Theft and forgery

in the world of art

It is very difficult to gain an exact idea of how many items of cultural property are stolen throughout the world and it is unlikely that there will ever be any accurate statistics

INTERPOL

While we can't have accurate data on the extent of global art crime, what we do know is that art theft and forgery is big business and shows no sign of going away

Read on as we explore the art world's shady black market, some of history's biggest art heists and most prolific forgers and the efforts being undertaken to combat this perennial problem

Global Trends in Art Theft

After Drugs and Guns, Art Theft Is the Biggest Criminal Enterprise in the World

Newsweek

Which Areas are Most Affected by Art Crime?

The Americas
  • 19% of art thefts occur in the United States
  • Every year, Canadian police investigate between 90 to 100 cases of art theft
Europe
  • 40% of all art thefts take place within Britain
  • As of 2013, there are still on average 100,000 artworks stolen by the Nazis still missing. The value of the artwork based on modern-day valuations is $10 Billion
Middle East
  • In 2010, law enforcement in Turkey recovered over 68,000 antique items from nearly 5,000 black market smugglers
North and
Sub-Saharan Africa
  • 95% of Africa’s cultural property is believed to have been lost to looters and traffickers
South-East Asia
  • Cultural officials from Malaysia state that the total trade in black market artifacts could be near $1 million

Worldwide, around 50,000 to 100,000 works of art are stolen each year

According to the FBI, the amount of criminal income generated by art crime each year is thought to be
$6-8 billion

In the UK, the value of art and antiques stolen each year is thought to be around
£300 million,
third after drug dealing and the arms trade.

What are the Most Common Theft Locations?

Private Homes

52% of art is stolen from private homes

Museums

$752.5 million worth of art was stolen from museums and private collections worldwide between 2003 to 2008

Places of Worshsip

8% of art is stolen from places of worship

Approximately 95% of stolen or illegally exported property does not return to countries of origin

Floris Guntenaar, CulturalHeritage.cc Foundation

$1.4bn

+£50m

$500m

$163m

$17.5m

$10.9m

$10m

Select for further information

Major Art Heists

Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

  • September 4, 1972
  • Largest art theft in Canadian history
  • 18 paintings stolen and worth a total of $2 million (approximately $10.9 million today)
  • Works by Delacroix, Gainsborough and a rare Rembrandt landscape
  • The works have never been recovered. In 2003, the Globe and Mail estimated that the Rembrandt alone would be worth $1 million

Ireland's Beit Collection Theft

  • In 1974, members of the IRA, including Rose Dugdale, bound and gagged the Beits, making off with nineteen paintings worth an estimated £8 million
  • May 1986 at Russborough House 18 paintings were stolen
  • Including a Vermeer, Goya, Rubens, Gainsborough, Guardi, Vestier, Palamedes, and Metsus
  • Total value +£50 million

Largest Art Heist in US History

  • Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, 1990
  • $500 million stolen, including 5 Degas, 3 Rembrandts, 1 Vermeer, and 1 Manet
  • No arrests

Stéphane Breitwieser - Frenchman Notorious For His Art Thefts

  • Between 1995 and 2001, he admitted to stealing 238 artworks and other exhibits from museums whilst travelling around Europe
  • Works valued at $1.4 billion
  • Breitwieser was given a 26-month prison sentence
  • 110 of Breitwieser’s beloved artworks were recovered
  • 60 remain unaccounted for
  • Over 60 paintings, including masterpieces by Brueghel, Watteau, François Boucher, and Corneille de Lyon were chopped up by Breitwieser's mother, Mireille Stengel

Cooperman Art Theft Hoax

  • July 1999 saw one of LA’s biggest art thefts
  • Steven G. Cooperman was convicted of insurance fraud for arranging the theft of two paintings from his home that included a Picasso and a Monet
  • Attempted to collect $17.5 million in insurance

Zurich Museum - Theft of 4 Masterworks

  • February 11, 2008 one of the largest and most audacious art robberies of all time took place
  • Four 19th-century masterpieces stolen, 3 men wearing ski masks walked into a private museum in daylight, grabbed the masterpieces, tossed them into a van and sped off
  • Total worth was estimated at $163 million

Encino, Los Angeles Heist

  • 9 works of art valued at $10 million were stolen from an Encino home in 2008
  • Thieves entered through an unlocked kitchen door
  • FBI and LAPD set up an undercover operation at a West Los Angeles hotel to recover the theft and detained Raul Espinoza

Journey of the stolen paintings

Select countries for further information

United Kingdom

Select Year

Portrait of the Duke of Wellington - Francisco de Goya
Stolen from: The National Gallery, London, United Kingdom
  • The thief Kempton Bunton gave himself up six weeks after stealing it
  • Estimated value: $1,310,720 - $1,966,080
Dulwich College Picture Gallery - Various
Stolen from: Dulwich College Picture Gallery, Dulwich, United Kingdom
  • Eight Old Master paintings stolen, three each by Rembrandt and Peter Paul Rubens, and one each by Adam Elsheimer and Gerrit Dou. Thieves entered the galley by cutting a panel out of an unused door.
  • Estimated value: £1.5 million (then US$4.2 million).
View of Auvers-sur-Oise - Paul Cézanne
Stolen from: Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, United Kingdom
  • Stolen on the night before the Millennium during a celebration of fireworks. The professional burglar created a smokescreen to foil security cameras. His holdall contained a scalpel, tape, gloves, a smoke canister and a small fan
  • Estimated value: $5,000,000
The Viaduct and Tanker Entering The Tyne - Laurence Stephen
Stolen from: Collector's Home , Cheshire, United Kingdom
  • Carefully planned robbery where the robbers held the art dealer and his wife at knifepoint. Gerard Starkey and Kevin Marlow the pair of criminal
  • Estimated value: The Viaduct worth £700,000 and Tanker Entering the Tyne valued at £500,000

Art forgeries

It is without doubt that forgery is dangerous, but it should also be argued that the business of art has made it so. Copies are a long tradition and adding such high values to art have changed the nature of forgeries and so now it is more serious than ever before

Ruba Asfahani, specialist in Contemporary Arab and Iranian art

To combat art crime the FBI established a rapid deployment Art Crime Team in 2004 consisting of 14 special agents each responsible for addressing art and cultural property crime cases

The Art Crime Team has recovered more than 2,650 items valued at over $150 million

In the U.S., there are 16 art crime officers, 1 for every 21 million people

Each represents 1 million citizens

In the UK, New Scotland Yard has 2.5 art crime officers (1 is part time), 1 for every 26 million people

Each represents 1 million citizens

Intent to deceive

A great deal of art theft, particularly of the domestic kind, goes unreported; many fakes and forgeries are never detected, even after the perpetrators are exposed, while the illicit traffic in cultural objects looted from archaeological sites is now arguably beyond the control of law enforcement agencies

Dr. Tom Flynn, London-based independent art historian, critic and specialist on art

Some of The Most Incredible Forgeries

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Han van Meegeren

Michelangelo

Tony Tetro

Mark Hofmann

The Greenhalghs

Mark Landis

Wolfgang Beltracchi

Han van Meegeren

  • A struggling painter who felt unrecognised and decided to demonstrate his genius by imitating masters
  • His forgeries reached the equivalent of $60 million for six fake Vermeers sold on the Dutch market
  • Had to prove he was a master forger by creating another work in prison
  • Sentenced to 1 year imprisonment but died of a heart attack before he could serve a day

Michelangelo

  • Fame built on forgery
  • He made copies of major works before ageing them with smoke and swapping them for the originals

Tony Tetro

  • Forger of the 1970s and 1980s
  • Once an altar boy, married at 16 and became a father at 17
  • Perfectionist who never had formal art lessons, but learned from books, paintings and experimentation
  • Works were regularly passed off as legitimate works in museums, galleries, and auction houses worldwide
  • In an interview with ACCLAIMag, when questioned why he did it, Tetro said “I was broke and I was married, and I started copying paintings for something to do because it was an inexpensive thing to do. But it was more than that—I enjoyed doing it”

Mark Hofmann

  • Forger and murderer
  • His forgeries fooled experts and members of his church, and caused the deaths of two people
  • Hofmann's most notorious forgery was known as “The Salamander Letter”
  • Now a prisoner for life who sits in a 7-by-10-foot cell in Utah State Prison

The Greenhalghs

  • British Family
  • Shaun Greenhalgh created forgery over a seventeen-year period between 1989 and 2006 in collaboration with his mother aged 83 and father aged 84
  • Forgeries were worth approximately $11 million yet they lived in abject poverty
  • Sentenced by Scotland Yard to a four year, eight month prison sentence

Mark Landis

  • Arguably one of the most prolific art forgers in U.S. history
  • Diagnosed as a schizophrenic at 17
  • Tricked over 60 museums in 20 states into believing his masterfully created replicas were authentic artworks
  • Produced fakes and donated them to museums and non-profit groups by using cover stories and dressing as a priest to enhance his credibility
  • Landis never profited from his forgeries, he stated “If there’s any such thing as attention-deficit disorder I’ve got it. I was always happy with just making a good superficial impression and then, fortunately, when a museum found out, I was long gone. So I didn’t have to face anything.”

Wolfgang Beltracchi

  • A German art forger, artist and a former hippie
  • Beltracchi stated he has forged hundreds of paintings by over 50 artists and stated in his SPIEGEL Interview “I never decided to become an art forger. I was aware of my talent at an early age, and I used it foolishly. This developed over the years. In my heart, I don't see myself as a criminal”
  • Sentenced to six years in prison

If a forger’s work is taken to be that of a great master, then the forger considers that he's just as good as Picasso

Noah Charney, author and art historian

Your Best Protection Against Forgeries Is To Know:

If, how or where it's usually titled, dated or numbered

What gallery, manufacturer, or supplier tags or labels it's likely to have

What their brush strokes look like

Where they typically sign on their art

What colours and media they sign in

How they sign (full name, initials, first initial & full last name)

What their favourite subject matters and compositions are

What the art looks like from the back

What the bottom looks like if it's a sculpture

How it's usually framed, mounted, or displayed

What media, materials, sizes and formats they usually work in

What Can People Do To Protect Themselves When Buying Art?

Certificate of Authenticity

Gallery of Art

Certificate of Authenticity ("COA")

A COA should be signed by either the artist who created the art, publisher of the art (in the case of limited editions), a confirmed established dealer or agent of the artist, or an acknowledged expert on the artist

Digital Authentication

Using a technique called wavelet decomposition, a picture is broken down into a collection of more basic images called sub-bands that are analysed to determine authorship