- 2 days ago
Former FBI Special Agent and member of the original FBI elite Art Crime Team Geoffrey Kelly joins WIRED to answer the internet’s burning heist questions.
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00:00Hi, I'm Jeffrey Kelley, author and retired special agent with the FBI's Our Crime Team.
00:04I'm here today to answer your questions from the internet.
00:06This is Heist Support.
00:12YoYo says, Ugg, I got through the vent system okay, but there's all these lasers around the
00:17exhibit hall.
00:17Use mirrors or acrobatics, hashtag heist.
00:21That is definitely Hollywood.
00:22In Hollywood, you have the suspension of disbelief, and you can believe that Catherine Zeta-Jones
00:27is kind of doing the limbo under all these lasers.
00:30But pro tip, museums don't use visible lasers.
00:33They're not going to make it that easy for you to be able to vault over it.
00:37Most museums employ what's called volumetric motion sensors, where the entire museum, or
00:42any security facility for that matter, is one giant space, and if there's any interruption
00:48in that space, any type of motion that occurs anywhere in there, it's going to alert.
00:53You don't need lasers when you've got motion sensors.
00:57JFish2121 asks, if I were to tweet that I'm planning a bank heist, would the FBI put me
01:03on some sort of watch list?
01:05I'm probably on one.
01:07Everybody talks about watch lists.
01:09There isn't really a watch list for committing a bank robbery, but yeah, I think you would
01:13probably get the attention of the FBI, and you might get visited by the FBI at some point.
01:18All right, so Wes Rerick asks, explain like I'm five, how do museums know their paintings
01:23aren't forgeries?
01:25There's a number of cases where museums have had pieces in their collection that turned
01:29out to be forgeries.
01:30We had a case a number of years ago where a museum in South America had a Matisse, and
01:36it turned out that it had been swapped out with a fake.
01:38There's different ways that museums can determine whether or not they're accurate.
01:43Some museums actually have provenance experts on staff.
01:46You can hire outside experts to come in and conduct their provenance research.
01:50The experts can do scientific analysis on the pigments used, the composition of canvas
01:55or stone or the plaster that's used to determine an age.
01:59And from that, that's going to help you determine whether or not it's potentially a fake.
02:04Only about 20% of artwork that's stolen from a museum is actually stolen from the gallery
02:09walls.
02:1080% of it is taken from the collection storage areas, and it's usually done by someone in
02:15a position of trust.
02:16If you look at a large museum, the collection, it's like an iceberg, and what you actually
02:20see on the gallery walls is the tip of the iceberg, and the majority of the museum's collection
02:25may be in storage.
02:27That's when you have to worry about theft, pieces being replaced with forgeries.
02:31And realistically, it's just impossible for a museum to do scientific and provenance research
02:38on every single piece in their collection.
02:40They only will do it if a question is raised about a particular piece being a fake or possibly
02:45being stolen.
02:47All right, so Nemb Mika, I finally watched The Town yesterday.
02:51Honestly, Ben Affleck did his thing with this movie.
02:54That was the most accurate depiction of a heist I've ever seen in film.
02:58Well, I am really flattered to hear you say that, because I was one of the technical
03:03advisors on that film.
03:04I worked on Violent Crime Squad for about 25 years, and I was one of the case agents
03:10on the real Charlestown armored car crew that committed a number of robberies.
03:16And Ben Affleck came to the FBI when he bought the rights to a book called Prince of Thieves,
03:20which was a fictionalized account of Charlestown armored car robbers.
03:24My partner and I worked with them to make sure that all the heists that were committed
03:28throughout that film were accurate.
03:29In fact, the first meeting that my partner and I had with Ben Affleck, I said to him,
03:33you know, if you want to make a good movie, just listen to what we're going to tell you,
03:36because we'll tell you what it's really like.
03:38And he listened.
03:40Catalina Bird asks, what in the Thomas Crown Affair happened in Paris?
03:45How do you rob the Louvre in broad daylight?
03:47We call it a smash and grab robbery, and there's really nothing sophisticated about it.
03:51And they were, I think they were in and out in seven minutes.
03:54You meticulously plan out the heist, but there's the bigger picture, which is getting away
03:59with it.
03:59And then the biggest picture of all is monetizing it.
04:02I believe that like, I think four suspects who were involved in that heist were arrested
04:07within days.
04:08And that typifies large scale art heists.
04:11You know, when you look at security that's in place in major cities around the world,
04:16including Paris, the number of video cameras that are out there, it really is a network that
04:20just envelops the entire city.
04:22And so the investigators are going to be able to follow you.
04:25You're going to get picked up on traffic cameras.
04:27You're going to get picked up on license plate readers.
04:30You're going to get picked up by private security surveillance systems that just about every
04:34business in the city of Paris has.
04:36And investigators are going to be able to follow you.
04:38They're going to be able to stitch it all together until eventually you're going to arrive
04:43at a location where something identifiable is going to be located.
04:47And so it's extremely difficult in today's surveillance world to commit a crime somewhere and get clean
04:53away without somehow leaving a digital fingerprint that can be traced back to you.
04:58Mirroring gives a shout out to George Clooney for saving the Ghent altarpiece from the Nazi
05:03ruin.
05:04That was fire.
05:05You're referring to the Monuments Men.
05:07It was a fictional movie based on a real unit.
05:09The Monuments Men was set up to protect and recover the priceless historical artwork that
05:16was at risk in Europe during World War II.
05:19They were responsible for saving pieces of the Ghent altarpiece, which was this beautiful,
05:24historic multi-panel display that was at a church in Ghent.
05:28And I think all but one of the pieces have actually been recovered.
05:31And George Clooney, this character was loosely based on a guy named George Stout.
05:35They did a tremendous job during World War II recovering and saving so much artwork that
05:40had been looted by the Nazis and was in danger of being destroyed from battle.
05:45A few years after the war, George Stout went on to become the director of the Gardner Museum.
05:50He realized from his time during World War II the need for artwork to be portable in the
05:55event of civil unrest or natural disaster.
05:59And so a lot of the larger pieces in the collection, the frames were cut and basically made a frame
06:06within a frame with little thumb screws to keep it in place.
06:08That way, if there was a need to evacuate this artwork rapidly, because he saw this from his
06:14time during the war, museum staff could just take these little thumb screws and turn them
06:18and take the piece out and leave the much larger, heavier, bulkier frame behind.
06:24Lunch Hill asks, what is Security Fog?
06:28And why do I feel the need to trigger it to find out?
06:31Well, please don't.
06:32Security Fog is a technology that's used in basically, when it's activated, it releases
06:37this giant cloud of opaque, harmless gas that temporarily blinds a thief.
06:44The whole room is enveloped in a cloud.
06:46I think there are some museums that may use it, but I think it's a terrible idea.
06:50I just wouldn't want the idea of panicked thieves in a room filled with valuable artwork,
06:58sculptures, whatnot, panicking and running blindly through it.
07:02I think you could do more damage from that.
07:04There's a number of security protocols that are in place today that can be used by a museum
07:09to keep their facility safe without resorting to that.
07:12From CAPME1, what criminal committed an almost perfect crime and what was the thing that messed it up?
07:19The closest thing that came to the perfect heist would have been the Antwerp diamond heist
07:24by Leonardo Noterbatolo, which was in 2003.
07:27He and his crew stole about $100 million worth of diamonds from a heavily fortified vault.
07:33They were able to defeat the alarm system and get in, get the jewels and get out.
07:37That was really the hard part.
07:39And when you're talking about diamonds and other precious jewels, that's your best bet as a thief
07:45to actually get away with it and monetize it because these gems can be recut.
07:49Settings can be melted down.
07:51It is a market unlike other cultural property like statues or paintings.
07:56They left garbage and other items of evidence that were related to the heist.
08:01It really led to his downfall because, of course, all of these items had DNA on it.
08:05They were identifiable with him and his associates.
08:07You kind of expected more from them because they had put so much planning and skill into
08:12the execution of that robbery.
08:14In the end, he wasn't able to profit from it.
08:17He ended up going to prison.
08:18But as far as the heist was concerned, it was pretty close to being flawlessly executed.
08:24Klebo99 asks, hey, Reddit Electronics, can you really disable video cameras like they did in
08:29Inside Man or was that total bull ?
08:32There are ways to disable video cameras.
08:35Of course, it's going to be one of the goals of a thief, whether it's for a museum or any
08:39other place.
08:40They're wireless.
08:41If they're cellular, there's ways that you can try and jam them.
08:44If it's a hard line, then you're going to try and cut into that line.
08:48The thing you need to understand, though, is if you disable the video cameras, it's immediately
08:52going to alert the guards that there's a situation going on and they're probably going to call the
08:57police.
08:57So it's not as effective as it probably was in the movie.
09:01A Quora user asked, is it true that Picasso once stole the Mona Lisa?
09:05So at the time, Picasso was considered a suspect, but he did not steal it.
09:09The Mona Lisa was stolen in 1911 by an Italian named Vincenzo Perugio.
09:13He did one of the classic museum thefts. He stayed in the Louvre and then pretended that he was a
09:19worker and he left the next morning with the Mona Lisa tucked under his arm.
09:22And he actually held on to that for two years.
09:24He brought it back to Italy and it seems that he tried to sell it.
09:28He ended up getting caught with this and during his trial, he argued that he did it for patriotic
09:32reasons to repatriate this Italian piece back to Italy.
09:36He only did about a year in prison, but as a result, that really became the most famous theft.
09:41But it has an unfortunate footnote because if anybody has ever been to the Louvre and seen
09:46the Mona Lisa in person, the piece is behind bulletproof glass and stanchions and barriers,
09:51and it's really difficult to experience the piece for what it is.
09:55But that was the museum theft of La Gioconda a hundred years ago.
09:59Miss Yulpo Supo, trying to tunnel into a bank that in 80s movies don't work no more,
10:05LOL. Yeah, I think you're referring to a movie that came out many years ago.
10:12I think it was with Jason Stratham, but it was a real event that occurred at a bank in the
10:17UK,
10:18where a group of subjects actually went through, I think it was a fish and chip shop next to a
10:24bank
10:24and tunneled in and then got into the safety deposit boxes. It would not work today because
10:30of security protocols that were not around 40 years ago. You would not be able to tunnel into
10:36the bank without setting off seismic alarms or motion sensors or whatnot. But back then,
10:43obviously, security wasn't as robust and sophisticated as it is now.
10:48Okay, and from the Character Rant subreddit,
10:50Holy , if you haven't read Arsene Lupin, Gentleman Burglar, Do So.
10:55The idea of the Gentleman Burglar, it's online with Thomas Crown Affair and Ocean's Eleven.
11:00It's an enduring Hollywood myth. It doesn't exist.
11:03The closest thing that I could come to that's ever happened in this country is a couple,
11:06Rita and Jerry Alter. And in 1985, there was a theft of a William de Kooning piece called
11:11Woman Ochre from the University of Arizona Art Museum. And it was taken by a man and a woman
11:16who distracted a guard. Jerry died in 2012. And when Rita died in 2018, the contents of her home
11:24were sold off to a local antique store. And one of the pieces that had been hanging in her bedroom
11:31for more than 40 years was the de Kooning piece, valued about $150 million. And they had kept it
11:37purely because of the love that they had for that piece, even though it had been heavily damaged when
11:42it was stolen. That's about as close as you're going to get to the Gentleman Burglar
11:45Construct when you're talking about Art Thief to my knowledge.
11:48From Bassist Music Man and Explain Like I'm Five.
11:52Why would someone steal a priceless painting? Wouldn't it be impossible to sell?
11:56You're absolutely correct. Nobody should steal a priceless painting because there is no market.
12:00It's really not priceless. It's worthless. Nobody wants to buy stolen artwork. So when you're talking
12:06about trying to move or fence stolen property that's recognizable, a painting, a Rembrandt, a Picasso,
12:13a Van Gogh, your actual market is shrinks because it has no investment value because it's stolen.
12:19Stealing it is the easy part. It's monetizing it after the theft that's difficult. You know,
12:24when I started working art theft like more than two decades ago, it was very difficult to move
12:28a stolen piece of artwork. Now with smartphones, Google image search will tell you within a second
12:33the whole history of the piece, the provenance of that piece. Was it ever reported stolen?
12:36Let's say you steal a very valuable Rembrandt. There might be somebody in the world who would
12:42be willing to purchase it and keep it secreted. Maybe some Russian oligarch or a drug trafficker.
12:49But the question is, how do you get in touch with that buyer? Everybody always talks about the dark
12:53web and it's like, well, it's not that easy to go to the dark web, right? Because if you go
12:57on the dark
12:58web and say that you have a very valuable stolen Rembrandt for sale, other people on that dark web are
13:04going to turn you in because there's probably going to be a reward. So it's really difficult
13:08to connect a thief who has a piece of stolen artwork with the very small collection of collectors
13:16who would actually be willing to purchase it. So as a result, these guys end up just sitting on it
13:22and stolen artwork ends up becoming more of a liability than an asset. From overchoice6096,
13:28CCTV monitoring or unarmed security guard. Every museum is going to use a combination of both.
13:34It's important to realize when you're talking about security guards in a museum, when the museum is
13:38closed, their primary goal is not to prevent like an Ocean's Eleven type attack. Their primary goal
13:44is to keep the collection safe from fire and flood. That's the two most destructive elements that can
13:49happen at a museum. So you're always going to have security guards. CCTV is, of course, it's the mainstay
13:55of museum security. AI has brought surveillance video cameras just in leaps and bounds over where they
14:02were just a decade ago. There's some museums that still have this non-AI security cameras where
14:08you have a couple of guards sitting glassy-eyed at a bank of, you know, a hundred video monitors
14:14watching, trying to look for somebody stealing something or doing something out of the ordinary.
14:19It's a Herculean task. But now with AI, the camera learns what the normal museum person is going to do
14:25in a museum. Even if they're looking at one piece of artwork for hours, which is not uncommon,
14:29that's not suspicious. But it learns what is suspicious and it makes these cameras smarter
14:34and it can detect this. So you don't need to have a couple of security guards watching this bank of
14:38cameras. The AI cameras will do it for you. And so you're seeing that museum security guards,
14:43while they're always going to be part of a security contingent at a museum, security cameras are really
14:48becoming much more and more sophisticated and they're really taking over that role. Something they need
14:54to have is disaster planning. Because if there is a fire, if there is a flood or some other natural
14:59disaster, that's not the time when you need to figure out what are we going to do with all this
15:03artwork. And in fact, we saw this terrible situation last year with all the wildfires in Los Angeles,
15:08and we assisted out there because there was no place for these museums to take their precious
15:14collections as the threat of wildfires grew. You have to think about the worst possible things that can
15:19happen and plan for it. Hopefully it'll never happen. But if it does, you need to be prepared.
15:25Fairy princex. Cute date idea. We solved the Gardner Museum heist. It's the world's largest art heist in
15:31terms of value. It's probably over a billion dollars worth of stolen artwork. So just as St. Patrick's Day
15:37festivities in Boston were winding down, two subjects showed up at the Gardner Museum dressed as police officers
15:43and they demanded entry. And against protocol, the night guard let them in. And once they came into the
15:49museum, they asked the guard who else was working. He said his partner was up doing rounds. They
15:53instructed him to get his partner to come down. His partner showed up and they said, hey, you know,
15:57I think there's a warrant for your arrest. Let me see some ID. And the guard who was at the
16:01the night
16:02desk showed him his his license. And they said, yeah, yeah, there is a warrant for your arrest.
16:06Assume the position. And these two subjects put both guards against the wall spread eagle. So after they
16:12handcuffed the guards, they tied them up down in the basement and they spent the next hour or so going
16:16through the museum, removing 13 pieces of artwork from the walls, including Rembrandt's only known
16:22seascape and a Vermeer, which is one of only 36 ever created by Johannes Vermeer. I worked the case
16:28for 22 years. It's kind of a two part investigation. One part was the whodunit part who actually pulled
16:33it off. And the other part is, is I think the more important question, which is where the piece is
16:38now.
16:38So in terms of solving, we know who did it. Wasn't some Thomas Crown like reclusive billionaire. It was
16:45just a group of Boston criminals, Boston mobsters who pulled it off. But the real question to me,
16:50and the one that I continue to work on is where the piece is now. I got the case in
16:542002, which was more
16:56than a dozen years after the actual crime occurred. By the time I got the case, it seemed that everyone
17:00who was actually involved in the actual robbery was dead. Three members of that crew were violently
17:06murdered within a year and a half of the robbery occurring. And a fourth died under very suspicious
17:11circumstances, most likely also killed. So you have four people who were associated with the robbery
17:17who were murdered or died within a year and a half. And I think it had a chilling effect on
17:22anybody that
17:23harbored any aspirations about coming forward with information about the Gardner heist.
17:29Babetron2 asked, people don't really do bank heists anymore. What happened? There's less
17:33currency in circulation now. Bank heists do still occur. There's still armored car robberies. But with the
17:39security becoming so much more sophisticated, a lot of people are kind of moving away from standard
17:45currency and doing everything on their cards or Apple Pay, there's not a need to replenish banks and
17:53stores with armored cars filled with cash. And so you do see a decline in armored car robberies and bank
17:59heists as a result. D rejected stone. The FBI art crimes, I didn't know they existed. So the FBI did
18:06found
18:07an art crime team in 2004. And I was one of the original members on the team. The impetus for
18:12it
18:13started about a year earlier during the war when US and coalition forces entered Baghdad. During that
18:18period of instability, there was a 36 hour timeframe when looters broke into the National Museum of Iraq,
18:24which is arguably one of the most culturally historically important museums in the world.
18:29It's really mankind's history. And they sold about 15,000 objects and damaged a great many others.
18:35And at the time, there was a call from the US government to the FBI to basically send in the
18:41art crime team to investigate this. And the FBI said, well, we don't have one. And so that was
18:45really the genesis of starting an art crime team. And so we received training from the Smithsonian and
18:50some wonderful institutions to learn about how to investigate art theft. As art crime team members,
18:55we had to learn some of the stranger things about it. Like how do we package up valuable artwork?
19:00How do we photograph it? What resources do we have available that can help us authenticate it or
19:06ship it? Typically, when the FBI seizes something, if I were to seize this laptop, I'm going to scribble
19:12my initials on it in a Sharpie and put the date, put an evidence sticker on it. And that way,
19:16if I end
19:17up testifying a trial that I seized this laptop, it's a chain of custody to show that, yes, this is
19:22the
19:22laptop I seized. And I know that because it's got my initials on it. But we can't do that with
19:26a priceless
19:27Rembrandt. So we had to come up with new ways and new protocols that the FBI could use,
19:32where we could seize items of cultural property, we could store items of cultural property without
19:36damaging them so that eventually they can be returned to the institution from where they were
19:42stolen. The DeBitch asks, pro tip, when selling your dad's house in Argentina, remove the Nazi stolen
19:48art from the walls. That's a good tip. From 19, I think 1930s until 1945, the Nazis seized hundreds of
19:56thousands of pieces of artwork from Nazi controlled Europe, primarily from their Jewish owners. The
20:02Fuhrer wanted to start his own Reichsmuseum because he was kind of a failed artist in his own right.
20:08Over the years, these pieces have made it out into the commercial market and they've been sold and
20:14they've ended up on museum walls and in private collectors, oblivious to the fact that it had been
20:19either seized from their Jewish owners or what we would call duress sales, which is Jews who needed
20:26to get out of Nazi controlled Europe would sell artwork pennies on the dollar or trade it in exchange
20:33to be allowed to leave. So this is stolen property. There's databases that are out there to try and check
20:39this artwork, to track it down, to make sure that it goes back to its rightful owner. There's a lot
20:44of
20:44legal issues that come up with it as well. In the United States, under our stolen property laws,
20:50you can never get clear title to stolen property. Even if you purchased it legally from a reputable
20:54gallery or from an auction house, if it's stolen, the victim from whom it was stolen has the primary
21:01right to that property. It's something that the FBI, our crime team worked diligently on to repatriate
21:07stolen Nazi looted artwork back to the heirs of the rightful owners. There are private databases out
21:12there that you can check for a modest fee to see if this piece that you potentially want to purchase
21:17is stolen or looted. So yeah, I would encourage anybody who's looking to buy a valuable piece
21:22of artwork to do a little bit of research to make sure that it's not stolen or wasn't looted by
21:26the
21:27Nazis. Cora asks, do people really believe the museum jewelry heist in Paris was actually done by
21:33professionals? Sounds more like lucky ass dumb thieves to me. I'd be very surprised if those stolen pieces
21:40aren't recovered intact at some point. Everybody thinks that the first thing somebody's going to do
21:45is throw it away if you steal artwork or jewelry because it's it links the crime to you. Well,
21:52there's places you can hide it, but if the French national police come knocking on your door,
21:56you better have something to bargain. If you've broken down those jewels, you really don't have a
22:01bargaining chip. All right, on the next question, a Cora user asked, how are art thieves usually caught?
22:06Well, like I said, they may steal televisions or watches, but the typical channels that they would
22:13have to fence their stolen property is not going to be the same channels where they can go to try
22:17and sell high-end artwork. As a result, they end up sitting on it for a while and they get
22:22kind of
22:22desperate to monetize it. A thief that steals a $10 million painting, he has this vision of making a
22:29million dollars on this deal. Over time, as he can't find a buyer, that price drops and drops and drops.
22:35Eventually, he ends up selling it to the wrong buyer because he gets desperate. Enough people
22:39hear about the fact that he's got it and that's usually how they get caught. There's a reason why
22:44it's so enticing for thieves to want to steal from museums. Museums are not meant to be secure storage
22:49facilities for artwork. It's not a vault. It's meant to be open to the public. It's meant to be welcoming.
22:55It's meant to give the visitors a pleasurable experience when they come in and take a look at
22:59this beautiful collection. So because of that, artwork in museums is just easy to steal. But it's
23:06the monetizing it which is difficult.
23:09Really Goose Name asks, how the do thieves get caught stealing stuff when there are literal
23:14YouTube videos about picking locks and not leaving fingerprints? Yeah, thieves continue to get caught
23:20and it's typically not going to be leaving fingerprints. It's DNA these days. Even bad thieves
23:28understand the concept of wearing gloves when you commit a crime because you're not going to leave
23:33fingerprints. But DNA is pervasive, like the sebaceous oils in your fingertips will leave DNA or touch,
23:40say like a hair follicle falls out. But you're also going to get technology as they're undoing. It's
23:46surveillance cameras and the interconnectivity of all the different marketplaces that are out there.
23:53Car rentals and tolls and easy pass and pinging off cell towers. There's so much technology that's
23:59out there that it is so difficult to defeat all of that, commit a crime, not leave any DNA behind.
24:05So it becomes very difficult to pull these things off. They still happen, but it's harder and harder to get
24:09away with it. The Quora user asks, how long after a major art heist to investigators usually continue to
24:16actively pursue leads? Well, as the case agent on the Gardner Museum heist for 22 years, I can tell you
24:23that they don't stop. Investigators will continue to follow leads on an art heist until there's
24:28absolutely no leads left. They're not going to leave it undone. In the United States, we have a statute of
24:33limitations, which is the period in which somebody can be charged with a crime. Back when the Gardner
24:38Museum heist happened in 1990, the statute of limitations was five years. Because of the Gardner heist,
24:43Senator Ted Kennedy in 1994 introduced legislation to make a theft from a museum statute to our law,
24:51which makes it a 20-year statute. But even after that statute of limitations expires,
24:56investigators will still work the case because in the United States you can never get clear title to
25:01stolen property, as we discussed, and so therefore you can always be charged with possession of stolen
25:05property. For me, getting the Gardner case in 2002, I was like 12 years behind. So it took
25:12many, many years to even get up to speed and to start re-interviewing people that were still around
25:19and available to be interviewed. And then you're really just following the trail. It can take years
25:24to actually find the people who can give you answers that you're looking for. Especially when you're
25:28looking at an old case like this, people don't think that it still has any importance. It's unlike,
25:33say, a terrorist event or a murder, which people know is extremely important and they're going to hold on
25:38to that in their memory banks. Well, that's everything for today. I hope you learned something.
25:42Thanks for watching Heist Support.