in Nice as they tried to sell the stolen painting, the Dutch master’s “Child With a Soap Bubble, ” which is valued at more than 3.2 million euros or almost five million dollars.
Investigators were tipped off by an art dealer who realized that the painting was listed as stolen from the museum of Draguignan. The painting has been returned to the museum.
In a separate case in Serbia last week, local authorities arrested four men and retrieved a Rembrandt painting that had been stolen by masked gunmen in 2006 from the City Museum in Novi Sad. “The Portrait of a Father,” painted in 1630, was stolen once before in 1996 and recovered in Spain. It was one of three paintings, including a Rubens, that was stolen from the Serbian museum.

Stolen Rembrandt painting recovered after 15 years

Colonel Stephane Goffenito with Rembrandt's painting Child with a Soap Bubble 
The recovered painting has been shown to the press

Related Stories

A 17th Century painting by Dutch master Rembrandt has been recovered in France, 15 years after it was stolen.
L'enfant a la bulle de savon (Child with soap bubble), valued at 3.2m euros (£2.7m), was taken from a museum in the southern city of Draguignan in 1999.
Two men were arrested in Nice on Tuesday, according to the Agence France Presse (AFP) news agency.
Police said they received information that a transaction was due to take place in a hotel the following day.
The men, aged 46 and 53, one of whom was described as a former insurer, appeared in court in Nice on Thursday, AFP said.
They were reported to be known to police for previous petty crimes. Police are still looking for other suspects.
Rembrandt's painting Child with a Soap Bubble 
The painting measures 60cm by 49cm and was said to be in a good condition
The painting was stolen from Draguignan's Musee Municipal d'art et d'histoire during the city's Bastille Day celebrations in July 1999.
At the time, police said the thieves entered through a back door and escaped before officers responded to the alarm.
The undated painting, which portrays a teenage boy with long dark brown locks, wearing a golden necklace and holding a soap bubble, was said to be in a good condition.

Stolen items returned to Petworth House


JPEt Petworth House ENGSUS00320131126100654

A detective returned a selection of antiques to Petworth House this week, after a prolific thief from London was jailed for stealing them.
The pair of Japanese plates - together with a Derby porcelain plaque from Clandon Park - were recovered from a pawn broker in Hatton Gardens, London.
Paul Whiting, 68, originally from Hammersmith in London, appeared at Guildford Crown Court on February 6 where he was sentenced to 12 months imprisonment for the theft of two Japanese plates from Petworth in February 2012 and a porcelain plaque from Clandon Park in May 2013.
The sentence is to run concurrent to a sentence he is already serving for a theft at a National Trust property in Hertfordshire.
A key piece of evidence to convict Whiting came from CCTV images of the 68 year old when he took the porcelain plaque to Bonhams Auctioneers in New Bond Street for a valuation.
John Sandon and Fergus Gambon of The Antiques Roadshow fame, were working that day at the auctioneers and carried out an inspection of the item.
A few days later, Mr Sandon read an article in The Antique Trade Gazette regarding the theft of the plaque from Clandon Park and recognised the piece as being the one he had recently examined.
CCTV was produced from Bonhams of the meeting and circulated to other police forces. An officer from Hertfordshire saw the stills and recognised Whiting as someone he had arrested for a burglary at a National Trust House in West Wycombe Park in June 2013.
Officers from Surrey Police interviewed Whiting in prison and subsequently charged him with the two burglaries.
Andrew Loukes, House and Collections Manager at Petworth said: “The National Trust at Petworth are delighted to have the Japanese dishes back, and are very grateful to Surrey and West Sussex Police Forces for all their efforts.
“We are also pleased that our own CCTV coverage was able to link Whiting with the theft from Petworth.”

300 rings stolen during raid at Honiton jewellers


Banwell Antiques in Honiton High Street.
Police are investigating a robbery at a jewellers shop in Honiton.
A lone man attacked a female worker at Banwell Antiques in the High Street as she opened the store at 9am this morning.
The suspect got away with more than 300 rings, pendants and earrings.
He's described as white, of slim build, heavily unshaven, with short dark hair, and aged between 30 – 50 years. He was wearing a blue coat, blue denim jeans, black trainers, a beige coloured flat cap and was carrying a blue rucksack.
The victim is shaken but unhurt.

Police return stolen antiques to National Trust Houses

A detective from Surrey Police had the enjoyable task of returning a selection of antiques to National Trust Properties this week which had been stolen by a prolific thief from London.
The items, a Derby Porcelain Plaque and two Japanese Plates were recovered from a pawn broker in Hatton Gardens, London having been stolen from Clandon Park, Guildford and Petworth House in West Sussex.
Paul Whiting, 68 years, originally from Hammersmith, London appeared at Guildford Crown Court on 6 February 2014 where he was sentenced to twelve months imprisonment for the theft of the porcelain plaque from Clandon Park in May 2013 and the theft of two Japanese Plates from Petworth in February 2012. The sentence is to run concurrent to a sentence he is already serving for a theft at a National Trust property in Hertfordshire.
A key piece of evidence to convict Whiting came from CCTV images of the 68 year old when he took the porcelain plaque to Bonhams Auctioneers in New Bond Street for a valuation. John Sandon and Fergus Gambon of The Antiques Roadshow fame, were working that day at the Auctioneers and carried out an inspection of the item. A few days later, Mr Sandon read an article in The Antique Trade Gazette regarding the theft of the plaque from Clandon Park and recognised the piece as being the one he had recently examined. CCTV was produced from Bonhams of the meeting and circulated to other police forces. An officer from Hertfordshire saw the stills and recognised Whiting as someone he had arrested for a burglary at a National Trust House in West Wycombe Park in June 2013. Officers from Surrey Police interviewed Whiting in prison and subsequently charged him with the two burglaries.
DC Dave Pellatt from Surrey Police CID said: "Whiting is a prolific antiques thief who has caused a great deal of heartache and inconvenience to all those affected by his offending. I'm really pleased that we have been able to recover the stolen items and it's equally satisfying to know that he is now behind bars for a lengthy period.”
Caroline Sones, House Manager atClandonParksaid: "Last year staff and volunteers at Clandon were saddened when this beautifulDerbyporcelain plaquewas stolen. We are delighted that officers from Surrey Police have recovered it for us and can't wait to have it on display again. The National Trust is one ofEurope's largest conservation charities and looks after historic collections forever for everyone. People come from near and far to enjoyClandonPark's collections of textiles, furniture and ceramics, representing the best in 18th century craftsmanship, in a grand English country house."
Andrew Loukes, House and Collections Manager at Petworth added: "The National Trust at Petworth are delighted to have the Japanese dishes back, and are very grateful to Surrey and West Sussex Police Forces for all their efforts. We are also pleased that our own CCTV coverage was able to link Whiting with the theft from Petworth.”
- See more at: http://www.surrey.police.uk/news/news-stories/full-news-story/article/9013/police-return-stolen-antiques-to-national-trust-houses#sthash.M0xuDPNu.dpuf

Police return stolen antiques to National Trust Houses

A detective from Surrey Police had the enjoyable task of returning a selection of antiques to National Trust Properties this week which had been stolen by a prolific thief from London.
The items, a Derby Porcelain Plaque and two Japanese Plates were recovered from a pawn broker in Hatton Gardens, London having been stolen from Clandon Park, Guildford and Petworth House in West Sussex.
Paul Whiting, 68 years, originally from Hammersmith, London appeared at Guildford Crown Court on 6 February 2014 where he was sentenced to twelve months imprisonment for the theft of the porcelain plaque from Clandon Park in May 2013 and the theft of two Japanese Plates from Petworth in February 2012. The sentence is to run concurrent to a sentence he is already serving for a theft at a National Trust property in Hertfordshire.
A key piece of evidence to convict Whiting came from CCTV images of the 68 year old when he took the porcelain plaque to Bonhams Auctioneers in New Bond Street for a valuation. John Sandon and Fergus Gambon of The Antiques Roadshow fame, were working that day at the Auctioneers and carried out an inspection of the item. A few days later, Mr Sandon read an article in The Antique Trade Gazette regarding the theft of the plaque from Clandon Park and recognised the piece as being the one he had recently examined. CCTV was produced from Bonhams of the meeting and circulated to other police forces. An officer from Hertfordshire saw the stills and recognised Whiting as someone he had arrested for a burglary at a National Trust House in West Wycombe Park in June 2013. Officers from Surrey Police interviewed Whiting in prison and subsequently charged him with the two burglaries.
DC Dave Pellatt from Surrey Police CID said: "Whiting is a prolific antiques thief who has caused a great deal of heartache and inconvenience to all those affected by his offending. I'm really pleased that we have been able to recover the stolen items and it's equally satisfying to know that he is now behind bars for a lengthy period.”
Caroline Sones, House Manager atClandonParksaid: "Last year staff and volunteers at Clandon were saddened when this beautifulDerbyporcelain plaquewas stolen. We are delighted that officers from Surrey Police have recovered it for us and can't wait to have it on display again. The National Trust is one ofEurope's largest conservation charities and looks after historic collections forever for everyone. People come from near and far to enjoyClandonPark's collections of textiles, furniture and ceramics, representing the best in 18th century craftsmanship, in a grand English country house."
Andrew Loukes, House and Collections Manager at Petworth added: "The National Trust at Petworth are delighted to have the Japanese dishes back, and are very grateful to Surrey and West Sussex Police Forces for all their efforts. We are also pleased that our own CCTV coverage was able to link Whiting with the theft from Petworth.”
- See more at: http://www.surrey.police.uk/news/news-stories/full-news-story/article/9013/police-return-stolen-antiques-to-national-trust-houses#sthash.M0xuDPNu.dpuf

Elderly couple, accomplice held for antiques theft

An elderly couple and an acquaintance have been arrested for stealing antique jewellery items and currency notes worth a few lakhs of rupees from a resident in South Mumbai's Peddar Road area.
The Gamdevi police have managed to recover all the 58 currency notes, which date back to the period of the British rule in India. They said the jewellery stolen is worth Rs17 lakh and they have found some of the items.
The three accused, Deepak Sambare, 63, his wife Smita, 61, and Aryan Patel, 28, have been booked for theft and criminal breach of trust under sections of the Indian Penal Code.
Deepak and Smita are real estate brokers who got to know Neeta Jhaveri in December last year, said Rajaram Prabhu, senior police inspector.
During their visits to Jhaveri's house in Sonarika building, the 65-year-old lady talked to them about her interest in collecting antique jewellery and currency notes, and she even showed them these items.
"She also told them that she wanted to sell the items. So, some days later, the Sambares sent Aryan Patel to her house, introducing him as an antique dealer," the police inspector said.
Jhaveri showed Patel the currency notes and the jewellery. Then he asked her for some water to drink and when she left the room he stepped out of the house with the items.
Jhaveri called the Sambares to tell them what had happened, but they did not answer her calls. Realizing that she was cheated, the woman's son lodged a complaint with the Gamdevi police on February 22.
The police located the three by tracking their phone calls. The Sambare couple were caught near Charni Road station on March 10 and Patel, a resident of Mira Road, was apprehended a couple of days ago.
"It's evident that the Sambares were involved with Patel in the crime. We have recovered the album containing the antique currency notes and some of the jewellery from them," the police official said 
Emil Nolde, Church Altarpiece, stolen
Emil Nolde Church Altarpiece Worth £1m Stolen In Denmark - ArtLyst Article image

Emil Nolde Church Altarpiece Worth £1m Stolen In Denmark

A Church altarpiece painted  by the German / Danish artist Emil Nolde (1867-1956) has been stolen from a church in Denmark. The work of art titled, Christ at Emmaus, painted in1904, was situated in the Ølstrup Church near Ringkøbing, in western Jutland, Denmark.

The masterpiece was found to be missing by the church’s verger on 11 March, Poul Madsen a spokesperson for the Ringkøbing police, stated but it was unclear whether the artwork was taken the previous day. “Churches are unattended at night and even in the day there is often no one there" the police added. "They are places where you have a lot of time on your own,” Madsen said. There wasn't evidence of a break-in and it is thought the robbery may have happened during the day while the church was open to everyone.

“We never thought of our church as an art museum. Everyone should be able to come inside and sit down without being surveyed by video cameras,” says Inge-Dorthe Brønden Kaasgard, the vicar. “We have always been very proud of the painting.”

Nolde was married to the daughter of the church's pastor, in 1904, and the church commissioned him to paint the altarpiece. He was paid 340.57 krone for the painting. The work has been in the church and is now valued at $1.8m at auction.

A major Emil Nolde retrospective opened at the Städel Museum, Frankfurt, opened on 5 March. Nolde’s oeuvre has been represented in numerous special thematic exhibitions, the last retrospective to pay tribute to his work in Germany took place twenty-five years ago. Some 140 works are on view. in 1937 his works were confiscated from public collections, and 47 of his works, including 33 paintings, were subsequently shown in the Degenerate Art exhibition in Munich. In 1941, he was moreover barred from the “Reichskammer der bildenden Künste” (Reich Chamber of Visual Arts) and prohibited from practising his profession. Between 1938 and 1945 he executed the Unpainted Pictures workgroup, consisting of oil paintings after his own watercolours. Following World War II he received numerous distinctions, for example an award for his graphic work at the XXVth Venice Biennale. Nolde died in 1956 at the age of eighty-eight.

Police swoop after 'high value' jewellery stolen from antiques shop in Abbotsbury

Police swoop after 'high value' jewellery stolen from antiques shop in Abbotsbury
Police swoop after 'high value' jewellery stolen from antiques shop in Abbotsbury
POLICE dramatically swooped on a car on a busy road as part of an operation to track down suspects after a jewellery raid.
Shocked motorists told how several police vehicles descended on a vehicle on the A35 between Dorchester and Bridport yesterday afternoon.
It came after what police described as ‘high value’ jewellery was stolen from a shop in Abbotsbury.
Police put out a major alert after the theft from Rodden Antiques about 3pm.
Just over an hour later, officers swooped on a car on the A35 close to the Walditch junction.
An eyewitness said: “At first there were four police vehicles, then another car pulled up and then a van.
“I thought there must be something going on as it was quite out of the ordinary.
“From what I could see they took one man out of the car and took him away.
“They had pulled over the car in the bus stop, just before you reach Bridport.”
A Dorset Police spokesman said: “We have got three people in custody helping us with inquiries in relation to the theft.
“I can confirm that the shop involved in the theft was Rodden Antiques.”
It is understood the shop has recently opened up.
A spokesman for Rodden Antiques said they discovered three arrests had been made by reading the Echo’s website.
He said a nine carat Edwardian watch and an Edwardian ring were taken in the theft but he was unable to comment any further.
Residents in Abbotsbury said they were shocked to hear of the theft.
Colin Boxshall, landlord of the Ilchester Arms on Market Street, said: “Abbotsbury is generally a very low crime area so everyone here in the village has been very surprised to hear news of the theft. We never get any problems in Abbotsbury whatsoever so this is just truly shocking; I don’t think anyone was expecting something like this to happen.
“If anyone has any more information please do inform the police.”
Abbotsbury resident Lynne Simonds said said: “I’m very, very sad to hear of this, it’s so sad for a shop that’s just started up. It’s really awful.
“I think everyone will be on high alert after something like this and I’m very sorry for everyone involved.”
Arthur Cartlidge, of Abbotsbury Antiques, said he was shocked to hear of the theft.
He said: “They have only just opened up and it’s awful that this has happened.”

Police return stolen antiques to National Trust Houses

A detective from Surrey Police had the enjoyable task of returning a selection of antiques to National Trust Properties this week which had been stolen by a prolific thief from London.
The items, a Derby Porcelain Plaque and two Japanese Plates were recovered from a pawn broker in Hatton Gardens, London having been stolen from Clandon Park, Guildford and Petworth House in West Sussex.
Paul Whiting, 68 years, originally from Hammersmith, London appeared at Guildford Crown Court on 6 February 2014 where he was sentenced to twelve months imprisonment for the theft of the porcelain plaque from Clandon Park in May 2013 and the theft of two Japanese Plates from Petworth in February 2012. The sentence is to run concurrent to a sentence he is already serving for a theft at a National Trust property in Hertfordshire.
A key piece of evidence to convict Whiting came from CCTV images of the 68 year old when he took the porcelain plaque to Bonhams Auctioneers in New Bond Street for a valuation. John Sandon and Fergus Gambon of The Antiques Roadshow fame, were working that day at the Auctioneers and carried out an inspection of the item. A few days later, Mr Sandon read an article in The Antique Trade Gazette regarding the theft of the plaque from Clandon Park and recognised the piece as being the one he had recently examined. CCTV was produced from Bonhams of the meeting and circulated to other police forces. An officer from Hertfordshire saw the stills and recognised Whiting as someone he had arrested for a burglary at a National Trust House in West Wycombe Park in June 2013. Officers from Surrey Police interviewed Whiting in prison and subsequently charged him with the two burglaries.
DC Dave Pellatt from Surrey Police CID said: "Whiting is a prolific antiques thief who has caused a great deal of heartache and inconvenience to all those affected by his offending. I'm really pleased that we have been able to recover the stolen items and it's equally satisfying to know that he is now behind bars for a lengthy period.”
Caroline Sones, House Manager atClandonParksaid: "Last year staff and volunteers at Clandon were saddened when this beautifulDerbyporcelain plaquewas stolen. We are delighted that officers from Surrey Police have recovered it for us and can't wait to have it on display again. The National Trust is one ofEurope's largest conservation charities and looks after historic collections forever for everyone. People come from near and far to enjoyClandonPark's collections of textiles, furniture and ceramics, representing the best in 18th century craftsmanship, in a grand English country house."
Andrew Loukes, House and Collections Manager at Petworth added: "The National Trust at Petworth are delighted to have the Japanese dishes back, and are very grateful to Surrey and West Sussex Police Forces for all their efforts. We are also pleased that our own CCTV coverage was able to link Whiting with the theft from Petworth.”
- See more at: http://www.surrey.police.uk/news/news-stories/full-news-story/article/9013/police-return-stolen-antiques-to-national-trust-houses#sthash.M0xuDPNu.dpuf

Stolen Art Watch, Italian Law Used to Launder Stolen Gauguin, Auction Ruse is Load of Bonnards !!

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Stolen Gauguin painting 'hung on factory worker's wall'

A pair of stolen masterpiece paintings valued at $50 million have been recovered after being bought at an auction for $25 and hung in an auto worker's kitchen for years.
The masterworks were described as Paul Gaugin's “Still Life of Fruit on a Table With a Small Dog” and Pierre Bonnard’s “The Girl With Two Chairs.” They were stolen from the home of a British couple in 1970.
An unnamed Fiat employee, described by police as a “lover of art,” bought the two paintings in an auction of items left in the lost and found department of the national railway. The paintings were reportedly left behind on a train from Paris to Turin and were never claimed. Railway authorities put them up for auction in 1975.
The Fiat worker was unaware of their value, according to Gen. Mariano Mossa, the head of the police’s Cultural Heritage department. The Fiat employee purchased the two masterpieces for $25 at the auction. He first had the paintings hanging in his kitchen, and after he retired, he brought them back to his native Sicily.
The auto worker's son had decided to sell the paintings last year and that is when they came to the attention of police.
“The present owner of the paintings was circulating pictures of the painting because he decided to sell them. He did so in good faith, as he did not know they were stolen. That is when we became aware of them and started researching,” the spokesman for the Art Theft Squad of the Italian police told ABC News.
The paintings were stolen from the collection of Sir Mark Kennedy in England on June 6, 1970. Kennedy and his wife died without heirs without ever knowing the fate of their paintings. Press reports from that month say that three men, one posing as a policeman and the others as burglar alarm engineers duped the housekeeper, telling her they were checking the alarm system. While she made them a cup of tea, they removed the paintings from the frames.
Authorities will now have to determine who are the rightful owner of the paintings.

Stolen paintings by Paul Gauguin and Pierre Bonnard hung on an Italian factory worker's kitchen wall for almost 40 years, police have revealed.
Now worth at least 10.6m euros (£8.8m), they were stolen from a collector's London home in 1970 and left on a train in Italy, with no indication of origin.
At a lost-property auction in 1975, the unsuspecting Fiat worker paid 45,000 Italian lire (23 euros; £19) for them.
He hung them in his Turin home before taking them to Sicily when he retired.
Paul Gauguin painting 
Paul Gauguin's still life is thought to be worth at least 10m euros (£8.3m)
The worker only grew suspicious about their origins when his son saw another Gauguin in a book and noticed similarities with the painting in his father's kitchen.
The man consulted experts and police were eventually alerted.
The Gauguin painting, titled Fruits sur une table ou nature au petit chien (Fruits on a table or still life with a small dog), had been painted in 1889 and was thought to be worth between 10m and 30m euros (£8.3m-£24.8m), police said.
The Bonnard, La femme aux deux fauteuils (Woman with two armchairs), is valued at 600,000 euros (£500,000).
Italian culture minister Dario Franceschini said: "It's an incredible story, an amazing recovery. A symbol of all the work which Italian art police have put in over the years behind the scenes."
Mariano Mossa, commander of Italy's heritage police, said he believed the paintings had been discarded on a train travelling from Paris to Turin after they were stolen.
"They were bought by an art-loving worker, who hung them for 40 years in his kitchen, first in Turin then in Sicily, after he retired," he added.
Gauguin was a post-impressionist master known for his creative relationship with Vincent van Gogh. His fellow Frenchman Pierre Bonnard is regarded as one of the greatest colourists of modern art.

Art Hostage Comments:
Under Italian law anyone who buys artworks from an auction in Italy gets to keep legal title despite the fact they may have been stolen. Therfore in this case there will be a dispute over legal title and that is why this bullshit story about the so called farmer buying them at auction is being used. The whole ruse would have been to take them to Italy when stolen from London and then put them through an auction thereby gaining legal title.
So don't be surprised to hear of an ongoing dispute about legal title. This has been used many times over the years to launder stolen artworks in countries with similar laws about legal title such as Belgium, Japan and Holland, where after thrirty years the legal title is gained by whomever has possession.
See this for Good Faith & Italian case law:
  http://media.law.stanford.edu/publications/archive/pdf/Merryman%20Good%20Faith.pdf

Art detective warns of missing checks that let stolen works go undiscovered

Case of 17th-century landscape highlights failure of European auction houses, dealers and collectors to carry out searches
Paul Mitchell with the recovered 17th-century painting by Jan van Goyen
Paul Mitchell with the recovered 17th-century painting by Jan van Goyen. Photograph: Antonio Olmos for the Observer
European auction houses, dealers and collectors are failing to make adequate checks to avoid handling stolen artworks, an art lawyer has warned after recovering from an Italian auction an old master painting taken from its British owner in a burglary more than 30 years ago.
Christopher A Marinello, who specialises in recovering stolen art and resolving title disputes, said: "We do find a lot of stolen and looted artwork in civil law countries such as Italy, France and Germany. Consigners of tainted works of art often try to hide behind the good-faith purchase laws of these countries while performing little or no due diligence."
He spoke to the Observer after negotiating the return from Italy of a landscape painting by Jan van Goyen, a 17th-century Dutch painter, which was stolen in 1979. Negotiations were particularly delicate because, under Italian law, if someone buys a stolen work in good faith the buyer is sometimes entitled to keep it. Marinello was able to prove to the Italian auctioneer that the painting was one of nine pictures stolen at night by criminals who broke into the home of Paul Mitchell, an antique picture frame specialist in London.
View of Lake Nemi 
View of Lake Nemi by Joseph Wright of Derby, one of the paintings stolen from Paul Mitchell. The thieves forced open a window to enter his house. Mitchell assumed that the slight noise that he heard from downstairs was the family cat. "Police call these people 'creepers', night-time burglars who specialise in burgling people when they are in their house," Mitchell said. Describing waking to discover the theft, he added: "The anguish is a very long, deep-seated thing which never really goes away. Hardly a day goes by when I haven't thought about it."
The loss of the pictures was also painful because of their sentimental value. They belonged to his father, but had become so valuable that Mitchell could not afford to insure them for their full worth. Back in 1979, the paintings were valued at £400,000. Today the amount is well into seven figures. After the theft, Mitchell tried in vain to track down the paintings, offering a £5,000 reward for their recovery, placing advertisements in international journals and approaching a specialist art detective. But the trail went cold.
He was overwhelmed with emotion at being reunited with the Van Goyen, a beautiful beach scene painted in 1643 by a pioneer of naturalistic landscape painting. It surfaced by chance a few weeks ago after a Dutch dealer tried to buy it in Italy. Before paying for it, he decided to check the database of the Art Loss Register (ALR), which tracks down the world's stolen art from its headquarters in London.
Still Life by Pieter Claesz 
Still Life by Pieter Claesz, another of the missing paintings. Marinello, the ALR's general counsel, who has recovered £200m worth of stolen and looted art in seven years, confirmed that it had been stolen: "The Italian auction house involved did not search the work with the ALR, but the dealer did. While losing out on a potential future sale, the [dealer] protected his reputation and saved himself significant sums in legal fees defending a case over title to the painting."
Unless more dealers, collectors and auctioneers make such checks, he added, other stolen items will remain undetected. "It's the same concept as having a survey done prior to purchasing a home. Considering the values involved, why wouldn't you want to know if there were serious title issues before purchasing fine art?"
Pastoral landscape by George Smith 
Pastoral landscape by George Smith of Chichester, which is still missing after 30 years. Asked why they had not made such checks, Marinello stopped short of suggesting that the buyers had not wanted to know about doubts over an artwork's legality: "Perhaps it's the excitement of getting a good deal."
A reward is being offered for information leading to the recovery of the other eight lost paintings, including Still Life with Oyster Shells (1646) by Pieter Claesz, and Lake of Nemi at Sunset (1780) by Joseph Wright of Derby.
Mitchell said his experience of being reunited with the Van Goyen after more than three decades will give hope to other people who have suffered thefts of their family's treasured items.

Stolen Art Watch, Time Is Of The Essence For Watch Thieves As Napoleon Artefacts Go Walkabout & Jasper Johns Needs Help

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Antique 17th century watches worth more than £200,000 in total stolen in evening raid on house in south London

  • More than 16 watches taken from a house in Beckenham, south east London
  • Haul includes a Reeve timepiece which is worth £15,000 alone
  • BMW car also taken in the raid but has since been dumped
  • Timepieces said to be from 'highest end watchmakers out there'
Antique watches worth more than £200,000 which date back to the 17th century have been stolen in an evening raid.
The haul of 16 watches were taken from a house in Beckenham, south east London, along with a BMW car.
The car was founded dumped in south London two days later, but there was no sign of the watches.
This Reeve watch is believed to dat back to 1630 and is valued at approximately £15,000
This watch from 1765, a De St Leu, is worth around £12,000
These two watches alone are said to be worth £27,000. Left, is the Reeve timepiece dating back to 1630 and valued at approximately £15,000. Right, is a De St Leu, valued at approximately £12,000 from 1765
This Breguet watch is valued at £15,000 and was stolen from the house in Beckenham
Another one of the watches that were stolen. This one is valued at £10,000
These are two Breguet watches, with the one on the left worth £15,000 and the one on the right valued at £10,000 
This antique watch is valued at £15,000
Another Breguet watch, this one worth £10,000
Another set of Breguet watches, which were taken. The watch on the left is worth £15,000, while the one on the right is valued at £12,000


The timepieces include a number of French and English watches made by the 'highest end watchmakers out there'.
It also includes a Reeve timepiece, which dates back to 1630, and is worth around £15,000 alone.
Simon Kerby, an antiques watch specialist from the Gerald E. Marsh dealership in Hampshire said: 'This was obviously a very good collection.
'A lot of the watches are classic English and French makers who are also famous clock makers. These are the highest end watchmakers out there.
'The list includes many of the top names. Breguet is going to be up there as one of the best.
Among the watches taken in the haul was this Fromanteel timepiece from 1690, which is valued at £6,000
Among the watches taken in the haul was this Fromanteel timepiece from 1690, which is valued at £6,000
A Quare & Horseman watch, circa 1705, valued at approximately £7,500
A K. J Everell, from 1705, valued at approximately £5,000
A Quare & Horseman watch, from 1705, worth £7,500 and this K. J Everell, valued at £5,000  from 1705 were also taken in the raid
A £8,000 Lampe timepiece stolen from a house in Beckenham
This Lupton watch dates back to  1660 and is valued at approximately £8,500
Together these two watch, a Lampe timepiece, left, and a Lupton watch, right, are worth a total of £16,500. They were both included in the haul taken from the house in Beckenham, south London


'They would have been making watches since the 1700s, and some of their pieces are astonishing.”
He added: “It would be difficult to sell them as a single lot in auction.
'They could possibly be sold abroad. The pocket watch collecting community is very small, there are really very few people who collect them.
'If someone came in here with a collection like that we would really want to know when they were last sold.
'I would also want to know when and how they were acquired. It would be very likely they had come up in an auction like Christie’s or Sotheby’s.
'You would have to be very careful where you sell them if you didn’t want to alert suspicion.'
The Windmill from 1720, valued at approximately £6,500
Boucheret, circa 1730, valued at approximately £6,000
The Windmill, left from 1720, valued at approximately £6,500 while this Boucheret timepiece also from the 1700s is said to be worth £6,000

This timepiece from Tompion dates back to 1710 and is said to be worth £5,000
This timepiece from Tompion dates back to 1710 and is said to be worth £5,000

The Metropolitan Police confirmed that watches had been stolen.
A Scotland Yard spokesman said: 'A burglary was committed at a property in Beckenham, on Tuesday, March 4 between 5.45pm and 10.10pm during which in excess of 16 antique watches were stolen, along with a BMW.
'The car was subsequently recovered in Verney Road, Southwark on March 6.'
Mr Kerby added: 'As an antique watch collector myself, security is a concern.'
'It’s something you do have to be very wary.'
Among some of the items taken were:
• Fromanteel, circa 1690, valued at approximately £6,000
• Breguet, valued at approximately £12,000
• Breguet, valued at approximately £10,000
• Quare & Horseman, circa 1705, valued at approximately £7,500
• Reeve, circa 1630, valued at approximately £15,000
• Breguet, valued at approximately £15,000
• De St Leu, circa 1765, valued at approximately £12,000
• LeRoy, valued at approximately £5,500
• Breguet, valued at approximately £15,000
• Lampe, valued at approximately £8,000
• J Everell, circa 1705, valued at approximately £5,000
• Lupton, circa 1660, valued at approximately £8,500
• Windmill, circa 1720, valued at approximately £6,500
• Boucheret, circa 1730, valued at approximately £6,000
• Tompion, circa 1710, valued at approximately £5,000
• Ellicott, circa 1775, valued at approximately £7,000 

Eight Romanians charged after £1.2 million heist at Lakeside

EIGHT men have been charged with aggravated burglary following a break in at a jewellers in the Lakeside shopping centre where goods totalling £1.2m were stolen.
The Romanian nationals will be appearing before magistrates in Basildon on Monday, April 14, each charged with one count of aggravated burglary.
The men are:
Emanoil CRETU, 26, Mihai CUPTOR, 20, Claudiu-Eugen CRETU, 22, Gheorghe RUSU, 21,
Ion-Alexandru CUPTOR, 22, Costica FERESTRAUARU, 21, Ovidiu CRETU, 18, and
Dimitri SPATARU, 24. They are all of no fixed address.
Detectives are continuing to investigate a burglary at a jewellers in Derwent Parade, South Ockendon, and ask anyone with information to contact them at Grays CID on 101.
Update: Sunday 1200hrs
DETECTIVES investigating two burglaries in the Thurrock district are now able to release further details.
A total of eight men, aged between 18 and 26-years-old, who have not given addresses, were arrested in the early hours of Saturday morning in South Ockendon on suspicion of aggravated burglary and arson.
A dog unit was involved in a coordinated search of the area with other uniformed officers.
The arrests are in connection with a burglary at Ernest Jones jewellers at Lakeside and a burglary at another jewellers in Derwent Parade, South Ockendon.
Detectives believe these were well-planned burglaries resulting in jewellery and high-value watches totalling around £1.2m being stolen. Officers have been conducting extensive searches in the area and items have been recovered.
They have also been investigating some road blocks made up of tyres which had been set alight which appear to have been an attempt to distract or impede the police response.
The men remain in custody for questioning today, Sunday, April 13.
Anyone with information is asked to contact detectives at Grays on 101 or Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.
Original story
POLICE are investigating a burglary at the Ernest Jones jewellers at Lakeside Thurrock which happened a little after 3am this morning, Saturday, April 12.
With the help of some members of the public, responding officers made a number of arrests and recovered what they believe to property from the crime.
Detectives are also investigating a burglary at another jewellers in Derwent Parade, South Ockendon, which was reported just before 3.20am.
A number of scene guards are currently in place whilst the crime scene investigators carry out their tasks, including at Lakeside, but police wish to stress to shoppers that the majority of the shopping centre is open as normal.
Superintendent Justin Smith said, “This appears to have been a well planned burglary which has resulted in a number of arrests following some excellent work by the public and police in the early hours of this morning. Evidence is being recovered as quickly as possible from the scenes and we will be allowing areas to be re-opened to the public just as soon as we can.”
Anyone with any information about the burglaries is asked to contact detectives at Grays CID on 101 or Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.

'Highly organised' jewellery burglars grabbed everything they could carry.




The jeweller's store is only 3m back from the parade road. Photo / Michael Craig
The jeweller's store is only 3m back from the parade road. Photo / Michael Craig
Thieves carried out a jewellery store smash-and-grab on the royal tour route just hours before yesterday's parade.




Ten hours before a silver limo carrying the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge drove through Cambridge's main street, a local jewellery store was burgled and more than $100,000 worth of watches, diamond rings and jewels were stolen.
Thieves smashed in the back door of family-owned Cambridge Jewellers around 2.40am, grabbed everything they could carry and were out quickly.
The shop's back door was only 10m from Victoria St, where the royal procession passed huge crowds yesterday.
The store is 100m from the town hall, where the royal couple stopped for lunch, and 60m from the war memorial where William and Kate each laid a rose.
Several monitored alarms were triggered during the break-in.
Witnesses who saw two people wearing hoodies in the store alerted police.
Police say the break-in was coincidental, and not a royal-tour security breach. The store was searched and secured after the break-in.
Waikato police spokesman Andrew McAlley did not believe the thieves were taking advantage of police attention being focused on the royal tour.
"I think quite the opposite is true, with police able to act quickly because there were so many officers in the area."
Police were investigating reports of a dark-coloured Mitsubishi Galant leaving the scene. A burnt-out car of the same colour and model was found hours later on a rural Cambridge road. Forensic officers were examining the car.
Store owners Andrew and Katrina Haultain said the break-in was highly organised by thieves who knew where expensive jewels were.
"They smashed the back door down and went for higher-value items. They knew where everything was," Andrew Haultain said.
"They took wedding rings, watches, diamond rings, coloured stone rings, Tissot watches, Seiko watches and Pandoro jewellery," he added.
"They smashed and grabbed and only left behind what they couldn't carry."
Katrina Haultain said last night that no one had been arrested but blood was found in the store, probably the result of a thief cutting themselves after smashing a cabinet.
A former head of royal protection for London's Metropolitan police, Dai Davies, caused a furore this week when he blasted Governor-General Sir Jerry Mateparae for publishing details of Kate and William's itinerary.
Last night, Davies said he would not regard yesterday's Cambridge break-in as a security breach, but he stood by his earlier comments.
"You simply can't secure everywhere — but that's the whole point of not disclosing routes."

UK: Gang of men who wore burkas in huge designer watch robery face the law

Smash and DRAG
By: Kieran Corcoran
Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/
An ‘audacious’ gang dressed in burkas and posed as wealthy Muslim women to steal designer watches worth more than £1.4million from Selfridges, a court heard Thursday.
Customers and staff in the world famous department store on London’s Oxford Street were left ‘terrified’ by the smash and grab raid, the court was told.
Some of the all-male gang, armed with axes and other equipment, also allegedly wore burkas to fleece a jewellery store in Windsor two months earlier.
Four men are standing trial over the attempted robbery at Kingston Crown Court, a year after four other men were convicted for their part in the event.

Ramela Gordon, 18, Ritchie Graham, 24, Vincent Bellamy, 37 and Leon Wright, 25, all from North Londoner, deny conspiracy to rob.
Gordon and Graham are also accused the £170,000 of watch haul in Windsor.
Roger Smart, prosecuting, told Kingston Crown Court that the gang first carried out a ‘well-planned robbery’ at Robert Gatward jewellers in King Edward Court, Windsor.
Mr Smart said: ‘The robbers, all of whom were male, wore burkas in order to disguise their identities and the equipment that they had taken with them in order to carry out the robbery.
‘They smashed their way into display cabinets whilst staff and customers were inside the premises and bystanders looked on in fear as they carried out their well-executed plan.
‘They stole a total of 19 Rolex watches with a value of between £3,000 and £31,650 per item.
‘The robbers quickly made off, running through the streets of Windsor, one of them with an axe raised above his head, warding off anyone who may have sought to impede their escape, to a nearby parked getaway car that took them and their property back towards London from where they had first come.’
As well as stealing £175,000 of watches, the thieves caused £41,361 worth of damage to the jewellers, meaning it suffered £216,361 worth of loss, the court heard.
Mr Smart said that less than two months later the same gang, along with some new faces, ‘doubtless buoyed by the success of the robbery in Windsor’ targeted Selfridges on Oxford Street in central London on June 6th last year.
He said: ‘The plot to rob was audacious, well-planned and carried out with the same degree of professional execution as the previous robbery.
‘They made their way inside the store and smashed at showcases containing high value watches of a variety of makes.
‘Members of the public and staff were terrified by their actions. The robber used the burka to disguise their identities and hide their equipment.
‘Such was their behaviour and appearance that it crossed the minds of many of those who were forced to witness the robbery that the men dressed in burkas were using them in order to hide their identities while perpetrating a terrorist atrocity.’
The gang escaped using two motorbikes, a motor scooter and a BMW car, all of which were stolen.
Sam Curtin, who was still wearing his burka, and Connor Groake, a getaway driver, were arrested when their moped crashed at the corner of Goodge Street junction with Charlotte Street and they were seized by passers by, the court heard.
Mr Smart said: ‘It was the quick thinking and bravery of members of the public that lead to both of them being detained, some of the watches being recovered and aided the police investigation.’
The thieves stole 143 watches worth £1,496,280 and damaged others worth £1.1million.
Mr Smart added: ‘The Windsor offence was a carefully planned, sophisticated and targeted robbery.
‘The robbers carried out in advance reconnaissance of intended started on April 5 2013, and an aborted attempt on April 11, before the actual robbery on April 12.
‘The sophisticated and targeted planning, the use of new tools and the choice of the disguises at the Selfridges robbery show the same preparation as before.’
Mr Smart then showed the court the telephone cell site analysis of calls made by Murrain and Gordon during the reconnaissance mission on April 5th, together with data generated by automatic number plate recognition devices.
This showed both men had made a journey to Windsor from north London and back at the same time, while remaining in constant contact.
He said: ‘It is more than coincidence the telephones moved with the vehicles from the north London area to Windsor and the cells providing best coverage round Richard Gatward were used.’
A ninth man, Andre Murrain, is also accused of involvement in both crimes, and will appear in court at a later date.
The trial continues.

Who's Looking Out For Jasper Johns?


Two decades ago, Martin Lang paid £100,000 for what he thought was a painting by Marc Chagall—a reclining nude, dated 1909-10. Recently, at his son’s behest, Lang submitted the painting to the producers of the BBC art program "Fake or Fortune?" Unfortunately for Lang, "Fake or Fortune"'s analysis came up fake: it showed that the painting's blues and greens used pigments only developed in the 1930s.
Upon this discovery, Lang was issued a writ by the Chagall Committee—based in Paris and headed by Chagall's two granddaughters—which is the only body with the authority to declare the authenticity of a Chagall. Now that Lang's painting has been shown to be a fake, what does the Chagall Committee want with it?
Well, they want to burn it.
If the committee finds a piece to have been forged it should, according to some magical and arcane and very, very French law, be burned in front of a magistrate. Italy and China also sometimes order the destruction of fakes. It's rarer in America, although already this year work by Richard Prince was ordered destroyed—not because it was fake but because it was said to infringe on copyright.
But sometimes you can't get your hands on your own fakes.
Jasper Johns is now 83 years old, and he lives in Sharon, Connecticut. At the end of January, he came back down to Manhattan to testify in federal court against Brian Ramnarine, a 60-year-old native of Guyana and the former owner of Long Island City's Empire Bronze Art Foundry. Ramnarine is accused of wire fraud. He tried to sell a fake Jasper Johns sculpture that he made, for $11 million.
Johns' first "Flag" painting was done in the mid-1950s, in a fertile period when he was involved with Robert Rauschenberg and they were working in studios down at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge; that "Flag" is now owned by the Museum of Modern Art. "White Flag," done in the late 50s, was sold to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for an undisclosed sum in the millions of dollars. "Three Flags" you have probably seen at the Whitney. You have probably not seen the one owned by Steve Cohen.
In 1960, Johns made a "Flag" painting using a material called "sculpt metal." Sculpt metal, as described by Johns in his witness testimony, is a kind of a lacquer that has the consistency of toothpaste. "It can be spread with a knife or with your finger or it can be thinned with a solvent and brushed on some material," he said. "When it dries it can be polished and it resembles metal." That was when Johns was being helpful on the stand. (To defense lawyers, he was less so: Q. "Much of your work is valued in the millions of dollars?" A: "Is that a question?")
Johns gave the sculpt-metal "Flag" to Rauschenberg; shortly thereafter he borrowed it back to use it to make a sculpture. Because he had done the piece using sculpt metal, Johns was able to take a mold of the surface of the painting. He poured plaster into the mold; he then removed the plaster and had a 'positive' of the surface of the painting, which he gave to a foundry. The foundry made four copies of that positive in bronze. One would be given to John F. Kennedy.

Two decades later, Johns had another mold made—this one a negative—by "a very fine mold maker," a woman he said had been working on the restoration of the Statue of Liberty with her father.
(A positive mold—such as the one used to create the first four copies of the sculpt-metal painting—is pressed into the ground, creating a depression which is then filled with metal. A negative mold is one into which metal is poured directly. Now you know!)
Sometime around 1987, Johns brought that mold to the Polich Tallix foundry. They cast a "Flag" sculpture in silver and returned the mold to Johns. A few years later, sometime around 1990, Johns began to consider casting a "Flag" sculpture in gold.
Johns approached Brian Ramnarine with the idea—they had worked together before on "a number of projects," Johns said. Johns lent the mold to Ramnarine, who made a wax cast—a kind of a test run—which he delivered to Johns and which Johns kept in his refrigerator. Ramnarine did not, however, return the mold.
Sometime in the early 90s, an art dealer came to Johns with a bronze copy of "Flag," asking him to authenticate it. Johns refused and sent the man away, though not before crossing out a fake signature on the back of the sculpture.
At the trial, the prosecutor showed Johns this forged sculpture once again.
"Is this your sculpture?" he asked.
"Its source is mine, from my work," said Johns. "But it's not mine."
The art dealer who visited Johns wrote him a series of "increasingly desperate"—Johns' words—letters from 1994 to 1996. In 1995 he even sent Johns a portrait that he (or someone else) had done of the artist. Johns responded twice, denying to authenticate the sculpture both times. At one point he sent his longtime assistant James Meyer to retrieve the mold, but Meyer was unsuccessful.
The identity of this art dealer—now deceased—is unclear. Johns remembers him as a relative of Ramnarine's but didn't use his name in court. During the cross examination, however, one of the defense attorneys used the name "Mike Harpul" to refer to this individual. In its trial coverage the Associated Press declined to use a name, referring only to a "relative" of Ramnarine's; the Wall Street Journal, however, does give this individual a name, albeit in a different form than that recorded in the court's official transcript: "Sendupt Harpaul."
In any event, after spending the previous half-decade denying this man's—and, presumably, by proxy, Brian Ramnarine's—requests to authenticate the bronze "Flag" sculpture, Johns got Ramnarine's wax cast out of his fridge and took it to a woman named Paige Tooker, who used it to cast a "Flag" in white bronze.
At some point in the intervening years, Ramnarine forged a second "Flag" sculpture—a fact of which Johns only became aware after he was informed by the FBI in 2010. This sculpture was not only inscribed with a signature but also identified as an artist proof: "AP 1/1."
Ramnarine (or someone else) also forged Johns' signature on documents purporting to authenticate the sculptures. It's possible that it was someone else because Ramnarine is illiterate.
Four days after Johns testified against him, Ramnarine changed his plea.
Brian Ramnarine faces up to 80 years in prison and as much as nearly a million dollars in fines. He has pleaded guilty to three counts of wire fraud, and it is up to the judge to decide whether he will serve his sentences for each concurrently or consecutively. The sentencing will take place May 30th at 10 a.m., if you are into that kind of thing.
But why is the penalty so steep? For one thing, wire fraud is a felony—and a federal offense at that—and Ramnarine copped to three counts of it. The feds had offered him a deal in 2012 but he declined. Whatever they offered him then is gone now. Moreover, Ramnarine was already under investigation for the first offense (the charges relating to Johns) when he committed the alleged fraud relevant to the second two counts.
It's odd that Ramnarine turned down the deal offered to him in 2012—after all, he took a deal in 2003, the first time he was staring down federal charges.
"He's a tremendously mean person," one former employee told the Queens Chronicle back in 2003, when Ramnarine was first busted selling fakes. "He has absolutely no shame."
When he changed his plea on the 27th, Ramnarine tried to introduce a new character to the story.
"I met an art broker, Adam Stolpen, and he was trying to sell the American 'Flag,' and I said, 'Fine,'" Ramnarine said.
The judge wasn't having it.
But why would an art broker be interested in a forgery? Particularly when, in Johns' case, there was so much legitimate work on the market already, and what's more, quite a bit of stolen work, as Johns' studio assistant James Meyer—the fellow that Johns had once sent to retrieve the forgery—was accused of sneaking at least 22 works straight out of the studio.
"Profit margin on fakes and stolen art means it comes in handy when business is tough," Paul Hendry told me over Skype. "Turbo Paul," as he is known, is the proprietor of the blog Art Hostage and claims to be a former trafficker of stolen art. The sale of forgeries, fakes, and unauthorized copies, Hendry said, "can be a welcome bonus because those deals are mostly cash oriented, off the books." In other words, fakes cost little, and sell quick.
"Temptation, human nature of something for nothing depicts why the allure of a quick buck overrides sense," he said.
And what's an artist to do? Johns' art dealer, Leo Castelli, died in 1999, and he hasn't had a guiding relationship like that since, though he works in a limited capacity with Matthew Marks Gallery. So when Johns was first approached by Harpul, or Harpaul, or whoever this art dealer was with the forged "Flag" sculpture, he contacted the Art Dealers Association in New York.
"They were not extremely helpful," he said.

Lock of Napoleon's hair among artefacts stolen from historic Victorian homestead


Napoleon Bonaparte artefacts
Priceless artefacts from Napoleon Bonaparte have been stolen from a museum on Victoria's Mornington Peninsula.
Burglars broke into The Briars historic homestead in Mount Martha on Thursday night and tripped an alarm.
Police believed the thieves had gained access through a bathroom window.

Facts about Napoleon Bonaparte

  • Born August 15 1769 in Ajaccio on the island of Corsica
  • Rose to prominence in the final stages of the French Revolution
  • Took political power in a coup d'etat in 1799, installing himself as First Consul
  • Ruled as Emperor of France from 1804 to 1814
  • Fought a series of wars to give France a dominant position in Europe
  • Suffered military failures in the French invasion of Russia in 1812 and the Peninsular war 1807-1814
  • In 1813 a coalition of countries defeated him at Battle of Leipzig and France was invaded
  • Napoleon was banished to the Italian island of Elba
  • He escaped and returned to power but was finally defeated in the Battle of Waterloo in June 1815
  • He spent the final six years of life on the island of Saint Helena in the south Atlantic Ocean
  • Napoleon died on May 5 1821 - there was a theory about arsenic poisoning but an autopsy said he died of stomach cancer
The collection of artefacts was put together by Dame Mable Brooks who was the great-granddaughter of Alexander Balcombe.
"Alexander Balcombe settled here [in Australia] in 1846 and sat on Napoleon's knee as a little boy," said museum coordinator Steve York.
"The family were good friends with the emperor when he was sent into exile on St Helena."
Napoleon stayed with the family while waiting for his own residence to be completed.
Mr York says 10 items were taken from the collection, including locks of Napoleon's hair and a silver inkwell set with three gold Napoleons which were allegedly in his pocket when he died.
Some miniature portraits of Napoleon and Josephine were also taken.
"Really they're priceless because they can't be replaced. We're quite distraught. Irreplaceable," Mr York said.
"We've now relocated the rest of the collection.
"This has proved it's vulnerable and so it's now being relocated to secure it until we look into improving the physical security in the future."
Detective Senior Sergeant Michael Lamb says security was on site within 10 minutes of the alarm going off and the offenders were gone.
"We think this was a fairly targeted theft," he said.
"They will be very difficult to dispose of publicly so we're asking for anybody who has been approached by anyone with these rare artefacts looking to sell them to contact Crime Stoppers."
Detective Lamb says it was a well-planned operation.
"We think they knew what they were looking for," he said.
"We think its probably destined for a private collection. It could well be stolen to order."
Mr York says the collection has become very popular since the major exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria last year.

Monet Vandal Andrew Shannon's Home Raided, Stolen Art Haul Recovered

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GARDAI seized hundreds of thousands of euro worth of pieces of stolen art when they searched a house in west Dublin late on Thursday night.

 Back-Story: http://arthostage.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/stolen-art-watch-shannon-goose-loose-in.html

Officers from Pearse Street Garda Station made the "highly significant discovery" at a property in Ongar and are now trying to identify the valuable stolen items.
About 60 pieces of art including paintings, statues and rare books were seized by officers at the home of a notorious criminal who has previous convictions for stealing from stately homes in England.
This criminal is currently in custody awaiting trial in a separate case but the house is occupied by a younger close relative who also has similar criminal convictions.
Sources say gardai estimate that one of the paintings they have recovered is valued at between €50,000 and €70,000.
APPEAL
Last night, gardai had only identified around half a dozen of the pieces of art and they expected that a public appeal will be launched next week in an attempt to trace the owners of the items.
A senior source told the Herald: "There were works of art in every room in that house – it was some sight. The property has a large attic and that was filled with paintings. Some of these are originals while others are less valuable prints.
Of the stolen items that have already been identified, gardai believe that they have been stolen from locations in Dublin and Belfast, some as long ago as 2007.
When officers arrived at the house in Ongar, they made contact with the man who is aged in his 30s and lives there and he agreed to go back to the property and gardai entered it.
This man is known to gardai and like his older relative is a key target of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation's Arts and Antiques unit.
It is understood that he has experience in the antiques business. His older relative has been an even bigger target for gardai and in 2009 he was jailed for three years after he admitted burgling six stately homes.
He stole paintings, ornamental lions, porcelain vases, figurines, expensive books and an antique walking stick during a four-day crime spree and English police discovered that he even had the addresses of the stately homes keyed into his car's sat-nav.
He also had a walkie-talkie which he used to communicate with his accomplice who fled the scene in a car.
Using CCTV footage, police traced the car and found a sat-nav system which had been pre-programmed for the six stately homes.

Stolen Art Watch, Art Crime Conference Responds To Global Menace

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Press Release - Art Crime Conference 2014


Art Crime Conference 2014


4-6 June, New York City
New York University & Art Recovery International

Art Crime and Cultural Heritage: Fakes, Forgeries, and Looted and Stolen Art
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) currently ranks art crime as the third-largest criminal enterprise in the world. The increase in international art transactions has incubated a booming market for stolen and fraudulent art, and major U.S. arts institutions still grapple with repatriation of stolen or looted objects in their collections. Co-organized by Jane C.H. Jacob, art historian and provenance research expert, Jacob Fine Art, Inc., Chris Marinello, director and founder, Art Recovery International, and Alice Farren-Bradley, Museum Security Network, this forum brings together experts from major museums and auction houses, NYU School of Law, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and President’s Cultural Property Advisory Committee, as well as independent scholars and authors, art crime victims, art crime attorneys, forensic scientists, and other major players working to address art crime worldwide.
Topics include art theft and gallery scams, misappropriated use of work, looting and cultural repatriation, fakes and forgeries, art market drivers, insurance fraud, scientific and forensic approaches, provenance research, issues facing auction houses and purchasers, and current case studies.
CLE units and financial aid are available for those who qualify. Lawyers attending the symposium can earn 7.5 CLEs in Professional Practice: 2.5 CLEs (June 4), 3.0 CLEs (June 5), and 2.0 CLEs (June 6). CLEs are transitional.

Event Information

Dates: June 4–6, 2014

Time: 9 a.m.–5 p.m.

Sign in Starts: 8 a.m.
Location:
Lipton Hall, NYU Law School
Registration Fees:
Full Symposium
General: $955
AAA, ISA, ASA, RICS, NYCBA, and NYSBA Members | NYU Students: $900
Single Day
General: $350
AAA, ISA, ASA, RICS, NYCBA, and NYSBA Members | NYU Students: $300
The NYU School of Continuing and Professional Studies (NYU-SCPS) thanks the following sponsors for their contribution to the Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Symposium.

ARIS
DeWitt Stern
Cahill Partners LLP
Davis Wright Tremaine LLP
Participants
  • Amy Adler, Emily Kempin Professor of Law, NYU School of Law
  • Anthony Amore, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum; coauthor, Stealing Rembrandts
  • Evan T. Barr, Steptoe & Johnson LLP, U.S. v. An Antique Platter of Gold
  • John Cahill, Cahill Partners, LLP; Chair, Art Law Committee, New York City Bar Association
  • Sebastiano Cossia Castiglioni, Art Collector and Advisor
  • Raymond Dowd, Partner, Dunnington Bartholow & Miller LLP
  • Milton Esterow, Editor and Publisher, ARTnews; art crime expert
  • Alice Farren-Bradley, Moderator, Museum Security Network and Associate Director of Recoveries, Art Recovery International Ltd.
  • Jack Flam, President and CEO, Dedalus Foundation
  • Robert Goldman, Robert E. Goldman LLC
  • Patty Gerstenblith, Director, Center for Art, Museum, and Cultural Heritage Law, DePaul University; Chair, President's Cultural Property Advisory Committee
  • Salomon Grimberg, author, Frida Kahlo Catalogue Raisonné
  • Scott Hodes, Senior Counsel, Bryan Cave, LLP
  • Thomas Kline, Andrews Kurth LLP
  • Bonnie Magness-Gardiner, Manager, FBI Art Theft Program
  • James Martin, Orion Analytical, LLC
  • James E. McAndrew, Grunfeld, Desiderio, Lebowitz, Silverman & Klestadt LLP; former Senior Special Agent, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S. Department of Homeland Security
  • David McFadden, Retired Chief Curator, Museum of Arts & Design
  • Joe Medeiros, Writer and Director, Mona Lisa Is Missing: The Truth About the Man Who Stole the Masterpiece
  • Justine Medeiros, Producer, Mona Lisa Is Missing: The Truth About the Man Who Stole the Masterpiece
  • Judith Pearson, President, ARIS Corporation
  • Steve Pincus, Managing Partner, DeWitt Stern Group
  • Christopher Robinson, Partner, Davis Wright Tremaine LLP
  • Marianne Rosenberg, Attorney and granddaughter of Paul Rosenberg, who was one of the world’s leading dealers in modern art prior to World War II; working to recover family art looted by the Nazis
  • Lucian Simmons, Senior Vice President and Worldwide Head of the Provenance and Restitution Department, Sotheby's
  • Lawrence Steigrad, Lawrence Steigrad Fine Arts
  • Geza von Habsburg, internationally renowned author and authority on antiquities and Fabergé; former Associate Professor, Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture and NYU
  • Yuri Yanchyshyn, Furniture Conservator and Head of Studio, Period Furniture Conservation LLC

*Please Note: This symposium, when attended in its entirety, counts as a 10-session elective. For additional information on the symposium, please call (212) 998-7289 or e-mail scps.libarts@nyu.edu.  


Browse the program for the three-day symposium, which includes the list of daily lectures, panel discussions, and presentations.

There will be tables available for books covering art crime topics and for book signings. For more information on book tables, please contact:
Jane C.H. Jacob
Jacob Fine Art, Inc.
Alice Farren-Bradley
Art Recovery International
E-mail: jane@jacobfineart.comE-mail: alice@artercovery.com

9:00 a.m.−5:00 p.m.

5:30−7:00 p.m.

9:00 a.m.−5:00 p.m.

5:30−7:00 p.m.

9:00 a.m.−5:00 p.m.

5:30−7:00 p.m.

Closing Reception

ATHENS, May 03, 2014 (AFP) -
Greek police said Saturday they have arrested four Serbian suspected members of a gang of international jewel thieves known as the Pink Panthers.
Police said the four Serbs took part in the theft of cars as well as in some 30 jewellery shop burglaries in Greece worth an estimated 550,000 euros ($762,900).
In one crime, they allegedly smashed into a jewellery shop with a stolen car, made off with the jewellery and fled with other stolen vehicles or motocycles, the Athens News Agency reported.
Police arrested one of the four suspects, a 26-year-old man, in the Athens district of Kypseli on Friday afternoon after he kicked and punched the policemen in an attempt to flee.
Forged documents such as a Bulgarian identity card and a driving licence were found in his possession along with a pistol and a balaclava.
The Pink Panthers are suspected of robbing items worth 330 million euros ($450 million) in luxury stores around the world since 1999, cross-border police agency Interpol says on its website.
They got their nickname from British police in 2003 when gang members in London hid a stolen diamond in a pot of beauty cream, a trick used in one of the "Pink Panther" comedy films.
Of the gang's estimated 220 members, most are thought to be from the countries of the former Yugoslavia, including some former members of the military.
- See more at: http://www.ntd.tv/en/news/world/europe/20140503/136831-greece-arrests-4-serbian-39pink-panther39-jewel-thieves.html#sthash.9BOatuFJ.dpuf

US bill would allow museums to knowingly exhibit stolen art

As Europe votes on a groundbreaking directive to help facilitate the return of stolen cultural treasures, the United States moves forward with legislation that would prevent claimants from recovering their rightful property. All in the name of museums.
We Americans enjoy some of the world’s finest museums, showcasing treasures from the ancient to contemporary. But with this privilege comes responsibility. This is owed to the masterpieces themselves, their previous custodians, and the individuals and civilisations that created them. These duties may seem one and the same and indeed they often are. Yet the right of museums to possess and display art, and the public’s to view it, increasingly clashes with the rights of those who may actually be its moral and legal owners.
Like so many conflicts, these rights are not decided by those most affected, whether they are the victims of Nazi looting or the trafficking of stolen antiquities and indigenous sacred artifacts. Instead, the fate of plundered cultural patrimony is now in the hands of US lawyers and lawmakers and the interest groups that control them.
As is often the case, the loudest voices are currently coming from a hardcore minority of people with the most vested interest in the outcome of this debate. Needless to say, this does not represent the larger community of museum professionals and cultural experts, let alone the general public. But if you want to keep American museums free of loot, including that taken from the UK and Europe, this issue concerns you. And you should speak up.

The bill in question

On March 25, backed by the art trade lobby, Republican Congressman Steve Chabot reintroduced the Foreign Cultural Exchange Jurisdictional Immunity Clarification Act to the House of Representatives. On its face, HR 4292 asks Congress to “clarify” a small section of the the law. But in truth, the bill goes far beyond mere clarification.
It would instead undo established US law and policy by allowing American cultural institutions to block legal claims to artwork on loan from abroad. Museums would knowingly be able to exhibit stolen and looted art and antiquities. It would leave the rightful owners without any legal recourse to recover their property in US courts.
This bill is just the latest attempt by the less responsible players in the art market to weaken US law. American legal principles have long held that a thief cannot transfer good title. The receipt, possession, and transport of stolen property is a crime. US legislation has carved out a narrow exception to prevent the judicial seizure of art imported for exhibition, but only in very limited circumstances, which it clearly enumerates. HR 4292 would greatly expand this exception by divesting our courts of all jurisdiction over such objects.



There are many looted sculptures from Cambodia’s Koh Ker region in American museums.BluesyPete, CC BY-SA
The bill’s stated — and it must be said commendable — purpose is to encourage cultural exchange (that its supporters hope Russia to be the main partner for such exchange is a story for another day).
But at what cost? Who can enjoy viewing an Egon Schiele on loan to a museum, knowing the Third Reich sent its previous owners to their deaths at concentration camp? Or an ancient Cambodian statue, knowing it was plundered during the country’s bloody civil war, perhaps even to fund the genocidal Khmer Rouge?
Even without HR 4292, claimants already face huge legal hurdles in US courts, despite clear evidence of theft or looting. For example, Cambodia had to fight for three years to recover a 1,000-year-old masterpiece from Sotheby’s, even though the feet of the figure were still in situ at an ancient temple complex. The case would have likely gone on much longer had the auction house not settled.
And the legal battle over Schiele’s Portrait of Wally– seized by a Nazi art collector from a Jewish art dealer fleeing Austria – raged for over a decade. That too ended only because a settlement was made. The vast majority of claims are never decided on their merits, but on procedural issues like statutes of limitations.
At the Washington Conference on Holocaust-Era Assets in 1998, 44 governments agreed to encourage claims from pre-World War II owners and heirs of Nazi-looted artwork in the interest of justice. The US was party to these principles, and yet, HR 4292 goes against everything they represent. The bill would in effect make American museums a haven for pieces of illicit art. All lenders need to do is jump through a single necessary hoop, undermining our nation’s time honoured tradition of property rights and cultural heritage preservation as they go.
Those who support this bill in the name of “culture” are misrepresenting it and the greater interests of most cultural institutions in the US.
In the absence of a Ministry of Culture, our government has never clearly defined its own cultural policy. But it’s one thing not to have a Ministry of Culture and quite another to let the market run roughshod over established legal principles.
In contrast, just this week the European Parliament approved Directive IP/14/430, which makes it much easier for member states to recover “national treasures of artistic, historic or archaeological value” from other countries in the European Union. When compared with its predecessor, this broadens the range of protected cultural objects and triples the time in which a nation can make a claim. If it passes a few more stages, it could be national law within 18 months.
If only Chabot and HR 4292’s other sponsors would learn from Europe’s example and support victims of plunder in seeking restitution. As it is, instead of promoting cultural exchange, they risk aiding and abetting its very destruction.
This piece is written in collaboration with Marc Masurovsky, co-founder of the Holocaust Art Restitution Project (HARP).He has researched the question of assets looted during the Holocaust and World War II since 1980 and is the co-author of the 2006 book Le Festin du Reich.

Lost & Found: The Recovery of Stolen Art

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In January 2014, Darren Agee Merager was sentenced to four years in prison after being convicted of stealing millions of dollars of art from the home of Jeffrey Gundlach, a prominent bond trader. The stolen items, including artwork by Piet Mondrian, Jasper Johns, Joseph Cornell and Richard Diebenkorn, were all eventually recovered.
More often than not, stolen works of art are not recovered. According to the Interpol database, there are over 42,000 art objects listed as stolen with many relating to thefts which occurred during wartime.
Consider the activities that took place in Europe during World War II. According to the Nazi-Era Provenance Internet Portal, a website launched by the American Association of Museums, “From the time it came into power in Germany in 1933 through the end of World War II in 1945, the Nazi regime orchestrated a program of theft, confiscation, coercive transfer, looting, pillage and destruction of objects of art and other cultural property in Europe on a massive and unprecedented scale.”
While some objects were eventually recovered, others have never been found or returned. Following this time, museums around the world continued to collect art and artifacts without fully researching their history. As a result, the original owners of some of the pieces began making ownership claims. Today, museums have begun the long and arduous task of researching pieces in their collections, and in some cases returning them to their rightful owners.
What Can Be Done?
Despite locks, alarms and laws, it is inevitable that art will be stolen. So what can be done to protect items of value?
First, it is important to document fine art. Unlike jewelry which can be melted down and made into something new, artwork is usually not altered because the value of the work is in its original state. Therefore, art is one of the most likely objects recovered.
The object ID checklist is the international standard for describing cultural objects. A checklist should be created for each object and include the following: The maker, the type of object, the title, materials and techniques, measurements, date or period, inscriptions and markings, distinguishing features and subject. A brief paragraph describing the object should be written and clear photographs taken. Once the inventory is complete it should be stored in a safe, locked in a location away from the objects themselves.
This can be a time consuming project and for that reason some serious collectors opt to hire appraisers to collect and document the necessary information. If art has been stolen the theft should be immediately registered with one of the art loss databases such as the Art Loss Register, Interpol, and the National Stolen Art File, which is run by the FBI.
Finally, it is important to mention that, although rare, some insurance companies offer a buy-back provision. If an artwork is stolen and later recovered, this gives the original owner the opportunity to regain title. This can be particularly important if the work of art has gone up in value since the time of the theft. For example, if a painting was stolen when it was worth $50,000 and at the time of recovery it was worth $100,000, the original owner could pay back the insurance company the $50,000 and then retrieve their property now worth the full $100,000.
Recovery of stolen art doesn’t have to be a monumental task.
As many as 350 soldiers eventually enlisted and recovered five million pieces of Nazi-looted artwork, books and documents, according to the Monuments Men Foundation. Many were destroyed and remain lost. These men risked their lives in the name of provenance, stewardship and posterity. While certainly a noble endeavor, fortunately we have the insurance industry to cover our backs.
As long as art and artifacts have been viewed as precious, beautiful and valuable, there have been people willing to take risks to steal it for themselves or others. In recent years, these robberies are making headlines.
One of the most recent and shocking cases is that of a respected New York City antiquities dealer, Subhash Kapoor, who allegedly raided archaeological sites in Cambodia, Pakistan and India and then used ports of entry to ship the items back to the United States. Of the objects recovered so far, one sandstone sculpture of a woman is said to be worth $15 million.

Suspected Dubai jewel thieves arrested in Greece


Four Serbians suspected of being members of the Pink Panthers gang, which was involved in a AED55m ($15m) robbery at Wafi Mall in Dubai in 2007, have been arrested by Greek police, it was announced on Saturday.
Police said the four Serbian suspects had been involved in around 30 jewellery shop burglaries in Greece, the Athens News Agency reported.
The Dubai Wafi Mall robbery was a key driver in the creation of Interpol’s Project Pink Panthers in 2007 to coordinate global activities after DNA profiles sent by the UAE from the Dubai robbery were matched against others submitted to the Interpol General Secretariat from a robbery in Lichtenstein in 2006, revealing that the armed robbery ring was active not just in Europe, but around the world.
The main objective of Project Pink Panthers is to centralise information related to the suspects of such crimes, identifying material, the crimes in which they are involved in, and their criminal partnerships and contacts.
 The group is believed to include approximately 800 individuals responsible for nearly 300 robberies in 35 countries since 1999, with the value of stolen jewellery estimated at more than $485m.

Fourth member of Pink Panther jewel gang arrested in Kypsel




A fourth member of the so-called Pink Panther gang of international jewel thieves was arrested late on Friday.
Police said that the 26-year-old was arrested in the Athens neighborhood of Kypseli.
Like the other three suspects arrested earlier on Friday, he is also a Serbian national.
Officers recovered a fake Bulgarian identity card and driving license from his apartment, a replica gun and a ski mask.
The gang is believed to be behind more than 30 jewelry store burglaries in Attica alone, netting a total loot in excess of half a million euros.
It is also thought to have carried out robberies in Britain, Dubai, Japan and Switzerland.

Riopelle art theft ‘a complete con job,’ dealer says

 Riopelle piece of art stolen from a Toronto gallery that was recovered in Montreal

A Winnipeg art dealer whose painting by Canadian master Jean-Paul Riopelle was stolen from a Toronto gallery says the heist was more sophisticated swindle than brutish burglary.
An untitled Riopelle from the 1950s was found this week in a Montreal home during a police raid, Quebec provincial police said Friday. The painting was stolen April 1 from the Toronto branch of Mayberry Fine Art, the gallery confirmed.

“It was a complete con job,” said Shaun Mayberry, the Canadian art specialist of the Winnipeg-based art dealing family. “This theft was very cleverly orchestrated. Nothing in my 40 years experience prepared me for that; nothing like that has ever happened.”
The Integrated Art Crime Investigation Team of the RCMP and Quebec provincial police released a photograph of a man they say is a chief suspect after they seized the painting. Provincial police spokeswoman Sergeant Mélanie Dumaresq said a person was questioned after the painting was seized in Montreal, but no arrests were made. “They’re still investigating,” she said.
The Riopelle painting, valued at about $225,000, was among the artist’s oil-on-canvas abstract works completed in Paris in 1958 – the same year he rose in international prominence with an honourable mention from the Guggenheim International Award.
“It’s a classic Riopelle canvas,” Mr. Mayberry said. “One of the great postwar paintings from a period where he was very influential. It’s a coveted period in the artist’s career, and that makes it very desirable from a collector’s point of view.”
Mr. Mayberry said the thief was clearly aware of the painting’s history when he walked into the gallery to conduct business, and was also intimately familiar with the transaction process for the purchase of a work of art worth hundreds of thousands of dollars from a reputable gallery.
Both the police and Mr. Mayberry were reluctant to go too deeply into theft methodology, citing the continuing investigation and, in Mr. Mayberry’s case, the security of other artworks. But he did say other galleries in Toronto have been victimized by similar frauds.
“These people were professionals, and we weren’t alone in being victimized,” Mr. Mayberry said. “Our communication, the transaction we conducted, there was nothing to suggest it was other than business-as-usual. Of course, in hindsight, I can now see gaps in our process.”
Riopelle artworks have been a favourite target of thieves for years. In 2011, a bronze statue titled La Défaite (The Defeat) was stolen from near his former workshop in Estérel, Que. It was discovered smashed in a nearby forest. Several of his lithographs were stolen in the early 2000s from a Montreal art supply store and turned up on Kijiji in 2010.
Mr. Riopelle, who is revered in his home province of Quebec and died in 2002 at 78 years old, was a prolific artist who created very marketable works, art experts say. Stealing art is one thing – finding a buyer willing to pay big money for artworks of dubious provenance is another.
“There are people out there who will turn a blind eye, but if the motivation is financial gain, it’s generally only a matter of time until someone gets tripped up,” Mr. Mayberry said.

German Stolen Nazi Art Collector Cornelius Gurlitt Dies

Cornelius Gurlitt
Some 60 paintings were found at the house of art collector Cornelius Gurlitt in Munich, Germany.Reuters
Reclusive German art collector Cornelius Gurlitt, who had previously been found hiding more than 1,400 paintings in his Munich apartment, has died according to local media.
Gurlitt, 81, made the headlines last year after tax inspectors chanced upon the artworks - a priceless collection of Picasso, Chagall and Matisse - behind a stack of tinned beans at Gurlitt's flat in the Munich suburb of Schwabing.
Gurlitt's father Hildebrand was an art historian when Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933 and operated as a Nazi-approved art dealer during the Third Reich.
He was one of the few dealers commissioned to handle artworks confiscated by the regime and he allegedly acquired hundreds of artworks sold for a pittance by Jews who were trying to escape Germany.
Gurlitt inherited the stock on his father's death in 1956.
He claimed that all the paintings had been bought legally from museums and other dealers. Jewish groups have called for the collection to be revealed in order to help ascertain if some are stolen art.
Gurlitt had been seriously ill following major heart surgery.

Swiss museum says it is ‘the unrestricted and unfettered sole heir’ according to the will of art collector who hoarded Nazi loot worth £1bn

  • Cornelius Gurlitt, 81, died at apartment in Schawbin, Munich, yesterday 
  • With no close relatives, the future of his collection had been in doubt
  • But a museum in Bern has announced it is sole beneficiary of his estate
Cornelius Gurlitt, 81, who hid a £1bn trove of suspected stolen Nazi art has died in his Munich flat
Cornelius Gurlitt, 81, who hid a £1bn trove of suspected stolen Nazi art has died in his Munich flat
A museum in Switzerland today said it has been named the 'unrestricted and unfettered sole heir' of reclusive art collector Cornelius Gurlitt.
The 81-year-old son of Adolf Hitler's art dealer, whose collection included many pieces looted by the Nazis, had made a will shortly before his death yesterday.
There had already been speculation that the beneficiary was a museum outside of Germany, possibly in Austria or Switzerland.
But now the Kunstmuseum Bern has announced it is 'surprised and delighted' to have learned that Mr Gurlitt's remaining paintings will be left to its collection.
In a statement it said the appointment brings “a considerable burden of responsibility and a wealth of questions of the most difficult and sensitive kind, and questions in particular of a legal and ethical nature.”
The museum says it never previously had any dealings with Gurlitt.
Mr Gurlitt died in the Munich flat where he kept many of the paintings, which included works by Renoir, Matisse and Picasso that were either looted or bought from Jews at knock-down prices.
He had been selling them over the years to support himself, until in 2012 Bavarian customs officials swooped and confiscated the collection of 1,400 works.
Authorities kept most, but allowed Mr Gurlitt to keep hundreds after investigators could find no evidence they were looted.
With his death, the ownership of those artworks had seemed to have been thrown into doubt. But now all eyes are on his final will.
 
Stephan Holzinger, Mr Gurlitt's lawyer, told the BBC that Mr Gurlitt wrote the will in the last few weeks.
'It now falls to the probate court to determine if the will is valid and whether a contract of inheritance exists,' he said. 'I can understand that there is now wild speculation, but I don't want to comment on that at this stage.'
Munich daily Süddeutsche Zeitung claimed it had learned that Mr Gurlitt intended his entire collection to remain together and go to a museum in Switzerland or Austria, where he had contacts.
The paper claimed that authorities in Germany were angry the controversial collector had chosen to leave the artworks to a foreign institution.
The Kunstmuseum in Bern, Switzerland: The museum said it has learned it is the 'unrestricted and unfettered sole heir' of Mr Gurlitt, who died yesterday at his home in Munich, Germany
The Kunstmuseum in Bern, Switzerland: The museum said it has learned it is the 'unrestricted and unfettered sole heir' of Mr Gurlitt, who died yesterday at his home in Munich, Germany

Mr Gurlitt, who had been ill with a heart condition, learnt just two months ago that he would be allowed to keep several hundred paintings after prosecutors said they could find no evidence that they had been looted.
He claimed all the paintings were legally acquired by his father, but at least 500 were found to have been either stolen by the Nazis or were strong-armed from Jewish collectors at rock-bottom prices.
Mr Gurlitt’s father Hildebrand was Nazi Germany’s leading expert on modern art, personally tasked by Hitler to sell paintings he despised abroad to help fund the Third Reich’s war effort.
However, Mr Gurlitt Snr secretly kept many of the pictures for himself.
After the war, he was questioned by the American Army’s ‘Monuments Men’ unit but never charged with any crimes. He lied that the bulk of his collection had been destroyed in the Allied bombing of Dresden in 1945.
In fact, the artworks survived intact and he passed them on to his son, a lifelong bachelor, who said before his death: ‘I never loved anything or anybody in life but my paintings.’
The collection, which includes works by Picasso, Matisse and Dix was discovered inside his Munich apartment
The collection, which includes works by Picasso, Matisse and Dix was discovered inside his Munich apartment

Under a new deal with prosecutors, art historians will have a year to examine the 1,401 works to establish where they came from and if they were stolen (pictured, a work by Otto Dix)
Under a new deal with prosecutors, art historians will have a year to examine the 1,401 works to establish where they came from and if they were stolen (pictured, a work by Otto Dix)
In 2011, he was investigated as a possible tax fraudster when he was found with money he could not explain, but investigators later found paintings hidden behind tins of beans and out-of-date food in his flat.
In February this year, more paintings, worth at least £100million, were found in a house he owned in Salzburg, Austria.
But a court decided he could get between 300 and 350 paintings back.
Under the terms of deal, the art will be held at a secret location for a year while historians carry out background checks on each of the paintings.

At the end of this year any painting which investigators had not finished studying would have been handed back to the 81-year-old.
Augsburg state prosecutor Matthias Nickolai said at the time: 'We have come across new evidence in the course of the investigation ... that leads us to re-evaluate the legal situation.'
Gurlitt's lawyer Tido Park applauded the decision to release the art, saying: 'It's a good day for Cornelius Gurlitt.'
The German government came under fire - especially by families whose relatives were robbed by the Nazis - for keeping silent for almost two years about the trove of art works.
Gurlitt was arrested in 2012 but it wasn't until last year that knowledge of the collection became public.
Separately, representatives for Gurlitt later secured a further 238 artworks at a dilapidated house he owned in Salzburg, Austria.
Gurlitt was never under investigation in Austria and those works weren't seized by authorities.

Gurlitt was set to have the paintings returned at the end of the year if investigators could not unearth whether they were stolen (painting by Henri Matisse)
Gurlitt was set to have the paintings returned at the end of the year if investigators could not unearth whether they were stolen (painting by Henri Matisse)

One of the pieces of work discovered in his flat was this masterpiece by Franz Marc
One of the pieces of work discovered in his flat was this masterpiece by Franz Marc

Last year it transpired that Mr Gurlitt had given four of his paintings to his brother-in-law. They may also have been looted by the Nazis, according to the authorities.
What happens to the artwork now remains to be seen. It could go to Mr Gurlitt's younger sister, Benita, but she would have to be named in a will - and such a document has yet to surface.
Christopher Marinello, Director and Founder of Art Recovery International, told MailOnline: 'It's a pretty murky situation. We don't know if he left a will. If his lawyers were smart they would have cleared up the issue in advance. It'll get cleared up over the next couple of days.'
One of the works of art in the trove - a Matisse valued at up to £60million - has been claimed by the ex-wife of Dominique Strauss Kahn.
Sitting Woman is thought to have belonged to Anne Sinclair’s maternal grandfather, the late French art dealer Paul Rosenberg.
Mr Marinello is representing the Rosenberg family and added that he's confident it will be returned to them.
He said that a second claim for the painting had 'been dispensed with'.
Gurlitt stayed out of sight after news of his collection broke, barely talking to media, and was apparently overwhelmed by the publicity. In January, his representatives said they were considering claims for some of the works and that he was seeking ‘fair and just solutions’ to the case.
‘So much has happened in the past weeks and months, and is still happening,’ he wrote on a newly created website shortly afterward. ‘I only wanted to live with my pictures, in peace and calm.’
Gurlitt was born in Hamburg in 1932 and came from a prominent German family of artists, composers and collectors, but little is known about his life beyond his position as the heir of his father Hildebrand's art collection.
When U.S. investigators questioned Hildebrand Gurlitt after the end of World War II about the origins of his collection, they were doubtful whether all the pieces really belonged to him but eventually decided that he was the rightful owner of most of them.
After his father's 1956 death in a car accident, Cornelius Gurlitt lived together with his mother in Munich until she died in 1968. He reportedly lived a reclusive life, making a living by selling paintings from time to time.
Experts who examined the pieces seized in Munich said they included both ‘degenerate art’ and looted art.
In the frame: A painting by German artist Max Liebermann called Zwei Reiter am Strande (Two Horsemen at the Beach), which was found at Gurlitt's house
In the frame: A painting by German artist Max Liebermann called Zwei Reiter am Strande (Two Horsemen at the Beach), which was found at Gurlitt's house
Remarkable: A formerly unknown painting of French artist Marc Chagall was found at Gurlitt's apartment
Remarkable: A formerly unknown painting of French artist Marc Chagall was found at Gurlitt's apartment
Sa.Giustina in Pra della Vale (1751/1800) by Antonio Canaletto
Sa.Giustina in Pra della Vale (1751/1800) by Antonio Canaletto



The Nazis took so-called degenerate art - mostly avant-garde modern art, such as expressionism - from museums and public institutions because it was deemed a corrupting influence on the German people. Looted art was stolen or bought for a pittance from Jewish collectors who were forced to sell under duress during the Third Reich.
For the heirs of those collectors, the discovery raised hopes of recovering art, but the slow release of information by the German government stirred frustration.
After much back and forth, Gurlitt eventually agreed last month to a deal with the German government, under which hundreds of works owned by the collector would be checked for a Nazi-era past while staying in government hands.
Displayed: Auguste Rodin's 'Etude de femme nue debout, les bras releves, les mains croisees au-dessus de la tite' (undated)
Displayed: Auguste Rodin's 'Etude de femme nue debout, les bras releves, les mains croisees au-dessus de la tite' (undated)
Nine hundred and seventy of the works were believed to have been confiscated, stolen or looted by the NazisOtto Griebel's Die Verschleierte ('The Veiled', 1926)
Nine hundred and seventy of the works were believed to have been confiscated, stolen or looted by the Nazis. Pictured is Otto Griebel's Die Verschleierte ('The Veiled', 1926)
The works were first discovered in 2012. Pictured is Otto Griebel's Child at the Table
The works were first discovered in 2012. Pictured is Otto Griebel's Child at the Table
The remarkable find was first revealed in Germany's Focus magazine. Pictured is Carl Spitzweg's Das Klavierspiel ('Piano Serenade', about 1840)
The remarkable find was first revealed in Germany's Focus magazine. Pictured is Carl Spitzweg's Das Klavierspiel ('Piano Serenade', about 1840)
Sketch: Ludwig Godenschweg's Female Nude (undated)
Sketch: Ludwig Godenschweg's Female Nude (undated)
Prosecutors who initially confiscated all the works of art they found at his apartment then announced that they were releasing the rest of the collection. Gurlitt's lawyers had argued that the prosecutors acted disproportionately in seizing the entire collection, and that the art wasn't relevant as evidence for prosecutors' suspicion of import tax evasion.
Monika Gruetters, Germany's culture minister, said on Tuesday that Gurlitt's decision to work with authorities deserved ‘recognition and respect.’
‘It will remain to Cornelius Gurlitt's credit that he ... sent an exemplary signal for the search for fair and just solutions with this avowal of moral responsibility,’ she said.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2622256/Hoarder-kept-Nazi-artworks-worth-1bn-DID-write-died-left-museum-Austria.html#ixzz313BdKiWy
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ATHENS, May 03, 2014 (AFP) -
Greek police said Saturday they have arrested four Serbian suspected members of a gang of international jewel thieves known as the Pink Panthers.
Police said the four Serbs took part in the theft of cars as well as in some 30 jewellery shop burglaries in Greece worth an estimated 550,000 euros ($762,900).
In one crime, they allegedly smashed into a jewellery shop with a stolen car, made off with the jewellery and fled with other stolen vehicles or motocycles, the Athens News Agency reported.
Police arrested one of the four suspects, a 26-year-old man, in the Athens district of Kypseli on Friday afternoon after he kicked and punched the policemen in an attempt to flee.
Forged documents such as a Bulgarian identity card and a driving licence were found in his possession along with a pistol and a balaclava.
The Pink Panthers are suspected of robbing items worth 330 million euros ($450 million) in luxury stores around the world since 1999, cross-border police agency Interpol says on its website.
They got their nickname from British police in 2003 when gang members in London hid a stolen diamond in a pot of beauty cream, a trick used in one of the "Pink Panther" comedy films.
Of the gang's estimated 220 members, most are thought to be from the countries of the former Yugoslavia, including some former members of the military.
- See more at: http://www.ntd.tv/en/news/world/europe/20140503/136831-greece-arrests-4-serbian-39pink-panther39-jewel-thieves.html#sthash.9BOatuFJ.dpuf
ATHENS, May 03, 2014 (AFP) -
Greek police said Saturday they have arrested four Serbian suspected members of a gang of international jewel thieves known as the Pink Panthers.
Police said the four Serbs took part in the theft of cars as well as in some 30 jewellery shop burglaries in Greece worth an estimated 550,000 euros ($762,900).
In one crime, they allegedly smashed into a jewellery shop with a stolen car, made off with the jewellery and fled with other stolen vehicles or motocycles, the Athens News Agency reported.
Police arrested one of the four suspects, a 26-year-old man, in the Athens district of Kypseli on Friday afternoon after he kicked and punched the policemen in an attempt to flee.
Forged documents such as a Bulgarian identity card and a driving licence were found in his possession along with a pistol and a balaclava.
The Pink Panthers are suspected of robbing items worth 330 million euros ($450 million) in luxury stores around the world since 1999, cross-border police agency Interpol says on its website.
They got their nickname from British police in 2003 when gang members in London hid a stolen diamond in a pot of beauty cream, a trick used in one of the "Pink Panther" comedy films.
Of the gang's estimated 220 members, most are thought to be from the countries of the former Yugoslavia, including some former members of the military.
- See more at: http://www.ntd.tv/en/news/world/europe/20140503/136831-greece-arrests-4-serbian-39pink-panther39-jewel-thieves.html#sthash.9BOatuFJ.dpuf

Stolen Art Watch, Stanley Spencer Painting Theft, French Art Heist, Strad Violin Snatch, Undercover Police Posing as Insurance Agents Or Buyers, Always Waiting, Offering False Reward Hope

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The $5 Million Violin and the Telltale Taser: Inside an Epically Stupid Crime

By Justin Rohrlich
It was a little after 10PM when Frank Almond, the concertmaster of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra (MSO), walked out of Wisconsin Lutheran College into the sub-zero January night. He had just finished a chamber music performance at the small school, located in the quiet suburb of Wauwatosa, and he was headed home.
As Almond opened the passenger door of his car to put his violin inside, a 41-year-old ex-con named Salah Salahadyn allegedly walked up to Almond and tased him unconscious. Almond came to just in time to see his attacker speed away in a burgundy minivan driven by a woman in a black hat. Almond’s iPad was gone. As were two 19th-century bows, which were worth a combined $50,000. And so was the violin, a 1715 Stradivarius he had been playing since a wealthy benefactor loaned it to him in 2008.
It was worth $5 million.
“There is now exactly one documented case of a Strad-level violin specifically targeted for an armed robbery," Almond tells VICE News. "Lucky me.”
* * *
He actually was pretty lucky.
Salahadyn, who had previously spent five years in prison for swiping a $25,000 statue from a Milwaukee art gallery in the mid-1990s and then trying to sell it back to the gallery owner, once described stealing a Strad as his "dream theft." But when he allegedly stole Almond's, it wasn't exactly the perfect score. Somehow Salahadyn had failed to realize that each time a Taser is fired, it disperses tiny ID tags imprinted with bar-coded serial numbers — kind of like guilt confetti. A phone call from police to the manufacturer of the Taser identified a 36-year-old Milwaukee barber named Universal Knowledge Allah as the man who'd bought it.
Allah (born Shaudell Johnson) planned to tell cops that the Taser had been stolen if they started asking questions, but according to court documents, he managed to implicate himself and Salahadyn before that ever happened. Four days after the robbery, Allah gave a haircut to a customer identified only as “W.D.” W.D. then gave Allah a lift home. It was during this ride that Allah told W.D. all that had happened, right down to Salahadyn having “used the electric, not the heat.” By that point, the robbery was big news, and a $100,000 reward had been offered by the MSO.
The following day, W.D. went to police and told them everything he knew.
Allah was quickly arrested, followed almost immediately by Salahadyn, who had neglected to dispose of two key pieces of evidence: a binder filled with magazine articles about Strads, and a note he wrote to himself reading, “Taser.com $500-$1000.” Salahadyn then led investigators to an associate’s home where he had stashed the stolen violin. In the attic, hidden inside a suitcase, was Almond’s undamaged Stradivarius, along with Salahadyn’s own ID. The alleged getaway driver, LaToya Atlas — also Salahadyn’s on-again, off-again girlfriend and the mother of his child — was arrested and released without charges. Officials have thus far declined to explain why.
Famous Strads 'have been photographed from more angles than a porn star.'
Dick Ellis, the detective who founded New Scotland Yard’s Art & Antiques Unit in 1989, describes the world of rare instrument theft as “a small subset of a niche area of criminality.” In other words, Strads are almost never stolen, despite the fact that so many of them — like Almond's — are absurdly easy targets. And there's one overarching reason why.
There are lots of dumb things you can steal. A Stradivarius may be the dumbest.
* * *
Of the approximately 1,000 violins, violas, and cellos Antonio Stradivari made in his lifetime, the most coveted come from what is called his “golden period,” which lasted from 1700 to 1725. Of these, two are considered the cream of the crop. One is the 1716 Messiah, which is in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, UK. The other is Almond’s 1715 Lipinski.
There are various theories about what makes the 450 or so surviving Stradivarius violins so sublime. Some experts have speculated it has to do with unique climate conditions experienced only during a brief time in the 17th century, which gave special acoustic properties to the wood used by Stradivari. Others believe it had something to do with the varnish, a secret formulation whose recipe disappeared when Stradivari died in 1737 at the age of 93. Still others think river fungi got into timber being floated down from the Italian Alps to Stradivari’s home base of Cremona, which somehow altered the wood’s cells in a magical way that has never been duplicated.
All of those theories may be total BS. Beyond dispute, however, is the fact that Stradivari’s creations are a testament to a singular brand of genius, an artisan who spent his life relentlessly trying to improve upon his past work.
But Strads don't cost millions of dollars simply because they sound good. They are pieces of art. The 1721 Lady Blunt Stradivarius is worth, ounce-for-ounce, 625 times the price of gold. Next month, Sotheby’s will open sealed bids for Stradivari’s 1719 Macdonald viola. There are far fewer Stradivarius violas still around than there are violins; if the Macdonald realizes the estimated sale price of more than $45 million, it will be the most expensive musical instrument ever to change hands.
It's no wonder Salahadyn got ideas.
“People read these articles about a Stradivarius worth millions of dollars and think, ‘Hey, if we just get 10 percent of its actual price, that’s still a lot of money,’” says former FBI agent Robert K. Wittman, founder of the Bureau’s Art Crime Team and author of Priceless. “The real art in an art heist isn’t the stealing, it’s the selling.” To that end, three things are absolutely vital if you’re going to get any value out of a Strad: authenticity, provenance, and proper documentation. This is where the deal tends to fall apart for a thief. A stolen Strad “might be real as rain,” Wittman says, but once it’s out of the rightful owner’s hands, it becomes relatively worthless.
"I call high-value stolen art ‘headache art’ because it disrupts the everyday handling of lesser stolen art, therefore causing everyone a fucking headache."
Strads derive their value in part from the fact that their provenance is so well-documented. Every nick, bump, and scratch has been analyzed and pored over, as has the grain of the wood. Modern-day violin makers use Stradivariuses as models for their own instruments, which makes the makers intimately familiar with the violins, violas, and cellos. Famous Strads “have been photographed from more angles than a porn star,” says Laurie Niles, a concert violinist and the editor-in-chief of Violinist.com. Privately run organizations like the Art Loss Register and Art Recovery International have dedicated databases focused solely on tracking stringed instruments for dealers, auction houses, collectors and buyers, police, museums, insurance companies, and anyone else with an interest in their recovery.
“Morons — low-level idiots,” is how ex art thief “Turbo” Paul Hendry describes Salahadyn and Allah, who are both due back in court May 15 and face up to 15 years in prison. Hendry, who claims to have been Great Britain’s most prolific trafficker of stolen art before he went straight in 1993, says most crooked dealers will handle only lesser-known pieces, which can be blended back into the legitimate market at, or close to, full price. Since most thieves know not to steal internationally recognizable items, the overall recovery rate for art and antiquities is a paltry 5 percent to 10 percent.
“Give me 100 stolen pieces worth $10,000 over one worth $1 million any day,” Hendry says. “I call high-value, iconic, stolen art ‘headache art’ because it disrupts the everyday handling of lesser stolen art, therefore causing everyone a fucking headache.”
The chances of a legitimate buyer taking a stolen Stradivarius off a thief's hands are, effectively, zero. According to Niles, a multimillion-dollar Strad without the right papers “might fetch $500” in a pawn shop. That said, there are a handful of famous Strads that have disappeared and remain missing. So where are they?
“So far I've seen absolutely no evidence that a black market for high-end instruments even exists — in contrast to paintings,” Almond says. “I'm aware of exactly three great Strads that have disappeared since 1994 and have not resurfaced; that's not much of a market.”
He’s right. As one dealer explains, the rarer the item, the smaller the world becomes. This is one reason why Ellis believes many stolen instruments — like the Le Maurien, Colossus, and Davidoff-Morini Strads Almond mentions — could very well have been fenced for, essentially, nothing. Today they may be hiding in plain sight.
Says Ellis: “I suspect they have been sold on to students and [other people] who have no idea what they bought on the cheap."
* * *
There are only two police officers in the United States who serve as full time “art cops.” One of them is Detective Don Hrycyk of the Los Angeles Police Department.
Back in the late 1980s, when Los Angeles was seeing roughly 1,000 murders a year, Hrycyk was working homicide in South Central’s violent 77th Street Division. When the relentless bloodshed got to be too much, he put in for a transfer to the commercial burglary unit. Hrycyk’s caseload initially included a handful of art crimes, and in 1993 that became his sole focus. Today, the 40-year veteran is in charge of the LAPD’s Art Theft Detail, which currently consists of one person: Don Hrycyk.
Over the past 20 years, he has orchestrated the return of seven of eight rare violins stolen in LA. (A Luigi Mozzani 1917 model known simply as “#108” remains missing.) In his experience, there is no common MO among art thieves; Hrycyk has seen rare instruments get swept up as part of a larger haul in ordinary burglaries, snatched out of spite during domestic disputes, and stolen by everyone from highly organized crews to domestic laborers. Although he says he’s encountered the odd targeted theft, the kind of advance work Salahadyn did before allegedly stealing Almond's Strad is rare.
Twice on Hrycyk’s watch, high-end stringed instruments have walked away when distracted musicians left them unattended. In 2004, the $3.5 million General Kyd Stradivarius, a cello on loan from the LA Philharmonic to cellist Peter Stumpf, disappeared when he absentmindedly left it overnight on the front porch of his Los Feliz home. The following year, a 1742 Sanctus Seraphin violin, on loan from Southern California philanthropist Peter Mandell to music student Lindsay Deutsch, was snatched from the back seat of her car while she shopped at a West Hills supermarket. Both were quickly returned in exchange for rewards: $50,000 put up by an anonymous donor in the case of the General Kyd, and $10,000 put up by Deutsch’s parents for the safe return of the $350,000 Sanctus Seraphin — and the $160,000 bow that was stolen with it.
Both were crimes of opportunity, and Hrycyk didn’t have much doubt the cello and the violin would turn up eventually. What still disturbs him is that the crimes seem to have paid off; the thieves were never caught.
“Our feeling was that the people who ‘found’ these things were probably sent in as mules for the thief to get the reward,” Hrycyk says.
That tactic is becoming less and less feasible. In fact, according to Hendry, stealing a Strad in hopes of collecting a reward — or ransom, as he calls it — is almost as foolish a plan as Salahadyn’s was in Milwaukee.
“Rewards are a load of bullshit,” Hendry says. “It used to be common for stolen art to be recovered quietly and payments made, but recent money-laundering laws in Europe and the US have made those deals harder to make. Law enforcement will not allow the private sector to recover stolen art without arrests anymore; anyone acting as a conduit knows to get a legal agreement in place before helping recovery. I have done this many times and when no agreement is forthcoming, I walk away.”
“I never met a drug dealer who would be willing to trade good heroin or coke for a Stradivarius he can’t do anything with.”
Of course, rules are sometimes broken. In 2010, solo violinist Min-Jin Kym’s 1696 Strad, worth about $2 million, was stolen while she chatted with a friend at a Pret-a-Manger in London’s Euston Station. A closed-circuit camera later identified the culprits as John Maughan, a 30-year-old Irish Traveler with 46 known aliases and 123 criminal convictions to his credit, and two teenage accomplices who were too young to be named publicly. After pleading guilty, the boys were sentenced to undisclosed terms; Maugham was sentenced to 4 1/2 years in prison, which was reduced on appeal to 3 1/2. But the violin remained missing.
After a £30,000 reward offered by the violin’s insurer failed to turn up anything conclusive, Kym was paid by her insurance company for the loss. For three years, cops chased leads all over Europe, but Maughan clammed up and the trail seemed to have gone cold. Then, last June, British Transport Police (BTP) announced that investigators had miraculously found the Strad. The BTP said nothing else, other that the violin had been located at “a house in the Midlands.”
Further details were never revealed. So we asked Hendry to tell us what he knows.
The violin that became known as the “ex-Kym” Strad was auctioned for $2.3 million last December, and the public was told that a portion of the proceeds were donated to the authorities who had recovered it. But Hendry says the sale proceeds “donated” to police actually went to Maughan’s associates.
“The truth is, it was handed back by fellow gypsies who had taken possession of the Strad from Maughan, the original thief,” Hendry tells VICE News. “This was an illegal act under UK law, but done because there was simply no other way of recovering the Strad. It’s a grey area that happens when the desire to recover the stolen artwork overrides the ability to make arrests.”
Authorities’ desire to recover the Strad was motivated in part by the fact that it was being used as collateral for drug deals, Hendry says. But that's an extremely unusual circumstance.
“I never met a drug dealer who would be willing to trade good heroin or coke," Wittman says, "for a Stradivarius he can’t do anything with.”
* * *
Musicians say each Strad has a distinct personality. Most have names, and Hrycyk believes this adds to the huge sense of loss when one gets stolen.
Almond was no exception. The day after the robbery, he addressed the media at a news conference. “It is difficult to fully articulate, but the main thing about instruments in this echelon is that your interaction with them on so many levels becomes something very similar to a primary human relationship, with all its twists and turns," he said. "For many years I have been incredibly fortunate to be passing through its life, not the other way around.”
And it’s not just the musicians who feel an acute loss. After the theft, a local Milwaukee music critic named Rick Walters wrote, “Hearing its rich tones has been a defining aspect of classical music in Milwaukee. As the violin’s audience, we are also violated by this robbery. My reaction is some combination of outrage and grief.”
According to British cultural critic Norman Lebrecht, a violinist in 1960 could expect to pay about $1,600 for “a fine 19th-century instrument,” or roughly double his annual salary. Today, Lebrecht says, the ratio is 10 or 12 times average orchestral earnings.
More than $100,000 in Bitcoin was stolen in a ridiculously low-tech heist. Read more here.
In recent years, Stradivarius investment funds have started to appear, pushing already astronomical prices even higher. Not entirely unlike oil prices that started to rise when speculators got involved, the market for rare violins became even more distorted once Strads became an asset class. The instruments remain coveted not only because they are a finite commodity almost guaranteed to appreciate, but also because loaning one to an elite musician bestows upon the owner — whether a corporation, foundation, or private individual — a level of status that a barrel of oil never could. Plus, regular use is part of a Strad’s maintenance; many believe the sound becomes more exquisite each time the instrument is played.
That's why it’s important to remember that violins are instruments, says Dorit Straus, an insurance advisor for Art Recovery International and herself a professional-level violinist. That is, they are tools, not museum pieces. Yes, a Strad is a work of art and a cultural artifact — but it is meant to be played. High-value paintings or sculptures, which are rarely if ever transported, are often accompanied by specialists and guards when they are.
Two weeks after the robbery, Frank Almond played the Lipinski Stradivarius at a sold-out recital.

Avoiding trial: Plea hearing scheduled for “mastermind” in Stradivarius theft

MILWAUKEE (WITI) — One day after it was announced Universal Allah has reached a plea deal for his role in the theft of the valuable Stradivarius violin — we’ve now learned the second man charged in the case — Salah Salahadyn has reached a plea deal as well.
Salahadyn faces one count of robbery in the case. Prosecutors say Salahadyn was the mastermind behind the theft.
He appeared in court for a scheduling conference on Thursday, May 15th — and a plea hearing was scheduled for June 30th.
Salahadyn previously pleaded not guilty in the case.
Allah was in court on Wednesday, May 14th.
Allah faces one count of robbery, and one count of possession with intent to deliver THC (less than 200 grams).
Allah’s attorney requested a plea hearing — and it is expected Allah will plead guilty.
Prosecutors say Allah was the one who purchased and provided the stun gun that was used to attack and rob Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra violinist Frank Almond.
The plea hearing will take place on May 28th — and a sentencing hearing is set for July 24th for Allah.
The violin was stolen on January 27th.
Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra concertmaster Frank Almond had just finished up a concert at the Wisconsin Lutheran College on Bluemound Road. Almond was exiting the performance hall, and he approached his vehicle and opened the rear door on his car to put the violin inside.
That’s when a man walked up to him, “produced a flashlight-style Taser-type weapon, and fired that Taser at Mr. Almond.”
Almond told police the “ejected probes of the Taser struck him in the wrist and chest.
Almond said he fell to the ground, and was momentarily incapacitated.
Upon gaining control of himself, Almond said the Stradivarius Lipinski 1715 violin was missing.
The Milwaukee Police Department eventually recovered the stolen 1715 Lipinski Stradivarius violin from a home in the city’s Bay View neighborhood.

French Art Heist Mastermind Says Ex-FBI Agent Robert Wittman Framed Him


Jan Brueghel the Elder, <em>Allegory of Earth</em> (circa 1611). Photo: courtesy Musée des Beaux Arts, Nice.
Jan Brueghel the Elder, Allegory of Earth (circa 1611).
Courtesy Musée des Beaux Arts, Nice.
Convicted art thief Bernard Ternus now claims that he’s been framed for his alleged role in a French art heist, the AFP reports. The 2007 theft at Nice’s Musée des Beaux-Arts took place in broad daylight and was carried out by five armed robbers who made off with four paintings by Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, and Jan Brueghel the Elder.
The Miami-based Ternus was convicted in US court of masterminding the crime in 2008, and after serving a five-year prison sentence, has been transferred to France. While testifying in Aix-en-Provence, Ternus claimed that he had been framed for the crime by an FBI sting operation.
According to Ternus, two men approached him asking for paintings by Dutch masters. “I was manipulated, I have never in my life asked anyone to steal paintings,” he said in court. Ternus went on to claim that the supposed FBI operatives, one of whom he described as a “mysterious Frenchman,” were quite insistent, and eventually threatened him.
Claude Monet, Cliffs near Dieppe (1897).
Claude Monet, Cliffs near Dieppe (1897).
Courtesy Musée des Beaux Arts, Nice.
All four paintings—Monet’s Cliffs near Dieppe, Sisley’s The Lane of Polars at Moret, and Brueghel’s Allegory of Water and Allegory of Earth—were eventually recovered in Marseille. FBI art crimes investigator Robert Wittman led the effort that resulted in the arrest and conviction of five men, all of whom were sentenced to between two and nine years by French courts.
The burglars, who were disguised as cleaning workers, pulled off the blockbuster heist in just five minutes. According to a New York Timesreport, the Sisley was previously taken by thieves in 1978, and recovered in a Marseille sewer a few days later. It was also stolen, along with the Monet, in 1998, but turned up shortly thereafter on a boat in a town not far away. The latter robbery was overseen by Jean Forneris, the museum’s curator at the time.
Ternus’s trial is scheduled to end today, May 14.
Word has it Bernard Ternus was found guilty and sentenced to nine years in jail.

Thieves ransack Daylesford church stealing $100K of historic items

Police are appealing for witnesses after more than $100,000 worth of historic items were stolen from a church in Daylesford in central Victoria.
It is believed the antiques were stolen from the Anglican Church on Central Springs Road on Tuesday night.
The items taken include a 17th century mirror and wooden screen-print, a gem-encrusted brass and silver cross and a 140-year-old lectern.
Detective Sergeant Tony Coxall says it is unclear whether the property was secure at the time of the theft.
"Yes there are indications that there could have been a vehicle involved," he said.
"Unfortunately we don't have a description of the vehicle but we believe either a van or a wagon of some sort must have been involved with the number of items.
"We're still getting a full list of the items stolen but we believe it must be well in excess of $100,000 at the moment."
Detective Sergeant Coxall says it is believed multiple offenders were involved due to the weight of some of the items.
Father Jeff O'Hare says most of the furniture has also been taken and the community will be bringing their own seats for this weekend's services.
He says the parish is devastated by the loss of such rare items.
"They've all been given, and the cross, for instance, from the high altar, has stood in place since the 1860s," he said.
"So it's historic value as well as for some people extremely sentimental value."

Burglars steal antiques in raid in Twyford near Winchester

ANTIQUE furniture and jewellery were stolen from a house in Twyford near Winchester.
Entry was forced and raiders stole items including an eight foot grandfather clock and 6ft by 4ft cabinet along with Chinese-style pottery and antique jewellery.
The burglary in hazeley Road was between 8.30pm on Thursday, May 8 and 10.30am on Friday, May 9.
PC Jasmin Connolly from Winchester police station said: “This burglary has been devastating for the family as many precious family belongings have been stolen including very large pieces of furniture.
“The offenders must have used a van to remove the items and there are likely to have been at least two offenders.

Painting returned to Dublin gallery 20 years after theft

 
A small but valuable painting stolen from a Dublin art gallery more than 20 years ago is back hanging on its walls after being recovered by detectives.
In The Omnibus by the French artist Honore Daumier has been returned to the Hugh Lane gallery in Dublin after being found by proceeds of crime officers late last year.
The drawing in watercolour and gouache was stolen on a Saturday afternoon in June 1992 when the gallery was open to the public and a thief ripped it from a wall.
It was valued at the time in the hundreds of thousands but gallery chiefs refused to be drawn on its value today.
Dr Barbara Dawson, appointed director of the Hugh Lane a year before the theft, suggested the remarkable discovery may have been thanks to the keen eye of detectives running a wider investigation.
“It was shocking for me at the time. It was literally pulled off the wall,” she said.
“It was a very particular theft, and interesting that it was that painting that someone went for. We weren’t sure if it was a ’magpie’ that liked to have things to look at themselves or was it stolen to order.
“We haven’t been told. Maybe it was someone who was covetous and liked to have things for their own enjoyment.”
It is understood that the stolen painting was discovered when Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) detectives began investigating other proceeds of crime and the unusual work was uncovered.
In The Omnibus was part of the original collection presented by Hugh Lane to the city of Dublin for the Gallery of Modern Art which first opened to the public in 1908.
Daumier was a satirist, caricaturist and renowned for his social commentary on life in France in the 1800s.
Detective Garda Philip Galvin, of the CAB, has been credited with the work that led to the discovery.
CAB chief, Detective Chief Superintendent Eugene Corcoran, praised the work of his officers.
“The Bureau is particularly pleased that as part of its investigative work in 2013, this significant piece of artwork has been recovered and restored to the gallery, having been stolen in 1992,” he said.
Based in Paris, Daumier was famous for chronicling modern French urban life.
His works began focusing on satire and he criticised the social, legal and political systems in France under King Louis Philippe.
He spent six months in jail after drawing a caricature of the monarch as Gargantua eating gold coins.
In The Omnibus shows a crowded group of workers and a young child in quiet contemplation as they travel through the city and is regarded as having a powerful resonance as social commentary. Daumier’s work is held in public collections worldwide including the Louvre, The Metropolitan Museum New York and The National Gallery London.

Security tightened to beat jewel thieves at Cannes Film Festival

Security tightened with 700 police deployed for opening of blockbuster movie festival today after a series of audacious jewellery thefts last year

While movie stars shine on the red carpet, security is being tightened in Cannes this year after a spate of increasingly audacious raids highlighted the ease with which jewel thieves can strike.
A year ago, as film festival luminaries partied into the early hours, a thief broke into the hotel room of an employee of Swiss jewellers Chopard and made off with a US$1.4 million haul.
The theft came hours after the premiere of The Bling Ring, Sofia Coppola's film about a group of Californian teenagers who break into celebrity mansions to steal designer items while their A-list owners are out on the red carpet.
Twelve months on, with the jewels still missing, Cannes authorities are preparing to deploy nearly 700 police for this year's festival, which begins today.
Scott Selby, co-author of Flawless about the US$100 million Antwerp Diamond Centre heist in 2003, said the thieves at last year's festival took advantage of "relatively lax" security to snatch items that were normally well protected.
"The Chopard employee left the jewellery in a hotel safety deposit box in her hotel room. That was a mistake," he said.
"All someone needed to do was rip the safe from the wall. The thief did not even need to know how to break it open. He or she simply took it with them."
Also during last year's festival, a US$1.9 million diamond necklace by de Grisogono was taken from under the noses of a reported 80-strong contingent of security guards during a party at the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc near Cannes. Two months later, thieves raised the stakes when they struck again, this time taking jewellery worth US$142 million from the Carlton Hotel.
A man with a semi-automatic pistol walked into an exhibition in a wing of the hotel with direct access to the street. He cleared the display cabinets before melting into the crowd on the Croisette, the Cannes promenade.
Selby said the theft had at least some of the hallmarks of the gang of robbers known as the Pink Panthers. They are wanted for stealing items worth US$450 million from luxury stores around the world since 1999.
Insurers Lloyd's of London have offered a reward of up to US$1.3 million for information leading to the recovery of the Carlton exhibition jewels.
But jewel thefts are notoriously difficult to solve. "It's very hard to catch people because it's not the sort of thing people talk about and there is a short window to catch someone," Selby said.
"It's possible that later there's some kind of snitch or they catch somebody for something else who tells them about it. But the loot will have been long gone."
The Carlton jewels would have been smuggled out of France and the stones resold after any certificate numbers inscribed on the sides had been polished off.
Unlike art theft, jewel theft was lucrative because it was relatively easy to get away with, Selby said. Only the most unusual stones would present a problem for the thieves.
"A really nice necklace that's got a giant pink stone or a giant yellow stone that is going to be very identifiable becomes tricky.
"That's where you have a choice to either sell to a buyer willing to buy a stolen item, often in Hong Kong or in the Emirates.
"Or what you have to do is find a corrupt polisher and cleaver in Antwerp and to turn it into two stones or shave a little bit off and put it in a new shape," he said.
The vast majority of these stones would have been one or two carat white or yellow stones that were easy to resell.
Such stones were very probably in engagement rings "that someone is wearing in London right now", he added.
Cyprus authorities have requested information on the notorious ‘Pink Panther’ jewel theft gang after four suspected members of the operation were recently apprehended by the Greek police.
Police spokesman Andreas Angelides confirmed that the request to the Greek authorities will hopefully shed light on the gang’s method of operation and help local detectives in the ongoing investigations of jewellery heists on the island which the Pink Panthers are suspected of involvement in.
The suspects - four Serbian nationals, believed to be ex-military - were arrested in the Kypseli district of Athens last week.
Greek police believe the gang members are responsible for at least 30 jewellery shop heists in the country to the tune of €800,000.
The Pink Panthers are suspected of robbing items worth €450 million in luxury jewellery shops in more than 20 countries since 1999, according to Interpol.
They got their nickname from British police in 2003 when gang members in London hid a stolen diamond in a pot of beauty cream, a trick used in one of the Pink Panther comedy films.
The gang – believed to be a network of around 200 people - commit elaborate armed robberies with extreme precision. Suspected members of the operation have disguised themselves as Hawaiian tourists, workmen and pensioners for jobs and have made their escapes in cars, speedboats, and on scooters or bicycles depending on the location.

Lost Van Gogh painting found in Spain

Van Gogh also painted "The Starry Night",  which is currently at New York's Museum of Modern Art.
A painting by Dutch Post-Impressionist artist Van Gogh that has been missing for 40 years has reportedly been recovered in Spain.

Reports are indicating that tax collectors who were going through the contents of a safe-deposit box discovered the long-lost work.
The artwork, titled "Cypress, Sky and Country" disappeared from the Kunsthistorisches Art Museum in Vienna.
Spanish newspaper El Mundo has reported that the painting, which they say was found in December, measures just over 1ft by 1ft.
According to the authorities the landscape painting, which is dated 1889, bears three seals on its back, indicating that the work resided in different museums throughout the 20th century.
The most recent mark appears to be from the Museum of Fine Arts, also known as the Kunsthistorisches Museum, in Vienna.
El Mundo says that the painting may have been created during Van Gogh's stay at the Saint-Rémy-de-Provence asylum in the south of France – the same place the artists created his beautiful painting "The Starry Night".
The safe-deposit box was one of hundreds targeted by Spanish officials in an in-depth tax-evasion investigation.
Authorities in Spain are said to be working on authenticating the painting.
  • West Yarmouth man charged with theft from antiques show

  • FRAMINGHAM - A West Yarmouth man and his father stole a minivan full of antiques from a Holliston antique show last year and admitted to the theft when busted for drugs in Barnstable, authorities said.

FRAMINGHAM - A West Yarmouth man and his father stole a minivan full of antiques from a Holliston antique show last year and admitted to the theft when busted for drugs in Barnstable, authorities said.
Ronald D. Kimball, 27, pleaded not guilty at his Framingham District Court arraignment on Wednesday.
Holliston police issued a warrant for Kimball's arrest last May, but he has been in jail on drug charges since before the arrest warrant was issued. He went to Framingham District Court on Wednesday to answer the charges.
On April 25, 2013, a vendor working at the annual antique show at Holliston High School reported his van full of antiques was stolen from the school parking lot. Police began an investigation and in early May, the Barnstable Police contacted them, according to a police report filed in Framingham District Court on Wednesday.
Barnstable Police had arrested Kimball on several drug charges, and while being interrogated, he offered that he and his father, Ronald Kimball Sr., committed a theft in Holliston, the report said.
He told police they went to the antique show on April 24 to look around, and returned the following day, planning to steal from someone. The plan was to follow one of the vendors home and to steal the car after it was parked, the report said.
However, they saw one vendor load a minivan full of antiques and then go back inside the school, while leaving the van running.
"He stated they took advantage of this opportunity and stole the van," the report said.
The pair drove the van to a nearby location where they had stashed a rental car. They transferred all of the antiques from the van to the car and ditched the van.
They then went to another location and dumped seven bins worth of antiques they thought would be to hard to sell, Kimball told police, the report said. The items were later found and returned to the owner.
Police issued warrants for both Kimball and his father's arrest. Ronald Kimball Sr. has not been located.
The younger Kimball, of 9 Rosetta St., West Yarmouth is charged with larceny of a vehicle and larceny of property worth more than $250.
Prosecutors did not ask for bail because Kimball is already being held. Judge Douglas Stoddart did not set bail. Kimball is due back in court on June 19 for a pretrial conference. 

Federal agents go on the hunt for stolen treasures

NEW YORK - Art theft is nothing new. And it turns out, the U.S. government has a special unit that seeks out - and returns - stolen artwork.
A 2,000-year-old sarcophagus was found in a private collector's Virginia home. He said it was passed down from his father.
But the ancient coffin was actually stolen from Egypt, and sold on an international black market.
"By looking at the cracks and the cuts, it was probably cut up in many pieces and air shipped," said James Dinkins, former director of the U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations division.
In doing so, the sellers risked ruining the sarcophagus, Dinkins said, "but to them it's just money."
HSI tracks down stolen antiquities smuggled into the United States and returns them to the rightful owners.
"It goes from everything from dinosaur fossils to looted art that the Nazis may have stolen during World War II," Dinkins said.
He said the majority of the buyers know that they're getting stolen items.
"These are usually businessmen, taking advantage of opportunities to sell them to wealthy businessmen," he said.
A CBS News crew was with HIS agents in March when they followed an informant's tip and searched a storage facility in the New York City borough of Queens. They found hundreds of items worth an estimated $8 million.
The items were allegedly stolen by Indian dealer Subhash Kapoor, a man international authorities say has been smuggling artifacts for decades. He is currently on trial after pleading not guilty to looting and smuggling charges.





nair07.jpg
Thieves steal treasures like these from temples in India and sell them on the black market.
CBS News
How do the thieves get the artifacts in the first place? "They'll hire folks to go out to a temple in India and literally chip away and take off decorative pieces from those temples," Dinkins said.
He pointed to one of the recovered items. "This is a real skull."
In the last seven years, HSI has returned more than 7,100 stolen items, such as fossils of a Tyrannosaurus given back to Mongolia, gold ornaments sent back to Afghanistan, and paintings that went back to Peru.
Dinkins says agents often volunteer to work with HSI because the department is unlike any other.
"In many of our cases that we investigate, you can't undo the crime that has happened. In this case, you are literally about to right a wrong, set the clock back and return that item back to rightful owner as if it never left," he said.
They're not only recovering priceless art; they're restoring stolen history.

Gallery holds out hope for missing Spencer painting

The Stanley Spencer Gallery is appealing for the safe return of a painting two years after it was stolen in a smash-and-grab raid. 'Cookham from Englefield' was taken during an early morning break-in at the gallery in High Street on Tuesday, April 29 in 2012.
A drain cover was thrown through a window to gain entry and two other paintings were damaged when they could not be removed from their frames.
DC Iain Watkinson) of Thames Valley Police appeared on BBC's Crimewatch in 2012 to appeal for information regarding the theft, which carries a reward of £10,000 for a recovery and arrest.
Despite a number of positive leads, the painting has yet to be found.
Chairman of trustees at the Stanley Spencer Gallery, Stuart Conlin, said the gallery is still confident it can be returned.
"We're still hopeful the painting is around," he said.
"Looking at other cases, you see instances of stolen art turning up more than two years later, sometimes its 10, 20 or 30 years after the event.
"If anybody has seen the picture or come across it on their travels in antique shops or jumble sales then please come forward and talk to the police.
"Someone might have it on their wall enjoying it, you never know."
The painting measures about 90cms by 60cms.

Stolen Art Watch, Art Crime In Vogue, Flavour Of The Moment

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Can I imagine stealing a great work of art? Yes, I can. But I wouldn't

Art thief Patrick Vialaneix says he became so obsessed with a Rembrandt he had to steal it. I can sympathise

Patrick Vialaneix
'That rare being – a thief who is an art lover'… Patrick Vialaneix, who hid a stolen painting in his bedroom for a decade. Photograph: Collet Guillaume/Sipa/Rex
Art thieves are usually a great disappointment to anyone cherishing romantic fictional ideas of gentleman burglars or fanatical collectors. Most of the best-known art thefts of recent years are connected with gangland. Paintings from Munch's Scream to Rembrandt's Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee were taken not by art-lovers, but career criminals on the look-out for forms of underworld collateral.
Patrick Vialaneix appears to be an exception. This French unemployed technician turned up at a police station earlier this year to confess to the theft of Child with a Soap Bubble, a painting often attributed to Rembrandt, from a museum near Cannes in 1999.
If an interview he gave to Le Monde is to be believed, Vialaneix is that rare being – a thief motivated by the love of art. He says he fell in love with the painting when he saw it at the age of 13 and regularly visited it from then onwards to stand rapt before the genius of Rembrandt. Finally, he worked out how he could use his skills as a security technician to steal it.
Is this plausible? Vialaneix has now been arrested in connection with an attempt to sell the painting, but is it believable that he really was motivated initially by an obsession with this work of art?
Yes, it's believable. I can easily imagine being so obsessed with a painting that you feel compelled to steal it. Not this painting, though: I do not believe it to be an actual Rembrandt. But sure, I might be tempted by a real Rembrandt.
After all, the entire art world rests on its power to seduce and fascinate and obsess people, to make them covet it. Collectors are people who cannot bear to just see art in museums. They need it in their house. They get it (usually) in legal ways, by buying from galleries or at auction. Similarly, curators who work in public museums are driven to get physically close to art, to dedicate their working lives to being in close proximity to it. And writing about art is another way of taking possession of it.
On the other hand … writers share art with their readers. Curators care for it on the public's behalf. Only private collectors come close to the art thief in selfishness, yet even they bequeath works to museums or loan them to exhibitions.
The art thief who loves art is seeking a totally selfish experience, hidden from the world. By taking art out of circulation, making it vanish, you deny everyone else the pleasure you covet. Your relationship with the work of art becomes like that between a kidnapper and a hostage. If this is love, it is of the perverse kind.
Let's be honest. Anyone who adores art can imagine hiding away a secret, stolen masterpiece. But it's a sick daydream. The beauty of art lies in sharing. It is the fact that everyone loves a masterpiece that makes it a masterpiece. To steal art is to destroy the social phenomenon that is beauty.

Shame still hangs over the Sevso hoard

The recent return of seven of the 14 pieces of Roman silver to Hungary from the UK is a positive development in the find’s sad history

Marcus Linell, a senior director of Sotheby’s, with some of the Sevso hoard before its aborted sale in 1990
It is a relief that the sorry story of the misappropriation of the great treasure of late Roman silverware known as the Sevso hoard now seems to be reaching an acceptable conclusion. A tangled tale of greed and irresponsibility by “collectors” in high places who might have known better, seeking a quick and easy profit and showing little respect for the world’s archaeological heritage, it ends where it presumably began, in Hungary.
For it is to Budapest that the key piece, the Hunting Plate, along with six other major pieces of silverware, has now been returned. The Hunting Plate is crucial, for it bears an inscription referring to its owner, Sevso (from whom the treasure takes its name), as well as a reference to Pelso, the Roman name for Lake Balaton in Hungary, near where the treasure was allegedly found. That now appears to have been the case, although the government of Croatia has not yet withdrawn its claim to ownership.

Mysterious discovery

The treasure seems to have been discovered—the circumstances remain murky—in the 1970s. That the late Peter Wilson, formerly the chairman of Sotheby’s, should have started acquiring pieces of the treasure in 1980 seems odd today, since it was not until 1981 that a Lebanese export permit (later found to be forged) was acquired for the first four pieces that were bought. A buyer with a more suspicious mind would have realised that the treasure must have been looted and must have been exported illegally from its country of origin.

Through his lawyer, Peter Mimpriss of Allen and Overy, Wilson was able to interest the Marquess of Northampton in the silver as a proposition for investment, and by 1987, the Marquess of Northampton 1987 Settlement Trust was the sole owner of what by then was a collection of 14 pieces of impressive Roman silverware. The plan for Sotheby’s to sell the silver by auction in Switzerland in 1990 was halted by the seizure of the treasure on a publicity tour to New York, when Lebanon, and then Hungary and Croatia, laid claim to it in the New York State Supreme Court. The court did not find in favour of either Hungary or Croatia, Lebanon having withdrawn its claim, and the treasure was returned to London to the custody of the Marquess of Northampton.

It is important to note that the judge did not rule that the marquess was the legal owner, simply that neither Hungary nor Croatia had demonstrated good title. Not surprisingly, the Marquess of Northampton was disappointed by the sale fiasco of his investment, and (with a new lawyer) sued Mimpriss and Allen and Overy, winning a settlement—reportedly of £24m—in 2000.

In November 2006, the 14 pieces of silver (and the copper container in which they were found) were placed on display at Bonhams auction house for an invited audience. Then the scene went quiet, until the announcement in late March by Victor Orbán, Hungary’s prime minister, that seven pieces of the treasure had been successfully repatriated (at a cost of €15m) and put on public display.

The vendors, who are €15m better off, did not include the Marquess of Northampton; the silver was instead sold by a trust. Its beneficiaries are the two sons of the late Peter Wilson, who made the initial, ill-fated purchase in 1980. Ludovic de Walden, the current lawyer of the marquess, indicated last week that the marquess is still the owner of the remaining seven pieces.

Loss to archaeology

There are several conclusions to be drawn from this unhappy tale. The first is that much crucial archaeological information must have been

lost at the time of the discovery of the treasure. The circumstances of the find remain unclear, although later investigations in Hungary seem to have identified the place where the silver was found. The archaeological associations could have yielded crucial information, which is now lost forever, about the circumstances of burial.

Whether or not it is true, as has been claimed, that another 40 vessels and 187 spoons were also part of the hoard can probably never now be established.

The second rather shocking outcome is that the treasure, after all its unhappy history, has again been divided, with seven pieces in Budapest and seven apparently still in the possession (although, according to the New York judge, not necessarily the legal ownership) of the seventh Marquess of Northampton. Financial expediency wins again, as Europe’s cultural heritage is treated as a mere investment. It is sad that the integrity of this important assemblage of Roman silverware has again been broken.

Sullied reputations

There are other dismal features. The reputation of the late Peter Wilson, and indeed of Sotheby’s, does not come well out of this unseemly episode. The government of Hungary has had to pay €15m to repatriate what was presumably its own property in the first place. The law firm Allen and Overy was obliged, in 2000, to pay £24m to the marquess, in a settlement that certainly did not enhance its reputation (nor his own). And the unfortunate marquess is probably not in overall profit, after paying substantial legal fees to his succession of lawyers, and is still in possession of seven pieces of silver that are probably now unsaleable.

For Croatia has not yet protested about the recent export from England of the seven pieces to Hungary, undertaken with an export licence from the UK government. If Croatia were to relinquish its claim, Hungary might well be able to reassert its own claim as the sole remaining claimant to the pieces still in the possession of the marquess. Certainly it would now be difficult for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport to grant an export licence for these remaining seven pieces if their destination were anywhere other than Hungary.

Still, to look on the bright side, seven of the most important pieces of Roman silverware in the world are now on display in Budapest. There, the Latin motto on the Hunting Plate can still be read:

“Let these, O Sevso, yours for many ages be/Small vessels fit to serve your offspring worthily”.

And it is an ill wind that does nobody any good: the restoration of at least a part of Hungary’s cultural heritage in March did no damage at all to the standing of Prime Minister Orbán, who secured a second term in the election held on 6 April.


A detail of the Hunting Plate



Professional criminal Reginald Soper masterminded raids across Devon as part of prolific gang, court hears

Reginald Soper: Criminal gang carried out 54 raids across Devon.
Criminal gang carried out 54 raids across Devon.

A PROFESSIONAL criminal funded a jetsetting lifestyle by allegedly masterminding burglaries across Devon including South Molton, Winkleigh and Hatherleigh, a court has heard.
Reginald Soper was claiming Jobseekers Allowance and living in a caravan but had been on two holidays to Jamaica, two to Cyprus, and trips to Mexico, Egypt and Majorca in the four years before his arrest.
The alleged thefts cost businesses hundreds of thousands of pounds and even forced one shopkeeper into bankruptcy, a jury has been told.
Soper formed part of a gang which carried out 54 raids on jewelers and small businesses throughout the county.

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The other members were his older brother Percy, who lived at the same caravan site near Taunton, his stepson Daniel Small, and his friend Nicky Christian, who both lived in Plymouth.
The group never left finger prints and hid their loot in remote areas of the countryside to ensure there was no evidence to link them to the raids if they were stopped on their way home.
Their most frequent targets were firms with units on small trading estates and stretched from Plymouth in the West to Beer and Dunster in the East and from Churchstow in the South to Hatherleigh and South Molton in the North.
They often took vehicles in one raid to use in the next and even left a cheeky message on the whiteboard at one office saying ‘Thanks for the car’ with a smiley face.
They caused massive damage, smashing their way through walls or fire exit doors and used tools and even a stolen fork lift to remove safes which were bolted to floors.
They wore masks to hide their faces and used walkie-talkies to communicate with each other and a night vision device was found at Reginald Soper’s caravan.
On at least two occasions they escaped in getaway cars which had no lights on, making them more difficult to identify on town centre CCTV systems.
The total value of the goods stolen is estimated at around £200,000 and included 17 safes, but the damage to building also runs into six figures. The stolen jewellery alone was worth £50,000.
Exeter Crown Court was told how they were arrested after a five month police operation codenamed Churchill in the summer of 2012.
Detectives used CCTV footage, shoe prints, DNA from the handle of tools, number plate recognition, mobile phone evidence and even a hidden camera in a safe to link the men to many of the offences.
They are linked to the rest by the use of vehicles and the similarities in method. In many cases the stolen cars and vans were abandoned or burned near the scenes of the raids.
The crimes ended after Percy Soper was arrested red-handed during a raid on a car showroom in Taunton and identified despite giving his name as Donald Duck.
Reginald Soper, aged 49, and his brother Percy Soper, aged 54, both of the Otterford caravan park at Culmhead, near Taunton, Somerset, Daniel Small, aged 23, of Linketty Lane, Plympton, and Nick Christian, aged 23, of Bernice Terrace, Plymouth, Devon, all deny conspiracy to burgle.
Reginald Soper, Small and Christian all deny two counts of conspiracy, including one dealing with the raids on jewelers while Percy Soper only faces one, dealing with the rest of the burglaries.
Mr Donald Tait, prosecuting, told the jury: “This case is about burglaries and there were a lot of them. Our case is that these defendants, and the two Soper brothers in particular, are professional career criminals with no legitimate source of income.
“They specialised in the burglary of commercial premises and Reginald Soper, with the assistance of Small and Christian also burgled antique and jewellery shops.
“They planned these offences in advance, wore disguises to avoid recognition. They were forensically aware and left very little to link them with these offences.
“The Sopers knew the countryside of North Devon like the back of their hands. They used this to stash stolen property in very remote locations so they could come back at a later time for it.
“According to tax records Reginald Soper had no income since at least 2006/7 and has been claiming Jobseekers Allowance. The same applies to his brother.
“Despite Reginald apparently lacking employment and income inquiries with the National Border Targeting Centre to find out if he had even been abroad, and despite having no known income, he visited Jamaica in 2008.
“In September 2008 he also visited Cyprus. In January 2010 the Jamaica experience was repeated and in August 2010 he spent ten days in Cyprus.
“In August 2011 he spent 14 days in Majorca and in May 2012 he had an early spring break in Cancun, Mexico and his passport showed he also visited Egypt at some time.
“The jury may want to ask how he supported all this foreign travel on Jobseekers Allowance. The prosecution say the answer is simple. He is a criminal who burgles premises and steals whatever he can, money and any equipment that can be sold on.”
He said Christian’s last known income was a small amount from Pizza Hut and an employment agency in Plymouth in 2010/11 while Small was also on JSA and employment support allowance.
Mr Tait identified common features of the raids including the way in which some walls were demolished to get in, including one raid at Cullompton Football Club where a hole was smashed through a brick wall with a sledgehammer.
He said these were not victimless crimes and antique dealer Jason Jones had been bankrupted by the £20,000 uninsured loss from the raid on his shop in Budleigh Salterton.
Mr Tait said: “Although these were commercial premises, these crimes are not victimless and many people lost a lot of money as a result of these activities. In one case that meant a business going into bankruptcy.”
He showed CCTV from several of the raids in most of which nobody could be identified, but said footage from a shop in Budleigh Salterton which was cased but not burgled, showed Reginald Soper and Christian.
Another clip, taken from a Spar shop close to the scene of a raid at the Silver Lion Jewellers in Ashburton, Reginald Soper and Small were identifiable.
He also showed a short clip from a camera which police planted in a safe which was found hidden in woodland at Modbury which showed Percy Soper returning to it but moving away when he became suspicious.
None of the defendants made any comment after their arrests.
The trial continues and is expected to last for six to ten weeks.

Trial of men accused of 54 West Country raids stopped

THE trial of a group of men accused of carrying out a five month burglary spree around the West Country has been stopped.
The jury at Exeter Crown Court had only just started hearing the 10-week case when they were discharged for legal reasons which cannot be reported.
The four men from Plymouth and Somerset were accused of taking part in a total of 54 raids on commercial premises across the West Country in which antiques, jewellery, safes, plant and other machinery were stolen.
The alleged offences took place between May and October 2012 and stretched from Plymouth and Churchstow in the South and West to Budleigh Salterton and Beer in the East and Hatherleigh, South Molton and Dunster in the North.
Reginald Soper, 49, and his brother Percy Soper, 54, both of the Otterford caravan park at Culmhead, near Taunton, Somerset, Daniel Small, 23, of Linketty Lane, Plympton, and Nick Christian, 23, of Bernice Terrace, Plymouth, Devon, all deny conspiracy to burgle.
Reginald Soper, Small and Christian all deny two counts of conspiracy, including one dealing with the raids on jewelers while Percy Soper only faces one, dealing with the rest of the burglaries.
The case is to be relisted for a fresh trial in April next year by Judge Phillip Wassall.

Stolen Rupert Bunny painting, Girl in Sunlight, returned after 23 years


The mystery began on an autumn night in April 1991, when a burglar broke into the Blairgowrie home of elderly retiree Albert Watt.
According to the police report, the only item stolen was Mr Watt's cherished Rupert Bunny painting, Girl in Sunlight, which hung above his dining table and is worth about $250,000.
Mr Watt bought the painting - which depicts a woman with a white parasol reading in a Parisian garden - in 1953 and kept it in his South Yarra apartment until his sea change in the late 1970s.
Police never solved the theft, which they described as ''targeted''. Over the years, Mr Watt would blame his cleaner - the only person who regularly admired the painting - while his nephews, James and Michael, assumed it ended up overseas. Mr Watt died in 1993, two years to the day after Girl in Sunlight was taken, with the case unsolved.
As executors of their uncle's will, Michael and James Watt continued the search, offering a substantial reward and even engaging a private investigator, but to no avail.
Eventually, an anonymous phone call ended the mystery. That call came in 2010, when the National Gallery of Victoria held a retrospective of Rupert Bunny's work. Girl in Sunlight was scheduled to go on display.
The tip-off led police to the Malvern East home of Frank Levy - the new owner of the painting - and the discovery that it had apparently been stolen by Mr Watt's closest friend, Peter Rand. Mr Watt and Mr Rand - an eccentric millionaire property investor and rumoured Melbourne brothel owner - were South Yarra friends and neighbours for more than 40 years.
But now, according to court documents, it has been established that Mr Rand was the likely mastermind behind the theft.
Mr Rand kept the painting until his own death in 1997. According to his will, Mr Levy - his lawyer - would receive a ''painting by Rupert Bunny of a woman sitting on the ground''.
The Levys did not know the painting had been stolen, displaying it in their Malvern East home for the next decade.
In February 2008, Mr Levy and his wife decided to have the painting valued. The valuer told them art historian and curator David Thomas was cataloguing Rupert Bunny's work for an exhibition at the NGV and would be interested in seeing the painting. A few weeks later, Mr Thomas decided to include the work in the NGV's retrospective.
In April 2010, the matter was reported to police and a few weeks later a search warrant was executed at Mr Levy's home. But that wasn't the end of the battle for the Watts. Their uncle's painting had been found, but Mr Levy argued that the statute of limitations had expired and the Bunny was now rightfully his.
For the past three years, the case has been before the Supreme Court. Last week Mr Levy finally lost his appeal.
Twenty-three years after Girl in Sunlight disappeared, the painting is once again with Mr Watt's heirs.

Police keeping eye out for stolen WWII medals


Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/05/28/4143316/police-keeping-eye-out-for-stolen.html#storylink=cp
Roy Hopper survived the Normandy invasion and a prisoner of war camp during World War II.
Now, Hopper, 89, faces another challenge: Trying to get back military medals — including a Bronze Star for bravery — that were stolen from his home last month while he was in the hospital.
The Albuquerque Police Department and U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-New Mexico, are leading the effort to help Hopper.
Detectives are watching pawn shops and antique stores for the framed service medals, Albuquerque police spokeswoman Tasia Martinez said Wednesday. Hopper's name is inscribed on the back of the medals, authorities said.
Heinrich, D-New Mexico, told KOB-TV (http://goo.gl/l4B7bG) that his staff is working on getting replacement medals for Hopper.
"I hope ... he can get his original medals back with his name inscribed on the back," Heinrich told the station. "If that's not possible, we're here to make sure he gets replacement medals for every single medal he's earned."
Military services work on request for replacement medal for veterans at no cost, according to the National Archives website. This includes family members with the signed authorization from veterans, the website says.
In 1991, Hopper was awarded the Bronze Star for his heroic efforts during World War II. Hopper participated in the Normandy Invasion before being captured by the Germans. He spent nine months in a camp for prisoners of war.
Investigators searched Hopper's home for evidence, but they didn't find any fingerprints, police said. Investigators said they believe the suspect was wearing gloves.
Guns and cash were also missing from Hopper's home. No arrests have been made.
Terri Stewart, co-owner of Stewart's Military Antiques in Mesa, Arizona, said it's difficult to put a price tag on WWII medals like the Bronze Star.
"It all depends on if his name is inscribed on the back and if the medals come with proper documents," Stewart said.
In a separate incident, another World War II veteran was robbed at his home in Carson City, Nevada.
The Secret Witness program is offering a $1,500 reward for the arrest and prosecution of suspects who robbed the 101-year-old veteran during the Memorial Day weekend.
The robbers forced their way into the home of the Air Force veteran around 5 a.m. Sunday looking for a non-existent safe, authorities said. One of the robbers had a gun.
The victim, Jim Sorentino, told KRNV-TV that he lives alone with a caretaker in a gated community. His home was ransacked, and the thieves stole a wristwatch, pocketknife and a wallet with about $30 in it, Sorentino said.

Yichang Thief Decorates House with Over 300 Priceless Antiques Stolen over 3 Years


Yichang Thief Decorates House with Over 300 Priceless Antiques Stolen over 3 Years

The Yichang authorities recently cracked a big case of antique theft. The suspect, Zhu, had apparently been accumulating the collection for over three years. Since 2011 he has been preying on upscale districts of the city. Statues of Buddha, wood and ivory carvings as well as valuable jade carvings were found dotted around his small house. 
Discovered among his collection were priceless treasures from the Zhou and Shang Dynasties (that’s over 3,000 years old), the value of which is literally inestimable, according to Beijing experts.
Zhu has been arrested as is awaiting trial for grand theft.

Court hears of £500,000 art theft from Dowager Countess Bathurst 

Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard: Former housekeeper of the Dowager Countess Bathurst, Kim Roberts 
Former housekeeper of the Dowager Countess Bathurst, Kim Robert
A FORMER housekeeper of the Dowager Countess Bathurst has appeared in court charged with stealing £500,000 of art and antiques.
Kim Roberts, of Lower Church Street, Colyton, Devon, appeared at Gloucester Crown Court this week accused of taking items including a Picasso sketch while she worked at the Dowager's Cirencester and London homes as a housekeeper and personal assistant.
Her defence team told the court that she would be pleading not guilty and had in fact been given the items after working for the Dowager Countess Bathurst, after she had worked for her for less than a month.
She is charged with three charges of theft - two from the Dowager Countess and one from a previous employer.
She will appear back in court on August with a three day trial planned for the start of November.
The Dowager Countess Gloria lives in a farmhouse on her family's Cirencester Park Estate and is the widow of the eighth Earl Bathurst, Henry, who died in 2011 aged 84.
The charges against Ms Roberts include theft at Sapperton between April 30 and May 21 last year of art and antiques to the value of approximately £500,000 belonging to the dowager Countess Bathurst.
She is also charged with stealing antique vases between April 30, 2013, and August 20, 2013, from the Dowager's London home in Kensington and with stealing a £10,000 Volvo XC90 on October 21, 2012. The Volvo was allegedly stolen from Drayton House in Drayton Foliat, Wiltshire, the home of previous employer Emily Olympitis.
Prosecutor Julian Kesner said the defence had informed him Ms Roberts will plead not guilty to all charges and there will definitely be a trial.
Ms Roberts was released on bail pending the trial.

Masterpiece is
 returned – 22 years after theft

A PAINTING that was stolen from a Dublin gallery more than 20 years ago has finally been returned to its walls after being found by gardai.

Members of the Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) discovered In the Omnibus, by the French artist Honore Daumier, during a criminal investigation last year.
When it was stolen in 1992, the watercolour and gouache work was insured for at least €250,000.
Sources in the art world have said the small painting could now be worth up to €1m, 
depending on market trends and tastes.
It was put back on display in the Dublin City Council-funded Hugh Lane Gallery on Parnell Square yesterday.
Collector
But while the masterpiece by the French artist, who died in 1879, is hanging in the gallery once more, its future is less certain.
When it was stolen, the painting was owned by Dublin City Council and the insurance company who covered it paid out on the loss.
That means that the painting is now in the ownership of the insurance company, which could sell it to a private collector if it wanted to.
The painting does not seem to have suffered any damage during the years it was missing.
“Our internal audit section are liaising with the insurers, who have changed ownership since the theft occurred, to see if a suitable arrangement acceptable to both parties can be agreed,” said assistant city manager Brendan Kenny.
“We would hope that no matter who owns the masterpiece it might remain in the Hugh Lane for the public to enjoy, having been hidden away from them for more than two decades,” he told
The council said it is not privy to the details of the garda investigation that led to the discovery of the painting, and a spokesperson for An Garda Siochana would not comment on the matter.
“We are just happy that this important work of art has been retrieved in good condition,” said Mr Kenny.
Security at the gallery was upgraded after the painting was stolen in 1992 and again following the construction of a new wing to display more works of art.
In the Omnibus is part of the original collection presented by Hugh Lane to Dublin for the Gallery of Modern Art, which first opened to the public in 1908.
Honore Daumier was a printmaker, caricaturist, painter and sculptor, whose many works offer commentary on social and political life in France in the 19th Century.
He was best known for his caricatures of political figures and satires on the behaviour of his countrymen, although the value of his work as a painter was appreciated after his 
death.

Los Angeles police are searching for a pair of burglars they say broke into Miley Cyrus'San Fernando Valley home and got away with jewellery and a luxury car.

The LAPD says officers from the department's North Hollywood station responded to a report of a burglary Friday at Cyrus' home.

They say a man and a woman scaled a fence and got inside the house and garage while no one was home.

A 2014 Maserati luxury sedan and an unspecified amount of jewelry were taken.

Police asked Sunday that anyone with information about the crime call North Hollywood's burglary detectives.

Last month the 21-year-old pop star obtained a temporary restraining order against an Arizona man who was detained by police while trying to meet her - See more at: http://www.hindustantimes.com/entertainment/tabloid/burglary-at-miley-cyrus-house-maserati-stolen/article1-1225233.aspx#sthash.BCcxnrBM.dpuf
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/05/28/4143316/police-keeping-eye-out-for-stolen.html#storylink
Los Angeles police are searching for a pair of burglars they say broke into Miley Cyrus'San Fernando Valley home and got away with jewellery and a luxury car.

The LAPD says officers from the department's North Hollywood station responded to a report of a burglary Friday at Cyrus' home.

They say a man and a woman scaled a fence and got inside the house and garage while no one was home.

A 2014 Maserati luxury sedan and an unspecified amount of jewelry were taken.

Police asked Sunday that anyone with information about the crime call North Hollywood's burglary detectives.

Last month the 21-year-old pop star obtained a temporary restraining order against an Arizona man who was detained by police while trying to meet her - See more at: http://www.hindustantimes.com/entertainment/tabloid/burglary-at-miley-cyrus-house-maserati-stolen/article1-1225233.aspx#sthash.BCcxnrBM.dpuf

Dali sculpture snatched from Paris museum

 In the latest stolen art caper in France, a thief made off with a sculpture by surrealist art master Salvador Dali. The only good news here is that stolen works in France do sometimes get back to their rightful owners. 
 Dali sculpture snatched from Paris museum 
The stolen bronze sculpture was a depiction of Dali's famous melting clocks, as seen here in The Persistence of Memory. Photo: Wikicommons
  • French farms suffer as thieves pilfer stock (27 May 14)
  • Monet heist 'mastermind' on trial in France (12 May 14)
  • Thieves rob dead woman at French funeral home (12 May 14)                                             Police are searching for two thieves who burst into two exhibition rooms on Saturday showing works from the renowned Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dali in Montmartre in Paris’s18th arrondissement. One of the men reportedly tried to steal a sculpture entitled ‘Danse du Temps I’ at the Espace Dali on rue Poulbot. However his attempt was thwarted by a vigilant tourist and he fled empty handed.
    Meanwhile, at a nearby gallery just 100 metres away on place du Tertre, a second man managed to make off with a bronze sculpture depicting Dali’s famous so-called melting clocks, a recurrent symbol in the surrealist’s work, French daily Le Parisien reported.
    Estimated at €22,000, the stolen work was kept behind a display case but was not equipped with an alarm. Both men managed to escape.
    Sadly this isn't the first piece of art to go missing from a French museum or private collection. However, police recently recovered a Rembrandt worth millions that was stolen from a museum in the south of France.
    Also a trickle of the trove of artworks pilfered by the Nazis during World War II have found their way back to their rightful owners. France recently turned over three works that were seized and auctioned off in the 1930s.

Stolen Art Watch, Da Vinci Madonna, Marshall Ronald, Against All Odds, Litigates In Person Towards Truth & Justice

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Da Vinci accused Marshall Ronald's payout bid proceeds

Marshall Ronald 
Marshall Ronald's bid to sue the Duke of Buccleuch will go to a hearing of evidence

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A judge has rejected a move to dismiss a bid to sue the Duke of Buccleuch for £4.25m over the return of a stolen Leonardo da Vinci painting.
Marshall Ronald, 57, is seeking the payout following the recovery of the Madonna of the Yarnwinder.
He was cleared in 2010 of conspiring to extort money for its return.
Lawyers for the duke described the bid to sue as "an attempt to extort a sum of money" but a judge decided it should go to a hearing of evidence.
Mr Ronald, of Upholland, Lancashire, was acquitted with others of a conspiracy to extort money for the safe return of the masterpiece at a trial at the High Court in Edinburgh in 2010.

“Start Quote

As matters stand, I do not accept that the pursuer's case is bound to fail on grounds of illegality or public policy”
Lord Glennie
The valuable artwork had been stolen from the Duke of Buccleuch's Drumlanrig Castle seven years earlier.
After the court case, Mr Ronald raised an action claiming that he was due payment for the return of the painting which was recovered in 2007.
At first he was suing both the duke and the police but dropped his claim against the police last year.
The duke is contesting his claims and his lawyers moved to dismiss the action.
They say the agreement Mr Ronald is seeking to rely on is "unenforceable as being illegal and contrary to public policy".
However, Lord Glennie said that it was "by no means obvious" that a "to whom it may concern" letter written as part of a police undercover operation was not meant to be taken at face value.
"It is by no means impossible to conceive of a case where, as part of a police operation to recover a painting, a reward is offered to someone who may be in a position to facilitate its recovery, and the reward is paid to that person when the painting is in fact recovered," he said.
"I accept that it is no doubt also possible to conceive of a situation where the offer of a reward is not intended to be genuine, and the letter granting authority to the intermediary to make that offer on behalf of the owner of the painting is indeed intended as a sham."
'True picture' He added that on Mr Ronald's pleadings in the action it was alleged that the agreement was made at a time when he was not in possession of the stolen painting and did not know who had it.
"The best that can be said is that he was in a position in which he had the opportunity, through others, to pay money in the hope of procuring its release," he said.
"If this is the true picture, I can see no basis upon which it can be said that his negotiation of an agreement to be paid a handsome reward for his part in procuring the release of the painting amounts to extortion.
"It might be quite different if he himself had possession of the painting or it was within his control; but that is not what is presently averred either by the pursuer or even by the defender.
"As matters stand, I do not accept that the pursuer's case is bound to fail on grounds of illegality or public policy."

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Duke could be sued over Drumlanrig da Vinci theft


The Duke of Buccleuch faces a claim over return of the art work to Drumlanrig Castle. Picture: Ian Rutherford
The Duke of Buccleuch faces a claim over return of the art work to Drumlanrig Castle. Picture: Ian Rutherford
A JUDGE has cleared the way for a bid to sue the Duke of ­Buccleuch for £4.25 million over the return of a stolen Leonardo da Vinci painting.
Marshall Ronald, 57, is seeking a payout from the UK’s largest private landowner following the recovery of the Madonna of the Yarnwinder, which was stolen from Drumlanrig Castle, Dumfriesshire, in 2003.
Former solicitor Mr Ronald claims he was commissioned to ensure the painting was handed over.
He was at the offices of a Glasgow law firm along with others – including undercover police officer John Craig, posing as a risk-management expert – in 2007 when the masterpiece was returned after four years. Mr ­Ronald, of Upholland, Lancashire, was cleared, with others, of a conspiracy to extort money for the safe return of the masterpiece at a trial at the High Court in Edinburgh in 2010.
He claims he was put in touch with undercover officers and on 29 August 2007 he and Mr Craig entered into an agreement which would see the duke pay him £2m to secure the painting. The figure increased to £4.25m a few days later, it is claimed.
Mr Ronald claims that was less than 10 per cent of the value of the painting.
He said he knew the painting was stolen but did not know by whom.
Mr Ronald said he was in contact with intermediaries and agreed to pay them £700,000 to secure the art work’s release. He claims he paid over £500,000.
The duke maintains that undercover officer Mr Craig had no authority to make an agreement on his behalf.
It is also alleged the agreement Mr Ronald seeks to rely on is “unenforceable as being illegal and contrary to public policy”.
Lawyers acting for the duke sought to have the action dismissed at a procedural hearing before Lord Glennie. Andrew Young QC said: “Properly viewed, what the pursuer [Mr Ronald] is averring is an attempt to extort a sum of money.”
Mr Ronald said he had acted in good faith and told the court: “I don’t accept any illegal acts.”
Lord Glennie said he would not dismiss the case.
He said: “It is by no means impossible to conceive of a case where, as part of a police operation to recover a painting, a reward is offered to someone who may be in a position to facilitate its recovery, and the reward is paid to that person when the painting is in fact recovered.”
He added: “The best that can be said is that he was in a position in which he had the opportunity, through others, to pay money in the hope of procuring its release.
“If this is the true picture, I 
can see no basis upon which it can be said negotiation of an agreement to be paid a handsome reward amounts to extortion.
“It might be quite different if he himself had possession of the painting or it was within his control; but that is not what is presently averred.
“As matters stand, I do not accept that the pursuer’s case is bound to fail.”
Mr Ronald is expected to continue with the case.


 COURT OF SESSION
[2014] CSOH 101
A460/12
OPINION OF LORD GLENNIE
in the cause
MARSHALL NEIL CRAIG RONALD
Pursuer;
against
THE DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH
Defender:
________________


 COURT OF SESSION
[2014] CSOH 101
A460/12
OPINION OF LORD GLENNIE
in the cause
MARSHALL NEIL CRAIG RONALD
Pursuer;
against
THE DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH
Defender:
________________


 Pursuer: Party
Defender: A Young, QC; Anderson Strathern LLP
19 June 2014
Introduction
[1] On 27 August 2003 a valuable painting attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, known as “Madonna of the Yarnwinder”, owned by the ninth Duke of Buccleuch, was stolen from his home at Drumlanrig Castle.
[2] A criminal investigation was launched together with attempts by the police, insurers and others to recover the painting. This was known as “Operation Drumlanrig”. The operation involved the use of undercover police officers, including one who posed as a risk management expert under the assumed name “John Craig”. It is alleged by the pursuer that the defender, who became the tenth 2

Duke of Buccleuch on his father’s death early in September 2007, participated to some extent in this operation, by holding one or more telephone conversations with one of the then suspects, by preparing written documentation showing a willingness to pay monies in exchange for the safe return of the painting and, of particular relevance for present purposes, by providing an undated written letter of authority, addressed “To whom it may concern”, confirming that John Craig acted as his agent in the recovery of the painting and expressly authorising John Craig on his behalf to conduct any lawful negotiation or transaction in relation to the matter.
[3] The pursuer avers that on 10 August 2007 he wrote to the loss adjuster offering to facilitate the return of the painting. After contacting the senior investigating officer, the loss adjuster put him in touch with the undercover officers. On 21 August 2007 John Craig contacted the pursuer, stating that he was acting on the defender’s behalf. On 29 August 2007 the pursuer and John Craig entered into an agreement whereby the defender would pay him £2 million to secure the return of the painting. A few days later, this figure was increased to £4.25 million. That is said by the pursuer to be less than 10% of the value of the painting.
[4] The pursuer admits that, at the time of that agreement, he knew that the painting was stolen. He says that it was being held by persons whose identities were not known to him. He was in contact with two intermediaries, RG and JD, who were in contact with those in possession of the painting, and had agreed to pay them £700,000 to enable them to secure the release of the painting to them.
[5] The pursuer avers that, on 3 October 2007, he paid £500,000, being part of that £700,000, to RG. RG handed over that money at a pre-arranged location and later that day was advised of the whereabouts of the painting. That evening RG informed 3

the pursuer that the painting had been safely recovered and that he was proceeding with it to Glasgow. The pursuer notified John Craig, using the phrase: “the Lady is coming home”. On the next day, 4 October 2007, the pursuer attended at the offices of an Edinburgh firm of solicitors where he met, amongst others, John Craig. RG and JD arrived at about 11 am and handed over the painting.
[6] The reward of £4.25 million has not been paid to the pursuer. A number of criminal prosecutions followed the recovery of the painting. In particular, the pursuer was charged with extortion, or attempted extortion. He was indicted in the High Court and the case went to trial. The jury brought in a verdict of not proven and the pursuer was acquitted.
The pursuer’s case
[7] The pursuer sues for the sum of £4.25 million. His case is simple. That was the sum agreed to be paid to him for his part in securing the return of the painting. The agreement was made by John Craig acting on behalf of the defender. John Craig had actual authority from the defender to make that agreement, as evidenced in particular by the “To whom it may concern” letter. Having been instrumental in securing the return of the painting, he is entitled to be paid the agreed sum.
The defender’s case
[8] The defender advances two main lines of defence to the claim. The first is that John Craig had no actual authority to enter into any such agreement on his behalf. The second is that the agreement relied upon by the pursuer in support of his claim is tainted by illegality and/or is contrary to public policy and should not be 4

enforced. I shall explain what is said by the defender in more detail below. But it is to be noted that the defender does not make any case in these proceedings that the pursuer was in any way involved in the theft of the painting or its retention pending its recovery.
Discussion on the Procedure Roll
[9] The case came before me for discussion on the Procedure Roll. The defender insisted on his first plea in law, a general plea to relevancy and specification. He sought dismissal of the action.
[10] The discussion was conducted under reference to the well-known principles set out in Jamieson v Jamieson 1952 SC (HL) 44, to the effect that the pursuer’s case will only be dismissed if the court is satisfied that the action is bound to fail even if he succeeds in proving everything which he offers in his pleadings to prove. However, the defender’s argument was somewhat unusual in that it sought to gain support from averments made in the answers and from the fact that, as he contended, the pursuer’s averments in response were lacking in candour.
[11] I propose to deal separately with the arguments concerning lack of authority and illegality.
Lack of actual authority
[12] The defender’s case in summary is this. The “To whom it may concern” letter was written by the defender on the instructions of the police as part of their undercover operation in order to deceive the pursuer, and possibly others, into believing that John Craig was his agent when in fact he had no actual authority to 5

agree any deal which would bind him. In those circumstances, he says, it is clear that the letter did not in fact clothe John Craig with authority to act on his behalf. He avers that the pursuer knows this to be the case, because it was made clear in the evidence led by the Crown at his trial. This is set out in the answers, and is met by a bald “Not known and not admitted”. That response is lacking in candour and should be disregarded. In consequence, the defender’s averments on this point should be treated as admitted. Furthermore, it is inherently improbable that John Craig, a serving police officer, would undertake a dual role, acting both as a law enforcement officer and also as a private commercial agent for a member of the public. It would require very detailed and specific averments by the pursuer to explain how such an unusual and potentially contradictory arrangement could arise, but the pursuer makes no such averments. In those circumstances it is clear that the pursuer’s case on actual authority must inevitably fail.
[13] I cannot accept this argument, for three main reasons. First, I accept that there have been cases where a lack of candour in the defender’s answers has been held to be a basis for treating those answers as irrelevant and granting decree de plano, and I would accept that the same approach could, if valid, be adopted mutatis mutandis in respect of a lack of candour in the pursuer’s pleadings. But that approach has not generally found favour; and I do not consider that in general it is legitimate to treat a denial or non-admission, however bald, as amounting to an admission. Generally a party is entitled to put the other party to proof of his averments. The problem of dilatory defences, defences designed simply to delay by not admitting what must obviously be known to be true, is well-known. That was the reason why the provisions for summary decree were introduced in Rule of 6

Court 21: see Henderson v 3052775 Nova Scotia Ltd 2006 SC (HL) 85 per Lord Rodger of Earlsferry at para [13]. But the rules for summary decree apply only to the case of a pursuer moving for decree on his claim and that of a defender moving for decree on his counterclaim. They do not apply to a defender seeking dismissal of a claim made against him. There is no “reverse summary decree”. This may be a gap in the rules which ought to be addressed, but that is not for me. In that situation, where the Rules of Court have been altered to provide an answer to the problem caused by a lack of candour in a party’s pleadings, but those rules do not apply to the present case, I do not consider that it would be proper to seek to plug that gap by holding that decree of dismissal is available where a pursuer fails candidly to answer averments made by the defender in his answers.
[14] My second reason for rejecting this argument is straightforward. The defender’s case is based upon evidence which will be called by the defender and which is similar in nature to that called by the Crown in the criminal trial. The pursuer is under no obligation to accept that evidence as true. He is entitled to put the defender to proof. This is not a case where his denial or non-admission is of something within his own knowledge which he knows or must know to be true. Just because he knows that that evidence will be called, and just because he may not have a positive case to advance in answer to it, does not mean that he has to accept it. In the circumstances of the present case it is perfectly proper to answer the defender’s averments relating to the police operation, the circumstances in which the letter came to be written and the alleged intention of those who were party to it with a simple “not known and not admitted”. 7

[15] My third reason for rejecting the defender’s argument on this issue is equally straightforward. It is, to my mind, by no means obvious that the fact, assuming it to be a fact, that the “To whom it may concern” letter was written by the defender on the instructions of the police as part of the police operation to recover the painting necessarily means that it is not to be taken at face value. It is by no means impossible to conceive of a case where, as part of a police operation to recover a painting, a reward is offered to someone who may be in a position to facilitate its recovery, and the reward is paid to that person when the painting is in fact recovered. If, in all such cases, the offer of a reward is to be regarded as a pretence, because made without the authority of those on whose behalf it was purportedly made, then I doubt whether it would often lead to the recovery of a stolen painting. I accept that it is no doubt also possible to conceive of a situation where the offer of a reward is not intended to be genuine, and the letter granting authority to the intermediary to make that offer on behalf of the owner of the painting is indeed intended as a sham. Much will depend upon the precise circumstances and the intentions of the parties as revealed by the evidence. Even if the pursuer were to be taken to have admitted everything in the defender’s pleadings about the offer having been made as part of the police undercover operation, that would not necessarily mean that his case must fail. Although the burden of proof lies on the pursuer to establish that the agreement under which he sues was made with the authority of the defender, the evidential burden of showing that the letter purporting to have given John Craig authority to make that agreement on behalf of the defender is not to be taken at face value lies with the defender. 8

[16] I should add this, in case it may be thought that the existence of the “To whom it may concern” letter gives rise to a case of ostensible authority and therefore makes the arguments about actual authority irrelevant. The pursuer does not in his pleadings advance any case of ostensible authority. So far as the letter is concerned, he only became aware of that at a much later date. So he cannot rely on that letter for any representation made by the defender upon which he relied so as to give rise to a contention that at the time the agreement was made John Craig had ostensible authority to act on behalf of the defender. Whether he could rely upon any other representation made to him by John Craig as giving rise to ostensible authority is not a matter before me, and, as I have said, there are no pleadings raising such a case.
Illegality/ public policy
[17] The defender’s second line of defence is that the agreement upon which the pursuer sues is illegal and contrary to public policy. A number of arguments were advanced.
[18] It was said that it would be contrary to public policy to render a party liable on a contract which was purportedly entered into by him as a ruse on the part of an undercover police officer in order to recover stolen property. I cannot accept that, at this stage at least. Assuming the contract to have been made with the authority of the defender, an issue which will have to be resolved at proof, I can see nothing in the fact that on the defender’s part it was entered into as part of the police undercover operation and as a ruse to recover stolen property which would make enforcement of it contrary to public policy. 9

[19] It was also argued that the pursuer cannot seek to enforce a contract which would result in him receiving many millions of pounds for the return of a stolen painting which was secured from criminal sources for £500,000. I cannot see why not. It is not for this court to determine what a person may be willing to pay, or should be allowed to pay, to recover property which is of a particular monetary or sentimental value. That would be to remake the bargain struck between the parties. How is the court to judge what would be an appropriate reward to the pursuer for his part in the recovery of the painting?
[20] It was also suggested that other adminicles of evidence might be relevant. For example, there are averments that the pursuer did not want the police involved. But I cannot see why this should necessarily make any difference. There may be many reasons, some more respectable than others, why a person seeking to assist in the recovery of stolen painting should think it sensible to involve the police.
[21] In developing his argument on behalf of the defender, Mr Young QC focused on the submission that what the pursuer was seeking to do amounted to extortion. He submitted, under reference to Black v Carmichael 1992 SCCR 709 at 717A-B and 718B-C, that it is the crime of extortion in Scotland if a person seeks to obtain money from the rightful owner of property in order to release or return that property to its rightful owner. He submitted that, on his own averments, the pursuer knew that the painting had been stolen and that the possessors of it had no legal right to retain it. On that basis, he submitted, the pursuer had no legal right to retain or deal with the property, and his actions were no different in law from the unknown persons who only released the stolen painting in return for £500,000. That amounted to extortion. 10

[22] I do not accept this argument. It is, to my mind, a fallacy to equate the position of the pursuer with that of a person who is in possession of the stolen property and refuses to return it except upon payment of a large sum of money. That might well be extortion. But the position as shown on the pursuer’s pleadings is quite different. On his pleadings the agreement was made at a time when he was not in possession of the stolen painting and did not know who was. He had ascertained that certain others, JD and RG, were in a position to contact the people who held the painting and to procure its release to them upon payment of a sum of money. On this account the pursuer neither had the painting in his possession nor had the power to procure its release. The best that can be said is that he was in a position in which he had the opportunity, through others, to pay money in the hope of procuring its release. If this is the true picture, I can see no basis upon which it can be said that his negotiation of an agreement to be paid a handsome reward for his part in procuring the release of the painting amounts to extortion. It might be quite different if he himself had possession of the painting or it was within his control; but that is not what is presently averred either by the pursuer or even by the defender.
[23] One additional point made by the defender was that the pursuer, who was a solicitor at the time, funded the payment to RG by illegally removing monies from various client accounts, as a consequence of which he was struck off. Mr Young QC confirmed to me that he did not seek to rely upon this as a separate ground of illegality making the agreement unenforceable. It was put forward, as I understand it, in conjunction with other matters such as the request that the police should not be involved, essentially to present a picture of dishonest dealing by the pursuer colouring his whole involvement in the matter. I do not consider that it is of any 11

assistance, at least at this stage. The defender makes no averment that the pursuer was involved in the theft or was a party to the withholding of the painting thereafter. If such an allegation were made and proved, that would put a very different gloss on the whole matter.
[24] As matters stand, I do not accept that the pursuer’s case is bound to fail on grounds of illegality or public policy.
Disposal
[25] For these reasons, I shall allow a proof before answer, leaving the defender’s preliminary plea outstanding. I shall reserve all questions of expenses
Da Vinci Madonna Take-Two

GOLD SWAGGER: Police Swoop at Edinburgh law firm sparks legal fight by Chief Constable for ownership of £1Million ancient gold crown

Top cop goes for gold after top prosecutor dropped case. A POLICE STING culminating in arrests of persons negotiating the sale of a 2,500 year old gold crown at the premises of Edinburgh law firm Balfour & Manson has led to a court fight involving Chief Constable Sir Stephen House of Police Scotland who wants to establish ownership of the ancient relic. The increasingly political case, heard by judge Lord Brailsford comes even though the Lord Advocate dropped any prosecution against the Turkish cafe owner who claims ownership of the gold artefact and is adamant the item is a family heirloom.
Chief Constable House has hired private law firm Morton Fraser to pursue the case at taxpayers expense, in an effort - legal experts say appears to be solely focused on handing back the treasure to the Turkish Government - even though Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland ordered the item returned to Murat Aksukalli after all charges relating to the swoop on the lawyer’s office in 2010 were dropped.
AND. in spite of attempts by vested interests to hinder public access to information of the court case, a Fife based transparency campaigner & amateur historian - Tom Minogue, has identified the wreath as one looted from a Greek tomb by the Earl of Elgin, famous for the Elgin Marbles. Mr Minogue has submitted evidence to the court and has written about it on his website here: The Gold Wreath riddle
The Scottish Sun newspaper published a highly detailed investigation into the affair:
CROWNED OFF: Cops nab Turk selling £1M relic, Legal fight for Golden Treasure : Ancient Trinket was looted from Tomb
EXCLUSIVE By RUSSELL FINDLAY Investigations Editor Scottish Sun 15 June 2014
UNDERCOVER detectives nabbed a Turkish cafe boss as he tried to sell them a 2,500-year-old gold crown — worth a staggering £1million. Murat Aksakalli claimed the stunning ancient relic had been left to him by his grandfather.
But police believe the precious artefact known as the Edinburgh Crown was looted from Turkey and should be returned. They launched a sting operation and Aksakalli was held as he tried to flog the intricate decorative wreath at a lawyers office in Edinburgh.
A source said they could make a movie out of this and call it Indiana Jones and the Edinburgh Crown. "Its an incredible saga involving a Turkish wheeler dealer, an undercover police sting, the chief constable and the Lord Advocate. The crown is now being held at Police Scotland's Edinburgh HQ as a legal battle is fought over its future.
A Turkish government report claims the treasure may have been plundered from a tomb in the ancient city of Milas between 2000 and 2010.
But 50 year old Aksakalli insists he inherited the controversial antiquity from his grandfather Fazil Aksakalli who died in rural Cemisgezek. And he claims he can prove he had the relic before the ancient tomb was raided.
He said: "I kept it tor years and forgot about it""The police said that I went to Turkey in 2010 and just started digging and found it"
His lawyer Aamer Anwar added "Just because the Turkish Government say anything remotely connected to them belongs to them doesn't mean that's right in our legal system"
Aksakalli decided to sell the beautifully crafted crown when his cash and carry company hit financial problems. And two of his business associates Ali Sanal and Hakki Ozbey also helped in the attempt to find a buyer. They approached experts at posh auction houses Sotheby's and Bonhams in Edinburgh.
And Aksakalll claims that a police officer friend of his, Lawson Porter also spoke to the National Museum of Scotland about the ancient head decoration on his behalf.
But their activity caught the attention of the now defunct Serious Organised Crime Agency and an undercover cop was deployed in a sting operation. The officer going under the name Ahmed Shakur met Aksakalli it the Hilton and Marriot hotels in Edinburgh and asked to see the crown.
A third meeting was then arranged at the office of bluechip law firm Balfour & Manson in October 2010. Police swooped on the talks in in the city centre and Aksakalli, Sanal and Ozbey were held and the crown taken by detectives.
One source revealed "The official valuation for the purpose of the court action is £225,000 but the true value is thought to be £1million". "It's become known as the Edinburgh Crown because it was found in the capital".
There is no suggestion Balfour-Manson were involved in any wrongdoing. Following the raid Turkish embassy officials met with Detective Superintendent David Gordon and Lindsay Miller, head of the Crown Office 's organised crime division. They claimed the valuable object belonged to their country and demanded its return.
In December 2012, Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland decided there would be no criminal proceedings against Aksakalli. But months later he agreed to send the crown to Turkey for seven days to undergo forensic analysis. An expert there concluded that the ornate metal wreath - which his decorated with 50 myrtle leaves and flowers - probably came from a Milas tomb and dated to around 350BC.
But in another twist, an amateur historical claims the golden crown may have been looted from Greece in the 19th century by the Earl of Elgin - famous for taking the sculptures from the Parthenon in Athens now known as the Elgin Marbles. Campaigner Tom Minogue found Elgin had bragged about discovering a golden wreath matching the description of the disputed relic seized in Edinburgh,
He has now joined the legal battle being fought over the crown, claiming it could be the same ancient artefact which was mentioned by Elgin. And he is demanding that the experts in Greece be allowed to examine the antiquity as well - just like the Turkish have already done.
Retired engineering businessman Tom said "There seems to have been a rush to judgement by the Police and the Lord Advocate who determined that a gold wreath was Turkish for no other reason than because the person in possession of it said so and happened to be a UK national of Turkish birth.
"There was no claim of any such gold wreath having been plundered from Turkey other than an unspecified generalisation. "This airy-fairy reasoning by the Turks has caused the Scottish authorities to send the gold wreath to Turkey, during which the Turks were allowed to do anything with it as they wished, without hinderance".
"The question of ownership of the golf wreath should be dealt with in an open, fair and unbiased manner, recognising the fact that Greece, the country that taught the world the meaning of democracy, deserves equal treatment to Turkey in the eyes of the law"
Last night Police Scotland confirmed the crown was still being held while the legal battle over its future continues. A spokesman said: "This item was seized in 2013 during a police operation at business premises in Edinburgh. "It is being held until ownership can be determined by the court"
RIDDLE OF LOST ROYAL WREATH
By Russell Findlay
THE intricate golden artefact dubbed the Edinburgh Crown is thought to date from around 35OBC. It features thin branches wound around a wreath with around 50 deli­cate myrtle leaves and rosettes.
The relic is crafted from 98 to 99.5 per cent pure ancient gold and would have been placed in a tomb in either Greece or Turkey. And experts believe the treasure could be worth up to £1 million.
The Edinburgh Crown is very similar to one unearthed in the Piraeus in Athens by the Earl of Elgin in the 19th century.His discovery was recorded in a book about the aristocrat’s travels in Greece.
Elgin presented to parliament a list of the items that he had removed from the country.But missing from this list in 1811 was the gold wreath. The Earl speculated that the crown may have come from a site known as the tomb of Aspasia.
HISTORY & MYSTERIES 350BC Gold crown is buried in royal tomb in Greece or Turkey.
1816 Lord Elgin sells Greek artefacts to the UK but a gold wreath he discovered is missing. 1982 Aksakalli claims he inherits gold wreath from grandfather. 1989 He moves from Turkey to Scotland and claims he later brings over the treasure. 2000-2010 Looting takes place at archaeological ruins in ancient Milas, Turkey 2004 Campaigner Tom Minogue urges Fife Police to probe items taken from Greece by Elgin, including a gold wreath. 2007 Aksakalli begins exploring attempts to sell the crown. SEPT 2010 He meets potential buyer who is actually an undercover cop. OCT 2010 Aksakalli is arrested. 2011 Scots police and prosecutors meet Turkish officials. 2012 Lord Advocate drops case against Aksakalli. MAR 2013 Crown sent to Turkey for analysis, then returned. MAR 2014 Police go to court to try to legally obtain wreath and hand it to Turkey. APRIL 2014 Minogue lodges legal claim that crown may be the one taken by Elgin.
CHIEF CONSTABLE IN COURT:
Top Cop goes for gold. Redacted documents relating to the civil action raised by the Chief Constable of Police Scotland over the gold wreath have now been released by the Scottish Courts.
The Chief Constable’s pleadings in court revealed:“In or around July 2010 Lothian and Borders Police received information that two men were believed to be in possession of a stolen golden wreath of Turkish origin and were attempting to sell it. On 5 October 2010 the first defender, along with Ali Sanal and Hakki Ozbey, was detained at the offices of Balfour & Manson, solicitors, 54-66 Frederick Street, Edinburgh on suspicion of reset. The three suspects were in possession of the fund in medio and were attempting to secure its sale. All three are Turkish nationals.”
“At interview the first defender asserted ownership of the fund in medio. The first defender and said Sanal and Ozbey were released without charge pending further inquiries. A report was submitted to the Procurator Fiscal. The pursuer retained possession of the fund in medio on the instructions of the Procurator Fiscal.”
“On 27 December 2012 the Lord Advocate instructed that no criminal proceedings would be taken against the first defender, or any other person, in respect of the fund in medio due to an insufficiency of evidence. The Lord Advocate instructed that the fund in medio should be returned to its owner.”

20 comments:

Anonymous said...
Does it not strike you as odd that the Law Society of Scotland's own lawyer Balfour & Manson are named as being involved in this?

Strange?
Anonymous said...
Blimey! What is it with Edinburgh.
Their legal shenanigans are truly unique.
Anonymous said...
If the Police are so sure of this crown's origin then why are the Crown Office Civil Recovery Unit not leading the case instead of Morton Fraser.

Police Chief hiring private lawyers to pursue private property after the Crown say it should be returned to owner sets a dangerous precedence.
Anonymous said...
“On 27 December 2012 the Lord Advocate instructed that no criminal proceedings would be taken against the first defender, or any other person, in respect of the fund in medio due to an insufficiency of evidence. The Lord Advocate instructed that the fund in medio should be returned to its owner.”

So why wasnt it returned after this?

Dont like the way this is going anyone else smell something in the background?
Anonymous said...
Watch out for a stray bullet
Anonymous said...
and let that be a lesson to anyone fool enough to do business in the offices of Scottish law firms
Anonymous said...
All the high heid yins including the judges will be trying it on for size
Anonymous said...
Looks like a lot of effort just to go to for an antique so what else is going on we are not being told about?
Anonymous said...
This sounds highly suspicious
Anonymous said...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/south_of_scotland/8607994.stm has the same ring to it
Anonymous said...
Anonymous said...

and let that be a lesson to anyone fool enough to do business in the offices of Scottish law firms

18 June 2014 17:12

Amen to that!
Anonymous said...
Anonymous said...
All the high heid yins including the judges will be trying it on for size

18 June 2014 20:24
ddddddddddddddddddd

Does my bum look big in this?
Anonymous said...
Totally bonkers the crown was sent to Turkey when it should have stayed in Scotland and had tests done here.

There is clearly something going on in the background here.Political double dealing and handshakes between Edinburgh and Turkey.
Anonymous said...
Something very dodgy going on here no wonder they wanted to keep it quiet
Anonymous said...
Anonymous said...

If the Police are so sure of this crown's origin then why are the Crown Office Civil Recovery Unit not leading the case instead of Morton Fraser.

Police Chief hiring private lawyers to pursue private property after the Crown say it should be returned to owner sets a dangerous precedence.

18 June 2014 15:36

Nothing is safe (if its genuinely yours or not) if someone in the justice system has decided they want it off you.

Just ask the sheriff clerk who ended up with a £350,000 4 bedroom house for £70,000 out of a bogus sequestration signed off by his local sheriff.
Anonymous said...
The show me the money brigade, squabbling over the spoils of someone else's property?
Anonymous said...
and compare the way this is going what Lord Glennie said in the davinci payout case today!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-south-scotland-27922530

Da Vinci accused Marshall Ronald's payout bid proceeds

A judge has rejected a move to dismiss a bid to sue the Duke of Buccleuch for £4.25m over the return of a stolen Leonardo da Vinci painting.

Marshall Ronald, 57, is seeking the payout following the recovery of the Madonna of the Yarnwinder.

He was cleared in 2010 of conspiring to extort money for its return.

Lawyers for the duke described the bid to sue as "an attempt to extort a sum of money" but a judge decided it should go to a hearing of evidence.

Mr Ronald, of Upholland, Lancashire, was acquitted with others of a conspiracy to extort money for the safe return of the masterpiece at a trial at the High Court in Edinburgh in 2010.

The valuable artwork had been stolen from the Duke of Buccleuch's Drumlanrig Castle seven years earlier.

After the court case, Mr Ronald raised an action claiming that he was due payment for the return of the painting which was recovered in 2007.

At first he was suing both the duke and the police but dropped his claim against the police last year.

The duke is contesting his claims and his lawyers moved to dismiss the action.

They say the agreement Mr Ronald is seeking to rely on is "unenforceable as being illegal and contrary to public policy".

However, Lord Glennie said that it was "by no means obvious" that a "to whom it may concern" letter written as part of a police undercover operation was not meant to be taken at face value.

"It is by no means impossible to conceive of a case where, as part of a police operation to recover a painting, a reward is offered to someone who may be in a position to facilitate its recovery, and the reward is paid to that person when the painting is in fact recovered," he said.

"I accept that it is no doubt also possible to conceive of a situation where the offer of a reward is not intended to be genuine, and the letter granting authority to the intermediary to make that offer on behalf of the owner of the painting is indeed intended as a sham."

He added that on Mr Ronald's pleadings in the action it was alleged that the agreement was made at a time when he was not in possession of the stolen painting and did not know who had it.

"The best that can be said is that he was in a position in which he had the opportunity, through others, to pay money in the hope of procuring its release," he said.

"If this is the true picture, I can see no basis upon which it can be said that his negotiation of an agreement to be paid a handsome reward for his part in procuring the release of the painting amounts to extortion.

"It might be quite different if he himself had possession of the painting or it was within his control; but that is not what is presently averred either by the pursuer or even by the defender.

"As matters stand, I do not accept that the pursuer's case is bound to fail on grounds of illegality or public policy."
Anonymous said...
This stinks, and so do Balfour and Manson - a firm to steer clear of believe me, I know.
Diary of Injusticesaid...
@19 June 2014 12:58

Good point ... and there are a few Sheriff Clerks & higher who fit the terms of your comment ...

Stolen Art Watch, Hotter Than July 2014

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Man gets 3½ years in prison for $5M violin theft

FILE - In this combination file photos provided by the  Milwaukee County Sheriff's Office is Salah Salahadyn, right, and Universal K. Allah, left, both of Milwaukee. Salahadyn and co-defendant Allah, suspects in the theft of a $5 million Stradivarius violin taken from a Milwaukee concertmaster, are due in court Thursday, July 24, 2014. Allah has pleaded guilty to felony robbery and Salahadyn is expected to change his not-guilty plea. Photo: Milwaukee County Sheriff's Office, AP / Milwaukee County Sheriff's Office
FILE - In this combination file photos provided by the Milwaukee County Sheriff's Office is Salah Salahadyn, right, and Universal K. Allah, left, both of Milwaukee. Salahadyn and co-defendant Allah, suspects in the theft of a $5 million Stradivarius violin taken from a Milwaukee concertmaster, are due in court Thursday, July 24, 2014. Allah has pleaded guilty to felony robbery and Salahadyn is expected to change his not-guilty plea. Photo: Milwaukee County Sheriff's Office, AP 
MILWAUKEE (AP) — A Milwaukee man who provided the stun gun used in the theft of a $5 million Stradivarius violin in January was sentenced Thursday to 3½ years in prison.
Universal K. Allah, 37, pleaded guilty in May to being party to felony robbery, a charge with a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison. His attorney and family asked for leniency, noting that Allah loaned the weapon but didn't participate in the attack.
Milwaukee County Judge Dennis Moroney was not moved. He told Allah that being party to the crime makes him just as culpable as the man who carried out the attack, especially since Allah knew his acquaintance planned to use the weapon to steal a rare musical instrument.
"You knew what was going on. You knew he was not capable of getting a gun, he wasn't eligible to get a gun. Yet you helped him get armament to hurt another human being," Moroney said, anger evident in his voice. "You're not exactly a Boy Scout in this operation, let's be frank."
The instrument, which is almost 300 years old, was missing for nine days before police recovered it in good condition. Moroney said the crime was an attack not only on the concertmaster from whom it was taken but on the Milwaukee community as a whole.
Before sentencing, Allah apologized to the court, the violin's owner and the concertmaster to whom it had been loaned.
"I just want to humbly apologize to you for making this mistake," Allah said. "This is a total setback within my life. I plan on changing my life, changing everything from this point on."
Moroney seemed more influenced by the statement of Frank Almond, the concertmaster who was attacked with the stun gun Jan. 27 in a parking lot after he finished a musical performance. Almond said he wasn't seeking revenge or retribution, but that a severe penalty was "critical."
Almond said he was lucky he didn't suffer a career-ending arm or wrist injury when he crumpled to the icy pavement that night. He was also alarmed to learn how closely the perpetrators had been stalking him and his family for years.
"They knew where I lived, they knew the names of my children and other details of my day-to-day life," Almond said.
Moroney ordered Allah to pay restitution to Almond to cover about $3,500 in lost wages, $400 in violin repairs and about $140 for his ambulance bill.
The other man charged in the attack is Salah Salahadyn, who court documents describe as the mastermind who'd been plotting for some time to carry out his "dream theft"— snatching a Stradivarius from a musician in broad daylight.
Salahadyn's public defender, Alejandro Lockwood, had requested a second plea hearing, a step that often indicates a plea deal has been reached. But the Thursday hearing was postponed after Lockwood asked to be allowed to withdraw from the case.
Lockwood provided little explanation in court except to say that Salahadyn didn't agree with his decision, and that Lockwood had a conflict of interest. He recommended that Salahadyn get an attorney who wasn't a member of the public defender's office.
The violin's owner has remained anonymous. But she filed a victim-impact statement extoling the virtues of the nearly 300-year-old instrument, calling it a direct link to history.
"It is, after all, an amazing work of craftsmanship that in the right hands is capable of producing matchless, exquisite sound that expresses every emotion," her statement said.
Many Stradivarius violins, crafted by renowned Italian luthier Antonio Stradivari, are owned by private collectors who lend them to top violinists to be played in symphonies. Experts say a Stradivarius violin deteriorates if it's not used but remains in good condition when played regularly.
Experts estimate 600 to 650 Stradivarius instruments remain, or about half of what the master produced. Although they can be worth millions of dollars apiece, they're rarely stolen because they're catalogued so well that a thief would have a hard time selling one.

Tired of selling guns and drugs? Try art theft — another profitable criminal endeavor.


Vermeer’s oil on canvas “The Concert” is shown in a photo provided by the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. The painting is included on a list of several works of art stolen from the museum in a brazen robbery on March 19, 1990. (REUTERS/Gardner Museum) The empty frame from which thieves took “The Concert,” on display at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston in 2010. 

When you watch “White Collar,” USA’s successful show about master forger and art thief Neal Caffrey (Matt Bomer) and the FBI agent tasked with criminal-sitting him, it’s easy to get drawn in by Caffrey’s charm, wit and disarming good looks.
In fact, that’s the point. Sure, Caffrey’s a criminal — but he’s not violent, his crimes don’t really seem to hurt anyone and when he does commit them, it’s for the right reasons, no? Besides, how awful can he be? He’s a criminal informant, tracking down and foiling lesser thieves with bigger guns and smaller brains.
“White Collar” makes for entertaining television. But in the real world, stealing and forging art amounts to big, big business with a small, overstretched group of people tasked with policing a black market trailing only weapons and drug dealing in the amount of money it nets.
WHITE COLLAR Episode 416
Matt Bomer, left, as Neal Caffrey in an episode of “White Collar.” 
 
A new Newsweek piece by Kris Hollington examines the world of art crime and the people fighting it with a look at a recent conference called “Fakes, Forgeries, and Looted and Stolen Art.”
Among the revelations? There’s a 63-year-old Max Ernst forger named Wolfgang Beltracchi who doesn’t sound much different from Caffrey. He spent 35 years ripping off Ernst and convincing experts his fakes were the real deal — fakes that sold for millions. After fooling an Ernst authenticator and expert with 58 forgeries, Beltracchi eventually ended up in prison — if you can call it that. It’s more like camp; he gets to go home during the day. Art detectives still haven’t tracked down all of the ersatz Ernst works, and Beltracchi claims hundreds of them are on display the world over.
What really casts a shadow over the art world though — much more than tales like the one of the Middle Eastern aristocrat who coughed up $60 million for a collection Fabergé eggs that all turned out to be Fauxbergés —  is the breathtaking amount of art stolen by the Nazis during World War II. It is next to impossible to communicate the scale of just how much Adolph Hitler’s minions pilfered. Much still hasn’t been recovered, let alone returned to its rightful owners.
Instead, art was hoarded by people like Cornelius Gurlitt, who died in May, leaving investigators to discover a trove of more than 1,400 works in his Munich apartment worth in excess of $1 billion. Gurlitt’s father was an art collector with Nazi ties held and questioned by the Monuments Men, U.S. military art detectives charged with hunting down what the Nazis stole from Jews. Gurlitt, who never paid taxes or registered with the German healthcare system, was unemployed. He lived off the sale of the paintings, thanks to dealers unconcerned with his collection’s provenance.
In Gurlitt’s possession was at least one painting that had been part of the collection of Paul Rosenberg, a Paris art dealer forced to flee to New York. His collection was stolen by the Nazis, and he spent his life trying to track down his possessions–a mission that has been continued by his granddaughter.
A reproduction of a painting by French painter Henri Matisse titled Seated Woman.
A reproduction of “Seated Woman” by French painter Henri Matisse at a press conference in Augsburg, Germany. 

She was able to find one of her grandfather’s paintings, Matisse’s “Seated Woman/Woman Sitting in Armchair.” They finally got Gurlitt, who initially tried to sell it to them, to agree to return the painting, but he died. When Gurlitt and his billion-dollar stash were discovered, he signed an agreement with the German government agreeing the stolen work would be returned to descendants of the Nazis’ victims. However, Gurlitt’s will conflicts with the government agreement — and left the art, including Rosenberg’s, to the Kunstmuseum in Switzerland, which apparently has the right of first refusal. The museum has not publicized its decision yet.
The Nazis would have deemed one of the works Rosenberg was able to flee with “degenerate.” Van Gogh’s “Starry Night,” which Rosenberg sold to the Museum of Modern Art, where it still hangs — across from one of four versions of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.” “The Scream” was never returned to Rafael Cardoso, great-grandson of Hugo Simon, the painting’s original owner. Simon consigned the painting to a Swiss gallery because of Nazi persecution, Cardoso said.
Wrote Hollington:
Cardoso refused compensation offers from the consignor, Norwegian shipping magnate Petter Olsen, stating that his only issue was a moral one: ‘That the legacy of those who were wronged should be remembered and respected.’
The sale went ahead regardless, and The Scream was sold for a record-breaking $119.9m to New York billionaire Leon Black, buying it for New York’s Museum of Modern Art in May 2012 – which has yet to add the painting’s full history to the display.


Stolen Art Watch, Corrupt EX-Cop Richard "Dishonest Dick" Ellis Is Crooked Fox Guarding The Hen-House, Rancid (Julian) Radcliffe, Dishonest As The Day Is Long

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Corrupt Ex-Cop Richard "Dishonest Dick" Ellis, above 
 Rancid (Julian) Radcliffe above
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The Murky World of the Art Detective

Alexi Mostrous
The theft of artworks is now the world’s third most lucrative crime. Old Etonian Julian Radcliffe tracks down stolen Picassos and Cézannes – so why is he such a controversial figure?
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/magazine/article4167385.ece

In December 2007, an art exhibition opened in Pfäffikon, a small lakeside town in Switzerland, around 20 miles east of Zurich. The exhibition included 20 original Picasso paintings, as well as more than 150 etchings, prints and linoleum cuts by the artist, all of which had been loaned to the Pfäffikon cultural centre by the Sprengel Museum in Hanover. This type of arrangement is not uncommon across Europe; large museums and galleries will often allow their works to be shown in smaller provincial institutions. But such generosity carries a certain amount of risk: big galleries used to showing precious artworks will often boast elaborate alarm systems and large numbers of security personnel. Smaller galleries will often not. Plus, owing both to their great number and great value, works by Picasso are stolen more often than any other artist’s. So when the paintings came to Pfäffikon, it was not just a boon for local art lovers, but a potential opportunity for thieves.

It was one they seized. On a cold Wednesday night in early February 2008, the alarm at the Pfäffikon cultural centre sounded. Police arrived to find that two of the Picassos were missing. One was Tête de Cheval (Head of Horse) from 1962, the other was Verre et Pichet(Glass and Pitcher) from 1944: works that, between them, had an estimated value of more than £2.5 million. The Sprengel Museum immediately offered a reward for any information leading to the recovery of the paintings. Investigators hypothesised that the thieves may have remained hidden inside the gallery until after it had closed, but they could not be sure. The authorities were left with no firm idea as to how the crime happened, who had carried it out or, most vitally, how to get the Picassos back.

This last question quickly came to be pondered by a raffish figure from within a shabby office in London. The International Art and Antique Loss Register occupies the first floor of an anonymous five-storey block in Farringdon and is considered by many, despite outward appearances, to be the world’s foremost art detection agency. Founded by Julian Radcliffe, a slender man aged 65, the Art Loss Register (ALR) claims to have returned more than £150 million worth of paintings, artefacts and sculptures to their rightful owners in the 22 years since business began.

Radcliffe’s pale face, though often inscrutable, breaks into a smile when discussing his own exploits, and he clearly enjoys the sense of danger that comes with his status as an internationally renowned art detective. He has a caddish charm and the sort of self-confidence you would expect of an Old Etonian. Throughout his anecdotes – which mix references to hardened European criminals and attempted arrests by South American police – Radcliffe portrays himself as a Briton trying to bring order to foreign chaos. An Oxford graduate, Radcliffe was first employed as an insurance broker for Lloyd’s, specialising in political risk, before going on to found a company that would evaluate security in dangerous countries and regions. He later spent some time working as a hostage negotiator. In his pinstripe suit, he’s a little like something from a Graham Greene novel.

Radcliffe formed the ALR following a conversation with a director of Sotheby’s auction house who bemoaned the lack of a comprehensive worldwide database of all stolen and missing artworks. Such a database would ensure that reputable art dealers and private collectors could check that any piece they were purchasing did not, in fact, belong to somebody else. Over the past two decades, Radcliffe has built the ALR into a vast roll-call of stolen art, with more than 400,000 objects currently listed. Dealers and collectors pay Radcliffe fees to check the register.

Were the ALR a business built solely around this database, then Radcliffe would be a useful, if uncontroversial member of the art world, something like a particularly proactive lost property clerk. But Radcliffe is no clerk, and he and his company enjoy a far more glamorous sideline, earning hundreds of thousands of pounds a year tracking down and recovering stolen art on behalf of insurers and victims of theft. It works like this: Radcliffe’s network of sources around the world tip him off about the locations of stolen paintings. For a substantial fee, they may provide “information” which somehow leads to the stolen artwork landing in Radcliffe’s hands. The ALR man has collected paintings left for him in the boot of a car and by a layby. It’s a system shrouded in mystery but then, Radcliffe claims, it gets results.

In 1999, Radcliffe identified and reunited with its owner a stolen Cézanne, Pitcher and Fruits, which had turned up in Panama and which went on to sell at auction for £18 million. This month, Christie’s will sell several Old Masters stolen in 1987 from the gallery of art dealer Robert Noortman, which were recovered thanks in part to the ALR. Radcliffe worked with Dutch police to set up a sting operation, resulting in two criminal convictions and the recovery of all but one of the pictures.

But what makes Radcliffe such a contentious figure is his work with a shady network of informants in Serbia, whom he uses to recover stolen artwork, sometimes without obtaining explicit police approval, and occasionally in the knowledge that part of the payments he makes to these informants will filter back to the art thieves themselves.

While the ALR states publicly that it never pays anyone involved in the original theft, privately Radcliffe admits to me that the situation is rather different.

“You have got to understand that we are operating in the real world,” he says, sitting back in an old leather chair in his office when we meet. “The law tries to treat all this stuff as black and white and actually, in most cases, it’s shades of grey. The public policy has to be: we don’t pay … But in certain cases some payments have to be authorised. We keep them to a minimum.”

Radcliffe estimates that 20 per cent of stolen art is destroyed or lost for ever. It’s a useful statistic to keep in mind; collectors and institutions want their paintings back in one piece, and often they don’t mind how this is facilitated.

“The only thing I care about is my artworks, and Mr Radcliffe can do what he wants with whom he wants,” says Jean-Louis Loeb-Picard, a millionaire property developer. Loeb-Picard had employed the ALR following the theft of more than €3 million (£2.3 million) worth of art from his Parisian apartment, and under such circumstances he was not squeamish about Radcliffe’s methods. “It’s my right to do what I have to do to recover my works,” he maintains.

To use police language, theft victims are allowed to pay rewards “for information leading to the recovery of a stolen object”. That is not in itself controversial, even when payments amount to thousands of euros and the informants have criminal records.

Indeed, having a good network of informants is crucial to Radcliffe and other art detection companies’ ability to track down stolen art. Both the police and private companies regard the payment of rewards as often the only way to recover paintings.

But while rewards are uncontroversial, paying money to anyone directly or indirectly involved with the original theft is anything but. Some payments may not only be illegal but, like a government paying a kidnapper to turn over his hostages, may actually fuel art theft rather than prevent it.

The art recovery industry, murky and unregulated though it may be, is further boosted by the fact that police budgets for fighting art crime have been slashed, leaving organised gangs – especially gangs from Eastern Europe – able to tap into a global market worth billions. Art crime is now ranked the third highest-grossing criminal enterprise, behind drugs and arms dealing respectively. In 2013 figures suggested that thefts of art and antiques in the UK alone totalled more than £300 million. “I am not naive,” says Loeb-Picard. “I don’t insist on the matter. I know. Why would the criminal give back the works if they are not paid? But I asked two different lawyers, ‘Am I right to give money to Julian Radcliffe, knowing that part of the money may be going to criminals?’ My lawyers said I could do what I want.”

Radcliffe’s methods have provoked criticism at the highest level of European law enforcement. Some criminal investigators view him as little more than a fence, one who provides a means for the very people who stole the art to sell it back to their victims.

“Radcliffe ruins everything,” says Thomas Erhardy, head of the BRB (Brigade de Répression du Banditisme), the Parisian police force tasked with investigating serious crime. “He doesn’t play by the rules. All he wants is his percentage. He’s in contact with thieves. I simply don’t trust him.”

The Frenchman has crossed paths with Radcliffe several times. He accuses the ALR of creating a dishonest market in stolen art, one that flows from the thieves who steal it in European cities, through Serbian intermediaries, onwards to Radcliffe and the ALR, and finally back with the insurance companies or victims themselves.

Radcliffe bats away the criticism. “Erhardy may call me tomorrow and ask me to help on a case,” he says. “But for very good political reasons, he’s got to be critical of us in public.” He denies Erhardy’s claims, however, saying he has never handled stolen goods or himself acted illegally, and insists that he seeks permission from relevant police forces before paying over money.

In some rare cases, the ALR accepts that money will be paid directly to criminals, but only as part of what they have come to term the “Balkan strategy”. This approach involves secretly offering sums of money, which the ALR claims are relatively small, to criminals to recover pictures on behalf of their rightful owners, while at the same time using its extensive database to make it impossible for those same criminals to sell to anyone else. Radcliffe insists that no payment has been made for thefts after 2010 and that his strategy has been effective at reducing crime.

“There are fewer than 12 cases out of more than 1,600 in the past 21 years in which we suspect the payments made to intermediaries might have been passed on to those involved in the original theft,” says Radcliffe.

“We absolutely understand that some of the cash paid results in money going back to people who may have been involved in the original crime. No one is fooling anyone about the fact that [an intermediary] will pass on some of the money.”

Radcliffe says he has taken legal advice and the position is not always clear. Ultimately, “It comes down to intent. A prosecutor would find it very difficult to say what you are doing was wrong if it was part of a clear strategy to reduce crime.”

Thanks to a series of internal aides-memoire written by Radcliffe between 2004 to 2012, and leaked to The Times, it is possible to reveal for the first time just how far the ALR is willing to go to recover stolen masterpieces.

In 2011, on the trail of the Pfäffikon Picassos, Radcliffe flew into Belgrade to meet some of his contacts who claimed they knew of the paintings’ whereabouts. A few hours after arriving, he found himself being hustled into a car by a young Serb he knew only as “X”. The Serb had already warned Radcliffe “No police”. They drove in silence into the hills behind the Serbian town of Krusevac.

“We climbed up through open fields with a small church just on the right,” Radcliffe wrote afterwards. “‘X’ told me not to remember where we were since the pictures would only be there for ten minutes. At a junction we went into a house which he seemed to know well.”

The pair then entered a garage where they were met by a heavy-set man, who moved aside a lawnmower before carrying out two pictures wrapped in a large zipped cover. Radcliffe examined the contents. One was Tête de Cheval. The other was Verre et Pichet. He had been led to the missing Picassos.

The question is, who had helped get him there in the first place? After seeing the two stolen masterpieces for himself, Radcliffe met three of his Serbian contacts at a nearby restaurant. The first was a tough-talking man called Wolf Minic, a 48-year-old chain-smoking private detective with contacts deep within the country’s criminal underworld.

Minic introduced Radcliffe to a prominent Serb businessman aged about 60, whom everyone knew simply as “the Boxer”. He boasted of once fighting Evander Holyfield. According to ALR notes, the Boxer had “financed many gangs of thieves overseas” and had “directed criminals to steal in Zurich”. But now, apparently, he wanted to “go clean”. The final contact was a young café owner called Marko, who appeared to be in charge. He showed Radcliffe pictures of other allegedly stolen artworks, telling him: “There are many other cases if we give him a list of what we are after.” As the men talked, Radcliffe noticed a man standing guard with a submachine gun. Eight months after he first met him, Serbian police filed criminal charges against Marko “due to the fact that he possessed stolen paintings”, according to a spokeswoman for the Ministry of the Interior in Serbia.

Through Minic, the ALR paid them tens of thousands of pounds for information on a number of stolen artworks.

Speaking today, Radcliffe says he then had “no grounds to suspect” that any of his Balkan contacts had any direct involvement in art theft – although Marko was obviously in contact with people who were – and that he was comfortable doing business with them. Minic says that, “Marko is trusted by both sides,” and, “The Serbs know that he was not involved with the crime.” That same year, the three men helped Radcliffe locate Constructivo Blanco, a painting by Uruguayan artist Joaquín Torres-García, a work worth a six-figure sum. After the painting was returned, its insurers, Catlin Insurance, paid the ALR €60,000 in fees and expenses. €30,000 of this was kept by the ALR and the other half distributed between the Boxer’s group and the “criminal holders”.

Radcliffe says that the insurance company knew this was the case. In a note of his meeting with a Catlin representative, Radcliffe recorded that he and the insurance company agreed that at least some of the money would go “to the thief”. A Catlin spokesperson strongly denied this, and said the company would never have authorised such a payment. Radcliffe’s response is to suggest that the established art world authorities – the police, the insurers – cannot afford to admit what everyone else knows is the truth.

“Catlin have got to take that public position,” he says. “We kept the insurers fully informed and they knew that some payment would eventually end up with criminals.” Catlin continues to deny this.

When it comes to art recovery, Radcliffe is by no means the only game in town. Despite locating the two missing Picassos, it was not the Old Etonian who would ultimately take the credit for the safe return of the paintings. Radcliffe tried to obtain a contract to recover them with AXA Art, the insurers, but was rebuffed. AXA preferred to deal with a competitor of his, Dick Ellis, with whom it had a long-standing relationship. Ellis is a former police officer who set up the Art and Antiques Squad at Scotland Yard and now runs his own art recovery business, the Art Management Group. In person, Ellis exists as an almost exact counterweight to Radcliffe: ruddy-faced, bald and thickening where his competitor is pale, slender and with a sweep of well-groomed hair. You wouldn’t have to guess who is the ex-policeman and who is the aesthete.

Ellis even used the same contacts – Marko, the Boxer and Minic – to obtain information about the Picassos’ whereabouts. In fact, Ellis has an even closer relationship with the three. In 2011, he set up a company in Serbia called Art Management DOO with the Serbs listed as directors and equal owners. Like Radcliffe, Ellis maintains that these men are simply intermediaries in a part of the world where the legitimate and the illegal often intertwine.

“If you are investigating crimes and using information, then it’s quite common for the informants to have criminal connections,” says Ellis. “Marko is clearly well connected, but the degree to which he’s criminally involved is unclear to me. Despite my having provided law enforcement investigators with his details I saw no evidence to connect him criminally with any of these activities.” (He declines to say if he was aware that charges had been filed against Marko in 2012, however.)

The line between paying a ransom to a crook and paying a reward for information leading to a painting’s recovery is, in this world, easy to blur. Radcliffe believes that Ellis knew perfectly well that some of the fees he paid his contacts during recovery of the two Picassos would end up in criminal hands.

“AXA stated publicly that they had not paid criminals, on the rather shaky grounds that the payments were for information, not for stolen art,” he noted. Ellis says this description is “manifestly inaccurate and wrong”.

On a clear winter’s day, I meet a third player in this field, at a café beside Richmond Bridge in London. Charley Hill has operated as a private art investigator since 2002, having previously worked with Ellis at Scotland Yard. In 1994, he posed as an American collector as part of a sting to recover The Scream by Edvard Munch, which had been stolen from the National Gallery in Oslo. Today, he is seeking to recover a number of gold snuffboxes stolen from Lord Rothschild’s Waddesdon Manor home, collectively worth £5 million, goods that Radcliffe also happens to be on the trail of.

A mild, bespectacled figure, Hill boasts good contacts within the traveller community, and has enlisted James Quinn McDonagh – a championship bare-knuckle boxer – to set up introductions with individuals connected to the Rothschild thefts. “He and I are after all of Jacob Rothschild’s gold boxes, the Ashmolean Cézanne, and the Caravaggio stolen in Palermo in 1969,” says Hill. “He gets me into the travellers.” There is no suggestion that McDonagh had any involvement in the snuffbox thefts, but the very presence of a bare-knuckle boxing champion only serves as a reminder of the types of characters often involved in the recovery of artworks. In 2004, Radcliffe’s own notes show him visiting the Hyatt Regency Belgrade to meet someone known only as “the Boss Man”.

“He had thin aquiline features, slim build, balding, speaks Russian, certainly knowledgeable about where the pictures were stolen,” he noted. The Boss Man’s associates took Radcliffe “to a ground-floor office with a caged locking door where they showed me a Van Dyke stolen from a castle”. On another occasion, Radcliffe met a Bosnian general and an arms dealer, both of whom “controlled” stolen works of art, he said. He paid one group of “holders” €50,000 and another €25,000, ALR documents record.

Again, you wonder whether these artworks would ever be recovered without paying such people. “Paying criminals a ransom has to be wrong,” says Hill. But paying people for information “leading to the recovery of masterpieces” would be in the public interest. “You wouldn’t get it back any other way,” he says. “None of us are fools.”

Two individuals close to the Art Loss Register told me that Radcliffe’s forays into the Balkans were as much a desperate attempt to wrestle his company into financial health as an idealistic endeavour. The ALR, which has not made money for six years, had liabilities of more than £1 million in 2012.

“Distributing money to these individuals in Serbia I thought was wrong,” says one source close to Radcliffe, who wishes to remain unknown. “It’s in an absolute financial mess. If it wasn’t for Julian’s personal cash infusions the company would be insolvent.” (Radcliffe says he is confident the ALR will eventually make a profit.)

Last year, the ALR’s general counsel, a man called Chris Marinello, defected in order to set up his own art detection agency, Art Recovery International. He too questioned the methods of his former company. “The direction of the ALR, with these ingrained practices and questionable affairs of its management and board, was not aligned with my vision of how a due diligence business (or any business for that matter) should be run.” Upon announcing the creation of Art Recovery International, Marinello stressed that his own company would be run “ethically, responsibly and with respect for the rule of law”. Radcliffe is not surprised a competitor would criticise the ALR.

But even an experienced police officer such as Erhardy has, in a roundabout way, benefited from information sold by men like Marko. In November 2012, a Serbian thief called Goran Arsic stole a €500,000 Delacroix painting called The Arabs of Oran from a gallery near the Louvre. In May 2013, Dick Ellis travelled to Paris to seek permission from Erhardy and a French judge to recover the painting. When this was granted, Ellis travelled to Belgrade where, with the assistance of Marko, he was able to locate the stolen painting. Even though telephone records linked Arsic to Marko, Erhardy states he was satisfied that Ellis had acted appropriately. “His goal can help my goal,” the Frenchman says. A year after the original theft, Erhardy arrested Arsic in Paris.

Nevertheless, Erhardy maintains that the very nature of the art recovery industry means it is unlikely ever to become less murky. “Everyone is happy and everyone gets money,” he says, speaking of the cycle of theft, recovery and payments. “But you have to stop the situation otherwise you are encouraging more thefts.” Which may be true. But then, if you were to wake to find that two of your Picassos had gone missing, who would you call? There is no shortage of men ready to help you get them back. At least, for the right price.

Additional reporting by Katie Gibbons

Dick Ellis back-story:

Stolen Art Watch, Dick Ellis, DNA Depicts, Dishonesty, Double-Crossing, Duplicitous & Doggy Nature From Greedy, Corrupt Former Police Officer



Lessons From a Corrupt Old Master
By Emma Jacobs

The art of the investigation: Richard Ellis is hired by collectors and insurers to retrieve stolen works
Criminals are both nemeses and friends to Richard “Dick” Ellis. He has the knack of using both criminals and former colleagues in Law Enforcement for his own ends. After he leaves the Wallace Collection, the gallery in central London displaying paintings by Fragonard and Canaletto, the 63-year-old is going for a drink with one. Or, as he nonchalantly puts it, “someone who was classified as a former terrorist”. The same destiny will befall this former terrorist as with all the people who cross paths with Dick Ellis, set up, arrested, cheated out of any reward payment and possible criminal charges and even jail.
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The reason? “That is how you learn to do stuff.”  “Never trust anyone, never give anyone the benefit of the doubt and always be prepared to escape scrutiny by leaving contacts holding the baby, so to speak, butter them up, set them up, walk away, live to fight another day”
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Mr Ellis traces stolen paintings and artefact's on behalf of collectors and insurers, working closely and conspiring with the equally dishonest art loss adjuster Mark Dalrymple, whom is the most hated, despised and corrupt art loss adjuster in the history of the art insurance industry. Keeping up with criminal contacts helped him do his job as an investigator at New Scotland Yard, heading the art and antiques squad, and now it helps him to retrieve stolen property for private clients. It must be said Dick Ellis gained a reputation for being the most corrupt, greedy and duplicitous police officer to grace the Art and Antiques squad.
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His address book is a relic of a bygone era of policing. He laments the short-termist, “parochial” attitudes to criminal investigations by police needing to meet government targets that means detectives no longer foster the kinds of relationships that are built up over years. Those relationships with criminals led Dick Ellis to gain wealth from corrupt payments far beyond his pay grade of lowly Detective Constable and have allowed him to send his daughter Verity to Medical School, paying huge fee’s over the years.
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“I joined an elite – I was a career detective in the days of Life on Mars [the television police drama set in the days of institutional corruption within police forces during the 1970s, 80’s and 90’s]. It was tremendous fun, low wages were supplemented by the back-room payments which allowed us all to enjoy a somewhat higher standard of living than our rank would normally allow. The world is a different place,” he says. He prefers his new life in the private sector, cosseted from the modern concerns of crime enforcement, whereby corruption is frowned upon and the antics of Dick Elis would see him in jail rather than at the bar of a top London hotel. This reference to the BBC drama Life on Mars is a direct reference to Dick Ellis playing the good cop bad cop and taking illegal payments in order to prevent certain criminals from being arrested. Dick Ellis earned himself the nickname “Five hundred pound Dick” a reference to Dick Ellis always wanting a corrupt cash £500 payment back in the Life on Mars days of the 1980’s and 90’s.
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Mr Ellis has worked on numerous high-profile cases recovering artworks taken from public galleries, including Edvard Munch’s “The Scream”, stolen from the National Gallery of Norway in 1994, pages from an edition of Audubon’s “Birds of America” lifted from the State Library in St Petersburg. He has also traced antiquities looted from China and Egypt, and many items of art and antiques stolen from private residences in the UK, Ireland and overseas. The Dick Ellis Golden rule has always been to throw the contacts to the Wolves, have them arrested, once he receives payment and to never, ever share any fee or reward payments, Dick Ellis keeps all the ill-gotton gains.
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It was a personal quest that set him on his career path. Mr Ellis’s father, a doctor, was a keen amateur painter, and his great-aunt was an artist who trained under John Roddam Spencer Stanhope, the Pre-Raphaelite English painter. “I grew up in an environment of looking at art critically,” he says.
His parents, who also collected art and antiques, were burgled. Then a young policeman, he undertook the investigation himself, recovering much of the horde by paying off local criminals. As well as providing a boost to his family, it also fuelled his twin passions for sleuthing and art.
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According to Mr Ellis, art thieves are career criminals. While most crime is undertaken by opportunists, an art thief needs to know the market and be professional. “They find the Achilles heel in security,” he says. After all, you can’t “take a painting off the wall and flog it in the pub”.
The idea of masterpieces being stolen to order for a criminal mastermind, typified by James Bond villain Dr No displaying Goya’s portrait of the Duke of Wellington, is entirely fictional, says Mr Ellis. In his 20 years as an art crime investigator he has never come across a “Mr Big”.
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But is a Picasso stolen from a wealthy collector of any concern beyond the victim of the crime when most people have more pressing concerns? Mr Ellis believes it is. “Art is being used as a currency to fund criminality, arms, drugs and terrorism,” he says. “It’s far more important than just losing cultural property. If you stop art crime you are stopping the funding of arms and drugs” Dick Ellis says this with tongue firmly in cheek, as by stopping art theft it would put him out of business, effectively cutting his own throat, which is a destiny most contacts would like to see for this wily old Corrupt former low ranking Policeman. 
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Mr Ellis has often had to make this case. Tracing a Vermeer is hardly a priority for the public and government who want “Bobbies on the beat focused on antisocial behaviour”. Yet it should be, insists Mr Ellis. Visible policing “might have an effect on car and house burglary but it has little deterrent on career criminals”.
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The US Department of Justice ranks art crime behind only drugs and arms in terms of highest-grossing criminal trades. According to the FBI, “fundamentalist terrorist groups rely on looted antiquities as a major funding source. Mohamed Atta tried to sell looted antiquities in 1999 as a funding source for the 9/11 attacks.”
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Being an investigator was an unusual career path for Mr Ellis, whose family was full of medics. His enthusiasm for policing was sparked by taking a taster course in his school holidays at Hendon police college in north London. There he was billeted to Limehouse in the east end of the city. “A fantastically busy area for policing, I spent time with the vice squad,” he says. “They didn’t hold back. They showed us everything, how to accept corrupt payments, keep a low profile and skirt under the radar of higher ranked Police officers, who would turn a blind eye to corrupt dealings and payments, “Those were the days”.
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After joining the police, he spent a decade doing criminal investigations before moving to affluent Hampstead in north London, which saw a wave of art thefts. In 1989 he reformed the art and antiques squad, which he led until his retirement from the police in 1999. “The international requests poured in – were getting 250 requests from overseas a year. We never recovered less than £14m a year in stolen property.” I was able to save enough cash to send my daughter to medical school and still maintain a high standard of living, without even opening my legitimate Police wage packet.
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Mr Ellis cites the story of Sir Alfred Beit’s art collection in County Wicklow, Ireland, which included works by Vermeer and Goya, as an example of how criminals try to dispose of stolen art. In 1986, Martin “The General” Cahill, a notorious Irish criminal, stole 11 paintings from the house. The first thing he did was bury them in the ground. After realising the impossibility of selling them on the open market, he explored disposing of them on the black market – where art is sold for a small percentage of its market value, or used as collateral. As Mr Ellis puts it: “A legitimate businessman uses their house, a criminal might use a painting.” In the end, Cahill traded two as currency for drugs. The rest were recovered – one by Mr Ellis behind a sofa in a north London flat. The informant who helped Dick Ellis was violently beaten but as Dick puts it “What did I care, he played the game, and lost, they come to me like Moths to a flame”
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Tenacity (“Just ask my wife: I’m bloody-minded I don’t let go easily”) has always been key to his work both as a policeman and as a private art investigator. “Take no prisoners, be they criminals, fellow Police officers or Insurance industry executives". "Victims of art crime are ripe for exploitation and when they pay us they seem to lose again, two for the price of one” Dick Ellis says with a wry smile. The difference is that unlike the police, his focus in not on catching criminals but on recovering the paintings, silverware and sculpture, and dealing with clients. “I tell [them] if it is likely to be a long investigation, then we can extort the maximum payments, sometimes over many years, milking the veritable art crime victim cash cow. We set a cap on expenditure and review it.” 
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When he uncovered two Picassos stolen in Serbia that had been stolen in Switzerland on behalf of an insurer, the investigation took three years, involved making illegal payments to corrupt Serbian Police officers and public officials. In recent years the circle of corruption in which Dick Ellis operates has been reduced, the 2002 Proceeds of Crime Act has made the double dealings of Dick Ellis a bit more difficult and the proceeds from the Serbian Picasso recovery had to be smuggled back to the UK to avoid detection and falling foul of the UK strict money laundering laws. 
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Working in the UK has become hazardous for Dick Ellis, not least as most criminals now know what will befall them when dealing with Dick Ellis and UK law enforcement are less than forgiving towards corrupt former Police officers. So its is to foreign climbs for Dick Ellis to ply his particular double dealing web of deceit.
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As with most professions, however, it’s networking that gets results. “Talk to criminals and you will learn what they are doing, use them, abuse them, then throw them to the Wolves" he says.
With that, he goes off to meet a former terrorist, the next Moth to the Dick Ellis flame.

Stolen Art Watch, Foxes Guarding The Hen-House

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The Murky World of the Art Detective

Alexi Mostrous
The theft of artworks is now the world’s third most lucrative crime. Old Etonian Julian Radcliffe tracks down stolen Picassos and Cézannes – so why is he such a controversial figure?
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/magazine/article4167385.ece

In December 2007, an art exhibition opened in Pfäffikon, a small lakeside town in Switzerland, around 20 miles east of Zurich. The exhibition included 20 original Picasso paintings, as well as more than 150 etchings, prints and linoleum cuts by the artist, all of which had been loaned to the Pfäffikon cultural centre by the Sprengel Museum in Hanover. This type of arrangement is not uncommon across Europe; large museums and galleries will often allow their works to be shown in smaller provincial institutions. But such generosity carries a certain amount of risk: big galleries used to showing precious artworks will often boast elaborate alarm systems and large numbers of security personnel. Smaller galleries will often not. Plus, owing both to their great number and great value, works by Picasso are stolen more often than any other artist’s. So when the paintings came to Pfäffikon, it was not just a boon for local art lovers, but a potential opportunity for thieves.

It was one they seized. On a cold Wednesday night in early February 2008, the alarm at the Pfäffikon cultural centre sounded. Police arrived to find that two of the Picassos were missing. One was Tête de Cheval (Head of Horse) from 1962, the other was Verre et Pichet(Glass and Pitcher) from 1944: works that, between them, had an estimated value of more than £2.5 million. The Sprengel Museum immediately offered a reward for any information leading to the recovery of the paintings. Investigators hypothesised that the thieves may have remained hidden inside the gallery until after it had closed, but they could not be sure. The authorities were left with no firm idea as to how the crime happened, who had carried it out or, most vitally, how to get the Picassos back.

This last question quickly came to be pondered by a raffish figure from within a shabby office in London. The International Art and Antique Loss Register occupies the first floor of an anonymous five-storey block in Farringdon and is considered by many, despite outward appearances, to be the world’s foremost art detection agency. Founded by Julian Radcliffe, a slender man aged 65, the Art Loss Register (ALR) claims to have returned more than £150 million worth of paintings, artefacts and sculptures to their rightful owners in the 22 years since business began.

Radcliffe’s pale face, though often inscrutable, breaks into a smile when discussing his own exploits, and he clearly enjoys the sense of danger that comes with his status as an internationally renowned art detective. He has a caddish charm and the sort of self-confidence you would expect of an Old Etonian. Throughout his anecdotes – which mix references to hardened European criminals and attempted arrests by South American police – Radcliffe portrays himself as a Briton trying to bring order to foreign chaos. An Oxford graduate, Radcliffe was first employed as an insurance broker for Lloyd’s, specialising in political risk, before going on to found a company that would evaluate security in dangerous countries and regions. He later spent some time working as a hostage negotiator. In his pinstripe suit, he’s a little like something from a Graham Greene novel.

Radcliffe formed the ALR following a conversation with a director of Sotheby’s auction house who bemoaned the lack of a comprehensive worldwide database of all stolen and missing artworks. Such a database would ensure that reputable art dealers and private collectors could check that any piece they were purchasing did not, in fact, belong to somebody else. Over the past two decades, Radcliffe has built the ALR into a vast roll-call of stolen art, with more than 400,000 objects currently listed. Dealers and collectors pay Radcliffe fees to check the register.

Were the ALR a business built solely around this database, then Radcliffe would be a useful, if uncontroversial member of the art world, something like a particularly proactive lost property clerk. But Radcliffe is no clerk, and he and his company enjoy a far more glamorous sideline, earning hundreds of thousands of pounds a year tracking down and recovering stolen art on behalf of insurers and victims of theft. It works like this: Radcliffe’s network of sources around the world tip him off about the locations of stolen paintings. For a substantial fee, they may provide “information” which somehow leads to the stolen artwork landing in Radcliffe’s hands. The ALR man has collected paintings left for him in the boot of a car and by a layby. It’s a system shrouded in mystery but then, Radcliffe claims, it gets results.

In 1999, Radcliffe identified and reunited with its owner a stolen Cézanne, Pitcher and Fruits, which had turned up in Panama and which went on to sell at auction for £18 million. This month, Christie’s will sell several Old Masters stolen in 1987 from the gallery of art dealer Robert Noortman, which were recovered thanks in part to the ALR. Radcliffe worked with Dutch police to set up a sting operation, resulting in two criminal convictions and the recovery of all but one of the pictures.

But what makes Radcliffe such a contentious figure is his work with a shady network of informants in Serbia, whom he uses to recover stolen artwork, sometimes without obtaining explicit police approval, and occasionally in the knowledge that part of the payments he makes to these informants will filter back to the art thieves themselves.

While the ALR states publicly that it never pays anyone involved in the original theft, privately Radcliffe admits to me that the situation is rather different.

“You have got to understand that we are operating in the real world,” he says, sitting back in an old leather chair in his office when we meet. “The law tries to treat all this stuff as black and white and actually, in most cases, it’s shades of grey. The public policy has to be: we don’t pay … But in certain cases some payments have to be authorised. We keep them to a minimum.”

Radcliffe estimates that 20 per cent of stolen art is destroyed or lost for ever. It’s a useful statistic to keep in mind; collectors and institutions want their paintings back in one piece, and often they don’t mind how this is facilitated.

“The only thing I care about is my artworks, and Mr Radcliffe can do what he wants with whom he wants,” says Jean-Louis Loeb-Picard, a millionaire property developer. Loeb-Picard had employed the ALR following the theft of more than €3 million (£2.3 million) worth of art from his Parisian apartment, and under such circumstances he was not squeamish about Radcliffe’s methods. “It’s my right to do what I have to do to recover my works,” he maintains.

To use police language, theft victims are allowed to pay rewards “for information leading to the recovery of a stolen object”. That is not in itself controversial, even when payments amount to thousands of euros and the informants have criminal records.

Indeed, having a good network of informants is crucial to Radcliffe and other art detection companies’ ability to track down stolen art. Both the police and private companies regard the payment of rewards as often the only way to recover paintings.

But while rewards are uncontroversial, paying money to anyone directly or indirectly involved with the original theft is anything but. Some payments may not only be illegal but, like a government paying a kidnapper to turn over his hostages, may actually fuel art theft rather than prevent it.

The art recovery industry, murky and unregulated though it may be, is further boosted by the fact that police budgets for fighting art crime have been slashed, leaving organised gangs – especially gangs from Eastern Europe – able to tap into a global market worth billions. Art crime is now ranked the third highest-grossing criminal enterprise, behind drugs and arms dealing respectively. In 2013 figures suggested that thefts of art and antiques in the UK alone totalled more than £300 million. “I am not naive,” says Loeb-Picard. “I don’t insist on the matter. I know. Why would the criminal give back the works if they are not paid? But I asked two different lawyers, ‘Am I right to give money to Julian Radcliffe, knowing that part of the money may be going to criminals?’ My lawyers said I could do what I want.”

Radcliffe’s methods have provoked criticism at the highest level of European law enforcement. Some criminal investigators view him as little more than a fence, one who provides a means for the very people who stole the art to sell it back to their victims.

“Radcliffe ruins everything,” says Thomas Erhardy, head of the BRB (Brigade de Répression du Banditisme), the Parisian police force tasked with investigating serious crime. “He doesn’t play by the rules. All he wants is his percentage. He’s in contact with thieves. I simply don’t trust him.”

The Frenchman has crossed paths with Radcliffe several times. He accuses the ALR of creating a dishonest market in stolen art, one that flows from the thieves who steal it in European cities, through Serbian intermediaries, onwards to Radcliffe and the ALR, and finally back with the insurance companies or victims themselves.

Radcliffe bats away the criticism. “Erhardy may call me tomorrow and ask me to help on a case,” he says. “But for very good political reasons, he’s got to be critical of us in public.” He denies Erhardy’s claims, however, saying he has never handled stolen goods or himself acted illegally, and insists that he seeks permission from relevant police forces before paying over money.

In some rare cases, the ALR accepts that money will be paid directly to criminals, but only as part of what they have come to term the “Balkan strategy”. This approach involves secretly offering sums of money, which the ALR claims are relatively small, to criminals to recover pictures on behalf of their rightful owners, while at the same time using its extensive database to make it impossible for those same criminals to sell to anyone else. Radcliffe insists that no payment has been made for thefts after 2010 and that his strategy has been effective at reducing crime.

“There are fewer than 12 cases out of more than 1,600 in the past 21 years in which we suspect the payments made to intermediaries might have been passed on to those involved in the original theft,” says Radcliffe.

“We absolutely understand that some of the cash paid results in money going back to people who may have been involved in the original crime. No one is fooling anyone about the fact that [an intermediary] will pass on some of the money.”

Radcliffe says he has taken legal advice and the position is not always clear. Ultimately, “It comes down to intent. A prosecutor would find it very difficult to say what you are doing was wrong if it was part of a clear strategy to reduce crime.”

Thanks to a series of internal aides-memoire written by Radcliffe between 2004 to 2012, and leaked to The Times, it is possible to reveal for the first time just how far the ALR is willing to go to recover stolen masterpieces.

In 2011, on the trail of the Pfäffikon Picassos, Radcliffe flew into Belgrade to meet some of his contacts who claimed they knew of the paintings’ whereabouts. A few hours after arriving, he found himself being hustled into a car by a young Serb he knew only as “X”. The Serb had already warned Radcliffe “No police”. They drove in silence into the hills behind the Serbian town of Krusevac.

“We climbed up through open fields with a small church just on the right,” Radcliffe wrote afterwards. “‘X’ told me not to remember where we were since the pictures would only be there for ten minutes. At a junction we went into a house which he seemed to know well.”

The pair then entered a garage where they were met by a heavy-set man, who moved aside a lawnmower before carrying out two pictures wrapped in a large zipped cover. Radcliffe examined the contents. One was Tête de Cheval. The other was Verre et Pichet. He had been led to the missing Picassos.

The question is, who had helped get him there in the first place? After seeing the two stolen masterpieces for himself, Radcliffe met three of his Serbian contacts at a nearby restaurant. The first was a tough-talking man called Wolf Minic, a 48-year-old chain-smoking private detective with contacts deep within the country’s criminal underworld.

Minic introduced Radcliffe to a prominent Serb businessman aged about 60, whom everyone knew simply as “the Boxer”. He boasted of once fighting Evander Holyfield. According to ALR notes, the Boxer had “financed many gangs of thieves overseas” and had “directed criminals to steal in Zurich”. But now, apparently, he wanted to “go clean”. The final contact was a young café owner called Marko, who appeared to be in charge. He showed Radcliffe pictures of other allegedly stolen artworks, telling him: “There are many other cases if we give him a list of what we are after.” As the men talked, Radcliffe noticed a man standing guard with a submachine gun. Eight months after he first met him, Serbian police filed criminal charges against Marko “due to the fact that he possessed stolen paintings”, according to a spokeswoman for the Ministry of the Interior in Serbia.

Through Minic, the ALR paid them tens of thousands of pounds for information on a number of stolen artworks.

Speaking today, Radcliffe says he then had “no grounds to suspect” that any of his Balkan contacts had any direct involvement in art theft – although Marko was obviously in contact with people who were – and that he was comfortable doing business with them. Minic says that, “Marko is trusted by both sides,” and, “The Serbs know that he was not involved with the crime.” That same year, the three men helped Radcliffe locate Constructivo Blanco, a painting by Uruguayan artist Joaquín Torres-García, a work worth a six-figure sum. After the painting was returned, its insurers, Catlin Insurance, paid the ALR €60,000 in fees and expenses. €30,000 of this was kept by the ALR and the other half distributed between the Boxer’s group and the “criminal holders”.

Radcliffe says that the insurance company knew this was the case. In a note of his meeting with a Catlin representative, Radcliffe recorded that he and the insurance company agreed that at least some of the money would go “to the thief”. A Catlin spokesperson strongly denied this, and said the company would never have authorised such a payment. Radcliffe’s response is to suggest that the established art world authorities – the police, the insurers – cannot afford to admit what everyone else knows is the truth.

“Catlin have got to take that public position,” he says. “We kept the insurers fully informed and they knew that some payment would eventually end up with criminals.” Catlin continues to deny this.

When it comes to art recovery, Radcliffe is by no means the only game in town. Despite locating the two missing Picassos, it was not the Old Etonian who would ultimately take the credit for the safe return of the paintings. Radcliffe tried to obtain a contract to recover them with AXA Art, the insurers, but was rebuffed. AXA preferred to deal with a competitor of his, Dick Ellis, with whom it had a long-standing relationship. Ellis is a former police officer who set up the Art and Antiques Squad at Scotland Yard and now runs his own art recovery business, the Art Management Group. In person, Ellis exists as an almost exact counterweight to Radcliffe: ruddy-faced, bald and thickening where his competitor is pale, slender and with a sweep of well-groomed hair. You wouldn’t have to guess who is the ex-policeman and who is the aesthete.

Ellis even used the same contacts – Marko, the Boxer and Minic – to obtain information about the Picassos’ whereabouts. In fact, Ellis has an even closer relationship with the three. In 2011, he set up a company in Serbia called Art Management DOO with the Serbs listed as directors and equal owners. Like Radcliffe, Ellis maintains that these men are simply intermediaries in a part of the world where the legitimate and the illegal often intertwine.

“If you are investigating crimes and using information, then it’s quite common for the informants to have criminal connections,” says Ellis. “Marko is clearly well connected, but the degree to which he’s criminally involved is unclear to me. Despite my having provided law enforcement investigators with his details I saw no evidence to connect him criminally with any of these activities.” (He declines to say if he was aware that charges had been filed against Marko in 2012, however.)

The line between paying a ransom to a crook and paying a reward for information leading to a painting’s recovery is, in this world, easy to blur. Radcliffe believes that Ellis knew perfectly well that some of the fees he paid his contacts during recovery of the two Picassos would end up in criminal hands.

“AXA stated publicly that they had not paid criminals, on the rather shaky grounds that the payments were for information, not for stolen art,” he noted. Ellis says this description is “manifestly inaccurate and wrong”.

On a clear winter’s day, I meet a third player in this field, at a café beside Richmond Bridge in London. Charley Hill has operated as a private art investigator since 2002, having previously worked with Ellis at Scotland Yard. In 1994, he posed as an American collector as part of a sting to recover The Scream by Edvard Munch, which had been stolen from the National Gallery in Oslo. Today, he is seeking to recover a number of gold snuffboxes stolen from Lord Rothschild’s Waddesdon Manor home, collectively worth £5 million, goods that Radcliffe also happens to be on the trail of.

A mild, bespectacled figure, Hill boasts good contacts within the traveller community, and has enlisted James Quinn McDonagh – a championship bare-knuckle boxer – to set up introductions with individuals connected to the Rothschild thefts. “He and I are after all of Jacob Rothschild’s gold boxes, the Ashmolean Cézanne, and the Caravaggio stolen in Palermo in 1969,” says Hill. “He gets me into the travellers.” There is no suggestion that McDonagh had any involvement in the snuffbox thefts, but the very presence of a bare-knuckle boxing champion only serves as a reminder of the types of characters often involved in the recovery of artworks. In 2004, Radcliffe’s own notes show him visiting the Hyatt Regency Belgrade to meet someone known only as “the Boss Man”.

“He had thin aquiline features, slim build, balding, speaks Russian, certainly knowledgeable about where the pictures were stolen,” he noted. The Boss Man’s associates took Radcliffe “to a ground-floor office with a caged locking door where they showed me a Van Dyke stolen from a castle”. On another occasion, Radcliffe met a Bosnian general and an arms dealer, both of whom “controlled” stolen works of art, he said. He paid one group of “holders” €50,000 and another €25,000, ALR documents record.

Again, you wonder whether these artworks would ever be recovered without paying such people. “Paying criminals a ransom has to be wrong,” says Hill. But paying people for information “leading to the recovery of masterpieces” would be in the public interest. “You wouldn’t get it back any other way,” he says. “None of us are fools.”

Two individuals close to the Art Loss Register told me that Radcliffe’s forays into the Balkans were as much a desperate attempt to wrestle his company into financial health as an idealistic endeavour. The ALR, which has not made money for six years, had liabilities of more than £1 million in 2012.

“Distributing money to these individuals in Serbia I thought was wrong,” says one source close to Radcliffe, who wishes to remain unknown. “It’s in an absolute financial mess. If it wasn’t for Julian’s personal cash infusions the company would be insolvent.” (Radcliffe says he is confident the ALR will eventually make a profit.)

Last year, the ALR’s general counsel, a man called Chris Marinello, defected in order to set up his own art detection agency, Art Recovery International. He too questioned the methods of his former company. “The direction of the ALR, with these ingrained practices and questionable affairs of its management and board, was not aligned with my vision of how a due diligence business (or any business for that matter) should be run.” Upon announcing the creation of Art Recovery International, Marinello stressed that his own company would be run “ethically, responsibly and with respect for the rule of law”. Radcliffe is not surprised a competitor would criticise the ALR.

But even an experienced police officer such as Erhardy has, in a roundabout way, benefited from information sold by men like Marko. In November 2012, a Serbian thief called Goran Arsic stole a €500,000 Delacroix painting called The Arabs of Oran from a gallery near the Louvre. In May 2013, Dick Ellis travelled to Paris to seek permission from Erhardy and a French judge to recover the painting. When this was granted, Ellis travelled to Belgrade where, with the assistance of Marko, he was able to locate the stolen painting. Even though telephone records linked Arsic to Marko, Erhardy states he was satisfied that Ellis had acted appropriately. “His goal can help my goal,” the Frenchman says. A year after the original theft, Erhardy arrested Arsic in Paris.

Nevertheless, Erhardy maintains that the very nature of the art recovery industry means it is unlikely ever to become less murky. “Everyone is happy and everyone gets money,” he says, speaking of the cycle of theft, recovery and payments. “But you have to stop the situation otherwise you are encouraging more thefts.” Which may be true. But then, if you were to wake to find that two of your Picassos had gone missing, who would you call? There is no shortage of men ready to help you get them back. At least, for the right price.

Additional reporting by Katie Gibbons




Renaissance masterpiece by Guercino worth £5m stolen from Italian church
Lack of funds meant the security alarm protecting the masterpiece, stolen from a church in Modena, was not working


The painting, completed in 1639, would be hard to resell in Europe because of stringent controls on stolen art works, but the thieves might try to off-load it in the Far East, experts said. Photo: ANSA
Nick Squires
3:01PM BST 14 Aug 2014
A Renaissance masterpiece worth up to £5 million has been taken from a church in Italy, amid speculation that it may have been stolen to order by a private collector or could be cut up into pieces in an attempt to sell it on.
The large oil painting of the Madonna with St John the Evangelist, measuring approximately 10ft by 6ft, is by Guercino, a Baroque painter whose mastery of light and shade has drawn comparisons with Caravaggio.
It was stolen in the middle of the night from the church of San Vincenzo in the northern town of Modena earlier this week.
Curators admitted that lack of funds meant the alarms protecting the painting were not working.
"There was an alarm in the church, but it was inactive," said Monsignor Giacomo Morandi, of the archdiocese of Modena.
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31 Oct 2009
10 Mar 2009
It had been paid for by a donation from a local bank but once those funds dried up it had been switched off, he told Corriere della Sera newspaper.
"It's very difficult to protect every single work of art," he added.
The painting, completed in 1639, would be hard to resell in Europe because of stringent controls on stolen art works, but the thieves might try to off-load it in the Far East, experts said.
Or it may have been stolen to order by a Bond-style criminal mastermind, one art historian speculated.
"It may have been taken on the orders of a very rich, passionate art lover who wants to have it for himself, a bit like the head of Spectre in the 007 films," said Claudio Strinati, an expert on Guercino.
Vittorio Sgarbi, a well-known art critic, said the painting was "a monumental work" that would be worth between five and six million euros.
"How is it possible that the authorities allowed a work this valuable to remain without any security?" he asked.
Art historians feared that the thieves might cut the oil painting into pieces and try to sell them individually.
The theft is being investigated by officers from a specialist unit of the paramilitary Carabinieri police force.
The stealing of the painting had shocked Modena, the city's mayor said.
"This precious painting is part of the cultural heritage of Modena," said Gian Carlo Muzzarelli.
"The theft has affected not just the church but the whole city."

Stolen Art Watch, Noah Davis Proves Honest, Raw Journalism Lives, Presents Turbo Paul, Unpaid Warrior For Gardner Art Recovery

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Turbo Paul: Art Thief Turned Art Crime Ombudsman

• August 22, 2014 • 

rembrandt
 http://www.psmag.com/navigation/books-and-culture/turbo-paul-art-thief-turned-art-crime-ombudsman-89068/

There’s art theft, there’s law enforcement, and, somewhere in between, there’s Turbo Paul.
I stumbled across Turbo Paul Hendry somewhere in the gray areas of the Internet. He runs Art Hostage and Stolen Vermeer, two happily abrasive sites dedicated to speaking the truth about art thefts around the world. The proprietor, a former “knocker” himself, sees his position as an advocate and a go-between, providing the true story behind the investigations to recover stolen art. “Maybe I’m just a sucker for Dickens and silver-tongued nutters,” Virginia Heffernan wrote about Hendry a few years ago, “but it’s people like Turbo Paul who, to me, exemplify the possibilities of the open Web.” We spoke over instant messenger, which is how he prefers to communicate.
Why start Art Hostage? Was/is the goal to be an informational source, to drum up work for yourself, or something else?
I saw the reporting of art crime by the MSM [mainstream media] in a way like yellow journalism so I wanted to tell it like it is. I agree I can be toxic, but I am at least even-handed with my toxic views about the criminals and those who pursue stolen art. A paradox is sometimes the so-called good guys act like foxes guarding the hen house. When it comes to negotiating the recovery of stolen art, the bad guys want to deal and tell the truth, the so-called good guys lie and prevaricate to avoid any payments, even if those who provide vital information have nothing to do with the theft or subsequent handling of the said stolen artworks.
Do you see yourself as a middleman? You’re open about your past as a “knocker,” which I would imagine establishes some level of credibility with the so-called bad guys.
Noah, we live in a propaganda-filled world and sadly, journalists have to temper their articles a bit because of fear of being blackballed if they reveal too much truth.
I don’t set people up and do act as a middleman for stolen art when all other avenues have been exhausted. Kinda like The Equalizer for stolen art so to speak.
I like that. How many cases have you been directly involved with? Can you give me an example of one?

“It must be said, however, I am not all bad, as I do advise law enforcement on how to prevent art theft and act as a conduit between law enforcement and the underworld. But being an honest broker means I cannot sting people, otherwise I would lose 30 years of trust built up.”

I have been involved in too many cases to mention but the Da Vinci Madonna case is a fascinating case I was directly involved in. Also, I have consulted in most high-profile cases in recent years. My best work is done when I dance in the shadows and allow others to claim the limelight.
Very little stolen art is recovered these days, and I do get offers of stolen art every day but, sadly, law enforcement won’t allow many deals to happen, so I walk away and tell my contacts to walk away.
Does the visibility your site has gained surprise you?
Not really, because there are only a handful of art crime experts in the world, say six or seven, and I am the only one with the background of being a former trafficker.
Also, being a character and being able to articulate myself helps get over my message as the other experts are ex-law enforcement, insurance loss adjusters, etc., and they are one-dimensional and wooden.
My academic chops, having an M.A., B.A., Hons, etc. helps me and gives me some credibility, but I retain my street cred because I don’t do stings and set people up. Think about it: Where can you read about art crime other than the usual spin in the MSM? I am the only alternative who shoots from the lip.
That’s fair. How has what you do changed in the seven years you’ve had the site? Also, were you doing the same type of work before you started the site?
I got to the top of the stolen art world and retired. I then went to university, rather than play golf or go fishing. In the seven years since I started the site the amount of stings and recoveries has been reduced markedly. People with information have grown wise to the old stings and double-dealings of insurance loss adjusters, etc. so the flow of information has dried up for those investigating art-related crime. However, the dumb crooks still fall for the ruses of ex-law enforcement art crime investigators and loss adjusters, but most seek my council first.
It must be said, however, I am not all bad, as I do advise law enforcement on how to prevent art theft and act as a conduit between law enforcement and the underworld. But being an honest broker means I cannot sting people, otherwise I would lose 30 years of trust built up.
Look, when I comment that a case might be a set up or rewards are bullshit, I am not revealing a secret as most criminals can research the past cases of stings, although they may be referenced on my site.
Before the Internet, law enforcement and insurance agents could use and abuse informants and threaten them with exposure. All of this would happen in secret. Nowadays, the Internet provides a database of previous cases where stings have happened so less recoveries and less information is passed through.
The Gardner case proves the point of credibility. Every time anyone has stepped forward they have been hounded and threatened and even jailed to try and lever them to reveal all. The underworld firmly believes the Gardner museum reward offer of $5 million is bullshit. Think about it: The offer is for all the Gardner art back in good condition, even though when stolen back in 1990 it was cut from the frames therefore it is impossible to be in good condition, another get out clause to prevent payment of the reward. The immunity offer has conditions: Anyone offering help loses their right to take the Fifth and has to reveal all and be prepared to testify against those who have the Gardner art. Therefore, anyone with knowledge stays quiet.
The $5 million Gardner reward offer was made back in 1997 and not raised since so raising it may help?
If authorities really wanted just the Gardner art back, they would offer pure immunity for help and the reward would not have any conditions. So, until then we have to hope the Gardner art is found by authorities stumbling upon it, perhaps during another investigation, but that has been the hope for over two decades.
How can you help get it back?
When I say pure immunity I mean immunity only regarding the Gardner case, not any other cases, etc.
Give me a real immunity deal and concrete proof the reward will be paid, then I could help. I have stated many times I seek not one dime of the reward, but if I could guarantee the reward would be paid and immunity offered to those who could help, then the Gardner art would come home. I also said the Gardner art should be left in a Catholic church confession box to prevent a sting and that would be a kind of absolution for the art. The deal in place would need to be legally watertight so the post-recovery reward would be paid. Again, I seek none of the reward.
Where is the so-called reward? All we have is cheap talk. Why not put the Gardner reward in an escrow account? Why not announce the immunity is blanket and those stepping forward do not have to reveal anything other than the location of the art and then collect the reward. Of course, whomever stepped forward would have to stand the scrutiny of not being involved in the Gardner theft or handling of the art, but I am sure someone could be appointed to take point. But up until now anyone stepping forward gets hounded.
You see the MSM never ask these questions about the Gardner art, just make bullshit repeating the spin about reward and immunity.
What would it take for that to change?
I must say if law enforcement does not want the reward to be paid and want arrests, fine. But don’t try to bullshit all the time.
Each case is different. It depends on what gets stolen and if the desire to recover it overrides the desire to make arrests, then deals can be made. Case in point: the Turners stolen in Germany, which were on loan from the Tate gallery U.K. This is a classic buy back. By the way, buy backs are not illegal, go check. It is not illegal for a victim or an insurance company to buy back stolen art. They try to spin that line, “it’s illegal,” but in reality buy backs are perfectly legal.
Noah, you know the MSM play the game, and in a post-9/11 world, the MSM are terrified to really conduct investigative journalism. Step out of the MSM line and your career is over.
I agree with some of that, but also I think stolen art is pretty low on the priority list of most MSM organizations.
I am not saying rewards or fees should be paid all the time and encourage art theft, but art theft happens because thieves can and will continue regardless. But if someone has information that helps recover stolen art, then they should be paid. Information is a salable commodity but sadly authorities expect it for free.
What does that have to do with MSM and investigative journalism?
I agree with you and much reporting on art crime is one of lazy journalism, therefore just trot out the usual spin under a banner headline. Take the Jeffrey Gundlach case in L.A. He offered a huge reward and got his art back within weeks, and the informant got paid.
Why has the MSM not questioned the Gardner case more? Why not seek answers to the immunity offer and reward offer to smoke out the truth. Then perhaps by firming up both immunity and reward offers people may believe it and come forward?
I see your point. I thought it was interesting that you used Google for everything. Do you trust them with your information despite the sensitive nature of some of it?
Noah, Google guys are great. They provide me with their security so hackers cannot disrupt my site like they may be able to do with an independent site. To hack my blog, hackers would need to bypass Google security and being in California I get the benefit of freedom of speech, so I can be toxic.
I mean less about hackers and more about Google themselves. They have shown in the past that they will work with law enforcement to turn over emails, etc. I’m not saying you’re doing anything illegal—I don’t think you are at all—but I can imagine a situation in which you might have some information like that which someone sends you.
I love Google, America, and of course Israel.
You can say, however, I am even-handed with my toxic viewpoints.
I am a thorn in the side of crooks and law enforcement, as well as the insurance industry. I say what journalists would love to say, I do not have the burden of office.

Stolen Art Watch, Sunday Bloody Sunday, Art Related Crime Continues Un-abated

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  Arrest warrant issues for suspected art thief

 
Edgar Degas's 'Dancer adjusting her shoe'

Police believe stolen Degas has not left Cyprus

By Constantinos Psillides
SERGEI Tyulenev, the 55-year-old Russian suspected of involvement in the theft of a €6 million Edgar Degas picture, was remanded for eight days in custody on Monday by the Limassol District Court.
Police sources told the Cyprus Mail that the 55-year-old remains uncooperative with police investigators.
“He doesn’t answer any question pertaining to the case. He only responds to general questions,” said the source, adding that investigators think that the painting hasn’t left the island.
“Smuggling a painting out of the country is no easy feat. Since we almost apprehended all people apparently involved almost immediately, we think that the painting is still in Cyprus,” explained the police source.
The Russian surrendered himself to the police voluntarily. He walked into Paphos police station on Sunday where he was arrested and transferred to the Limassol Police Station.
Two Cypriot men, 53 and 44, are also in custody regarding the case.
The artwork is believed to be Degas’ pastel on paper, titled Dancer Adjusting Her Shoe, approximately 47cm by 61cm in size and dated late 19th century.
The picture was reported stolen by a 70-year-old art collector last week. The work  – along with other valuables worth €157,000 – was stolen from his home in Apaisia village in Limassol.
According to police sources, the two Cypriots are believed to have put Tyulenev, a Cypriot citizen and resident of Limassol, in touch with the 70-year-old, after the latter expressed interest in selling his estate and part of his vast art collection which included over 250 paintings from famous European painters, as well as sculptures, crystal and Victorian furniture.
The known art collector used to have an insurance policy on his valuable art collection. He did not have an alarm system installed.
However, following the Eurogroup’s decision in 2013 to seize deposits in Cyprus’ two biggest banks, the 70-year-old fell on hard times and cancelled his insurance policy, said the source.
He decided to sell his home and part of his collection, but specifically not the famous work from the great French impressionist which he had inherited.
The last person to show interest in the house and paintings was reportedly Tyulenev. The two Cypriot men arranged a meeting between the Russian and the 70-year-old at his home and then again last Monday at a lawyer’s office.
At the time of the burglary in Apaisia, the 70-year-old was with the Russian discussing the sale deal. Tyulenev reportedly told the seller that he wanted time for his lawyers to go over the contract. During this time, burglars gained entrance to the house by breaking through the front door, using a crowbar.
Russian national suspected of biggest art theft in history of Cyprus
NICOSIA, October 6. /TASS/. Russian national Sergei Tyulenev was arrested in Cyprus on Monday on suspicion of involvement in the theft of a painting by Edgar Degas that its 70-year-old owner from Limassol estimates at six million euros, a police source in Cyprus told TASS.
According to the source, Tyulenev, who is permanently residing in Cyprus, surrendered to police, turning up in the police office of Limassol with his lawyer on Sunday, after being put on the wanted list last week.
Police informed Interpol for the case the painting surfaced on the international art market.
Cyprus police said Tyulenev would spend eight days in custody for questioning. Cyprus media speculate that Tyulenev could be the mastermind of what is described as the biggest art theft in the history of Cyprus.
Two suspected accomplices of the Russian businessman were detained last week. Police spokesman Andreas Angelides told TASS on October 2 that there was no substantial evidence against the Russian businessman, and his apprehension was needed so that investigators could clarify some circumstances.

Arrest warrant issues for suspected art thief

By Stefanos Evripidou
POLICE ISSUED an arrest warrant yesterday for 55-year-old Sergei Tyulenev from Russia in connection with the reported theft of a 19th century Edgar Degas painting believed to be worth around €6 million.
Two Cypriot men, 44 and 53, have already been remanded in custody for eight days in connection with the case after a 70-year-old man reported the precious painting- along with other valuables worth €157,000- stolen from his home in Apaisia village in Limassol on Monday.
The painting is believed to be Degas’ pastel on paper, titled Dancer Adjusting Her Shoe, approximately 47cm by 61cm in size and dated late 19th century.
According to police sources, the two Cypriots previously lived in England and South Africa before relocating to Cyprus. They are believed to have put Tyulenev, a Cypriot citizen and resident of Limassol, in touch with the 70-year-old, after the latter expressed interest in selling his estate and part of his vast art collection.
The source described the pensioner’s home as one massive art gallery, filled wall to wall with over 250 paintings from famous European painters, as well as sculptures, crystal and Victorian furniture.
The known art collector used to have an insurance policy on his valuable art collection. He did not have an alarm system installed.
However, following the Eurogroup’s decision in 2013 to nab deposits in Cyprus’ two biggest banks, the 70-year-old fell on hard times and cancelled his insurance policy, said the source.
He decided to sell his home and part of his collection, but specifically not the famous painting from the great French impressionist, one of the founders of Impressionism.
The Degas came to his possession after his great grandmother who lived in Paris acquired it, added the source.
The last person to show interest in the house and paintings was reportedly Tyulenev. The two Cypriot men arranged a meeting between the Russian and the 70-year-old at his home and then again last Monday at a lawyer’s office.
At the time of the burglary in Apaisia, the 70-year-old was with the Russian discussing the sale deal. Tyulenev reportedly told the seller that he wanted time for his lawyers to go over the contract. During this time, burglars gained entrance to the house by breaking through the front door, using a crowbar.
They went straight for the Degas and a safe containing seven gold watches, three pairs of gold opera glasses and other items worth €157,000. The case marks the biggest art theft ever recorded in Cyprus.
The 55-year-old Russian has since gone missing.
Police are investigating the possible involvement of the two remanded men, and are examining information connecting others to the burglary.
An arrest warrant was issued yesterday for Tyulenev, who is described as being around 1.85m tall, well built, with blue eyes and very short blonde hair.
Anyone with information as to his whereabouts is asked to call Limassol CID, or their nearest police station or the Citizens’ Hotline on 1460.
European and international arrest warrants are expected to be issued within days, said the source.
Police have also requested information from the authorities in Russia, South Africa and England regarding the three suspects.
One local art collector and expert told the Cyprus Mail that they had seen the Degas painting hanging on the wall of the 70-year-old’s home at a party he had thrown.
The art expert described the pensioner as a “serious collector” who was known for spending all his money on his collection. “It was his life,” said the expert.
The artwork in question is part of Degas’ body of work studying ballet dancers, which includes the dreamy Blue Dancers.
According to HistoryofDrawing.com, by the end of his career, Degas produced over 700 pastels.
In Dancer Adjusting Her Shoe, he coloured the girl’s tights and bodice pink and her ribbon blue and added yellow ochre hatching “that radiates from her like a sunburst”.
The Art History News blog described the painting as “a prime example of Degas’ breathtakingly fluid draftsmanship and near-photographic instinct for capturing a fleeting moment”.
Following an online search, the Cyprus Mail discovered a near identical version of Dancer Adjusting Her Shoe, belonging to the Dixon Gallery and Gardens in Memphis, Tennessee, USA, dated 1885.
The Columbia Museum of Art in South Carolina also included a Dancer Adjusting Her Shoe at an Impressionism exhibition in early 2013.
Speaking to the Cyprus Mail last night, Mark Winter, art expert and authenticator working from Florida-based Degas Experts, said it was not uncommon for Degas to do many variations of the same composition and for these to have the same title.
Regarding dancers and their shoes, Winter said Degas “worked extensively on the theme”, producing many that ended up with the same or subtly different titles.
“Very often it is auctioneers or art critics who put titles on paintings… and once they get translated from French to English, they read exactly the same in English, even though the French version may have had a slight change.”
Having seen a picture of the stolen painting, Winter said: “It looks very strongly like an authentic work. I have a very favourable first impression of the painting.”
However, the expert said the €6m price tag was probably an optimistic view of its value.
“That’s definitely on the high side, but not extremely so. It may actually sell for €3m, or on a lucky day, if you have two Russian billionaires competing over it, you may get €4m,” he said.

€250,000 reward for stolen Vienna art
Detail from one of the stolen paintings by Oskar Kokoschka. Photo: Police

€250,000 reward for stolen Vienna art

The collection of paintings by celebrated Austrian artists including Oskar Kokoschka and Koloman Moser was valued at more than €2 million.
The 73-year-old owner was on holiday when her house in Hietzing was broken into in late August.
She initially reported that 71 works of art were missing but has since discovered that one more piece was taken.
The reward has been provided by an anonymous donor and the full amount will only be given if all 72 paintings are found. If only some are found, then a partial reward will be given.
Police said the reward was the highest that has ever been offered in Austria after such a theft, and that the Federal Police would only be involved as a coordinator and mediator, with the anonymous donor responsible for all details pertaining to the reward.

Painting worth €6m stolen from Limassol house (Updated)

Painting worth €6m stolen from Limassol house (Updated)
A 19th century Degas painting worth €6 million, along with other valuables worth €157,000 was stolen from the home of a 70-year-old in Limassol, police said on Tuesday.
Authorities have arrested two Cypriots, aged 44 and 53, in connection with the theft and they were also seeking a Russian man, 55.
The theft had been reported to police by the 70-year-old Cypriot who appears to be a collector.
He said his house had been broken into between 9.50am and 2.30pm on Monday.
Police said the Russian man had shown interest in buying another painting in the man’s collection. The other two suspects acted as middlemen.
The Degas was not for sale.
A viewing had been arranged 15 days ago and the Russian man also took pictures.
They arranged a meeting on Monday with their lawyers to close the deal. The painting was stolen while the 70-year-old was at the meeting.
The painting was not insured.
Along with the painting by French 19th century artist Edgar Degas – regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism – worth €6m, a safe containing seven gold watches, three pairs of gold opera glasses and other items worth €157,000 were also taken.
Two remanded over Degasart theft
Two Greek Cypriots, aged 44 and 53, were on Tuesday remanded in custody for eight days as part of police investigations into the theft of an Edgar Degas painting worth over €6m and other valuables from an Apesia village home, Limassol.
A third man, a 55-year-old Russian national, is also being sought.
According to the head of Limassol’s CID, Ioannis Soteriades, the 70-year-old Greek Cypriot owner of the house, part of which has been transformed into a gallery, also reported the theft of a safe containing seven gold watches, three pairs of gold opera glasses and 20 sets of gold cufflinks, all worth a total of €157,000.
The two men were arrested after the painting’s owner said they had, accompanied by the 55-year-old Russian suspect, visited his home a few days ago showing interest in purchasing the house and part of the art collection.
“It appears so far that the specific painting was targeted because other very valuable paintings at the house were not stolen,” Soteriades said. He added the Russian had been placed on the stop list.
The painting is reported to be Degas’ work ‘Ballerina adjusting her slipper.’ Degas, in the early 1870s, did a series of works featuring dancers adjusting their ballet slippers  Soteriades said investigations were also ongoing to confirm the work’s authenticity.

How Reddit Supports Trade in Stolen Goods, in Plain Sight of the Internet

"Fencing" is the buying or selling of stolen goods. As with most imaginable topics and persuasions, there are fencing communities on reddit, the popular internet message board. But what's remarkable about the fencers on this particular site is how brazen they are about discussing their crimes. 

 http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/09/25/How-Reddit-supports-trade-in-stolen-goods-in-plain-sight-of-the-internet

In this thread, called UK Fencing, which requires no registration to access, criminals can be seen asking for advice about how to move stolen goods and soliciting local connections who can sell on stolen electronics and jewellery.
The thread is hosted in a subreddit called DarkNetMarkets, which is primarily used by people seeking and selling illegal drugs on hidden websites - though much of their discussion about these hidden sites is conducted in the open.
It is just one of dozens of threads that can appear and disappear over the course of a year on reddit, prompting questions about how seriously the site takes its legal obligations. Websites such as reddit have fallen foul of the law before, since their radical commitment to "free speech" can sometimes run contrary to local free speech laws and even terrorism legislation.
Conversations that would normally be restricted to the "dark net" and accessible only with special software such as the Tor browser bleed out into the regular internet when places like reddit fail to police their own networks for illegal activity and instead facilitate introductions between thieves and resellers.
"I am trying to find a UK fencer (sell "obtained" goods on my behalf). Any one have any recommendations or experiences with any vendors?" asks the original poster on the UK Fencing thread, who goes by the screen name of milkybarkid_ta.
Like many of the posters in these forums, milkybarkid_ta's username has been active for only a short time, and is likely to go out of service soon, probably to be replaced by another handle, from another computer or device, operated by the same person.

Criminals use an internet service called a proxy server, which masks their location and identity, to post on these forums. But the messages they leave are there for all to see - until personally identifiable information comes into play, or phone numbers need to be swapped.
At that point, "PGP keys" are exchanged. These encryption keys provide a secure form of email that can only be read by the sender and decoded by the recipient. They cannot be usefully intercepted by law enforcement, internet service providers or hackers en route to their destination.
In other words, they allow thieves and resellers to communicate in private, where they can swap phone numbers and arrange drop-offs, pick-ups, sales and payments. The preferred payment method for many of these transactions is the digital currency Bitcoin, because unlike bank accounts and credit cards police cannot easily trace Bitcoin transactions.
"I will be getting all sorts," writes milkybarkid_ta, in response to a question about what kinds of stolen goods he has to sell. "Anything from PC hard drives to TV's. Item's are SE'd, not carded. Need someone to accept delivery and sell them on."

"Carded" is understood to refer to products purchased using stolen credit cards. Goods bought with stolen cards are less desirable because they hold serial numbers that can be traced back to the cardholder and are thus slightly easier for the police to investigate.
"SE'd" is shorthand for socially-engineered, or blagged, items. "Social engineering" is a fencing euphemism for conning a store, company or private individual out of property by coercion, confidence trickery or simply robbery. Such goods are harder to trace and command higher prices on the black market.
Another user, who calls himself deep_anal_thrusts, can be seen offering advice to milkybarkid_ta on how to sell on stolen property. "Bruh, look on craigslist for people that buy electronics/jewelry etc. They are ALL fences...I did it for about five years. Just don't mention that it's hot and 90% of the time the guy won't even ask," he writes.
Moderators, the also-anonymous users who maintain these forums, say in their guidelines: "We (/r/DarkNetMarkets mods) do not condone or endorse anything posted on this subreddit. Use your own judgment. ... Your security is in your own hands; never assume that a Darknet Market site or vendor is safe, secure, or trustworthy. Do your own research and be responsible."
But those disclaimers are unlikely to insulate posters, or reddit itself, from liability should the police come knocking. And, in the past, cybercrime investigators have been known to pose as a variety of different sort of criminal to gain access to secret forums and to conduct sting operations. 

Posters on these forums are aware that security is lax and real identities are anyone's guess. "Lol you're gonna give your address, one you use to order drugs, to some random guy claiming to have fenced goods," writes one interlocutor, apparently surprised at how credulously a poster called boredraw is behaving. 
But they continue to use the forums, because there is so much of reddit to monitor the company does an exceedingly poor job of managing its own network. reddit-wide policies and local laws are routinely ignored when moderation is left to anonymous regulars, rather than staff with legal culpability. 
There is no way to know how much stolen property effectively passes through reddit, because much of the communication happens in private messages and then out in the real world. The site must surely know that it is being used as a speed-dating site for the criminal underclasses.
The internet makes certain kinds of crime easier than ever to conduct - but it also makes it easier than ever to catch bone-headed would-be miscreants in the act, too. We contacted reddit for comment, but they had not responded as we went to press.

Calgary artist hopes to recover stolen paintings

 Calgary artist hopes to recover stolen paintings

Natalie Kurzuk, a Calgary painter, was shocked to find out that two of her pieces may have been stolen after they were delivered to Saskatoon.

Photograph by: Supplied photo , The StarPhoenix

Natalie Kurzuk has mailed artwork to galleries as far away as New York and Jamaica, but the Calgary painter was shocked to find out that two of her paintings may have been stolen after they were delivered to Saskatoon.
Kurzuk had been accepted into the Members' Show Sale at the Mendel Art Gallery, and had sent the pieces by private courier to a friend's house on Sept. 3. However, the friend wasn't home to accept the packages due to a medical emergency.
Kurzuk says she had given instructions for the packages to be left in the veranda.
She received confirmation from the courier that they were delivered at 4:30 p.m. the day after she sent them. Her friend arrived three hours later, but the paintings were missing.
"I've called (the courier company), who said they would do some research, but I have yet to hear anything back," Kurzuk said.
Kurzuk, who wasn't able to mail the paintings directly to the Mendel since the showing is a fundraiser, has filed a report with the police.
"From what I hear, there are people who watch the trucks and when they see them drop them off, they'll pick them up," she said.
She values the paintings at $800 each. She mailed them without insurance because the courier company requires specific paperwork for artwork, she said.
"You can't insure the paintings unless you take them to a gallery to be formally appraised." Kurzuk is offering a reward for information leading to the recovery of the paintings, which feature abstract images of crows, and is hopeful the artwork will be returned.
"These paintings could still show up someplace," she said.
"If anyone sees them on a wall or a pawnshop or anywhere, maybe they will recognize them."

Miami Is a Hub for Stolen Art and Artifacts

Miami Is a Hub for Stolen Art and Artifacts

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol Officer Herbert Kercado (pictured) discovered this ancient sarcophagus at Miami International Airport in 2008. It was eventually returned to Egypt.
Two summers ago, Miami was the stage for one of the strangest FBI sting operations on record. On July 17, 2012, undercover agents set up a clandestine deal in a pricey South Beach hotel room. With hidden cameras recording his every move, an unwitting suspect carefully removed the much-coveted object from inside a cardboard tube. Then the cops kicked down the door.
But the illicit good wasn't an assault rifle or a brick of Colombian yeyo. It was a stolen painting.
The recovery in Miami of Henri Matisse's Odalisque in Red Pants— described in our September 4 feature, "Vanishing Point"— was no fluke, however. Miami may still be maturing as an international cultural capital, but it's long been a black-market boomtown. Dozens of near-priceless pieces of art or antiquities have mysteriously surfaced in Miami, only to be seized by authorities.
"We do know that Miami is a point of entry for a lot of this stuff," says Stephen Urice, a law professor at the University of Miami who studies stolen artifacts.
Why Miami? It's a convenient meeting point for rich Americans, Europeans, and Latinos, and its airport is one of the busiest in the world. But the Matisse case and others suggest Miami is especially fertile ground for furtive deals, whether it's illegal arms or artwork.
"There's a lot of money in South Florida, some of it dirty,'' U.S. Customs spokesman Michael Sheehan told the Miami Herald in 1999. "They know the people will keep it quiet because their money is dirty just like the art is hot.''
The trend began in the '80s, when the city was flush with drug money. In 1982, some South Florida businessmen plotted to hold paintings by Degas, Monet, and Whistler for ransom. If their demands weren't met, they would send the shredded art to the New York Times. Instead, FBI agents posing as museum tour guides took down the gang before it could nab the paintings. During the arrest, the feds found two pieces by Rubens stolen years earlier.
Seven years later, a retired Argentine policeman was apprehended with a stolen Goya in Miami Beach. Another Rubens was found inside a briefcase aboard a flight from Nicaragua. In 1993, a mashup of Marilyn Monroe and Mao Zedong was recovered from Colombian drug smugglers. And in 1999, the FBI found Jacob Jordaens'The Last Supper at a La Quinta Inn in Plantation.
Most common are cases of pre-Columbian artifacts smuggled through Miami, Urice says. In 1982, for instance, customs agents at Miami International Airport found $200,000 worth of Mayan jewelry inside a box marked "garden tools." Six years later, it was ancient Peruvian pottery hidden inside cheap furniture. Perhaps the strangest find was in 1995, when MIA inspectors discovered a solid-gold ceremonial rattle and a mummified head inside a crate, also from Peru. Or maybe it was the shipment of decorated craniums from the same country intercepted at MIA in 2003.
Not all the loot comes from Latin America. In 1991, the FBI found $7 million worth of stolen Irish antiquities — including the headstone for Saint Dermot's grave — on a 54-foot sailboat. Eight years later, the feds dug into a crate of fresh fish and found 271 items lifted from the Archaeological Museum of Ancient Corinth in Greece.
The title of South Florida's shadiest seized artifact, however, easily goes to the Egyptian sarcophagus uncovered at MIA in 2008. An American collector had bought the coffin in Spain. But when he tried to import it to the States, Egyptian officials cried foul. The sarcophagus was returned to Cairo two years later.
Urice says some oddball collectors with an obsession don't try too hard to find out where their new prize came from. Other times, the stolen art simply becomes currency on Silk Road or other black markets.
"It's like, 'I'll trade my Matisse for some cocaine, and then you give me some arms for my cocaine; I trade those arms for a Picasso...'" Urice says. "Just about everything is for sale."

Valuable antiques stolen in ram raid







damage
Substantial damage at the antiques shop Credit: Hants Police

Detectives in Aldershot are appealing for witnesses and information after a high-value burglary at an antiques shop in Eversley.
At about 2.30am on Thursday, September 25, unknown offenders used a vehicle to break into the barn in Church Road, which is used as an antiques shop.
Once inside they stole silverware, jewellery and other antique item valued at more than £15,000.
Acting Detective Sergeant Gavin Whyte said: 'It is believed a number of people were involved in this incident and they may have been wearing masks to cover their faces.'"

Police appeal after antiques stolen from Bishop's Waltham home

A POLICE appeal has been launched following the theft of antiques and china from a home in Bishop’s Waltham.
Burglars forced entry into the house in Ashton Lane on Wednesday, September 3, at around 3.45am.
PC Jasmine Connolly, of Winchester police station, said: “We would like to hear from anyone who saw anything suspicious in the area at the time of the incident, or possibly days leading up to it.”
 $89,000 shotgun stolen in Manchester

Provided Photo

A rare, very expensive shotgun featuring intricate carving on its silver sideplates was stolen from a Manchester store Wednesday.
MANCHESTER — Police are looking for two men and a Great Dane in connection to the theft of a shotgun valued at $89,000.

The gun was stolen from the Covey and Nye store on Main Street on Wednesday.

Manchester Police Officer Abigail Zimmer said the shotgun was made by Luciano Bosis, an Italian gunmaker. It’s a Michelangelo .410 over-under shotgun with gamebirds engraved on the sideplates, blue barrels and a silver frame with a highly figured walnut stock.

The website Shotgun Life said in a 2013 article that a standard Bosis shotgun similar to the one reported stolen could sell for about $140,000 even without engraving.

Lars Jacob, the gun room manager for Covey and Nye, said he wants to see the gun returned.

“That gun is a one of a kind,” he said. “… There’s no other gun made like it. … It’s a collectible but it’s what we call an ‘art form with reason’ so people will shoot it.”

Zimmer said police are looking for two white men in connection with the theft. The first is a clean-cut man, about 5 feet, 8 inches tall, in his mid-30s or early 40s with dark hair. Witnesses said he was well dressed, wearing lighter clothing and a long jacket or possibly a blue suit coat.

The second man was about 6 feet tall with long, black and gray “stringy” hair that runs to his mid-neck in his mid- to late 30s. He had no facial hair and was wearing dark pants with a form of wrappings around his lower calf and clog-type shoes.

Witnesses said the second man had a very large, brown-tan Great Dane with him in the store.

Zimmer said an employee at Covey and Nye told her Thursday that both men walked into the store around 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday and were “acting strange.”

The second man spoke with the employee while the first man walked toward the gun room. After a short time the first man returned to the front desk with merchandise he indicated he was going to buy.

The first man asked to have a blouse gift wrapped but then said he forgot his wallet and said he needed to run out and grab it.

Both men left and never returned, the employee said.

Another witness saw the two men getting into a car that may have been a black Ford Focus. The second witness could not provide police with any information about the license plate or in which direction the men drove.

Jacob said an over-and-under shotgun is usually used by bird hunters or clay target shooters. The gun has two barrels and can only hold two shells at a time.

Guns like the one stolen are for a very high-end market. Jacob said he only sells about four to five a year, but if the person who takes the gun tries to sell it, they may find that very difficult despite the value.

Jacob said a reputable gun dealer would recognize it as a distinctive piece and wouldn’t buy or sell it.

The theft has been reported to federal authorities and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, according to Jacob.

“It’s like trying now to sell a piece of Picasso art that you stole,” he said. “Almost impossible.”

Zimmer asked that anyone with information about the theft, the suspects, or the shotgun to call the Manchester Police Department at 362-2121.

£6,000 of antiques stolen in raid on Cumbrian home

A man who had thousands of pounds worth of antiques stolen from his home says some of the items taken are irreplaceable.
doulton001
Valuable: Royal Doulton and Coalport lady figurines
John Dalrymple is stepping up security at his north Cumbrian home after it was targeted by raiders.
He is coming to terms with the loss of a collection of antiques he says were worth about £6,000.
Thieves struck at his home, at Laversdale, near Carlisle.
Photographs of the haul have been released in the hope that they might be recognised by someone and spur them to contact police.
Mr Dalrymple, 50, is looking to install a camera system at his home.
He told The Cumberland News: “Once you know somebody’s been in, you’re worried they might come back.”
Burglars stole a collection of Royal Doulton and Coalport figurines, three Crown Derby plates and a silver tray from the property on Saturday, August 30.
“A fair bit of silver went and some of it had been engraved. There were one or two specific pieces which I won’t find again. There was a little perfume bottle with a silver cupped bottom. It was quite expensive,” said John.
The perfume bottle was made of three smaller bottles that fit together in a silver cylinder. “I’ve never seen anything like that before,” he added.
John, who works for Carlisle company Story Rail, has neighbours all around him. He said the downstairs blinds were always kept shut. He came home to find that the thieves had broken in through a window, damaging other valuables in the process.
PC Graham Thompson is investigating the theft.
He said: “They’ve been specially selected. They’ve gone around the house and picked up what they want. It’s someone with knowledge.
“I don’t think a normal burglar would be bothered to take them. It’s someone that knows about the value of these items.”
Local antiques dealers have been made aware of the incident and of what was taken.
Thief who has been committing crimes since 1972 admits stealing antiques from fair at Ardingly Showground

A SERIAL offender has admitted stealing antiques including silver spoons worth £400 from stall-holders at a fair at Ardingly Showground – despite making a "conscious effort" not to break the law after spending time in prison.
Gary Doyle appeared at Crawley Magistrates' Court on Wednesday last week (September 10) where he pleaded guilty to three charges of theft.
On July 23 this year, Doyle, 57, visited an antiques fair and stole three silver spoons, a china figurine worth £200 and two silver inkwells worth £100.
Prosecutor Melanie Wotton said: "At 1.50 in the afternoon police were called to Ardingly Antiques Fair following reports of a shoplifter there.
"It appears police came across Mr Doyle who had been detained by a security officer.
"It appears that Mr Doyle had been seen to select and steal a number of items.
"As a result of seeing him doing that they manage to grab hold of him as he went to run off. In his bag was found ink wells and also a figurine."
Ms Wotton told magistrates that Doyle has 33 previous convictions for 55 offences, dating back to 1972, including burglary and theft.
He had been to prison and was also handed a suspended jail sentence for a further offence, which was committed after those for which he was appearing in court.
Chair of the bench Peter McKenzie was handed a form meant to show Doyle's income and outgoings, which had not been filled in, and told him "this is totally unacceptable", before questioning how he could live with no money coming in.
Doyle said his girlfriend pays for everything for him, and that he occasionally did gardening work.
Representing himself, Doyle said he tried not to break the law after being sentenced to 12 months' imprisonment in 2012 for a number of thefts.
He said: "I did make a conscious effort not to get into any type of illegal activity.
"I did make a conscious effort even though I was struggling (financially).
"I can offer the court no viable excuse except that I had no money and did a stupid thing."
Mr McKenzie fined Doyle £73 and ordered him to pay a £20 victim surcharge and £85 costs.
Mr McKenzie said: "Mr Doyle, you already are fully aware that you are on a suspended prison sentence, which was given to you after the date of this offence."
He added: "Because you haven't had legal representation I will make this clear and easy for you to understand – after that suspended prison sentence, if you commit any more crimes for which you are found guilty or plead guilty you will go to prison for 16 weeks."
Doyle, from Hampton, south west London, was also asked if he could pay his fine that day, to which he replied: "I have got about £1.60 on me."

$100,000 Reward for Missing ‘Jennies’








Four stamps known to collectors as Inverted Jennies were stolen in 1955.Credit American Philatelic Research Library
Working swiftly and silently, someone cut the rope securing the leg of the display case and inched it forward. A sheet of protective glass was slid back, and four rare stamps were plucked from their display frame.
Minutes later — around 9:30 on a September morning in 1955 — a delegation of esteemed philatelists strolled down the row of display cases, looking expectantly for the star item of the collection: a block of four famous 24-cent stamps with the airplane in the center printed upside down in error. The stamp is known to collectors as the Inverted Jenny, after the nickname of the Curtiss JN-4 biplane.
But the block was gone. The Federal Bureau of Investigation interviewed the armed guards and others in the room and came up empty, unable to even name a suspect.
In the nearly 60 years since that theft, two of the stamps have been recovered, but the other two remain lost. Now, a prominent stamp dealer is offering a $100,000 reward to try to help close the case.
Donald Sundman, the president of the Mystic Stamp Company, a mail-order firm in Camden, N.Y., announced Saturday at an annual gathering of airmail stamp collectors that he was putting up $50,000 for each of the two missing Inverted Jennies.






Photo

Ethel B. Stewart McCoyCredit George Amick and American Philatelic Association

Separately, the American Philatelic Research Library in Bellefonte, Pa., which was given ownership of the stolen stamps in 1980, is offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to their recovery.
“It would be a great thing for the library if these stamps were recovered,” Mr. Sundman said. He made headlines in 2005 when he was involved in a swap involving a different block of four Inverted Jennies valued at nearly $3 million.
The stolen block belonged to Ethel B. Stewart McCoy, one of the most prominent philatelists of her day. Ms. McCoy was a New Yorker and the daughter of Charles Milford Bergstresser, a journalist who with Charles Dow and Edward Jones was a founder of Dow Jones & Company. Her inherited wealth allowed her to happily indulge her collecting passions, which included airmail stamps of the world and stamps depicting palm trees, of which she had three albums full.
Her Inverted Jenny block was one of just a half-dozen surviving intact from the original sheet of 100 misprints, bought over a post office counter in 1918 by a lucky broker’s clerk who quickly resold them to a prominent collector. That collector dispersed the sheet, mostly as single stamps, after numbering each one on the back in pencil.
Ms. McCoy’s foursome had been a gift in 1936 from her first husband, so its sentimental value to her greatly exceeded the $15,000 she insured it for before lending it to the American Philatelic Society to exhibit at its Norfolk, Va., convention in the fall of 1955.
What happened afterward is described in detail by George Amick in his 1986 book, “The Inverted Jenny: Money, Mystery, Mania.”
In 1958, the first of the four stamps resurfaced, separated from its siblings, in the possession of a Chicago stamp dealer named Louis Castelli. Experts, comparing details like the perforations around the stamp’s edge and flyspeck variations in its printing to photographs of the stolen block, were in no doubt as to its identity.

How Mr. Castelli had obtained it was not adequately explained, but the F.B.I. declined to pursue the matter, unsure whether the single stamp’s value at the time passed the $5,000 threshold allowing it to investigate.
Twenty years went by, and Mr. Castelli offered the stamp for sale again. This time, the F.B.I. seized it, but Mr. Castelli was not charged with any crime.
When Ms. McCoy had collected her insurance money after the theft, she stipulated that she could buy back the stamps if they ever turned up. By the late 1970s, though, she could not remember the insurance company’s name, and the firm never came forward.
She donated the recovered stamp to the American Philatelic Research Library, of which she was a supporter, and it was auctioned for $115,000.
Shortly after Ms. McCoy died in 1980 at the age of 87, a second so-called McCoy invert reappeared in the hands of another Chicago-area stamp dealer, who offered it to the library as a tax-deductible gift.
The F.B.I. investigated again, but after a quarter century the trail was cold. A federal court in New York affirmed the library’s ownership, and the second McCoy stamp remains on display there.
The last two of the stamps are still at large.
“It’s possible that the two remaining missing stamps were innocently acquired by collectors decades ago who did not realize they had been stolen,” Mr. Sundman said. “With the passage of time, the heirs of those collectors may not realize they’ve inherited stolen property.”
Like the recovered stamps, the remaining pair may have been altered in an effort to obscure their identity. The little penciled numbers marking their original positions in the sheet — 66 and 76 — are likely to have been partly erased. Nevertheless, experts are confident they would be able to authenticate them.
Five other examples of the Inverted Jenny have been sold at auction in 2014, at prices ranging from $126,500 to $575,100 each. But anyone trying to sell a missing McCoy stamp would be in for a rude surprise: Still considered a stolen good, it would have to be forfeited.
Rob Haeseler, a library official in charge of efforts to recover the McCoy inverts, said anyone who thinks he or she might have one should reach out to the library or to the American Philatelic Society, with which it is affiliated, for information on how to submit the stamps and claim the reward.
Although the F.B.I. declined to comment, Roger S. Brody, the library’s president, said the library had no interest in pressing charges for the theft or possession of the stamps.
“We just want the stamps back,” Mr. Brody said.

Art thief makes case for release









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A life-long criminal, responsible for the country's biggest robbery of its time and still holding the title of our biggest art heist, is back in court in a bid to be released from prison.
Ricardo Romanov, who also goes by the names Anthony Ricardo Sannd and Ricardo Genovese, has a string of convictions for armed robberies including in October 1984 when he and Charles Thomas Willoughby carried out what was then the country's biggest robbery - $294,529 taken from a security van at an Auckland Foodtown supermarket.
His most high-profile crime came in 1998 when he rushed into the Auckland Art Gallery carrying a shotgun, grabbed a James Tissot painting worth $2 million, and made a speedy getaway on a motorbike. A week later police arrested him and found the valuable artwork under his bed.
He was jailed for nearly 14 years for the Tissot snatch and grab, with more jail time added on for separate thefts of various motorbikes.
He was released on parole in March last year. Less than two months later the 63-year- old was back in jail due to the disappearance of yet another motorbike, this one a $130,000 Ducati. The Parole Board recalled him to jail also to complete his sentence for the Tissot theft.
Romanov used the ancient right of a habeas corpus writ (the right to demand to have a court decide whether he was being held legally) to challenge the Parole Board decision and try to get himself out of jail. His bid was rejected by the High Court at Auckland in March.
However, Romanov was back in the High Court at Auckland before Justice Geoffrey Venning this morning to appeal the Parole Board's decision to recall him to prison.
In the past, Romanov has resorted to other means to spring himself from prison. In February 2006, as an inmate at Rangipo Prison, he ran off on his first day of work at a prison farm.
After four weeks on the run, the Armed Offenders Squad surrounded a house in Pukekohe. Several firearms were found and Romanov, who is bald, was found wearing a wig that was described as looking "like a cat without any legs".
Detective Senior Sergeant Neil Grimstone said at the time that the wig was the same one that Romanov wore a week earlier when he took a BMW for a test drive but failed to return it.
The subsequent convictions saw another three years heaped on to his original sentence and Romanov was back behind bars - all up, his jail time was now to be 19 years.
The profusion of sentences he faced then caused confusion at the courts - Romanov appealed the sentence handed down for his escape and a High Court judge set all the sentences aside and imposed a new one. But in doing so he seemed to make a mistake, misreading the length of one of the earlier sentences.
That set the ground for Romanov to argue his current recall by the Parole Board was technically illegal because the shorter sentence meant he was no longer subject to Parole Board oversight. 
Today Romanov's lawyer Quentin Duff said the career criminal had effectively served his sentence and the Parole Board did not have jurisdiction to haul him back behind bars.
Duff said Romanov said "at what stage am I allowed the comfort of finality?".
Meanwhile, crown prosecutor Briar Charmley said the Parole Board did act within its jurisdiction when recalling Romanov.
Romanov was subject to recall as his statutory release date had not yet passed, Charmley.
The prisoner's statutory release date did not roll around until next year so while Romanov was able to be released on parole he could be recalled to prison until the date of his statutory release date had passed, according to the Parole Act 2002, she said.
Charmley said Romanov posed a risk to public safety and had a propensity to commit property theft.

LAPD's art theft unit is a piece of work

Detective Don Hrycyk , LAPD Art Theft Detail, shows how a theft had replaced an original Anders Zorn painting with a photograph and how the owners didn't realized the painting was stolen until a few month later. According to their website the Art Theft Detail has recovered $107,153,898 worth of art and is the only full-time municipal law enforcement unit in the United States devoted to the investigation of art crimes. ED
Tibetan artifacts shouldn’t be stashed among a pack of pot-bellied pigs, but that’s how Detective Don Hrycyk found them.
They’d been stolen over a decade earlier by a man who’d befriended the owner, a New York art collector and scholar.
Police received a tip that the culprit, a man who’d gained the trust of the owner, was living in Los Angeles. They paid him a visit. When they entered the Wilshire district home, they found squalor replete with live pigs, hay – and the stolen artifacts. They were chipped and covered in dust, a far cry from how they’d been exhibited with care in their rightful home.
Hrycyk, 63, has made more such discoveries as head and often lone investigator of the country’s only known unit dedicated to full-time investigations of art crimes.
Welcome to the Los Angeles Police Department’s Art Theft Detail.
A SOLO EFFORT
Hrycyk has been with the department for 40 years this past March, and 20 years as the only known full-time art cop in the country. He’s worked without a partner for most of those years and has recovered more than $107 million worth of stolen property since 1994, according to the LAPD.
“These are big cases, multimillion-dollar cases. The problem is that it was never meant for one person, wandering a city of 4 million people and handling these cases alone,” he said.
When it comes to high-profile art, Hrycyk interacts with museum curators, academics and experts to identify fake replicas, appraise values and learn about artists.
The partners Hrycyk has had last only a short while, either getting promotions or moving to other departments. It’s never really enough time for them to get a good handle on the art scene. It took Hrycyk years to learn more about art in Los Angeles. Though he appreciates art more, to him, the job is about business: catching the bad guy.
The unit was created in 1983, the year of a rise in art theft. With galleries, film studios and all kinds of artists, the city became a hub for thieves.
“Some of these things, the losses were large amounts of money, hundreds of thousands of dollars and we weren’t particularly effective in solving those crimes or in finding the property. So that kind of started the idea,” Hrycyk said.
He was tired of seeing dead bodies in the homicide division in South Central Los Angeles, so he applied to the Burglary Auto Theft Division. There, he was informed he’d be working in the newly formed art unit. He didn’t have much art experience, but he learned from Bill Martin, the detective who founded the unit. When Martin retired in 1994, it was up to Hrycyk to carry on the mission.
CHASING DOWN THIEVES
What is considered art? Hrycyk still can’t say for certain. His goal is to catch a thief and recover property for a rightful owner.

CAMDEN, N.Y. — A reward of up to $100,000 is being offered to locate two of the world’s most famous rare postage stamps that are still missing after they were stolen from the exhibit of a wealthy New York City woman in Virginia nearly 60 years ago. They were part of an intact block of four stamps from the fabled sheet of 100 “Inverted Jenny” airmail stamps mistakenly printed in 1918 with an upside down image of a Curtis Jenny airplane.
“It’s possible that the two remaining missing stamps were innocently acquired by collectors
Inverted Jenny Stamp
Recovered in 1981 and now owned by the American Philatelic Research Library, this is one of the two recovered, famous 1918 “Inverted Jenny” misprinted 24¢ airmail stamps that was part of New York City collector Ethel B. McCoy’s intact block of four stamps stolen in 1955.  A reward of $50,000 each now is being offered for the two stamps that are still missing after nearly 60 years. (Photo courtesy American Philatelic Research Library)
decades ago who did not realize they had been stolen. With the passage of time, the heirs of those collectors may not realize they’ve inherited stolen property,” said Donald Sundman, President of Mystic Stamp Company in Camden, New York.
Sundman is offering the reward of $50,000 per stamp on behalf of their current, legal owners, the American Philatelic Research Library in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania.
He made the reward announcement, Saturday, September 13, 2014, at Aerophilately 2014, an annual convention of airmail stamp collectors held at the American Philatelic Society headquarters in Bellefonte.
For 19 years the stamps were the prize possession of Ethel B. McCoy (1893 – 1980), a patron of performing arts and an avid collector whose father, Charles Bergstresser, was a co-founder of the Dow Jones company.
She acquired the block of four Inverted Jenny 24-cent denomination airmail stamps for $16,000 in 1936, and it was stolen in September 1955 while on exhibit at the American Philatelic Society convention in Norfolk, Virginia.
The block was broken apart, and one of the stolen stamps was discovered in 1977, another in 1981. Both were recovered with the participation of the FBI.
Before she died at the age of 87 in 1980, McCoy donated both of them along with the legal rights to the two still missing stamps to the American Philatelic Research Library.
McCoy’s first husband, Bert A. Stewart, a coin collector, died in 1936. In 1941 she married a prominent stamp collector, Walter R. McCoy, and they were active in philatelic organizations. In 1937 she was named a director of the American Air Mail Society and was posthumously named to the American Philatelic Society Hall of Fame in 1981.
“The Inverted Jenny stamps are a philatelic treasure, but title to the two missing McCoy stamps belongs to the library. If someone tried to sell one of them now, it would be seized and they’d have nothing. This is an opportunity to turn in the stamps for a $50,000 reward for each one, assuming they have not been damaged beyond recognition,” Sundman explained.
Only 100 of the legendary Inverted Jenny stamps were ever reported, all coming from a single sheet purchased in 1918 at a Washington, D.C. Post Office by William T. Robey for their combined face value, $24. In short order, the sheet changed hands and it was broken apart, sometimes as single stamps, sometimes as blocks.
“Many people who have never licked a stamp hinge know about the Post Office printing error that produced an inverted biplane on a 24¢ airmail stamp in 1918. To them it is ‘the
- See more at: http://www.antiquetrader.com/antiques/collectibles/philatelic-society-offering-100000-reward-return-stolen-rare-stamps#sthash.LiWz3fKB.dpuf
CAMDEN, N.Y. — A reward of up to $100,000 is being offered to locate two of the world’s most famous rare postage stamps that are still missing after they were stolen from the exhibit of a wealthy New York City woman in Virginia nearly 60 years ago. They were part of an intact block of four stamps from the fabled sheet of 100 “Inverted Jenny” airmail stamps mistakenly printed in 1918 with an upside down image of a Curtis Jenny airplane.
“It’s possible that the two remaining missing stamps were innocently acquired by collectors
Inverted Jenny Stamp
Recovered in 1981 and now owned by the American Philatelic Research Library, this is one of the two recovered, famous 1918 “Inverted Jenny” misprinted 24¢ airmail stamps that was part of New York City collector Ethel B. McCoy’s intact block of four stamps stolen in 1955.  A reward of $50,000 each now is being offered for the two stamps that are still missing after nearly 60 years. (Photo courtesy American Philatelic Research Library)
decades ago who did not realize they had been stolen. With the passage of time, the heirs of those collectors may not realize they’ve inherited stolen property,” said Donald Sundman, President of Mystic Stamp Company in Camden, New York.
Sundman is offering the reward of $50,000 per stamp on behalf of their current, legal owners, the American Philatelic Research Library in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania.
He made the reward announcement, Saturday, September 13, 2014, at Aerophilately 2014, an annual convention of airmail stamp collectors held at the American Philatelic Society headquarters in Bellefonte.
For 19 years the stamps were the prize possession of Ethel B. McCoy (1893 – 1980), a patron of performing arts and an avid collector whose father, Charles Bergstresser, was a co-founder of the Dow Jones company.
She acquired the block of four Inverted Jenny 24-cent denomination airmail stamps for $16,000 in 1936, and it was stolen in September 1955 while on exhibit at the American Philatelic Society convention in Norfolk, Virginia.
The block was broken apart, and one of the stolen stamps was discovered in 1977, another in 1981. Both were recovered with the participation of the FBI.
Before she died at the age of 87 in 1980, McCoy donated both of them along with the legal rights to the two still missing stamps to the American Philatelic Research Library.
McCoy’s first husband, Bert A. Stewart, a coin collector, died in 1936. In 1941 she married a prominent stamp collector, Walter R. McCoy, and they were active in philatelic organizations. In 1937 she was named a director of the American Air Mail Society and was posthumously named to the American Philatelic Society Hall of Fame in 1981.
“The Inverted Jenny stamps are a philatelic treasure, but title to the two missing McCoy stamps belongs to the library. If someone tried to sell one of them now, it would be seized and they’d have nothing. This is an opportunity to turn in the stamps for a $50,000 reward for each one, assuming they have not been damaged beyond recognition,” Sundman explained.
Only 100 of the legendary Inverted Jenny stamps were ever reported, all coming from a single sheet purchased in 1918 at a Washington, D.C. Post Office by William T. Robey for their combined face value, $24. In short order, the sheet changed hands and it was broken apart, sometimes as single stamps, sometimes as blocks.
“Many people who have never licked a stamp hinge know about the Post Office printing error that produced an inverted biplane on a 24¢ airmail stamp in 1918. To them it is ‘the
- See more at: http://www.antiquetrader.com/antiques/collectibles/philatelic-society-offering-100000-reward-return-stolen-rare-stamps#sthash.LiWz3fKB.dpuf

Stolen Art Watch, October Surprise 2014

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 The October surprise Art Hostage is referring to may occur in the next few days or weeks.
Without revealing too much.

Art Hostage reminds those who control or have access to high value stolen artworks, be they paintings or other iconic artworks such as the Fitzwilliam Oriental Jade, you have been warned that as soon as any of these artworks see the light of day Police will swoop and arrests made. 
However, that said there may be an initial exchange then the sting in tail with arrests, in a Hong Kong Dick Ellis manner.

To those trying to prevent high value art thefts form occurring, there is no taste in nothing and prevention comes at a price, so if a huge art theft occurs then authorities and the insurance industry have no-one to blame but themselves for being so cheap, wanting to prevent art theft for free.

 
Degas theft suspects to appear in court next month
Degas theft suspects to appear in court next month
By Angelos Anastasiou
THE three men – aged 53, 47 and 48 – held in connection with the theft of an Edgar Degas painting, reportedly worth €6m, as well as a safe containing valuables worth €162,000 from a 70-year-old pensioner’s home in Apeshia, near Limassol, will be brought before the Criminal Court on November 27, it was announced on Friday.
A fourth suspect, a 55-year-old Russian, also held in connection with the case, was released after no evidence was found to justify his detention.
The three men will face charges of conspiracy to commit a crime, burglary and robbery.
The court will decide on Monday on whether they will remain in custody until the trial.
The 53-year-old South African is the person who had initially contacted the painting’s owner, ostensibly to mediate for the sale of the pensioner’s house and part of his art collection, which included the stolen Degas.
The other two, residents of Larnaca who had been known to police for past cases, were arrested last Sunday, when their mobile phone records indicated they had been in the area at the time of the robbery.
It was also found that one of them had two telephone conversations with the 53-year-old during the robbery, and eye-witness testimony confirmed that they resemble two individuals approaching the plaintiff’s house in a car shortly before the robbery.
Witnesses also described the vehicle as one resembling the car owned by one of the two men.
As the painting, entitled ‘Ballerina adjusting her slipper’, remains missing, police continues efforts to locate it.
An investigation into the painting’s authenticity is also ongoing, as a French house specialising on Degas works has suggested it may be a forgery.
The painting was reported stolen by its owner on September 29 along with a metal safe which contained seven gold watches, three pairs of gold opera glasses and 20 cufflinks, estimated to worth around €162,000 in total.
The owner had been at a scheduled meeting to negotiate the sale of his house and part of his art collection at the time of the theft. The Degas was not part of the deal.
Police said the Russian man had shown interest in buying the art collector’s estate along with some of the paintings in his collection and that a viewing had been arranged two weeks before the painting was stolen.

French experts could be asked to weigh in on stolen painting

French experts could be asked to weigh in on stolen painting
By Stefanos Evripidou
POLICE want to send investigators to France to take statements from experts on the authenticity or not of the stolen painting believed to be the work of 19th century French Impressionist Edgar Degas.
Investigations into the theft of the painting, which as an estimated value of €6m, from the house of a pensioner in Apeshia in Limassol took an interesting turn after Interpol informed Cypriot police that the painting might be a fake.
Police spokesman Andreas Angelides yesterday said that the authorities were informed by Interpol that experts from a French company dealing specifically with French Impressionist artists came to Cyprus last year to examine the painting, on the owner’s request.
Following an initial examination, the evaluators left open the possibility that the work might be a fake. The 70-year-old owner insists, however, that the artwork is an original Degas inherited by him from his grandmother who lived in Paris.
Angelides said police are seeking the green light from the Attorney-general to send police investigators to France to take statements from this specific company but also to seek assistance from other experts specialising in the work of Degas to help establish whether they are dealing with the real deal or not.
Angelides said police were informed by local experts that there are specific tests you can do on the paint, on the signature etc. to verify its authenticity.
“To do that, you need to have the painting,” he said, noting that at present this is not possible.
The painting is believed to be Degas’ pastel on paper, titled Dancer Adjusting Her Shoe, approximately 47cm by 61cm in size and dated late 19th century.
In the meantime, the police are continuing their investigations, putting the work on a list of stolen artwork to inform other European countries, said the spokesman.
Four people are in remand in relation to the case, three Greek Cypriots, aged 47, 48 and 53, and a 55-year-old Russian. A fifth man, a 44-year-old taxi driver was released on Monday.
The painting was reported stolen by its owner on September 29 along with a metal safe which contained seven gold watches, three pairs of gold opera glasses and 20 cufflinks, estimated to worth around €162.000 in total.
The owner had been at a scheduled meeting to negotiate the sale of his house and part of his art collection at the time of the theft. The Degas was not part of the deal.
Police said the Russian man had shown interest in buying the art collector’s estate along with some of the paintings in his collection and that a viewing had been arranged two weeks before the painting was stolen.

Limerick man arrested in Germany over rhino horns








Jeremiah and Michael O'Brien pictured leaving Ennis court in March 2013 where they were each fined �500 for having 8 rhino horns valued at approx �500,000 without a permit
Jeremiah and Michael O'Brien pictured leaving Ennis court in March 2013 where they were each fined �500 for having 8 rhino horns valued at approx �500,000 without a permit
AN Irishman arrested by German police for trying to sell illegal rhino horns has been named as Michael O’Brien from Rathkeale.
The 29-year-old was detained at Frankfurt airport on Friday, October 1 after he allegedly tried to sell the horns to a number of Chinese men. Two of his customers have also been detained by German police.
It is understood they were arrested for alleged breaches of the Endangered Species Act.
Reports suggest that police swooped after observing the transaction in a hotel lobby.

The men are still in custody in Frankfurt.
A spokesman for An Garda Siochana said they were aware of the arrest of an Irishman in Frankfurt but could not confirm his identity.
“The German police have been liaising with An Garda Siochana through Interpol and the other relevant agencies,” said a spokesman in the garda press office.
In January 2010, Michael O’Brien of Roches Road, Rathkeale and his brother Jeremiah were arrested at Shannon airport with rhino horns worth nearly €500,000.
In March of last year, both men pleaded guilty to charges of illegally importing the horns at Ennis district court.
Michael O’Brien admitted importing four rhino horns to the value of €260,400, while Jeremiah O’Brien pleaded guilty to importing €231,760 of the items.
Dermot Twohig of the Revenue Commissioners told the court that the horns were found in the O’Briens’ luggage after they flew back to Shannon from Faro in Portugal.
Both men were fined €500 each for the offences.
Rhino horns have become an extremely valuable commodity, particularly in parts of Asia where they are used in traditional medicine and as status symbols. It is estimated that rhino horn can fetch up to €60,000 per kilo with a large horn worth over €200,000.
The high prices which can be obtained from their sale, combined with the, to date, relatively lenient penalties if caught, has led to a number of criminal gangs becoming involved in their trade. They have targeted museums, private collections and other premises where antique horns may be stored.
One of the most high profile of these incidents was the theft of eight horns valued at €500,000 from the National Museum of Ireland last April.
In January of this year, the Co Cork home of dancer Michael Flatley was also broken into by criminals who stole an antique horn.
Rathkeale-based criminals have been linked to this lucrative trade. Last September, Gardai and Criminal Assets Bureau officers raided a number of houses in Limerick city and Rathkeale as part of an investigation into the theft of rhino horns and other rare artefacts.
Two other men from the town have also been jailed in the United States for attempting to buy rhino horns from undercover FBI agents.
Europol has been tracking a suspected organised crime gang, which reportedly has strong connections in County Limerick.
The agency has previously warned the gang is one of the most significant players in the illegal global trade in rhino horns.

Sir Kyffin Williams painting stolen from Royal Festival Hall

Landscape At Llanaelhaearn by Sir Kyffin Williams 
Landscape At Llanaelhaearn was painted by Sir Kyffin Williams in 1947
An oil painting by a renowned Welsh artist whose works have been sold for tens of thousands of pounds, has been stolen from London's Southbank Centre.
Landscape At Llanaelhaearn, painted by Sir Kyffin Williams, was discovered missing after a member of staff found the broken picture frame hidden in a toilet cubicle in Royal Festival Hall.
It is believed the work was taken from the hall at the end of September.
Police said they believe the thief will try to sell the piece.
Det Con Ray Swan, from Scotland Yard's Art and Antiques Unit, said: "I urge anyone who is offered the painting to report the matter to us immediately, or contact us if you know anything about the theft or the painting's whereabouts."
The painting, which was on loan from the Arts Council Collection, had been on display at the centre since November last year.

Heirs Sue Bank Over Sale of Nazi-Looted Art

When Christie’s auctioned off Edgar Degas’s “Danseuses” for nearly $11 million in 2009, the catalog noted that the masterpiece was being sold as part of a restitution agreement with the “heirs of Ludwig and Margret Kainer,” German Jews whose vast art collection was seized by the Nazis in the years leading up to World War II.
But now a dozen relatives of the Kainers are stepping forward to object. Not only did they fail to benefit from that sale, they say they were never even told about it, or any other auctions of works once owned by the couple, including pieces by Monet and Renoir.
It turns out that the Kainer “heir” that has for years collected proceeds from these sales and other restitutions, including war reparations from the German government, is not a family member but a foundation created by Swiss bank officials.
In lawsuits filed in New York and Switzerland, the Kainer relatives contend that officers of the bank — now part of the global banking giant UBS — never made a diligent effort to find them, and worse, used the family name to create a “sham” foundation ostensibly organized to support the health and education of Jewish youth but actually formed, they say, to cheat them out of their inheritance.
Both the foundation — named after Norbert Levy, Mrs. Kainer’s father — and UBS have said in court papers that they have done nothing wrong, but declined to comment. The lawsuits come as high-profile disputes over looted art focus attention on how courts and governments have handled assets stolen from Jews by the Nazis. Despite the scrutiny, this case shows just how difficult adjudicating such claims remains. The Kainer family lawsuits, for example, involve the legal systems of four countries and rest on the intentions and actions of people who have been dead for many decades. Like many families who survived the Holocaust, the Kainer descendants were not even aware that their relatives had lost or left behind valuables to which they might have a claim. As experts note, the ability to track family members has made great leaps over the years. This case only came to light when Mondex Corporation, which helps recover looted property, noticed in 2009 that hundreds of works once owned by the Kainers had been listed in an international database of art lost in the war years, and then tracked down their relatives.
Then there is the added drama that the New York lawsuit names UBS as a defendant, striking a sensitive chord. UBS, the result of a 1998 merger between Swiss Bank Corporation and the Union Bank of Switzerland, was one of several Swiss banks accused of trying to block attempts by Jewish war survivors and heirs to reclaim assets deposited in what they had thought were safe havens.

The Kainer family’s dealings with Swiss banks stretches back to the period before Hitler grabbed power. Margret Kainer and her father relied on the Swiss Bank Corporation to manage their fortunes. Before his death in 1928, Mr. Levy, a Berlin metals dealer, set up a foundation to benefit his only daughter. He trusted the Swiss bank so much that in the foundation’s bylaws he required a bank director to be one of its two trustees.
When the Nazis seized control in Germany a few years later, Margret and her husband, Ludwig, a well-known artist and illustrator who designed sets for Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, fled to France.
The Germans ended up confiscating much of the Kainers’ extensive holdings, which included real estate, securities, bank accounts and a world-class art collection that contained works by Goya, Ingres and Renoir as well as Chinese ceramics and ancient Egyptian sculptures, according to court papers.
Out of the Nazis reach, however, was the Norbert Levy Foundation, based in Switzerland. The foundation provided regular payments to the couple: 800 Swiss francs a month (about $2,800) until the money ran out in 1944, court papers say.
Most of Margret’s relatives were not as lucky. At least four were killed in the Holocaust, said Max Corden, a great-nephew of Norbert Levy, now 87, who is a party to the lawsuit.
After the war, the Kainers, who had briefly sought refuge in Switzerland, moved back to Paris where Mr. Kainer died in 1967, followed by Mrs. Kainer in 1968. Since they were childless, the rightful heirs, the lawsuits contend, are the 12 children and grandchildren of Mrs. Kainer’s cousins. The foundation, they say, was legally terminated with Mrs. Kainer’s death.
What happened next is at the crux of the legal dispute. Did bank officials make a good-faith effort to track down family heirs after the couple died?
The Kainer relatives say no. They charge in court papers that even a cursory search would have turned up the names of relatives who had contacted the bank in 1947 and 1950 to ask about arranging for help from the foundation. A diligent effort, they say, would also have included contacting the International Tracing Service of the Swiss-based Red Cross, which was created specifically to find missing and displaced people. Family members, the court papers say, were listed with the service.
What bank officials did do was post a notice seeking heirs for three months of 1969 in a local governmental journal published by the Swiss state of Vaud, where the Kainers maintained a legal address.
Experts acknowledge that in those days, few institutions initiated the kind of full-bore efforts to find heirs that are considered standard now.
“There were different expectations of what was required,” said Anna Rubin, the director of New York State’s Holocaust Claims Processing Office. She noted that genealogical research was less advanced, and that digital databases did not exist.
Still, experts said a basic search would have included contacting the Red Cross. A more thorough attempt, they say, would have involved Jewish organizations and a registration office in Germany, where Margret Kainer was born.


The question of who qualified as an heir languished until 1970, when West Germany, as part of a postwar settlement, finally agreed to pay the family a lump sum as restitution (the exact amount is unclear). But the money would be forfeited if there were no legal heirs.
Since the bank had not located any family members, Dr. Albert Genner, a Swiss Bank Corporation director who had personally known Norbert Levy, came up with a plan to revive the foundation in order to get the payout. In a memo dated Dec. 21, 1970, and stamped “Private,” Dr. Genner advocated resurrecting the foundation to function as the Kainers’ legal successor, so that “a claim could be constructed.” The foundation’s purpose, Dr. Genner wrote, would be to help educate children, preferably “of Jewish heritage from prewar Germany,” who “for health reasons” needed to attend school in Vaud’s favorable climate.
What no one understood at the time was just how valuable the Kainer estate really was. Over the last decade and a half, millions of dollars in misplaced assets and recovered art have surfaced. The biggest bonanza came after Swiss officials discovered a lost portfolio worth more than $19 million, according to public records in Switzerland. Swiss officials said they, too, were unable to find Kainer descendants despite multiple searches and claimed the windfall. After the Norbert foundation objected, they ultimately negotiated a settlement in 2005 under which the foundation received $5.6 million. (The Kainer family is suing the municipalities of Vaud and Pulley in Switzerland to recover the rest.)
In recent years, the foundation has collected at least $11 million, including $1.8 million from the 2009 “Danseuses” settlement and proceeds from the sale of at least three other stolen works by Monet and Renoir. (Hundreds of other Kainer collection paintings are still unaccounted for.)
Given those assets, the question of how much has been spent by the foundation on Jewish students remains unclear.
Tracking the activities of a foundation in Switzerland can be difficult, because, unlike the situation in the United States, financial information is not necessarily open to the public. Lawyers for the foundation and its president, Edgar Kircher, declined to discuss its finances or comment on the accusations.
But the minutes of nine annual board meetings held between 1990 and 2008, and gathered by Moneyhouse, a Swiss data and information service, give some sense of the organization’s reported finances.
For example, in 2008, the last year for which minutes are available, the board reported that it planned to award $8,570, divided among three students. That year, the board also discussed removing the foundation’s investments from UBS’s management because of poor performance.
“I haven’t found any evidence that they’ve given any significant money to anybody,” said James Palmer, the president of Mondex. There is, however, no evidence that the board members have taken anything but minor reimbursements for their services.
The board has been controlled since its creation in 1971 by current and former bank officials or their spouses. For the past 25 years, Mr. Kircher, an executive with UBS, has been its president or served on its board. Since 1992, the foundation has been run out of his home.
Lawyers for UBS said in court papers that the company has no relationship with the foundation and is merely a bystander in this case. Margaret Stinson, a spokeswoman for UBS, declined to comment further.
In court papers, the foundation has maintained that, under the terms of Norbert Levy’s will, it has a legal right to the assets it collected.
Mrs. Kainer’s cousin, Mr. Corden, a retired economist, scoffed at such suggestions. In an email, he said he was “outraged” by the conduct of Swiss bank officials and the foundation. He said he is not looking to profit personally from the lawsuit, as he and his family no longer are in need.
“If I get any money,” he said, “I shall give most or all to good causes.”

Overwhelmed U.S. port inspectors unable to keep up with illegal wildlife trade

Victor Gordon’s cramped antiques shop was called “the most unusual store in Philadelphia,” and it more than lived up to its billing.
It was a tomb for African elephants, with about 425 pieces of tusks carved to resemble tribesmen and totems, “one of the largest known caches of illegal elephant ivory in the United States,” court records said, worth about $1 million.
Gordon was a middleman in the grisly supply chain of African elephant ivory and rhinoceros horn who took advantage of a poorly guarded U.S. port. He was by no means a rarity.

For nearly a decade, Gordon orchestrated what prosecutors called one of the “most significant and egregious” violations of U.S. laws against trafficking elephant ivory. He paid smugglers to buy ivory from stockpiles in West Africa and sneak it through New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport in shipping crates weighing as much as a ton.
It was a low-risk operation for the smugglers. With only six U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service inspectors and four police agents to search millions of shipments that arrive at JFK’s massive cargo facility each year, there was little chance of being caught.
While the international response to poaching is focused on Africa and the demand for contraband in China and Vietnam, middlemen such as Gordon have been running extremely lucrative operations within U.S. borders. They bring cargo in through poorly policed ports and take advantage of legal loopholes that exempt antiques and some hunting trophies from the ban on trading elephant ivory and rhino horn. When agents do manage to snare a wildlife smuggler, the courts are often lenient.
“Our nation hasn’t prioritized wildlife trafficking,” said David Hayes, a former Interior Department deputy secretary who serves as vice chair of an advisory panel for wildlife trafficking formed by President Obama. A major part of the problem, Hayes said, “is the lack of inspections at our ports.”
Fewer than 330 Fish and Wildlife inspectors and agents patrol the largest U.S. ports, about the same number as 30 years ago, when the agency’s law enforcement branch was formed. Since that time, international wildlife trafficking has grown from a small concern into a criminal colossus worth an estimated $20 billion per year, police and economists say — the fourth-largest­ global black market behind the trades for drugs, guns and humans for sex. The growing revenue has attracted crime syndicates, leaders of rogue armies, and terrorist groups, according to U.S. intelligence reports.
African elephant populations have been reduced by more than half in the past 30 years; nearly the entire black rhino population has disappeared since the middle of the 20th century.
The White House in February unveiled a national strategy to attack wildlife trafficking by increasing cooperation among a half-dozen or so federal agencies, toughening laws and enhancing enforcement. But nowhere does it specifically commit to increasing the thin ranks of inspectors and agents at the ports.
For every crate with illegal ivory, rhinoceros horn or some other banned product crafted from a threatened or endangered animal that is discovered, about 10 get by, police said.
“We don’t have enough people to do what we have to do,” said Paul Chapelle, the special agent in charge of the Fish and Wildlife law enforcement office near JFK Airport. And when they do arrest someone, he said, “you go back and look at the [shipping] manifests, and you see the same people had been doing the same thing for five or 10 years. . . . It happens all the time.”
The detection of the shipping crate that led federal agents to the immigrant smugglers, who led them to Gordon in 2011, was a stroke of luck, essentially the discovery of a needle in a haystack made up of hundreds of thousands of crates.
With a long prison sentence hanging over his head, Gordon admitted to his crime and begged for mercy at a federal court in Brooklyn. “I know I was wrong,” he wrote to a judge.
In a rare victory for wildlife law enforcement, Gordon was sentenced in June to 2½ years behind bars.
Spot-checking crates
As a soft rain fell on a dreary weekday in February, Naimah Aziz watched two other Fish and Wildlife inspectors crack open a shipping crate with a crowbar.

It was more than just another wood box stacked in a dank warehouse at JFK. It was also a coffin. Aziz ran her fingers across four milky white tusks of elephants shot dead in Zimbabwe. “It’s a hunting shipment,” she said, legal at the time under federal law, a loophole that allowed hunters to import the remains of non-endangered animals for trophies.
A second crate was opened, bigger and deeper. The skull of a crocodile sat atop the generous hide of a hippopotamus, folded as neatly as a bed comforter and sprinkled with lime to suppress the odor. “We see these all the time,” Aziz said.
Aziz is a member of one of the smallest federal enforcement units in the United States — Fish and Wildlife inspectors and police.
The United States ranks as the world’s second-largest retail market behind China for legal artifacts crafted from the remains of wild animals, with some studies estimating that as much as 30 percent of imported shipments are illegal, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society.
And JFK, with its 4-million-square-foot cargo facility, is the nation’s largest port for legitimately traded wildlife — including ­pricey T-shirts finely embroidered with crocodile skin, coats with buttons made from shells, and stuffed museum exhibits featuring authentic animal horns and hides.
Inspectors spend most of their time spot-checking some of the 140,000 declared shipments — merchandise with a federal permit allowing its entry — that come and go each year. Crates’ contents are electronically scanned by U.S. customs officials seeking contraband such as weapons and narcotics, not wildlife.
A spot-check put law enforcement on the trail of the smuggling ring in 2007. That year, a crate that arrived at JFK from Cam­eroon with documents saying it contained low-value wood trinkets aroused suspicion. A search revealed that much of the cargo was illegal ivory.
Police traced the crate to a smuggler, who after his arrest divulged the names, telephone numbers and bank account numbers of the men who paid him, said Philip Alegranti, a Fish and Wildlife investigator.
The informant, whom the government has declined to identify because of an ongoing investigation, said he smuggled raw ivory and “worked” ivory, meaning it had been carved into statues and masks. He had the ivory boiled and soaked in resin by artisans in West Africa to make it look like a 100-year-old antique that’s more expensive and legal to sell, another loophole the federal government only recently sought to close.
On at least three occasions between August 2006 and January 2009, Gordon paid the informant a total of at least $24,000 to deliver ivory to his store.
With the informant’s information, a federal agent posing as a buyer arranged to meet Bandjan Sidime, a member of the smuggling ring, at a cheap Richmond hotel in August 2008.
Sidime, a native of Guinea, assured the buyer that he was offering one of the hottest products on the black market. “It’s real,” he said about four carved elephant tusks offered for a bargain of $1,200. “It’s real ivory.”
The buyer was a federal agent who recorded the conversation. Sidime said smuggling ivory was expensive: “You have to give people something, a bribe,” he said, but worth the price. “Always the price of ivory go up like a diamond, like gold, all the time.”
Sidime pleaded guilty to violating a federal wildlife laws in 2010 and was sentenced to 30 days in prison, five months of home confinement with a digital monitor and two years of supervised release.
Some of the ivory he tried to sell in Richmond belonged to Gordon. When police raided Gordon’s shop in July 2011, they traced ivory through receipts to buyers in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Texas, Illinois, Kansas and California, where they were mostly used as carvings and other decorative art.

Fish and Wildlife put Gordon and his helpers out of business, but police were starting to see bigger, richer, better organized illegal operations that aggressively pursued the animal piece that commanded the highest prices in the illegal wildlife trade: rhino horn.
The rhino horn trade
A rhino’s horn is an icon that any grade school student can point out, perched on the long snout of a beast that looks prehistoric.
Aside from that, the horn is nothing special. Made of keratin, the same structural material that makes up bird feathers and donkey hooves, it has the same healing power as clippings from human fingernails or a clump of hair, which keratin also forms.
There is little explanation for why so many Chinese and Vietnamese have held firm to a centuries-old belief that rhino horns have the power to heal maladies from cancer to a post-drunken stupor.
On China’s black market, a single pound can command up to $45,000, said Edward Grace, the deputy assistant director of Fish and Wildlife law enforcement. The horns of an adult rhinoceros typically weigh between 10 and 20 pounds. They are also valued as ornate carvings.

Rhino and elephant populations continue to plummet as prices skyrocket on the black market for the animals’ horns and tusks. Weak enforcement and light penalties encourage smugglers to continue trafficking, which is pushing several large mammals toward extinction.
Buying and selling rhinoceros horn is banned throughout the world, but it is possible to purchase horns online and at auction in the United States, and criminals have smuggled them to Asia in airplanes, ships and even the U.S. mail.
During a sting operation in 2011, Fish and Wildlife police found that domestic and foreign crime syndicates were pursuing rhinoceros horn deep inside the United States.
That year, an undercover federal agent lured Richard O’Brien and Michael Hegarty into buying a pair of horns in Commerce City, Colo. The agent had no idea how big a find the two men would turn out to be.
Buyers are usually jittery, but O’Brien and Hegarty were bold and confident. When the agent asked if they were afraid of being caught, they said it could never happen. Their organization made similar transactions all over the world, they said, and their modus operandi was foolproof.

The men were arrested as soon as they tossed the contraband into a rental car and prepared to drive off. They were eventually sentenced to six months in prison and two years of supervised release.
Inside their car were items that police had not seen in other arrests: passports, large packing boxes and shrink-wrap to bind the horns. A search of the men’s criminal histories exposed them as members of a syndicate known as the Rathkeale Rovers, based in Rathkeale, Ireland.
Under the same international treaty that protects elephants, rhino horn cannot be imported or exported without a federal permit, and the sale of anything other than an antique is generally prohibited.
But there was a loophole — rhinoceros hunting trophies. The United States has banned the import of hunting trophies with elephant ivory and rhino horn from some countries but still allows it from others where hunters are needed as both a form of eco-tourism­ and to carefully manage herds.
Trophies are supposed to be imported strictly for personal use, with the stipulation that they not be sold for profit. But owners who tire of the trophies can put them up for sale to American collectors at auction.
But that is where criminals show up with forged documents claiming residency and false permits that allow them to purchase items. In 2012, members of the Rovers showed up with fake documents and purchased a trophy at an auction outside Dallas. They hacked off the horns and tried to sell them in New York.
The Rovers first made money by selling antique furnishings to buyers in Asia, but their criminal enterprise quickly diversified to trading rhino horn, police said.
“The Chinese and Vietnamese led them into the rhino trade,” Grace said. “They told them, while you’re out buying these . . . antiques, keep an eye out for rhino horn, for which we will pay more than the price of gold.”

Unknown in the United States, the Rovers were infamous in Europe for their snatch-and-grab thefts at museums in Britain and other nations, yanking rhinoceros horn from exhibits, police said. Thanks to gangs such as the Rovers, replicas are used in place of real rhino horns in museums throughout Europe.
“It had ballooned into something bigger than even we expected,” Grace said.
A spike in rhinoceros horn theft in the United States pushed Fish and Wildlife to step up its lagging police effort.
The United States was “being used as a base and a transshipment point by criminals seeking to profit on the deaths of hundreds of rhinos,” Fish and Wildlife Director Daniel M. Ashe said. It was “imperative that we act here and now to shut them down.”
Months after the Rovers’ arrests, Grace and others met to discuss the growing influence of organized crime over the wildlife trade. Within a year, Fish and Wildlife partnered with the Justice Department and other police agencies nationwide to launch a hunt for rhino horn traffickers in the United States.
They called it Operation Crash. Crash is slang for a stampeding herd of rhinos.
In nearly three years, Operation Crash has logged 21 arrests and 12 convictions, with at least two suspects awaiting trial.
The biggest bust by far involved Vinh Chung “Jimmy” Kha, 49, and his son, Felix, 26, masters of rhinoceros horn smuggling.
Their supply chain included a Texas cowboy, and their smuggling operation included the elder Kha’s girlfriend, the owner of a nail salon, who police say mailed horns to Hong Kong.

Police burst into Kha’s store outside Los Angeles in 2012 and found dozens of horns, shavings from horns, cash and diamonds. The father and son pleaded guilty and were each sentenced to more than three years in prison.
In another case, the promise of acquiring rhinoceros horn in the United States drew Zhifei Li 8,000 miles from his shop in China’s Shandong province to Miami Beach. He set aside half a million dollars for his shopping trip last year, U.S. prosecutors said.
After an undercover police officer sold him two horns, the biggest weighing five pounds, he was arrested. Li, 29, was sentenced in May to more than five years in prison for operating a rhino horn smuggling and trafficking network in the United States from his home in China.
The most widely publicized Operation Crash arrest is also one of the most recent. Michael Slattery, 25, another member of the Rathkeale Rovers, traveled from Ireland to Houston and tried to buy a rhinoceros head on a hunting trophy at a Dallas-area auction.
He was arrested and given a one-year prison sentence early this year.

‘We have a better job to do’
At wildlife conservation meetings held yearly by governments around the globe, U.S. officials say they are the toughest enforcers of crimes against wildlife while encouraging other countries to strengthen their laws. But some U.S. officials and conservationists question that boast.
“We have a better job to do” in order to be a role model “and practice what we preach to other governments,” Brooke Darby, a deputy assistant secretary for narcotics and law enforcement issues at the State Department, said during a recent panel on Capitol Hill.
As illegal wildlife trafficking thrived with the growing participation of crime syndicates, army renegades and terrorist groups, Obama issued an executive order in July 2013 “to address the significant effects of wildlife trafficking on the national interests of the United States.”
Four months later, seeking to lead by example, the federal government crushed six tons of ivory that U.S. agents had seized over 25 years and kept in a repository in Commerce City. It set off a chain reaction of crushes from Belgium to Hong Kong.
The White House appointed an advisory panel and a task force of federal agencies to address ivory trading. Their recommendations led to the government’s toughest stance yet on trading ivory: A Fish and Wildlife Service rule enacted in February made selling ivory across state lines and international borders illegal.
There were a few exemptions: if the ivory is more than a century old, if a family moves with ivory art or furniture not intended for sale or if a legitimate institution such as a museum is planning an exhibit.
Until recently, ivory imported as hunting trophies from a handful of African nations was exempt. But Fish and Wildlife, saying elephant populations in countries such as Tanzania were threatened and falling, issued a temporary ban effective in June.
As the federal government grappled with loopholes in its laws, states continued to cling to laws that failed to discourage wildlife crimes, prosecutors said. A case in New York was held up as a perfect example of how criminals are largely unpunished.
Mukesh Gupta, 67, and Jung-Chien Lu, 56, who were caught in 2012 with enough ivory to equal 100 dead elephants, a haul worth at least $2 million.
They both pleaded guilty to a single count of illegal commercialization of wildlife. And they both walked away with a fine, forfeiture of the illegally obtained ivory and probation.

Gupta is tending shop at his company, Raja Jewels, and Lu returned to his business, New York Jewelry Mart, and both continue to live well in upscale Westchester County.
Cyrus R. Vance, the Manhattan district attorney who prosecuted the case, walked away thinking that the law “doesn’t give a court or prosecutor much power to alter behavior,” he said in a telephone interview.
But outrage over the case pushed the state General Assembly into action. In June, the assembly passed a law that punished wildlife trafficking with significant fines for first offenses and prison time for repeat offenders. The law also banned the sale of ivory in the state with few exceptions.
Elly Pepper, a legislative advocate for the Natural Resources Defense Council, one of the groups that pushed for new laws, called it a precedent for states that have expressed interest in strengthening their ivory laws.
“The largest U.S. ivory markets following New York are California and Hawaii, and we will be pursuing efforts in both states next session to ensure they follow New York’s lead,” Pepper said.
Not everyone supports the tougher law. It could devastate individuals and families who legally own ivory that they have held for decades and hoped to sell. Antiques dealers said the federal law and the New York state law will cost them millions of dollars, without giving them a chance to sell artifacts that had been treasures.
Police and prosecutors argue that extraordinary measures had to be taken because the legal ivory trade masked the illegal one, fueling the slaughter of elephants.

“We’re all confident that we could go out today and send investigators into antique shops and trinket shops and find ivory for sale,” said Julieta V. Lozano, the lead prosecutor on the case involving Gupta and Lu.
That case “made us realize there’s a brisk trade,” she said. It also “confirmed for us what we knew: If we had all the resources we needed to make these cases, we could find dozens of shops every month.”
“From at least my perspective, this is a business, just like sex trafficking is a business,” Vance said. “I don’t think it’s unusual that people will go in illegal business to make money, and if you don’t enforce it, they will continue to do it.”
The importance of tougher sentences is obvious, Vance said. “We are talking about something of global significance, the extermination of species.”

Follow The ISIS Money

The lack of information about the economics of ISIS’ funding is puzzling.
Webb HubbellIn the movie Trading Places, Eddie Murphy’s character, Billy Ray Valentine, says, “You know, it occurs to me that the best way you hurt rich people is by turning them into poor people.” It doesn’t take a rocket scientist or Admiral James Stavridis, former NATO Supreme Commander, to know that ifISIS didn’t have money or weapons they would not be successful for very long. So it behooves us all, especially our leaders, to ask who funds ISIS, where their weapons come from, and to cut off their resources – to turn them into “poor people,” so to speak. Besides, those who fund terrorism are no less terrorists than those brandishing the swords.
We hear daily about the military successes of ISIS, our targeted airstrikes, and what our President is willing and not willing to do to defeat them. (Such willingness to tell the enemy what plays you won’t run doesn’t seem to me to be the best military strategy. It may be good political strategy, but in football you don’t tell your opponent you’ll never throw a forward pass.) So the lack of information about the economics of ISIS’s funding is puzzling, but let’s hope there is a strategy. If we have the capability of listening in to everyone’s phone conversation and read every email and Facebook post, surely we know the sources of ISIS’s funding and weaponry and are doing something about it.
Despite the administration’s silence on this facet of the war on ISIS, we do know some things. Most articles estimate that ISIS earns $1 to $3 million a day from oil sales – oil coming from lands and refineries they have seized in Iraq and Syria, which is purchased by black market brokers primarily in Turkey. Let us hope no U.S. company, American citizen or ally is participating in these purchases. If they are, let’s hope the administration is putting an immediate stop to it. If the administration won’t do that, I believe we should be told why not.
Another source of money is the sale of antiquities by ISIS after they raid and loot churches and museums in seized territories. I did a lot of research on looting and the sale of stolen antiquities for my novel, When Men Betray. It’s an industry of about $3 billion a year, with a lot of money finding its way into the hands of terrorists and a lot of art finding its way into the homes of Americans and Europeans. That’s right: art collectors and museums who buy stolen antiquities indirectly fund torture and murder. Again, let’s hope the administration is being aggressive with purchasers of stolen art for the sake of the stolen art, but also for the humans who are the ultimate victims of such an outrageous enterprise.
Speaking of outrageous, apparently another major source of ISIS’s funding is the sale of women and children captured in Iraq and Syria. I am not sure what is worse: ISIS selling women and children as sex slaves or the people buying them. The world community should have no stomach for this behavior, and if anyone who buys a human comes into the jurisdiction of the U.S., justice should be swift and certain.
Groups monitoring sources of ISIS’s weaponry report that much of their stash was also acquired by seizing territory, thereby seizing arms supplied by the U.S. to, for example, the Iraqi government and Syrian rebels. Once again, we learn that weapons supplied to allies can easily fall into the hands of our enemies. When will we learn not to be a source of “tools of terror?” The purpose of a bomb is to explode. The purpose of military weapons is to be fired and kill or maim. Until we quit treating weapons as a commodity of profit, we will always have terrorists and and mad men using them for evil.
We can’t undo past mistakes. If it were my call, I would say that U.S. weapons should only be in the hands of U.S. soldiers, but I know that is not realistic, given the vise grip the military-industrial complex has on political decisions in this country.
But if this administration intends to be transparent about our military plans for ISIS, then perhaps we need the same transparency about our economic war plans as well. At minimum, if U.S. corporations are buying “black market’ oil from ISIS’s brokers, let Americans know so that we can stop buying their gas and dump their stock. If other countries or individuals are arming ISIS, let Americans know so that we can stop doing business with those countries. If other countries are turning a blind eye to the sale of antiquities or human beings, let Americans know so that we can boycott products from those countries and encourage U.S. companies to take their business elsewhere.
I don’t need to know our plans to defeat ISIS and believe it might be a better strategy not to know. But I think it would be advisable for our leadership to acknowledge that we are waging war on ISIS economically as well as militarily, and to treat those who support ISIS by buying oil, weapons, stolen art, and women and children just as we will treat ISIS.
Please, Obama Administration, don’t let us find out years from now that oil interests, large corporations and wealthy individuals prevented us from fighting an economic war against ISIS because it may hurt their profits, or because our country has a double standard for terrorists. Wage war on the foot soldiers — but take a pass on the “rich people.”

Rookwood vase recalls famous stolen pots

Someone must own a photo of the pilfered Rookwood pots. That's the hope of a Cincinnati Police detective.
A picture of the 37-piece collection, lifted from a medical research facility in East Walnut Hills, might help solve a cold case that has been on the books since 1988.
Interest in the stolen Cincinnati-made vases, pitchers, ashtrays and tankards that vanished from the now defunct St. Thomas Institute surfaced with the recent appearance of a rare Tiger Eye Rookwood vase at the Downtown auction house of Humler & Nolan.
"This Tiger Eye vase is the famous Uranus vase. This is not part of the collection of stolen Rookwood," noted Riley Humler, the auction house's manager. The vase belongs to the same type of large pots taken in the burglary. As he spoke, Humler carefully turned the 15-pound, 18.5-inch tall vase so its glossy surface glimmered in the light.
"The Uranus vase was exhibited at the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1900. It sat on display for years at the Rookwood Pottery showroom (now the site of the Rookwood restaurant) in Mount Adams," Humler said. "This piece was made around 1899. Although we have not found a signature, it looks to be the work of famed Rookwood artist, Albert Valentien."
Humler, one of the world's foremost Rookwood experts, estimates the Uranus vase will fetch "$20,000 to $30,000" when he puts it up for auction Nov. 9. The entire stolen Rookwood collection was appraised at $52,000 in 1988.
The vase and the 37-piece collection once shared the same owner, George Sperti. The medical researcher founded and ran the St. Thomas Institute in East Walnut Hills. He also owned the Rookwood Pottery, Humler said, "for four or five years, depending on which history you read, starting in 1942."
Sperti housed most of the purloined 37-piece Rookwood collection in a glass display case on the second floor of his institute.
"I remember going there to see the Rookwood collection," Humler said. "They didn't let you play with anything in the case. But you could just walk right in and go up the steps to see the display."
Sperti earned world renown, along with a sizable fortune, for his inventions. He came up with freeze-dried orange juice, sun lamps and adding vitamin D to milk via lamp light. His biggest claim to fame was inventing Preparation H, a friend to hemorrhoid sufferers everywhere.
Illness forced Sperti to close the institute in 1988 and put it up for sale. While the building was being shown to potential buyers, the Rookwood vanished over the weekend of August 27 to 29, 1988.







At least two of the stolen vases sported the Tiger Eye finish. As with the Uranus vase, those pieces featured an iridescent dark brown glaze with gold flecks producing a layered look with rich liquid effects. This surface resembles the highly polished version of a tiger's eye gemstone.
The arrival of the Uranus vase reminded Humler of the 1988 theft. He wondered if the items were ever recovered and if the thieves had ever been caught. A search of The Enquirer's archives turned up no leads. A call to the Cincinnati Police Department's records section elicited a chuckle on the other end of the phone as a woman said: "We don't have anything that old."
One more call led to Detective James Wigginton of Cincinnati PD's Financial Crimes Unit. He joined the force in 1999, 11 years after the theft and five years after the statute of limitations ran out on the Rookwood burglary. And yet, he was still intrigued.
"If we were to find these pieces of pottery," Wigginton said as he admired the vase Humler was hefting, "no one would be charged with stealing them. There is, however, another crime called: 'Receiving stolen goods.'"
Wigginton conducted a search for the robbery's file. He came up empty. He did learn that the file had been shredded, along with photos of the 37 pieces of pottery.







On television, cold-case files are stuck in a police station basement and kept watch over by a crusty sergeant chewing on an unlit cigar. A detective tells old sarge what he wants. Sarge grabs a key and waddles down an aisle bordered by walls of chain-link fence. He flicks a switch, a florescent light flickers into action. He pulls down a battered box, blows off the dust and growls: "Here you go."
"It was almost like that," Wigginton said. "Everything was true except for the cigar. And, finding the case."
In his 15 years on the job, the detective has never dealt with an art theft of this magnitude.
"Nowadays," he said, "you just don't encounter things like this."
That was not the case in 1988.
"At that time," recalled Owen Findsen, The Enquirer's retired art critic, "a gang in town specialized in stealing Rookwood pottery, paintings and stained glass. The gang knew its stuff. And, the collection at the St. Thomas Institute was well known."
The 37 pieces "once belonged to a museum of American ceramics the owners of Rookwood were planning to set up at the Mount Adams pottery," Findsen said. "When that did not happen, the pieces went to the institute."
After they were stolen, he added, "you can be sure they didn't end up at the bottom of the Ohio River. They were too valuable."
Wigginton agrees with Findsen. That's why he wants to get the word out about the stolen Rookwood pots.
"They are still out there," the detective insisted. "And, we need a photo of them to see what they looked like.
"Somebody took those pieces of Rookwood in 1988," he added. "Somebody has them now. They need to be recovered."
Somebody needs to do the right thing.
Stolen Rookwood
A 37-piece collection of Rookwood vases, ashtrays, pitchers and tankards – crafted between 1885 and 1957 – vanished from the St. Thomas Institute in East Walnut Hills in 1988. Back then, the collection was appraised at $52,000. The theft included two rare Tiger Eye vases, one of which today would be worth $20,000 to $30,000. The stolen items were never found. Cincinnati Police Detective James Wigginton is looking for photos of the collection as well as the pieces of pottery. If you have any information about the theft, the photos or the missing Rookwood, contact him at: james.wigginton@cincinnati-oh.gov or 513-352-3542.

The Stradivarius Affair

It isn’t every day that a street criminal—a high-school dropout with two felony convictions—is accused of stealing a centuries-old violin worth as much as $6 million. But nothing about the heist of the Lipinski Stradivarius, which galvanized the music world last winter, was normal, or even logical








SAFE AND SOUND Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra concertmaster Frank Almond and the “Lipinski,” a 299-year-old Stradivarius.
Looking at it one way, there was a certain twisted creativity to it.
It just isn’t every day that a high-school dropout and twice-convicted felon, your basic street criminal, as he was described, is the alleged mastermind of a crime that no one in law enforcement the world over had ever quite seen. Maybe it wasn’t the crime of the century, but it definitely was the crime of the century in Milwaukee. The city, known for beer, bratwurst, the Brewers, and frighteningly large portions at German restaurants, had never been a hotbed of headlines. But this made national and world news not seen since the days of the city’s own serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.
The Milwaukee Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation put out dozens of officers and detectives and supervisors to crack the case and find a suspect named Salah Salahadyn.
Forty-two years old with a thin frame and the studied manner of someone trying very hard to be measured and professorial when he is neither, Salahadyn was a Milwaukee native and fancied himself a high-end art thief, according to police.
It is not exactly clear why he fancied himself this way. There was no evidence that he was a high-end art thief, except for one strangely bungled attempt roughly 15 years earlier in which he tried to return—for a finder’s fee—a $25,000 statue to the same Milwaukee gallery owner from whom it had been stolen. (In an interview with Vanity Fair, Salahadyn insists that he did not know the statue had been stolen.) He was arrested by police and given a five-year sentence for receiving stolen property.
His lifestyle, a free apartment and $400 a month in return for managing the apartment building, with two of his five children under the age of three, and fighting to make ends meet over the years by selling weed, did not seem the stuff of The Thomas Crown Affair either. He was articulate and well spoken, somewhat at odds with his fractured life. You couldn’t help but feel it all should have been better. But you only had to spend a minute with him to figure out that he loved notoriety even if it was bad, that he had a very serious case of grandiosity.
Still, there was method.







By Mike De Sisti/© Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
SCALES OF JUSTICE Salah Salahadyn, the alleged mastermind of the theft, after a court appearance in Milwaukee on July 24.
This idea of stealing a Stradivarius violin known as the Lipinski—299 years old, still eminently playable, and valued at somewhere between $5 and $6 million—did not just fall from the sky. Police say Salahadyn had been thinking of stealing a Stradivarius for at least a decade, ultimately setting his sights on the Lipinski because of the Milwaukee connection. He knew the patterns of his target, the routine of where he worked, where he parked, where he shopped, what car he drove, the name of his wife, all chilling because of the stalker aspect. According to police, Salahadyn went to one of his concerts, noting, among other details, that he was the only African-American there. He knew the history of what he was after, so much so that you could say he had become obsessed with it. This was no ordinary object of desire.
If you look at it another way, there was something dangerous and almost deranged about it, the kind of crime Abbott and Costello might plan, after consultation with Cheech and Chong and Martin and Lewis. There were also repercussions that could have been catastrophic far beyond the fate of a multi-million-dollar violin.
A Taser was used on Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra concertmaster Frank Almond as he was about to get into his car in a parking lot in subzero temperatures after a performance on January 27. Tasers in very rare instances have caused fatal heart attacks. In falling to the ground, the 50-year-old Almond could have cracked his head open on the patchy ice that had built up as a result of the frigid winter.
The Taser did immobilize Almond just long enough for someone to grab the violin case slung over his left shoulder. In that respect the crime went off just the way Salahadyn had allegedly dreamed of in prison—the ease of stealing a Stradivarius simply by grabbing it from an unsuspecting classical musician.
But there are two parts to an art heist such as this—stealing the object and then having a plan as to what to do with it afterward. It was in this second area that the scheme seemed stunted.
The getaway vehicle was a somewhat bruised minivan, sticking out like a phosphorescent bulb because of its maroon color. Police say its driver was not some trained professional but the mother of three of Salahadyn’s children.
It did not help that the Taser used on Almond shot out dozens of confetti-size identification tags, thereby enabling the F.B.I. to track down where the Taser had been purchased online and the owner of record.
It also did not help that the owner, the sublimely named Universal Knowledge Allah, or Uni to his friends, an affable barber and Tupperware consultant hoping to crack the middle-age-housewife party market, blabbed about details of the robbery (he was not at the scene that night) to a customer, who coughed him up to the police. It did not help when a former inmate who years before had been in the same Wisconsin prison as Salahadyn, sniffing a reward for the return of the violin, said in an e-mail to the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra that Salahadyn had talked in prison about stealing a Stradivarius. A $100,000 reward was offered, and in high-end thefts of this nature, it sometimes has the same effect as the perfect worm, with fishes jumping all over themselves to the top to get it.
It really did not help that unlike hubcaps, for example, or even a python, you can’t just walk up to someone in the street and say you know where you can get a really good deal on a stolen $6 million violin. It really really did not help that the Stradivarius happened to be stolen in perhaps the one place in America where the police chief didn’t think it was a form of Streptococcus and, fully cognizant of its cultural significance, decided to send in “the cavalry.”
The cavalry won.
In July the 37-year-old Allah, after admitting to his role in the theft, was sentenced to three and a half years in prison. Salahadyn is scheduled to appear in court on October 3. According to Milwaukee Police detective Billy Ball, one of the key investigators on the case, the district attorney’s office agreed after his arrest in February to reduce the charge against him from armed robbery to robbery. In return Salahadyn agreed to lead authorities to the violin and also plead guilty, according to Ball.
Several scheduled hearings were postponed, one in July, when Salahadyn’s attorney withdrew as counsel, and the most recent in early September, when, eight months into the case, Salahadyn’s new attorney asked for a motion hearing.
As of mid-September, Salahadyn had still not filed any plea, although claiming innocence appears somewhat difficult for him because of a lengthy interview with Vice News in which he did a seemingly failproof job of incriminating himself. During the interview, which he gave without the knowledge of counsel, he admitted to being involved in the robbery of the violin and in the physical possession of it. He claimed that he had been coerced by an Asian crime syndicate that he had made contact with and performed various activities for over the years; in this case he said they wanted him to take the Lipinski to Chicago, presumably for eventual transport to somewhere else. But he said he had changed his mind because he could not bear for the priceless instrument to leave its rightful home of Milwaukee.
Federal and local law-enforcement authorities describe Salahadyn’s claims as ludicrous, ridiculous, and pretty much any other likewise description. Dave Bass, who is a special agent on the F.B.I.’s Art Crime Team and who works in the bureau’s Milwaukee Field Division, where the case was assigned, says there is absolutely no evidence that an Asian syndicate was behind this. He gives several reasons, the most cogent being: Why would any sophisticated crime organization trust a local thief from Milwaukee, particularly one with terrible judgment?
Bass believes the motive may have been the $100,000 reward that was being offered by private sources. It is not uncommon in art heists for someone to steal an object, send in “mules” to help “find” it, and then reap reward money, since owners are often frantic to get their property back with no questions asked. So perhaps the intent was to let the investigation die down, make sure no specific names had surfaced, and then aid in the recovery in return for at least a portion of the reward. The flaw in this scenario, as Bass notes, is that the money is not usually released unless there is a conviction.
Or it simply could have been what Milwaukee police chief Edward Flynn hypothesized: “We can’t ever dismiss the nitwit factor.”
Whatever the motive, it is safe to say that neither Salahadyn nor Allah could have remotely imagined the tsunami that was about to hit them. Nor could the Lipinski, whose nearly three-century journey up until the moment of the robbery had already been the musical equivalent of the cat with nine lives.
The Lipinski
On April 28, 2008, Frank Almond received a curious e-mail. The writer, who still refuses to be publicly identified, claimed something improbable. She or he said that he or she was in the process of inheriting a Stradivarius violin known as the Lipinski. Two or three times a year, Almond got e-mails similar to this, about the discovery of a Stradivarius. It was typical for someone who had reached Almond’s stature: two degrees from Juilliard and the Charles and Marie Caestecker Concertmaster Chair at the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. He’s also the founder of a much-acclaimed chamber series called Frankly Music and a guest concertmaster appearing with symphonies across the globe.
Since around 1666, when the singular genius Antonio Stradivari began making his own violins in Cremona, Italy, it is not unreasonable to assume that everyone in history has at one time or another come to believe that the violin shoved into the corner of the attic is in fact a Stradivarius when it was probably purchased at a Henny Youngman concert.
Not much is known about Stradivari except that he was a workaholic up until his death, in 1737. (The exact date of his birth has been pegged to sometime around 1644.) For centuries classical musicians and scholars and scientists have tried to pinpoint the exact reason that his instruments are still believed to be the best ever produced, an unequaled balance of upper partials and lower partials, bright and joyful at times and painfully beautiful at others. Trying to account for the uniqueness of the Stradivarius is something of a growth area unto itself. Some say it was the varnish (no proof). Some say it was because of wood that was indigenous to the Cremona region and is now extinct (no proof). Stefan Hersh, a leading expert in the field of rare string instruments, sums it up best when he says, “What certainly must be true is that Stradivari had to have a great intuitive feel for acoustics, astonishing skill as a carver, and a truly dazzling imagination to create the works he did.”
Many of those who have played a Stradivarius, whether it’s a violin or viola or cello, ascribe human characteristics to it. They talk about its soul and its moods. It is no accident that many of them, including the Lipinski, are named after past owners, in this particular instance noted 19th-century Polish violinist Karol Lipi´nski. You don’t simply repair a Stradivarius; you “stabilize” it. If you follow that line, the instrument can also be bratty, temperamental, imperious if it doesn’t trust you, and, like a runaway, prone to disappearance.
In past years they have reportedly been left in the trunk of a New York taxi, a Newark cab, a train in Switzerland, on a porch in Los Angeles, the seat of a Porsche, and the side of the freeway, once again in Los Angeles, after it flew off the top of a moving car, according to one account. Some were destroyed in the bombing of Dresden in World War II. Another had been camouflaged in sticky black shoe polish, and it was only on the precipice of death that the person playing it admitted it had been stolen 49 years earlier. Another was stolen from its owner in New York as she was critically ill and 19 years later has still not been recovered. Yet another was stolen from a sandwich shop at a London train station when the violinist using it had become distracted with her cell phone.
The Stradivarius has also been accused of fraud. The French being the French, whose role in the world seems to be to debunk everything that isn’t French, have instigated research studies, one in which maestro violin soloists played a variety of instruments and basically could not distinguish between a Stradivarius and a much newer violin.
The Stradivarius has not only endured but increased exponentially in value. In 2011 the Lady Blunt, in excellent condition and rarely played, was sold for nearly $16 million to raise funds for Japan earthquake relief. Auction-house asking prices have also gone up astronomically. In June of this year the minimum bid at Sotheby’s for a Stradivarius viola, very rare because so few were produced, was $45 million. (It did not sell.)
The Hill brothers, owners of a violin-making firm in London and believed to have been the leading experts on the Stradivarius, said in their 1902 volume that Stradivari produced a total of 1,116 instruments, the preponderance of which were violins. The Hill brothers believed that 540 violins, 50 cellos, and 12 violas could be accounted for, one of those violins being the Lipinski.
The Lipinski’s initial owner, Giuseppe Tartini, composer of the famous “Devil’s Trill” sonata, said the inspiration had come to him from a dream in which he handed the violin to the Devil to see what he might do with it. The Devil was good.
The owner up until 2008 was classical pianist Richard Anschuetz. The instrument had originally been purchased in 1962 for $19,000 by Anschuetz’s mother for his wife, concert violinist Evi Liivak. The couple had met in Nuremberg, where Anschuetz was an American war-crimes-tribunal translator and Liivak a refugee from Estonia whose father had been killed by the Gestapo. They performed all over the world together.
As a pianist, Anschuetz had no personal use for the Lipinski after his wife died, in 1996. The natural inclination would have been to sell it, particularly since Stradivarius instruments were booming in price. But he still loved her so much that he could not bear to part with it. So he kept it in his New York apartment and went about his business with extreme privacy, playing the piano into his 90s and finding solace in the works of Indian philosopher and yogi Sri Aurobindo.
Anschuetz eventually moved to Milwaukee to be closer to relatives after becoming ill. (He died in 2008.) The Lipinski came as well and was placed in a bank vault downtown. It had not been played for at least 12 years.
As Almond continued to read the e-mail, it became apparent that the person writing it was credible. There were too many meticulous details, like the violin receiving small repairs and new strings at Jacques Français Rare Violins, in New York, and being appraised at some point by Christie’s.
There was some question as to whether the Lipinski was ready to come in from the cold. But the writer of the e-mail wanted to meet with Almond and seek his advice. He was asked to keep the information confidential.
They ultimately met at the bank vault with Stefan Hersh, brought in because of his expertise. Almond was excited, but he remembers that Hersh, whose family had been in the violin business for more than 75 years, was beside himself. He knew the lineage of the Stradivarius perhaps as well as anyone in the world. The Lipinski had been made during Stradivari’s so-called golden period. This could be a historic moment.
A disinterested bank employee carried the case into a nondescript viewing room. It was opened.
Even in the unflattering fluorescent light, it was immediately clear that this was an authentic 1715 Stradivarius. The bridge was down. There was an open seam. But with restoration it could be playable again; under the circumstances it was in remarkably good condition.
The owner’s family, humble, with a lineage of public service in Milwaukee, could have kept it or sold it for somewhere around $2.5 million. But they admirably eschewed personal gain and collector vanity. Rather than force the Lipinski into early retirement at the age of 293, they decided its life should actively continue. They lent it to Almond with virtually no conditions.
Almond’s Joy
The problem with a Stradivarius is that once you decide to play one you actually have to play one.
The Lipinski was tough and demanding. Almond found out right away that “it maximizes your strengths and really, really illuminates your weaknesses. There is no place to hide anymore.” The most difficult thing was to learn how not to work so hard to get the most out of it, how to appreciate its fast response.
The more Almond played the Lipinski at concerts, the more the Lipinski began to respect him. They became comfortable with each other, then quite intimate. In a city choking on inferiority—the monolith of Chicago, 92 miles away, obscuring Milwaukee in insecure shadow—Almond was also determined to make the Lipinski a source of public pride. He gave interviews about it. He created a CD comprised of pieces composed by those who had owned it. He was obsessively careful with it, never letting it wander away. But he never thought the Lipinski would be the object of a robbery. F.B.I. special agent Bass, who has been with the Art Crime Team since its inception, said he knew of no instance of a Stradivarius being taken by force. “My initial thought [was] this was bizarre and made no sense.”







From the Milwaukee Police.
ALL WRAPPED UP Days after the Lipinski was stolen, it was found in a Milwaukee attic, swaddled in a blue baby blanket in a suitcase.
“Call the Cavalry”
The alleged origins of Salahadyn’s plan to steal a Stradivarius traced back to the 2000s, when he was serving his second term in prison. According to the e-mail that was sent to the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra after the theft by the ex-prisoner, Salahadyn “would talk of stealing high-end art and how easily it could be stolen from unsuspecting victims. His dream theft was a Stradivarius violin because of its potential value and the fact that it could be snatched from the hands of a musician as they walk down the street.”
The night of January 27, as part of the Frankly Music concert series, Almond and three other musicians had just finished Olivier Messiaen’s extraordinary Quartet for the End of Time in the Schwan Concert Hall, at Wisconsin Lutheran College. Messiaen, who was French, had written it in a prison camp during World War II after being captured by the Germans. The piece had been emotionally draining. The audience did not make a sound immediately afterward.
There was a reception that lasted until about 10:15 P.M., when Almond and the other musicians left down a long hallway that ran parallel to the theater. Almond collected some items from the dressing room, then exited through a side door that led to a small parking lot. He walked out with clarinetist Todd Levy. The other two musicians, cellist Joseph Johnson and pianist Christopher Taylor, left ahead of them. The plan was to meet at a restaurant called the Knick.
The temperature was six below, with a windchill of minus 25. Almond, wearing only a thin jacket, had propitiously gotten a good parking space just a few yards from the exit. It wasn’t himself he worried about as much as the Lipinski, which might well pout at his next several performances if kept in the cold too long. It was slung over his left shoulder.
As Almond left he noticed a minivan parked next to him nearest to the exit. He assumed it was waiting to pick someone up. Then he noticed a man coming toward him. He was dressed in a bulky coat with a gray furry hat on top of his head with the earflaps tied. Almond also got a brief look at the person in the driver’s seat, a heavyset woman dressed in a parka and also a big furry hat. If Milwaukee had a winter fashion week, the perpetrators would have led the runway.
Almond figured the person wanted to talk to him about the concert. Then he saw him open his jacket and point something at him that gave off flickers of light.
Todd Levy had walked ahead to his own car, a Chevy Volt, when he heard the sound of somebody saying, “Ah! Ah! Ah!” He thought it might be some kids messing around, maybe drunk.
“Todd! Todd! Todd!” yelled Almond. “They got the violin! They got the violin!”
Levy ran over to Almond. By this time he was standing, but it was obvious he was in shock, as the object he had seen was a Taser.
Levy got him into his car. He was shivering and still stunned and generally freaking out. “This is my worst nightmare.” They immediately called 911.
The first patrol car arrived about five minutes later. The officers’ understanding of what had happened was apparently not immediate.
As Almond and Levy tried to explain, the cops were having considerable difficulty figuring out what they were talking about. The officers were extremely cordial and polite and professional, but more than once they probably wondered to themselves what they were doing out here in minus-25 windchill on a Monday night.
Almond and Levy tried to impress upon them the urgency of the situation. Whoever had just taken the violin might well be on the way to the airport as the first step in getting it out of the city and selling it. The officers congregating at the scene had their own problems, which could likely be boiled down to three distinct issues:
  1. How do you spell Stradivarius?
  2. What the fuck is a Stradivarius?
  3. How could a violin—whatever it’s called—cost $6 million?
It seemed to be going in a circular direction, so Levy made a call to the orchestra’s development director, Tanya Mazor-Posner. She in turn called a member of the board named Mike Gonzalez, who was on a golf vacation in South Carolina. Mike Gonzalez in turn called Chief Flynn, who was a friend of Gonzalez’s. Flynn, in turn, was sound asleep, since it was about 12:30 A.M.
Flynn had been to Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra concerts. He knew Almond. He did not have to be given a quick tutorial on the Stradivarius. He called the sergeant at the scene on his cell phone.
“Sarge, Chief Flynn.”
“Really?”
“What do you got?”
“I got a guy here. Somebody robbed his violin.”
“Listen to me very carefully. This is not a violin. This is a fucking multi-million-dollar musical instrument. Call the cavalry.”
The investigation picked up a notch after that. Many notches actually. There were those who questioned the priorities of the department in expending such manpower on finding a $6 million violin that at the end of the day was still a violin. During the period leading up to the recovery, there were two homicides in the city, which did not sit right with critics given the number of detectives who had been assigned to the stolen-Lipinski investigation. (Both cases were reportedly solved.) But Flynn strongly felt otherwise. It wasn’t just the dollar value of the violin but its symbolic value as a piece of history that could never be replaced.
“This was Milwaukee’s little piece of the Western heritage,” Flynn said later. “We had just been challenged. It had just been stolen. And we were bloody well going to find it.”
To Catch a Thief
The next morning at around six, with the aid of G.P.S. technology, the violin case for the Lipinski was discovered in the middle of a street. It appeared to Milwaukee police inspector Carianne Yerkes, one of the supervisors on the investigation, that it had been thrown out the window of the getaway vehicle, presumably for the very reason that there might have been some kind of tracking device inside it. Not only had the Lipinski been taken out of the case but so had two bows, valued in the range of $50,000, another indication that whoever was involved knew something about the marketplace.
The Milwaukee Police Department explored the possibility that whoever took the Lipinski might try to fly out of the city with it. The Transportation Security Administration was asked to keep an eye out for anyone traveling with a violin. Interpol was contacted. The F.B.I. office in Milwaukee offered major assistance. Investigators followed up on hundreds of tips, with the possible exception of the person calling to say one of their in-laws was squirrelly.
There was speculation that this had been the work of the Russian Mafia or an Asian gang. But Agent Bass immediately felt otherwise.
Stradivarius violins had been stolen before, but they had been stolen quietly, out of a dressing room of a concert hall or from an apartment, so it took a while for the owners to even notice. You wanted to create as little noise as possible, when all this particular crime did was create noise that only got louder.
There was also the issue of who would buy a $6 million violin after it was stolen. Bass did not think there was a dealer in the world who would touch it, because it was so hot. As for the theory that a collector might want it even if he could never display it to anyone, Bass pointed out that collectors live to show off what they have collected. The Taser also didn’t add up. Bass thought it was a very odd and unsophisticated choice, the risk high that it would not work if you were not familiar with it. In fact, only one of the two barbs that were fired broke Almond’s skin. The other lodged in his jacket. There was another problem with the Taser: the confetti with the serial number that shot out when it was fired. It ultimately led to a distributor in Texas, who supplied the name and address of the purchaser, Universal Knowledge Allah. Police captain Jeff Point, the lead supervisor on the case, immediately assumed that it was a dead end, because how could anyone have a name like that?
On February 2, an off-duty Milwaukee police officer ran into someone he apparently knew from the street. This witness said he had gotten his hair cut by Allah the day before at a barbershop called First Impressions, where there was a lot of chatter about who would be stupid enough to do something like this, since you could not readily sell it. Allah asked the client for a ride home, during which Allah volunteered that about seven months earlier Salahadyn had asked him to purchase a Taser since he had a permit to carry a concealed weapon and Salahadyn could not get one, because of his record. Allah further said, according to the criminal complaint that was filed, that Salahadyn called him the evening after the robbery and told him he had gotten the “instrument.”
Allah confirmed to police what he had said in the car. Salahadyn was a client of his, he told police, and he had known him for at least seven years.
The mention of Salahadyn’s name looped police back to the e-mail from the former inmate. The investigation moved quickly after that. Salahadyn and Allah were arrested on February 3 and taken into custody.
It was a huge breakthrough. There was only one significant gap: Where was the violin?
During a search of Salahadyn’s apartment, according to Detective Ball, police had found a scrapbook containing general articles and pictures about the Stradivarius instrument. But there was also one from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel from 2008 about the Lipinski finding a home in the city with Frank Almond.
The Lipinski had been through a great deal in its history. It had survived countless wars and epidemics. But neither the Lipinski nor any Stradivarius instrument could have been prepared for the indignities it suffered after it was stolen. Taken from the bosom of its case, it had ultimately been placed in a soft-cloth American Tourister suitcase and transported to one of the worst possible places for its health, a cold attic.







By Jon Riemann/Milwaukee Police.
CASE CLOSED Milwaukee police chief Edward Flynn with the recovered Lipinski at a news conference on February 6.
Lost and Found
When Detective Billy Ball interviewed Salahadyn, he said, the suspect seemed quite taken with himself. Ball recalled the following conversation:
“I figured you guys would be coming.”
“Why?”
“Because of my reputation.”
“What reputation?”
“My reputation as a high-end art thief.”
Ball said Salahadyn danced around that day and part of the second. He had the leverage of knowing the location of the violin. But police believed they had significant leverage of their own.
On the third day of interrogation, Ball said, a written agreement was made between Salahadyn and the Milwaukee County district attorney. Later that night Salahadyn led detectives to the apartment building where the violin was being stored. He guided them to the second floor, then pointed to the attic.
A search warrant was obtained. A ladder was borrowed from the SWAT team. Bass, who had handled high-value musical instruments before, climbed up the steps through the space in the ceiling. Bass’s biggest worry was that the violin had been damaged, and the condition of the attic did nothing to lessen that fear. The temperature hovered at about freezing, and such cold can be devastating: the wood of the violin might dry out, in turn causing a catastrophic split in the back. There was dust and insulation everywhere. But one item was free of detritus.
Bass unzipped the suitcase. He took a peek. Wrapped in a blue baby blanket with the logo of a little toy truck was the Lipinski.
Coda
The Lipinski has gone back to the mundane task of beautiful music. Almond continues to play it with regularity, the only major creative difference being that the Lipinski, a publicity hound at this point, sometimes seems to get louder applause than he does. Almond has also been supplied with security.
On Saturday, August 23, as part of the Music in the Vineyards chamber-music series, Almond performed at Hall Wines, in Napa Valley. He spent the night at a nearby vineyard.
The next morning, an earthquake of 6.0 magnitude hit the region.
Almond was knocked out of bed.
The Lipinski, on the floor in its case, slept like a baby.

Thieves plunder wealth of antiques from country house

THIEVES got their hands on a remarkable haul during a burglary at a Grade II listed country house in Worcestershire.
A wealth of antiques including silver cutlery, an 18 carat gold pocket watch and a pair of George III cast candlesticks were stolen from Chambers Court, Longdon, near Tewkesbury, after the offenders forced entry to the property.
The incident took place overnight between Wednesday, September 24 and Thursday, September 25.
Other items taken included a silver brace of pheasants, silver candlesticks, a George II beer jug crested by Fuller White, silver candlesticks, a boat-shaped sweetmeat dish with ivory handles, an 18th century bracket clock, a pair of George III silver chamber candlesticks and a heart-shaped silver box with turquoise stone. 
West Mercia Police are now appealing for witnesses to come forward.
Detective Constable Pete Ryland, the investigating officer, said: "I urge anyone who has seen or heard of these items being sold to contact the police.
“I also ask for anyone who saw somebody acting suspiciously in the area at the time of the burglary to make contact."

Austria Mistakenly Releases Pink Panther Gang Member from Jail

 A member of the Pink Panther organized crime network, which especially targeted jewelry stores, has been mistakenly released from an Austrian prison three years early.

Media reports reveal that the man,  a Serbian National known as "Ilija B", was due to be released in fall 2017 after serving a six-year sentence for his role in an armed robbery of a jewelry shop in Eisenstadt in November 2005, but a computer error meant he was released by Austrian authorities in June.

Prison error releases robber too early

A 30-year-old convicted thief who was released from prison in Upper Austria three years too early because of an embarrassing computer error is a member of the notorious Pink Panther gang, the Austrian Press Agency reports
Serbian Ilija B took part in the armed robbery of a jewellery shop in Eisenstadt in November 2005.
A 22-year-old watchmaker who had followed the masked gang as they were driving off in their getaway car was shot in the face by one of the thieves at close range. He needed full time care after the attack and died seven years later from his injuries.
Austrian detectives tracked down Ilija B and two other Serbs and they were arrested in Serbia in December 2006, for the brutal jewellery shop robbery as well as numerous other burglaries.
However the Serbian authorities released Ilija B and one other suspect, Slavko P, days later, for reasons unknown.
Ilja B was later sentenced in Germany for six and half years for aggravated robbery. After serving half of his sentence he was extradited to Austria, and given an additional six year sentence for the Eisenstadt robbery.
He should have been in jail until autumn 2017 but the prison computer in Garsten miscalculated his release date, failing to include the three years of the German sentence he still had to serve.
After his release he was banned from living in Austria and deported to Serbia. There is now a European arrest warrant out for him as he was due to be the star witness at Slavko P’s trial for murder and robbery in Eisenstadt on October 15th.
Peter Prechtl, head of the prison directorate, said there would now be a review of all discharge data in local prisons after the embarrassing mistake.
"Of course this mistake hurts, but the prison employees are basically good people," Prechtl said.
It is customary that two prison officers check all personal data for prisoners, including release dates, but in future a senior officer or prison director will also be checking any data for serious criminals, he added.
The Pink Panthers group is behind armed robberies targeting high-end jewellery stores in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and the United States.
They are believed to have carried out robberies worth in excess of €330 million since 1999. Hundreds of suspects are linked to more than 340 robberies in 35 countries.
Many gang members are known to originate from the former Yugoslavia, but they work across countries and continents.
The Panthers got their nickname after a diamond stolen during a raid in London was later found hidden in a jar of face cream, copying a tactic used in the original 1963 Pink Panther crime comedy, starring Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau.

Cheuk Nang tycoon Cecil Chao latest celebrity victim of burglary

Thief escapes with antiques and other items worth HK$10 million taken from bathroom safe
During the robbery, more than $550,000 worth of goods were stolen. The jeweler was shot in the face and died seven years later as a result of his injuries, which had left him an invalid.


Flamboyant tycoon Cecil Chao Sze-tsung became the latest victim in a string of celebrity burglaries when antiques and other items valued at about HK$10 million were stolen from a safe in a bathroom at his 20,000 sq ft mansion.
The burglary was discovered at about 9.30am yesterday after Chao's girlfriend found the bathroom in Villa Cecil on Victoria Road locked from the inside.
"When she used a key to unlock the bathroom, she found signs of ransacking inside," a police officer said. "The 3ft by 5ft safe was prised open and some antiques were stolen."
Initial investigations revealed that six antiques, five watches and 20 items of jewellery had been stolen.
The girlfriend, 35, told police that she had gone to the bathroom at about 2am and found nothing suspicious.
"The house is very big. It's just like a maze," the officer said. But he refused to comment how an intruder could have discovered the safe and whether it was possible it was an inside job.
"Police believe the burglar scrambled down a hillside into the mansion and then climbed into the cloakroom of the [girlfriend's] bedroom," he said.
A police source said the CCTV system was out of order and no one had been arrested. The western district crime squad is investigating the crime.
Leaving his mansion in a Rolls-Royce at about 1.30pm yesterday, Chao said it was inappropriate to comment as police were investigating.
Chao, 78, is the chairman of the family property company Cheuk Nang. His daughter, Gigi Chao, is its vice-chairman. The family made international headlines in 2012 after Chao offered HK$500 million to any man who succeeded in marrying Gigi after learning she had wed her girlfriend Sean Eav.
His mansion was the third luxury house burgled on Hong Kong Island in the past four days while a quarter of the 28,000-strong police force was busy controlling Occupy Central protesters.
Two houses in the exclusive Peak and Repulse Bay areas were broken into on Friday.
The year's biggest raid was in February when five-carat diamond earrings worth HK$7 million and HK$1.7 million in cash and valuables were stolen from the Sai Kung home of a Taiwanese businesswoman.

Chicago Raid Uncovers Cache of “High-End” Art


art-trove-chicago-seized
Seized artworks in Chicago.
Photo: Screenshot from Chicago Tribune video.
According to a report in the Chicago Tribune, a warrant carried out against a family charged with stealing $400,000 worth of high-end watches unexpectedly turned up thousands of stolen items, including a hoard of high end art.
Though the story does not identify any of the artworks—presumably because it might spark false claims from the public—one police sergeant tells the paper that some of the art was stolen from an art gallery in San Francisco, adding: “It seems as though this family is a clearinghouse for high-end art.”
Experts from the Art Institute of Chicago are helping police with the investigation, and most of the purportedly stolen merchandise was on display at the 18th district police station. Over the past weekend, victims were able to visit the station where they were required to provide proof of ownership.
Three men and two women were arrested recently after making off with the trove of watches. A man who was at the home when the search warrant was executed reportedly attempted to flee with some artworks but was apprehended. Along with artwork, the police also discovered designer clothes, vases, electronics, rugs, DVDs, and more.







Antiques stolen in burglary

ANTIQUES were stolen after burglars forced their way into a home.
They broken in through downstairs windows at the property in Longdon and searched the house.
A number of items of antique silverware, clocks, watches and ornaments were taken during the burglary, which occurred between 11pm on Wednesday, September 24 and 7.30am the next day.







A snuff box, silver candle sticks and a coffee pot among items stolen from Blackheath burglary in images released by detectives in hope to track them down


The engraved snuff box stolen from the Blackheath property in September
The engraved snuff box stolen from the Blackheath property in September
Detectives in Greenwich have released images of distinctive antique items stolen from a Blackheath property during a recent burglary in a bid to attempt to track them down.
News Shopper:
The items consist of a pair of silver coasters, a salver, a pair of silver candle sticks, a decorative antique box, a silver coffee pot and an engraved snuff box.

News Shopper:
The burglary took place some time between 2.30pm on September 20 and 1.30pm the following day.
News Shopper:
The suspect(s) is believed to have broken in through the kitchen window.
Detective Constable Steve Brunt, from Greenwich CID, who is investigating the burglary said: "The antiques and items stolen during this burglary are worth several thousand pounds and are of huge sentimental value. It is likely that the thief may have tried to sell these on for a quick profit in the local area.
News Shopper:
“We'd urge anyone who may have seen these items or with information to contact us so that we can progress with our enquiries.”
News Shopper:


Stolen Art Watch, November, Bonfire of The Vanities

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The 'Rathkeale Rovers': 13 men charged with stealing rhino horns and museum antiquities

Police investigating a team of jewel and rhino horn thieves dubbed the “Rathkeale Rovers” have charged 13 men over a string of museum raids across the country that netted millions of pounds worth of precious artifacts.
The 13 have been charged with conspiracy to steal after Chinese antiques and horn were targeted in seven burglaries in four months at an auction house and four museums.
Thieves stole jade figures and bowls from the Ming and Qing dynasties worth £15m in one of the raids at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. None of the 18 items have been recovered from a raid that authorities said had tarnished the museum’s reputation as a guardian of treasures. Furthermore, the bogus "Substantial" reward offer has done nothing to smoke out the stolen Jade and has only re-enforced the truth about rewards being paid are "Fools on a Fools errand, chasing Fools Gold"
Twelve men, aged between 25 and 67, were arrested in a series of raids across Britain in September last year in an operation coordinated by the National Crime Agency.
It was combined with further searches in Rathkeale, a town in County Limerick, in the southwest of Ireland, that gave the name to the men, who allegedly have roots in the Irish travelling community.
A thirteenth man, Daniel O’Brien, 44, from a traveller site at Smithy Fen, Cambridge, was arrested this week and will appear in court in Birmingham on Thursday November 6th. The other men, from London, Cambridgshire, Wolverhampton, Billericay and Southend in Essex, and Belfast, will appear at the same court in three/four weeks.
Three of the criminal raids were carried out at the Durham University Oriental Museum, with some of the items recovered, including a figurine and bowl that were found in a field.
Another raid was foiled when members of the public intervened at the Norwich Castle Museum. Gorringes auction house in East Sussex and the Powell Cotton Museum in Kent were also allegedly targeted.
The burglaries highlighted the high value of rhino horn to criminals that can provide a higher profit margin than gold or cocaine. It also has the advantage of being difficult to trace and less identifiable than other commodities.
It is highly prized in Vietnam and China where it is ground down and used in traditional products and commands huge prices, despite having no medicinal properties. Most rhino horn has now been moved from public display in Britain and scientists have started putting samples of horn on a DNA database to try to prevent such crimes. Private homes with Victorian hunting trophies have also been put on alert to avoid being targeted for the valuable horn.
They are: Alan Clarke, 26, of Newham, London; Ashley Dad, 34, of Wolverhampton; Michael Hegarty, 42, of Smithy Fen; John O’Brien, 67, of Wolverhampton; John O’Brien, 25, of Smithy Fen; Richard O’Brien, 29, of Dale Farm, Essex; Paul Pammen, 48, of Southend-on-Sea; Richard Sheridan, 46, of Smithy Fen; Chi Chong Donald Wong, 55, of Lambeth, London; Patrick Clarke, 32, of Melbourne Road, London; Terrence McNamara, 45, of Belfast; and Robert Gilbert, 26, of HMP Lewes.

Past masters ... in the art of the heist

They are paintings by three of the best-known Irish painters of the 20th­century. When raiders lifted valuable by art works by Jack B Yeats, Sir John Lavery and Paul Henry, from a private house in Wicklow in the past few days, they seemed to know exactly what they were looking for.
No other items were taken in the robbery, leading gardaí to believe that the criminals were well aware of the value of the art in the house at the end of the a long driveway near Baltinglass. It was not the normal opportunist crime.
All three painters targeted have works hanging in the National Gallery in Dublin, and have featured in the private collections of wealthy individuals across Ireland in recent decades.
The most valuable painting in the haul, Portrait of a Lady by Sir John Lavery, is believed to be worth up to €100,000 on the open market. Lavery is perhaps best known for his portraits of his wife Hazel; one of these iconic images appeared on the old one pound notes.
If they were sold legitimately, the paintings would have been worth up €200,000 in total, but it is most unlikely that underworld figures would receive anything like that price on the black market.
If anything the fame of the painters may make the paintings almost impossible to sell in Ireland, according to Dublin art auctioneer Ian Whyte.
"They wouldn't be sold through a regular art dealer. When someone comes to us we would always check a painting's provenance, and if we were suspicious of the sellers we would check them out."
Stolen or missing paintings are logged by the London-based Art Loss Register, a database that is led by the insurance industry.

MASTER: Gardai are hunting the thieves who stole three paintings including Portrait Of A Lady by John Lavery
MASTER: Gardai are hunting the thieves who stole three paintings including Portrait Of A Lady by John Lavery
"I think there is a good chance that the paintings were taken to England and sold there very quickly," Mr Whyte told Weekend Review in the middle of this week as gardaí tried to trace them.
"These painters are not so well-known in England, and the theft is not big news there. They could have been sold at an antiques fair, and whoever bought them probably doesn't know they are stolen. The thieves would probably have been happy to get €10,000 for them."
Mr Whyte said burglars usually target goods that are easy to dispose of such as gold, silver and jewellery, but there are some dedicated art thieves.
"Usually, they pick paintings that are slightly less valuable, and sell them for under €5,000, because there is less fuss over them."
In one of the few cases where a thief accumulated a private collection of art, gardaí recently discovered a haul of 48 paintings in a Dublin home.
The collection, which included works by Graham Knuttel and William Ashford, is thought to have been built up over three decades.
While the recent Wicklow art robbers knew what they were looking for, in another reported heist in Co Armagh two years, a gang sought help from outside.
In what became known as the "iPhone raid", raiders were said to have taken two paintings by the Italian artist Canaletto from a retired Protestant vicar. After tying up their victim and gagging him, they used a smartphone to send images of his collection to an outside accomplice.
They then received instructions from the criminal connoisseur about what to take.
Private houses are more likely to be the target for thieves than galleries or museums, because of heightened security. Museums have security devices such as motion sensors and contact detectors that sound alarms when contact between the painting and a wall is broken.
There is a popular image of a villainous art collector sitting in a darkened room, with his collection of masterpieces around him.
In the 1962 film Dr No, Sean Connery's James Bond visits his enemy's lair and spots Goya's stolen portrait of the Duke of Wellington.
In real life, Goya's painting had actually been stolen from the National Gallery in London by an unemployed truck driver, who escaped with his haul through a toilet window. The thief said the raid had been carried out as a protest against the cost of TV licences.
Art auctioneer Ian Whyte said the idea of the rich art-collecting villain in his lair is actually a myth.
The two most famous art robberies in Ireland, both at Russborough House, show how raiders are more likely to steal extremely valuable paintings in order to seek a ransom, or to use them as security in major drug deals.
In 1974, an IRA gang including Dr Rose Dugdale, tied up Sir Alfred and Lady Clementine Beit, and made off with a haul that included works by Rubens, Goya and Vermeer.
They sought a ransom of £500,000 and the release of IRA prisoners. The paintings were found only a few days afterwards in the boot of a car in West Cork.
In the second major raid at Russborough, the Dublin criminal Martin Cahill ("The General") got away with 18 paintings.
Cahill's use of the art followed a pattern where a criminal hopes to use the paintings as bargaining chips in deals with other villains.
Gangs use valuable paintings as security on loans or as a form of currency when they are trading in drugs or weapons. One of the Russborough paintings stolen by Cahill's gang turned up in Istanbul as part of a heroin deal.
According to the book, Art Theft, by the director of the British National Portrait Gallery Sandy Nairne, the annual market for stolen art and antiquities in the early part of this decade was $5bn (€4bn).
As the first Russborough theft showed in 1974, raiders may try to secure a ransom with valuable paintings.
A bold demand for cash ransom from a museum, a collector or an insurance company is unlikely to be successful.
However, in an article in the Daily Telegraph, art critic Alastair Sooke said a museum or an insurance company will often offer a reward for information leading to the recovery of a work.
There seems to be a grey area between a ransom demand and information leading to a painting's recovery.
As Sooke puts it: "While rewards are never paid to criminals, this can be circumvented with the help of one or two shady middlemen - with authorities turning a blind eye, so long as the stolen goods are returned."
According to the Art Loss Register, which logs missing work, the recovery rate of stolen art is only about 15pc. Of the other 85 pc, around 20pc has been destroyed.
In Ireland however, the recovery rate of stolen paintings after high-profile robberies has been high. All but two of the 18 paintings stolen by the "General" Martin Cahill were eventually recovered.
The owners of the paintings stolen in Wicklow in recent days, would have been hoping that there was a good chance that they could be recovered. The artists are so well known that criminals who are trying to off-load them could find they are a liability.
As Dublin art auctioneer Ian Whyte puts it: "Many a criminal has found himself in jail after a painting they had stolen was traced."

Four arrests after burglars tie up victims in multiple raids in West End, Hambledon and Bishops Waltham

FOUR MEN, including infamous Christopher Doughty, have been arrested following a string of burglaries across Hampshire including two where homeowners were tied up and threatened.
Southampton men aged 29, 36, 48 and 53 are being quizzed by officers after eight warrants were executed at addresses in Southampton, Eastleigh and Hedge End today.
They came after burglaries in West End, Bishops Waltham and Hambledon.
As previously reported by the Daily Echo, a retired couple were tied up and threatened during a burglary at their home in West End on August 6.
Jewellery, watches and firearms were taken from the address.
Another burglary took place during the early hours of September 3, when entry was forced to a house in Bishops Waltham and items of china along with other antiques were stolen.
Finally at around 2am on October 9, three men entered a house in Hambledon and tied up two women aged 90 and 27.
Antique items of jewellery and silver were targeted.
Detective Superintendent Victoria Dennis from the Hampshire Major Investigation team said: “Each of these burglaries would have been very frightening for the victims involved.
“We have previously appealed for witnesses for these three burglaries separately but following extensive enquiries we are now treating them as linked.
“We are taking these incidents very seriously and have made a number of arrests today as part of our ongoing investigation.
“We are still appealing for witnesses and would urge anyone with information to contact us so that we can bring those responsible for these terrifying incidents to justice and recover stolen property.”

Detectives charge man with two burglaries


A MAN has been charged with two burglaries.
Police executed warrants at eight addresses after burglaries on September 3 in Bishop’s Waltham, October 9 in Hambledon and on August 6 in West End, Southampton.
Christopher Doughty, 53, from West End, is charged with two counts of aggravated burglary and is due to appear at Southampton Magistrates’ Court on November 18.
Three men from Southampton, aged 29, 36 and 48, were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to burgle have been bailed until January 7.
A 24-year-old man from Southampton arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to burgle has been bailed until January.
A 43-year-old man from Southampton is being quizzed on suspicion of conspiracy to burgle.

Sculpture worth £7,000 stolen from a central Newcastle art gallery


CCTV image of a man police want to speak to in connection with the theft of a sculpture from Castle Fine Art gallery in Newcastle

A sculpture worth £7,000 was snatched from a central Newcastle gallery.
The piece, by artist Lorenzo Quinn, was taken from Castle Fine Art Gallery on Grey Street in a move that staff say occurred in a matter of minutes.
The artist is an Italian sculptor whose work mainly focuses on human hands. His work includes both large scale sculptures as well as smaller pieces. The work stolen featured a small hand with a man sat in its palm.
The man made off with the sculpture in a bag despite its substantial weight, according to staff.
Gallery manager Sarah Manghan said the thief had headed straight for the sculpture, called ‘The Hand of God’, as though he knew what he was looking for.

The sculpture called 'hand of god' which is worth around £7000 was stolen from Castle Fine Art gallery in Newcastle
The sculpture called 'hand of god' which is worth around £7000 was stolen from Castle Fine Art gallery in Newcastle
 She said: “The theft happened so quickly. A man came into the gallery, immediately headed for the sculpture, put it in a gift bag that he was carrying and then left.
“It seemed like he knew what to take and exactly where it was. The entire incident lasted no longer than a couple of minutes.”
The piece was part of a two part set called ‘The Hand of God’. It was snatched from the ground floor of the gallery, but the thief left the second piece in the set behind.
Police are carrying out an investigation and have now released CCTV images of a man they want to speak to in connection with the theft, which occurred at the beginning of October.
The gallery is home to local artists including Alexander Millar, Jeff Rowland and Keith Proctor.
Ms Manghan said: “We have a high turnover of exhibitions and artwork in our gallery, but thefts are extremely unusual.
“We have excellent security systems and a prosecution policy for any shoplifters caught. We greatly appreciate the support of the police and their call for witnesses, and hope that the public can help us locate the beautiful ‘Hand of God’ sculpture by Lorenzo Quinn and bring it back to the gallery where it can be admired.”

Three religious paintings worth more than £30,000 stolen in Plungington home raid

Three paintings worth more than £30,000 have been stolen from a home in Preston.
Police are appealing for information after the raid at around 10pm on Thursday.
An unknown number of people have forced access to the rear of a property in Emmanuel Street, Plungington.
The owner returned home from work and is believed to have disturbed the offenders.
Three original Italian religious works of art are around 2ft by 2ft in size and are housed in dark Oak antique frames.
One painting features Jesus on the cross, another the Virgin Mary and Jesus, and the third features Our Lady Virgin Mary.
Two sewing machines and a laptop were also taken.
DC Warren Gibson from Preston Police said: “This has understandably been an upsetting experience for the victim and we are keen to trace and return the valuable paintings to her as soon as possible.”

Balochistan’s stolen antiques found in Italy

ISLAMABAD: Antiques pertaining to the Buddha era stolen from Mehrgarh area of Pakistan’s southwestern province of Balochistan have been recovered in Italy.

A provincial government spokesman said yesterday that the Italian government had informed the authorities in Islamabad that they had recovered the antiques smuggled from Pakistan.

“The antiques, including statues of Buddha, had been found during digging at Mehrgarh in the mountainous region of Bolan Pass. They were later stolen and smuggled to Italy,” he said. He said smugglers sold the antiques in Italy at a lucrative price.

Earlier, Chief Minister Dr Abdul Malik Baloch said a request had been made to the federal government to approach the Italian government for bringing the antiques back to Balochistan.

A senior official said that the theft took place in connivance with some government employees and smuggled to Europe via sea. “Some black sheep in government departments helped smuggle the antiques out of Pakistan.”

The excavation at Mehrgarh was carried out by French archaeologist Jean Francois Jarrige and the French Consulate in Pakistan had extended financial cooperation for the purpose. The Mehrgarh civilisation is said to be 8,000 years old.

Officials said that a mafia was involved in the smuggling of antiques from centuries old civilisations of Loralai, Zhob, Bolan and Jhal Magsi districts of Balochistan.

Mafia is a type of organised crime syndicate that primarily practices protection racketeering — the use of violent intimidation to manipulate local economic activity, especially illicit trade.

Clerkenwell gallery hit by ‘theft to order’

Four of eleven wooden sculptures stolen
A gallery in Clerkenwell, north London has been broken into and four sculptures stolen in what has been described as a “steal to order” theft. In a press release issued yesterday, 29 October, Kim Savage, the owner of Fold Gallery, says he initially thought that “opportunistic thieves” looking for laptops and office equipment committed the break in.
But Savage says he soon realised that four out of eleven sculptures by the British artist Tim Ellis on show were taken, while none of his paintings, which could be “easily transported”, were touched.

“The police have told us this is a ‘steal to order’ situation, which is very rare for a gallery of our size,” Savage says. “We thought we should make people aware as this is an unusual event; I have never come across this before.”

Savage is offering a “substantial reward” for the return of the four wooden sculptures; he says the exact figure is being negotiated with the police. According to the press release, the value of the stolen works is around £20,000, but because Ellis did not sign the sculptures they are now “valueless”. Savage says the works were due to be signed when they were sold along with their certificates of authentication.

A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police says they received a call at 9.05pm on Saturday 25 October logging the break in, but that no arrests have been made. Savage says by publicising the theft he hopes to retrieve the works and draw attention to the crime. “The best thing we can do for our artist is get the word out. We are trying to make something good out of something terrible,” he says.

$23 Million Arlington Mansion Target of Possible Home Invasion Robbery

The $23 million mansion at 201 Chain Bridge Road in Arlington was the scene of a possible home invasion robbery this morning.
The robbery is at least the second time the 23,000-square-foot, Mediterranean house overlooking the Potomac River has been broken into in the past seven months. This time, police were dispatched around 10:30 a.m. for a report of a burglary in progress, according to Arlington County Police Department spokesman Dustin Sternbeck.
Police arrived with a large response; more than two dozen vehicles were at the scene, blocking off one lane of Chain Bridge Road and occupying the entirety of the hilly driveway. Sternbeck said police took two subjects into custody and had multiple K-9 units sweeping the massive house to ensure no one else was on the property.
“This is a known residence to police,” Sternbeck said, referencing previous calls for “a variety of incidents,” including when valuable art was stolen from the home.
The mansion near the border with McLean belongs to Rodney P. Hunt, the former CEO of RS Information Systems who sold the I.T. company for $1.2 billion, he told ARLnow.com in April. The April incident was also allegedly perpetrated by two individuals, who made off with some crystal ware, Hunt said.
Sternbeck could not confirm if anything was taken from the house before police arrived. Hunt and another person were inside the home when the break-in occurred, Sternbeck said.

The Masterplan: fans steal Oasis painting in daylight raid

The one-of-a-kind piece was taken from a Manchester art gallery
The Masterplan: fans steal Oasis painting in daylight raid

A one-of-a-kind Oasis painting has been stolen from a Manchester art gallery during a daylight raid.
According to police, thieves snatched the black and white painting around 5pm yesterday evening (28 October), after smashing through glass to get into the Art Gallery and Gift Shop. The piece by Olga Tsarevska, which features both Noel and Liam, is signed "otz2013".
"Quite what the masterplan behind this theft is I don't know, but a local business has been broken into and a one of a kind piece of artwork taken," said PC Katherine Gosling. "This was the only piece taken and some might say we are therefore looking for an Oasis fan - similarly it may have been stolen to order. Regardless we are keen to find it and return it."
The news follows on from the disbandment of Beady Eye over the weekend and the usual Oasis reunion rumours returning. Could this have been the work of some wounded Gallagher fan boys?
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From a cost standpoint, when involving paintings and artifacts valued in the millions of dollars, the cost to museums, galleries, and collectors for implementing StealthMark™ technology can become insignificant. Expensive insurance premiums to protect such highly-valuable items can be drastically slashed to the point where such institutions can turn a profit when factoring the difference between cost of use and money saved.
Working closely with industry experts, Stealth Mark is poised to become a key player in combating the rise in illicit fraud, forgery, and theft of valuable goods; setting the bar for anti-criminal solutions in museums, galleries, and other applicable industries, globally.
"Although our target market continues to be the Healthcare & Pharmaceutical industries, the demand for our unique anti-counterfeit and data verification solutions cannot be ignored. Within the coming months, Stealth Mark is poised to demonstrate its technological versatility for use across a wide spectrum of products in several industries," stated Rick Howard, CEO of StealthCo, Inc.
Industries affected by counterfeiting, diversion, and theft include: Aerospace, Defense, Automotive, Electronics, Technology, Pharmaceuticals, Consumer and Personal Care Goods, Designer Products, Beverage/Spirits, and many others. In 2012, counterfeit Auto Parts accounted for $4 billion in the US and $12 billion globally, Electrical Parts were $15 billion, and Personal Care was $4 billion in the US. Furthermore, over 8% of the medical devices in circulation are counterfeit, Aerospace & Defense accounted for 520,000 counterfeit parts in the US, and greater than 5% of wine sold on the secondary market is counterfeit.
- See more at: http://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2014/10/31/678582/10105613/en/Stealth-Mark-s-Anti-Counterfeiting-Technology-Ready-for-Use-in-Art-Galleries-Museums.html#sthash.S08RxCpF.dpuf

The art of theft: Why do thieves steal famous paintings when they're so hard to sell?



Edvard Munch's The Scream
Edvard Munch's The Scream, which was stolen from the Munich Museum in 2004
On a freezing Stockholm evening just before Christmas 2000, a group of six to eight Middle Eastern men put into action a plan they’d been working on for months. The group parked cars in the middle of the three central roads leading to the Swedish National Museum and set them ablaze. As fire engines screeched into the city centre and passersby crowded around the spectacle, three of the men – one armed with a machine gun, the other two with pistols – approached and entered the museum on foot. After ordering everyone to lie on the floor and screaming at them to remain calm, they went upstairs to claim their prize: two small Renoirs dated around 1870 and a Rembrandt self-portrait no bigger than a postcard. The Rembrandt alone was valued at $36m. Their multimillion-dollar cargo stuffed hastily into large black duffel bags, the thieves jumped into a getaway boat and chugged away into the icy Scandinavian night.
“Criminals who steal high-value art-works tend to be better thieves than businessmen,” says Robert Wittman, former undercover agent and head of the FBI Art Crime Team. “They don’t understand that the true art in a heist isn’t the stealing, it’s the selling.” The theft at the Swedish National Museum made news all around the world, the kind of exposure that makes a sale on the legal market impossible. The black market is another story, but it can be just as difficult for criminals to make money from their loot below board. As a general rule, stolen artworks’ black-market value is around 10 per cent of the actual value, but with paintings worth tens of millions of dollars, even this mark-down is way out of most illicit buyers’ price range. “The kind of people who have the wherewithal to pay that kind of money,” says Wittman, “aren’t interested in owning something that they could never sell on and that they could possibly go to jail for possessing.”
When it comes to stealing and selling art, going cheap pays. Paintings worth in the tens of thousands are less likely to be registered on international databases and don’t make headlines when they go missing. At this price range, only about 10 per cent of stolen works are recovered. With masterpieces worth tens of millions the rate of recovery improves to around 90 per cent.
So why do criminals steal expensive art? Ever since Dr No bragged to 007 about his stolen Goya (a portrait of the Duke of Wellington), the aesthetically-inclined super-villain having priceless paintings stolen to order has loomed large in the collective imagination. In reality, no international criminal would intentionally court the attention a missing masterpiece invites.

Robert Wittman poses next to a Goya painting he helped recover
That said, it isn’t always about profit. Between 1995 and 2001, French waiter Stephane Breitwieser stole over 200 paintings and objets d’art, eventually amassing a collection worth over $1bn. After he was arrested he recalled the first painting he ever stole, a minor portrait of a woman by 18th century German painter Christian Wilhelm Dietrich: “I was fascinated by her beauty, by the qualities of the woman in the portrait and by her eyes.” Breitwieser never tried to sell the art he stole, and instead used it to decorate the home he shared with his mother, who destroyed most of it after hearing her son had fallen foul of the law.
Another unusual motive lay behind the 2004 theft of Edvard Munch’s The Scream. The masterpiece, a version of which was sold at auction for $119m two years ago, was stolen from the Munch Museum by armed robbers. In the subsequent investigation detectives began to link the suspects to another armed robbery that left a senior ranking Norwegian police officer dead. In light of other peculiarities about the case (the robbers hadn’t done their homework and needed to be shown the location of the painting) officers began to suspect the work was stolen to distract police from investigating the death of the policeman; an “illustrious corpse” as the mobsters say. The criminals were right, international attention did pressurise Norwegian police into prioritising the stolen Munch. In the end, though, the painting was recovered and both thief and police killer were brought to justice.
When a painting as famous as The Scream goes missing, the authorities have no choice but to focus their attention on getting it back. But thousands of lower-value works are stolen every year, and law enforcement agencies don’t have the resources to go after them all. Scotland Yard has just three people working in its arts and antiques unit. Given that the vast majority of thefts are non-violent, and that most losses are covered by insurance, art-retrieval is largely left to the private sector. The Art Loss Register, a London-based company part owned by Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Bonham’s, maintains a database of over 400,000 missing works. Before each sale, dealers and auction houses have a duty to check the item against the Register. If it’s listed as lost or stolen, the ALR will then handle negotiations leading to its return in exchange for a fee.
“Often, when an item is found,” says Julian Radcliffe, founder of the ALR, “it’s owned by someone who is not the thief, but who bought it not knowing it was stolen. There has to be a private negotiation because going to the courts is too expensive.” When this happens, does the unwitting owner of the stolen work ever get to keep it? “It’s different in every country, but generally if someone has bought it in good faith, not from the thief but from someone who has bought from the thief, and they’ve held it for six years, they may have a chance of holding on to it... But if it’s a professional member of the trade [a dealer or an auction house] and they’ve not checked the Register, they won’t be able to claim good faith.” 
In the world of high-value art theft, the Munch Museum heist and Stephane Breitwieser are exceptions. For organised criminals, top-dollar loot is most useful as collateral; while it may be difficult to sell masterpieces for a fat sum, information about their whereabouts can be used to leverage shorter sentences in the event the thieves find themselves facing criminal charges, whether artrelated or otherwise. Most European courts accept these kinds of plea bargains, though similar negotiations are not permitted in the US.
An art thief’s plunder, then, is most valuable to him after he’s been caught, a fact that explains the high recovery rate of high-value pieces, and why antsy thieves tend not to destroy their haul as police investigators close in.

Lucian Freud's Woman with Eyes Closed was stolen from the Rotterdam Kunsthal
That’s not to say it never happens. On an October morning in 2012, a gang of Romanian criminals broke into the Kunsthal museum in Rotterdam and made off with seven paintings including two Monets, a Picasso and Lucian Freud’s Woman with Eyes Closed. Experts speculated that if sold legally under auction the cumulative value of the paintings would reach well into the hundreds of millions. The theft caused a media storm that spooked the gang into a hasty return to Romania, where they attempted to flog the paintings out of plastic bags for about €100,000 each. When the authorities caught wind of stray Monets being loped around the streets of Bucharest they acted swiftly – three members of the gang were arrested in January, three months after the original theft.
The authorities got their men, but they didn’t get their paintings. In the subsequent investigation, Olga Dogaru, mother of the ringleader, Radu Dogaru, confessed to burning them in a fit of panic following her son’s arrest. Like much of Breitwieser’s collection, the seven masterpieces from the Kunsthal museum met their end at the hands of an anxious mother.
This is a nightmare scenario for the likes of Wittman. Lying face down on a museum floor while thieves wave guns around is scary; for many working in the field of art crime, the prospect of a masterpiece being destroyed is scarier. How does Wittman feel when a painting is lost forever? “It’s a terrible shame because it’s a piece of genius that humanity has created. It’s a terrible loss, but even worse it’s hugely disappointing that we didn’t protect it for future generations.”
In 2005, five years after the Stockholm heist, Robert Wittman was sitting in a stuffy Danish hotel room pretending to be Mr Big. A six month investigation linking criminals in Los Angeles, Iraq, Bulgaria, Sweden and Russia had led him, finally, to Copenhagen. Opposite sat a nervous young Iraqi called Kadhum. As far as Kadhum was aware, Wittman was an American art-loving mobster, or at least someone working for the mob (when going undercover it’s best to keep things vague). An elaborate plan had been hatched by Wittman’s FBI team, trust had been won, and now it was just a question of executing the hand-over. Wittman laid out the wads of cash (the agreed sum a trifling $250,000) and in turn Kadhum handed over the Rembrandt. Wittman took it into the bathroom to take a closer look. There was no mistaking it, that golden half-smile beaming back as if to say, “thank you”. Loudly and triumphantly, Wittman uttered the code phrase: “We have a done deal.” The swat team moved in.
Kadhum was eventually sent down for two years for his part in the crime. In the five years between heist and recovery, the Rembrandt had been kept wrapped in red velvet cloth and hidden in a bedroom closet in a flat in Stockholm. No damage was sustained during its time as a hostage. The Renoirs had been recovered a couple of years earlier in a separate operation.
“Generally speaking, the groups that carry out these kind of crimes, they’re not art thieves,” says Wittman, “they’re just common criminals involved in many different criminal activities; car theft, drugs, weapons. And then one day they just happen to do an art heist.” Why? Because they see on the news when an artwork exchanges hands for $200m and their heads are turned. As long as legally sold art continues to smash records and make headlines, thieves will continue to make their own headlines with daring raids on the world’s most prestigious collections.

Quirky Matisse exhibit rekindles art mystery in Venezuela

CARACAS - Venezuela is flaunting its newly-recovered Henri Matisse painting next to a sloppy copy that was put in its place when the original was stolen more than a decade ago, rekindling an art-world mystery.

The "Odalisque in Red Pants," worth roughly $3 million, was stolen from the Caracas Museum of Contemporary Art at some point during a tumultuous period after the start of socialist Hugo Chavez's presidency in 1999.

The theft went unnoticed for months or even years because the robbers replaced it with a forgery.

To this day, no one has been charged with the crime nor have its exact circumstances been established.

The original was finally retrieved in 2012 after it was offered to undercover FBI agents at a Miami Beach hotel for about $740,000.

The striking topless odalisque, a word of Turkish origin meaning concubine, traveled back to Venezuela last July to great fanfare.

She now graces the same museum again, right next to the gaudy imitation that long duped visitors, allowing the public to compare the two and reviving interest in the mystery over who poached it and why the theft took so long to come to light.

"It's a very bad copy," said Venezuelan artist Elizabeth Cemborain, who was fascinated by the case. "It doesn't have the original's design, it doesn't have its elegance. I don't understand how no one realized."

The forgery is, indeed, shockingly amateurish.

It is in acrylic rather than oil, and has six horizontal green stripes instead of seven plus a big brown stain in the middle. The odalisque's sweet face looks contorted in the fake, and even her famous red trousers are off-color.

The museum touts the exhibit as an opportunity to learn about the illegal traffic of cultural goods, and an educational video explains the many differences between the two paintings.

"This exhibit just generates more questions. It's almost a piece of contemporary art in and of itself," said Cemborain.

Venezuela's culture ministry the National Museums Foundation did not respond to requests for comments.

Odalisque's odyssey

The museum says its coveted Matisse had been stolen by 2001 but Venezuelan journalist Marianela Balbi, who wrote a respected book about the robbery, argues it was snatched sometime between December 1999, when it was moved for protection from floods, and mid-2000.

While Balbi says the museum was negligent, she has not directly accused any officials of involvement in the heist.

In 2002, after a brief coup against Chavez plunged Venezuela into chaos, Matisse's muse surfaced in Florida.

A self-identified Venezuelan National Guard colonel tried to sell it to a Miami art dealer, according to Balbi's "The Kidnapping of the Odalisque."

In late 2002, Venezuela-born Miami gallery owner Genaro Ambrosino got wind the painting was on the market.

Ambrosino says he tried to corroborate the information with the museum only to be ignored or told there was a bogus painting circulating.

"I was furious," Ambrosino told Reuters. "So I sent an email to everyone I knew in the art world."

A stunned Caracas art scene started asking questions and Venezuela in December 2002 finally announced its Matisse, bought for $480,000 from a New York gallery in 1981, had indeed been poached.

Balbi says it changed hands several times between art thieves and apparently unsuspecting dealers over a decade, including stops in New York, Paris, and Mexico, before the FBI seized it back in Miami.

A U.S. judge last year sentenced two people to prison for trying to sell the stolen painting, and Venezuela requested it be returned.

"It's absurd that they're showing the copy too," Balbi said of the new exhibit. "It legitimizes the object of a crime that Venezuelan authorities haven't done anything about in 12 years."

Thief caught for stealing antiques worth $25K from Brighton home

A thief who broke into a Brighton home, by forcing entry through a window, and stole anti
A thief who broke into a Brighton home, by forcing entry through a window, and stole antique goods has been caught.
BAYSIDE police have charged a man after he allegedly burgled a vacant Brighton home and stole antiques worth more than $25,000.
A break-in at a New St home was reported to police last month, with a large quantity of antique clocks allegedly taken.
The house was vacant and had been accessed at the rear through a window that was forced open.
Police officers conducted a routine traffic intercept on Sunday and allegedly spotted an antique clock in the man’s vehicle.
A later search of the man’s house allegedly uncovered several more antique items, which police believe were stolen from the vacant home.
A Bentleigh man, aged 48, has been bailed and will appear before court at a later date to face charges including burglary and handling stolen goods offences.

Antique paintings stolen from elderly couple with dementia










An elderly couple from Slough are appealing for information about three stolen pieces of art.
The antique paintings, belonging to a woman in her seventies and a man in his eighties, were taken at some point between March and June.
The couple, who both have dementia, noticed other paintings hung in their place to replace the stolen artwork.
If anyone has been offered these paintings for sale, or has seen them since March, please contact PC Jason Twine.

Mystic jeweler pleads guilty to possession of goods stolen in residential burglaries

Downtown Mystic jeweler Matthew L. Hopkins pleaded guilty Monday to being in possession of jewelry and antiques stolen in a series of residential burglaries in the Lyme and Old Lyme area and faces up to two years in prison when he is sentenced in January.

Hopkins, 42, owner of Goldsmiths & Silversmiths Co. at 9 W. Main St., pleaded guilty to second-degree larceny in New London Superior Court. Initially charged with first-degree larceny, he accepted an offer from prosecutor David J. Smith to plead guilty to the reduced charge in exchange for a sentence of five years in prison, suspended after two years served, followed by five years of probation.

Under the agreement, defense attorney Michael L. Cozzolino has the right, at Hopkins’ Jan. 9 sentencing, to argue for a reduced or fully suspended prison term. Judge Hillary B. Strackbein said she would be ordering Hopkins to make restitution along with brothers Justin and Karl Weissinger, who sold him the stolen goods in 2011 and 2012.

The total restitution amount is approximately $326,000, and Strackbein indicated that his effort at repayment would play a big part in whether Hopkins goes to jail or not. The two brothers are incarcerated and are not expected to be able to make restitution payments for several years, if ever. The judge said the restitution order will be enforceable for 10 years.

“You happen to run a business,” Strackbein told Hopkins when he stood before her to enter his plea. “It looks like the lion’s share of restitution could fall on you.”

Several of the burglary victims were in court to hear Hopkins’ plea and are expected to address the judge at his sentencing.

Hopkins, of 396 Post Road, Westerly, was arrested in July 2013 following an extensive investigation by state police and Old Lyme police. A year earlier, Trooper Gary Inglis was investigating a series of burglaries in the Lyme and Old Lyme area when he went into Hopkins’ store and ran into Karl Weissinger, who was attempting to sell two stolen watches and a gold chain, according to the court documents. He surrendered the items to police.

Inglis also spotted several stolen items on display in the store, including a Narwhal ivory tusk that had been taken during a burglary of a home on Selden Road in Lyme.

Sgt. John Mesham went to the store and recognized a Tiffany bamboo pattern bar set, black tooth fossil and mammoth vertebrae fossil set that had been reported stolen along with a Tiffany sterling silver baby pacifier.

Hopkins told police the Weissinger brothers had gone into the store 15 to 25 times with items they said they had obtained from storage unit auctions.

A week later, Hopkins and his attorney went to the Troop F state police barracks with financial records from the transactions with the Weissingers and several bags of assorted jewelry and silverware that Hopkins said he had purchased from the Weissinger brothers over the past several months.

Hopkins said he sold some of the precious metals to the Geib Refining Corp. of Warwick, which smelted them.

The Weissinger brothers both pleaded guilty to larceny charges and were sentenced in August. Justin Weissinger, who had a prior record, was sentenced to nine years in prison. Karl Weissinger, who had no prior record but was rearrested twice while his case was pending, was sentenced to 3½ years in prison.

Stolen Art Watch, Monet Damage Was Reaction To Police Raid

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Thief jailed over damage to €10m Monet painting


The area of damage on the  Monet ' Argenteuil Basin with a Single Sailboat ' [1847] painting. The restored Monet Painting  was placed back on  public view at the National Gallery of Ireland yesterday. 1/ 7 14 Pic Frank Mc Grath
The area of damage on the Monet ' Argenteuil Basin with a Single Sailboat ' [1847] painting. The restored Monet Painting was placed back on public view at the National Gallery of Ireland yesterday

a 49-year-old criminal who was jailed for four and a half years for damaging a €10m painting is also the chief suspect for robbing a massive haul of artwork and rare books which were discovered in his west Dublin home in April.

Andrew Shannon (49) of Willians Way, Ongar had pleaded not guilty to damaging the Claude Monet painting entitled Argenteuil Basin with a Single Sail Boat (1874) at the National Gallery of Ireland on Clare Street on June 29, 2012.
Mr Shannon claimed he had felt dizzy and fell forward, telling two tourists from New Zealand and a member of security staff that he had a heart condition. A jury of seven women and five men returned a verdict of guilty on that charge yesterday following an eight-day trial.
Theft
The court heard Shannon has 48 previous convictions in this and other jurisdictions, some of which are for burglary and theft offences involving antiques.
About 60 pieces of art, including paintings, statues, antiques and rare books, were seized by officers from Pearse Street garda station at Shannon's home. Shannon has previous convictions for stealing from stately homes in England as well as for handling stolen property, including maps dating from 1651 with a value of €6,000.
The huge haul which gardai discovered in April was the subject of a garda appeal when many of the items were put on display. The haul included 48 paintings by renowned Irish-based artists like William Ashford, Robert Ballagh and Graham Knuttell, worth well over €100,000.
Shannon was on remand in prison when the raid on his Ongar home took place in April and has not yet been questioned or arrested about the haul.
The artworks were stolen from locations as diverse as Maynooth, Blarney and England. He is expected to be questioned over the coming months.
The revelation comes as senior sources told the Herald that the investigation into Shannon's vandalism of paintings at the National Gallery, as well as the failed prosecution for damaging paintings in the Shelbourne Hotel, have cost "hundreds of thousands of euro".
A senior source pointed out that gardai had to travel to the United States to interview witnesses and other witnesses had to be brought from New Zealand for the trial at a major cost to the State.
The case also involved hundreds of man hours for investigating officers as well as two lengthy trials.
Spite
Gardai also believe that Shannon committed the vandalism act against the Monet painting out of "pure spite" after his home had been raided and items taken from it by the Garda National Bureau of Criminal Investigation's Arts and Antiques Unit earlier that day.
The Monet painting is now back on display in the National Gallery following a period of restoration.
Judge Martin Nolan imposed a sentence of six years and suspended the final 15 months on strict conditions including that Shannon not enter into a public painting gallery or any other institution where paintings are displayed.
Backstory: 
 http://arthostage.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/stolen-art-watch-shannon-goose-loose-in.html

Irishman jailed for stately home thefts

May 2009 
A SERIAL thief who travelled from Ireland to target English stately homes has been jailed after a caretaker at Yorkshire's Castle Howard saw him stuff two valuable watercolours into his laptop bag.
Andrew Shannon, 44, described as unemployed and illiterate, robbed six stately homes of antiques and paintings worth thousands of pounds on a "weekend spree" of stealing.
Shannon travelled from Dublin to target famous buildings across the country, including Blenheim Palace and Chatsworth House.
Together with an accomplice, he stole ornamental lions, porcelain vases, figurines, expensive books and even an antique walking stick from Belvoir Castle – which was identified as missing by the Duke of Rutland.
The four-day spree came to an end on a Sunday last August at Castle Howard, when a caretaker spotted Shannon lurking on a second floor of the home where the public are not allowed.
He claimed he was looking for a toilet, but staff grew suspicious and found two 800 paintings hidden in his laptop bag.
He also had a walkie talkie which he used to communicate with his accomplice and a Chinese ceramic lid – the other half of which was with the other thief, who cannot be named for legal reasons.
Police later traced Shannon's car and found a satellite navigation unit which had been programmed with six stately homes across the UK.
In court he admitted his part in six burglaries.
Jailing him for three years him at York Crown Court, Recorder Deborah Sherwin said: "Your purpose for travelling to England was to carry out this spree of theft.
"You travelled around the country visiting stately homes and stealing from them. It was pre-planned, you took advantage of these vulnerable homes that do not have the most sophisticated security measures in operation."
Prosecuting, David Brooke, said: "The two men visited a number of stately homes between July 30 and August 3 last year. But they were not innocent tourists visiting them for their beauty, this was a long weekend of crime."
Defending, Taryn Turner, said that Shannon had been claiming disability benefits after being seriously injured in a car crash in 1996. As a result he had suffered four heart attacks.
Speaking after the sentencing, Sgt Daniel Spence, of Malton Police Station, said: "Shannon is a prolific international travelling criminal with numerous convictions of a similar nature and his visit to the UK was with the sole intention of stealing works of art from stately homes and country houses.
"An accomplice in this case was detained by the Gardai in Dublin and has been dealt with in Ireland for handling stolen goods. The Crime Prosecution Service and the police are working towards attaining an arrest warrant and bringing him back to the UK."
He added: "It is a good result for Castle Howard and the police."

Shannon brothers sought over stolen antique books

Andrew and William Shannon 
Andrew and William Shannon failed to return to a police station in July
Police want to speak to two brothers in connection with more than 100 stolen antique books and objects offered for sale at an auction in Gloucestershire.
William Knowle Shannon, 30, and Andrew Shannon, 46, whose last known addresses were in Dublin, were arrested and questioned in relation to the thefts.
They were given bail and told to return to a Gloucestershire police station in July 2011, but failed to appear.
Among the items is a Chinese porcelain goose valued at around £20,000.
The books offered for sale in South Cerney date between 1571 and 1962.
A number of them contain personal inscriptions, including one to the wife of Sir Winston Churchill.

Chinese porcelain Goose 
Police said the Chinese porcelain goose is valued at £20,000.
There is also a bronze sculpture by Clodion and a green hardback book of poetry, The Wild Harp by Katherine Tynan.
Inside is written: "To Lady Glenconner."
The books and ornaments are believed to have been stolen from stately homes or possibly National Trust properties across England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales.
A Gloucestershire police spokesman said officers have been working to try to locate the men and they are now asking the public for their help to find them.

Picasso artwork stolen from Art Miami fair


A silver plate crafted by Spanish master Pablo Picasso was stolen, apparently overnight, from Art Miami in Midtown, the premier satellite fair to Art Basel Miami Beach.
David Smith, owner of the Amsterdam-based Leslie Smith Gallery, said he arrived at the booth Friday morning to find an empty plate holder on the wall where the artwork hung Thursday night.
“I’ve been doing art shows all my life. Even when I was a kid, I went with my parents,” he said. “I’ve never, ever had anything stolen.”
Smith reported the theft to the show and to Miami police, who came and dusted for fingerprints, he said.
The 1956 piece, Visage aux Mains (Face with Hands), is a 16.5-inch-wide silver plate engraved with, naturally, a face and hands. It’s Number 16 in a 20-plate series, Smith said, and is valued at about $85,000.
Art Miami is located at 3101 NE First Ave. in a temporary tent facility apparently guarded by the same company that conducts security for Art Basel, which is located at the Miami Beach Convention Center.
At Art Miami, which is a separate fair entirely, security includes 24-hour guards at entrances and exits, as well as locks and chains on the doors. There is no video surveillance of each booth, which is hardly unusual for art fairs.
“There’s an investigation going on,” said Nick Korniloff, the fair’s director and partner.
Overnight, he added, cleaning crews, fair employees and booth operators would have had access to the site. The fair has a list of all personnel working on the premises.
According to Smith, a security guard did a walk-through at about 10:30 p.m. and the Picasso was still in place. Smith said he himself left Art Miami at about 8:30 p.m. last night, with his gallery collection whole. The Picasso had hung there since Monday.
When he walked in at about 10:45 a.m. Friday, Smith said, the piece was gone.
By the time fairgoers started to arrive at 11 a.m., all they saw was a label beneath where the Picasso had been. “Signed, numbered & Stamped with silver marks,” the label read in part.
Police asked the gallery to keep the booth untouched as they investigated, which means Smith could hardly focus on selling art in the fair’s first two hours — usually the busiest ones of the day.
“We had to shoo people off the booth,” he said. “I definitely missed people I didn’t speak to.”
Nothing else in his booth was missing or appeared disturbed, Smith said. The Picasso plate wasn’t the most valuable artwork on display, according to Smith: For example, a Picasso ceramic just below where the plate was hanging is worth about $365,000. The missing piece will be reported to an international database of stolen artwork.
Smith speculated that the plate might have been small enough for someone to hide under a sweater or jacket. The neighboring ceramic piece was smaller but easier to break — and easier to spot as a Picasso, perhaps making it less attractive to steal.
“If you steal art, if it’s from a famous artist, it’s going to be hard to re-sell,” he said. “Either somebody steals it for himself to keep, or somebody, somewhere, someday will realize it’s stolen.”

Red Bull Formula 1 trophies stolen in Milton Keynes factory raid

Sebastian Vettel with the trophy cabinet at Red Bull 
 Four-time World Champion Sebastian Vettel visited the factory last week before leaving to join Ferrari for 2015
More than 60 trophies won by Red Bull Racing have been stolen from the Formula 1 team's Milton Keynes factory after a 4x4 drove through the entrance.
Six men used the vehicle to gain access to the site in Bradbourne Drive, Tilbrook, about 01:30 GMT.
Team principal Christian Horner said they were "devastated" by the break in as the trophies "took years and hard work to accumulate".
Night staff working at the site were not harmed, Thames Valley Police said.
'Aggressive break-in' Horner said: "The break-in caused significant damage and was very upsetting for our night officers who were on duty at the time.
"Beyond the aggressive nature of this break-in, we are perplexed why anyone would take these trophies.
"The value to the team is of course extraordinarily high due to the sheer hard work and effort that went into winning each and every one.
"But their intrinsic value is low; they would be of little benefit to those outside of the team and, in addition to that, many of the trophies on display were replicas."

Sebastian Vettel with the Brazilian Grand Prix trophy in November 2013 
Sebastian Vettel won 39 Grand Prix with Red Bull and its junior team, Toro Rosso
The F1 championship and constructors trophies were not at the factory, having been presented to Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes for winning the 2014 titles.
"The actions of these men mean it's likely that we will have to make our site less accessible in the future, which will be unfair on the hundreds of fans that travel to visit our factory each year to see our trophies and our Formula 1 car, added Horner.
In addition to the silver 4x4, a black or dark blue Mercedes estate car was also involved. Both are believed to have foreign number plates, police said.
Detectives are appealing for witnesses.

Thief walks out with €500,000 sculpture from Italy's national modern art museum

Theft provokes an outcry over security as a robber walks away with the 19th century bronze hidden under his jacket in broad daylight

It took a thief only minutes to swipe the precious sculpture entitled ‘Sick Child,’ right, by Italian impressionist, Medardo Rosso, from the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome, left
It took a thief only minutes to swipe the precious sculpture entitled ‘Sick Child,’ right, by Italian impressionist, Medardo Rosso, from the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome, left Photo: Alamy
The daring robbery of a €500,000 (£400,000) sculpture from Italy’s premier modern art gallery in Rome has provoked a fresh outcry about whether enough is being spent protecting the country’s precious cultural assets.
It took a thief dressed in a suit and tie only minutes to swipe the precious sculpture entitled ‘Sick Child’ (Bambino Malato) by Italian impressionist, Medardo Rosso, from the National Gallery of Modern Art and walk away it under his jacket during opening hours.
The bronze sculpture was created by Rosso between 1893 and 1895 and is considered one of his finest masterpieces, often compared to Auguste Rodin.
Art historian and blogger Tomaso Montanari described the robbery as “incredible” and questioned whether government funding cuts had played a role.
“You have to say that no museum can avoid robberies,” Montanari wrote in La Repubblica. “But it is upsetting to see a bronze by Medardo Rosso that can be taken away from a museum as if it was a self-service pizza.”
Gallery officials are uncertain when the robbery occurred but a custodian realized the sculpture was missing around 4.30 pm on Friday.
Staff were reportedly distracted with the staging of an art show elsewhere in the building but security cameras captured the thief leaving the gallery.
Museum director Maria Vittoria Marini Clarelli defended its security as members of the Carabinieri's culture squad were called to investigate.
“The system is very well-equipped with alarms and video surveillance but we cannot give any more information as investigators have asked us for the utmost discretion,” she said. “The video cameras filmed everything.”
She confirmed that the sculpture was insured for £400,000.
It is the latest embarrassment for the modern gallery that was recently revamped. Three armed robbers stole two works by Dutch master Vincent Van Gogh and another by French impressionist Paul Cezanne in 1998. The works were later recovered.
Art crime is a booming business according to the United Nations, and is the fourth most lucrative sector in international crime after drugs, money laundering and illegal arms shipments.
Update:

Missing sculpture found in locker of Rome museum

Police working on theory that thief returned with art work
A bronze sculpture by Italian artist Medardo Rosso was recovered in a museum locker at Rome's Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna (GNAM) on 8 December, three days after it was stolen, according to a report in Italian daily newspaper La Repubblica.

Considered one of Rosso's masterpieces, the Bambino Malato or Sick Child sculpture dates from 1893-1895, and is valued at €500,000. The bronze bust was noticed missing at around 16.30 on 5 December, during opening hours, from a pedestal in room 48 of the museum.

Police are working on the theory that the thief returned to GNAM and deposited the sculpture in the locker area which had already been searched following the theft. The artwork belongs to the museum's permanent collection and was on show as part of the current exhibition Secessione e Avanguardia.

The Italian culture ministry said that the museum's closed circuit television and alarm systems were fully operational at the time of the theft.

In 1998 three armed robbers stole two works by Vincent Van Gogh and another by Paul Cèzanne. The paintings were later recovered.

Born in Turin in 1858, Rosso was a Post-Impressionist artist and is considered by many to be Italy's answer to Auguste Rodin. He is best known for his half-formed bronze, plaster and wax sculptures, and he died in Milan in 1928.

Burglars waltz out of Madrid art gallery with 70 paintings

Security guard questioned thieves but did not suspect any wrongdoing



Gallery owners took this photograph of the hole made in the wall by the burglars. / EFE

Three men managed to break into a Madrid art gallery last week, and walked out with 70 paintings worth an estimated €600,000.
The thieves entered Galería Puerta de Alcalá in the early hours of Thursday by first breaking into the adjacent premises, a former bar that has been closed since last year. They then punched a hole through the wall leading into the gallery, and deactivated the alarm once inside.
A security watchman from a nearby construction site saw the men walking out with paintings in their arms and went over to ask them some questions, but did not suspect that they were burglars.
“Is this merchandise yours?” he reportedly asked.
“We’re taking the paintings out of the gallery to put them on display somewhere else.”
“At this time of the night?”
“We have to get an early start to get there in time.”
The burglars, whom the security guard described as having Eastern European accents, spent two to three hours taking out art, propping it against nearby trees and loading it into a van. Then they drove off with their haul.
Pedro Márquez, who used to run the gallery before handing it over to his son, said that “in the last 40 years we have never taken out a single painting at 5am.”
“They took all the paintings from the back of the gallery, in a well-hidden spot. They took all our best work,” he added.
The stolen art includes 14 paintings by Segarra Chías, a painter from Seville whose work was going to be the subject of a solo show at the gallery; work by the Valencian painter Eustaquio Segrelles; and pieces by Juan González Alacreu.
“Given the amount of paintings they took and the way they took them out, wrapping them in plastic after a careful selection, they must have been here between two and three hours,” explains Márquez.
The gallery owners have photographic records of all the stolen material, and they plan to make these images public to prevent the art from being sold on the black market. Meanwhile, the police are working to locate the art thieves.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/visual-arts/art-basel/article4296633.html#storylink=cpy

Stolen Art Watch, Paul (Gauguin) The Other One, As $50 Million Stolen Art Returned To Handler, Buon Natale !!

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Italian pensioner awarded ownership of Gauguin stolen from London flat

Rome authorities declare Italian pensioner can keep £28 million Gauguin masterpiece stolen from London flat of Marks and Spencer heiress more than 40 years ago

A Carabinieri stands next to the two paintings stolen in London in the 1970s by French artists Paul Gauguin  
A Carabinieri stands next to the two paintings stolen in London in the 1970s by French artist Paul Gauguin "Fruits sur une table ou nature au petit chien", (L) and Pierre Bonnard "La femme aux deux fauteuils"

An Italian pensioner who unknowingly acquired a Gauguin masterpiece after it was stolen from a London flat more than 40 years ago has been awarded ownership of the painting, which is estimated to be worth £28 million (35 million euros) by Rome authorities.
The man, who has requested anonymity out of fear that the painting could attract thieves, now plans to sell it and hopes his life will be transformed after decades of working gruelling night shifts in a Fiat factory.
The pensioner bought the 1889 Gauguin painting, entitled "Fruits on a table or still life with a small dog", at an auction in Turin in 1975, along with a work by another French artist, Pierre Bonnard, entitled "Woman with two armchairs", now thought to be worth around 600,000 euros.
Identified only as Nicolo, he plans to take his wife on the honeymoon they could never afford – a journey between Trieste, in Italy's north-east, and Vienna.
"I'm already in negotiations over the sale of the Gauguin," the 70-year-old told La Repubblica newspaper. "Lots of private collectors have contacted me and I'm considering the offers along with my family."
He said he would keep the Bonnard because it had great sentimental value.
He also plans to buy a farm outside his home town of Syracuse in Sicily and hopes to use the rest of his anticipated fortune to assure a comfortable future for his children and grandchildren.
He admitted that it had been "a stroke of luck" that he had bought the paintings, which auctioneers had told him were worthless "rubbish" 40 years ago.
"Maybe I had an intuition. I just liked them. When I took them home I said to myself, 'I don't care who painted them, I find them beautiful,'" he said.
The paintings were originally owned by Mathilda Marks, an heiress to the Marks and Spencer empire, but were stolen by con men from the flat she shared with her American husband in Chester Terrace, near Regent's Park in London, in 1970.
The thieves smuggled the paintings by train through France, intending to enter Italy, but panicked while waiting to cross the border and left them on a train heading towards Turin.
They were found by railway inspectors and languished for years in a dusty lost property office before being put up for auction by Italy's national railway network in 1975.
The Fiat worker, who regularly attended the railway auctions as a hobby, bought the two masterpieces for 45,000 lire – just £19 in today's money.
Not realising how valuable they were, he hung them on the wall of his kitchen, first in Turin and later, after he retired, at his home in Syracuse.
It was the curiosity of his son, who had a keen interest in art history, that eventually made him think that the paintings might be more than worthless daubings.
By comparing a dedication on the Gauguin painting with examples of the artist's handwriting, they realised that they had a masterpiece by one of the world's best known artists on their hands.
They contacted a special unit of the Italian police that deals with art and antiquities, who along with art experts confirmed earlier this year that the works were by Gauguin and Bonnard.
The two paintings were then sequestered by the police, who set about trying to establish their rightful ownership.
They liaised with the Metropolitan Police in London to try to discover whether anyone in the UK might have a legitimate claim to the artworks.
But Mrs Marks and her American husband, Terence Kennedy, had no children and no claimants came forward.
"I acquired the painting in good faith and that has been recognised by the authorities in Rome," Nicolo said.
The decision to award the paintings to the pensioner was made by a court in Rome, based on information provided by a special unit of the Carabinieri police that specialises in art and antiquities.
A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said that had any claimants in the UK come forward, the information would have been passed to the Italian police.
But none did, so the force had no objections to the paintings being returned to the ex-factory worker.#
Backstory:
 http://arthostage.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/stolen-art-watch-italian-law-used-to.html
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