priceless

Plundered antiquities, brazen museum break-ins, war-time appropriations- art works, gems, relics , valuable books and documents have always been irresistible targets for thieves. The recent investigation of  the $145 million dollar smuggling ring that dealt  in antiquities from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Cambodia, Thailand and Afghanistan  over the last 30 years brought to mind the book Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World’s Stolen Treasures   by Robert K. Wittman, founder of the FBI Art Crime Team. In this enthralling real-life who-done-it , Wittman shows that art thieves  can run  the gamut  from brazen, practiced criminals, to petty thieves looking to turn a quick profit; skillful criminals knowledgeable of the art world, or everyday people who simply helped them selves to something that they admired. The current Indian smuggling ring was broken by a multi-national collaboration of law enforcement organizations, much like the cases Wittman takes us through in his book.

Sadly, not all art thefts are solved. In Wittman’s book, he recounts the story of the theft of 13 works of art worth an estimated $500 million in 1990 from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.
That case has never been solved. In 1981, the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, in my base camp, Pittsburgh, was robbed of a 16-carat pale yellow diamond. That theft, too, has remained unsolved.

To learn more about these, and other high profile art heists, I highly recommend reading :
https://www.amazon.com/Priceless-Undercover-Rescue-Worlds-Treasures/dp/0307461483