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Hi, I'm Jeffrey Kelly, author and retired special agent with the FBI's our crime team. I'm here today to answer your questions from the internet. This is heist support. Yoyo says, "Ugh, I got through the vent system, okay, but there's all these lasers around the exhibit hall. Use mirrors or acrobatics. # heist." That is definitely Hollywood. You know, in Hollywood, you have the suspension of disbelief, you know, and you can believe that Katherine Zeta Jones is kind of doing the limbo under all these lasers. But pro tip, museums don't use visible lasers. They're not going to make it that easy for you to be able to vault over it. Most museums employ
what's called volutric motion sensors where the entire museum or any security facility for that matter is one giant space. And if there's any interruption in that space, any type of motion that occurs anywhere in there, it's going to alert. You don't need lasers when you've got motion sensors. JFish 2121 asks, "If I were to tweet that I'm planning a bank heist, would the FBI put me on some sort of watch list? I'm probably on one." Everybody talks about watch list. There isn't really a watch list for committing a bank robbery, but yeah, I think you would probably get the attention of the FBI and you might get visited by the FBI at some point. All right, so Wes Raric
asks, "Explain like I'm five. How do museums know their paintings aren't forgeries?" There's a number of cases where museums have had pieces in their collection that turned out to be forgeries. We had a case a number of years ago where a museum in South America had a matise and it turned out that it had been swapped out with a fake. There's different ways that museums can determine whether or not they're accurate. Some museums actually have provenance experts on staff. You can hire outside experts to come in and conduct their provenance research. The experts can do scientific analysis on the pigments used, the composition of canvas or stone or the plaster that's used to determine an age. And from that,
that's going to help you determine whether or not it's potentially a fake. Only about 20% of artwork that's stolen from a museum is actually stolen from the gallery walls. 80% of it is taken from the collection storage areas. And it's usually done by someone in a position of trust. If you look at a large museum, the collection, it's like a it's like an iceberg. And what you actually see on the gallery walls is the tip of the iceberg. And the majority of the museum's collection may be in storage. That's when you have to worry about theft, pieces being replaced with forgeries. And realistically, it's it's just impossible for a museum to do scientific and provenance research on every single piece in their collection.
They only will do it if a question is raised about a particular piece being a fake or possibly being stolen. All right, so Nem Ma, I finally watched The Town yesterday. Honestly, Ben Affleck did his thing with this movie. That was the most accurate depiction of a heist I've ever seen in film. Well, I am really flattered to hear you say that because I was one of the technical adviserss on that film. I worked uh on Violent Crime Squad for about 25 years and I was uh one of the case agents on the real Charles Town armored car crew that committed a number of robberies. and Ben Affleck came to the FBI when he bought the rights to a book called Prince of Thieves, which was a
fictionalized account of a Charles Town armored car robbers. My partner and I worked with him to make sure that all the heists that were committed throughout that film were accurate. In fact, the first meeting that my partner and I had with Ben Affleck, and I said to him, you know, if you want to make a good movie, just listen to what we're going to tell you cuz we'll tell you what it's really like. And he listened. Catalina Bird asks, what in the Thomas Crown affair happened in Paris? How do you rob the Louve in broad daylight? We call it a smash and grab robbery and there's really nothing sophisticated about it and they were I think they were
in and out in seven minutes. You meticulously plan out the heist, but there's the bigger picture which is getting away with it. And then the biggest picture of all is monetizing it. I believe that like I think four suspects who were involved in that heist were arrested within days and that typifies large-scale art heists. You know, when you look at security that's that's in place in major cities around the world, including Paris, the number of video cameras that are out there, it really is a network that just envelops the entire city. And so, the investigators are going to be able to follow you. You're going to get picked up on traffic cameras. You're going to
get picked up on license plate readers. You're going to get picked up by private security surveillance systems that just about every business in the city of Paris has. And investigators are going to be able to follow you. they're going to be able to stitch it all together until eventually you're going to arrive at a location where something identifiable is going to be located. And so it's extremely difficult in today's surveillance world to commit a crime somewhere and get clean away without somehow leaving a digital fingerprint that can be traced back to you. Mirroring gives a shout out to George Clooney for saving the Gent alterpiece from the Nazi ruin. That was fire.
You're referring to the monuments man. It was a fictional movie based on a real unit. The Monuments Men was set up to protect and recover the priceless historical artwork that was at risk in Europe during World War II. They were responsible for saving pieces of the Gent alterpiece, which was this beautiful historic multi-panel display that was at a church in Gent. And I think all but one of the pieces have actually been recovered. And George Clooney, this character was loosely based on a guy named George Stout. They did a tremendous job during World War II, recovering and saving so much artwork that had been looted by the Nazis and was in danger of being destroyed from battle. Few years after the war, George Stout went on to become
the director of the Gardener Museum. He realized from his time during World War II the need for artwork to be portable in the event of civil unrest or natural disaster. And so a lot of the larger pieces in the collection, the frames have were cut and basically made a frame within a frame with little thumb screws to keep it in place. That way if there was a need to evacuate this artwork rapidly, cuz he saw this from his time during the war, museum staff could just take these little thumb screws and turn them and take the piece out and leave the much larger, heavier, bulkier frame behind. Lunchhill asks, "What is security fog and why do I feel then this need to trigger it to find out?" Well,
please don't. Security fog is a technology that's used and basically when it's activated, it releases this giant cloud of opaque harmless gas that temporarily blinds a thief. The whole room is enveloped in a cloud. I think there are some museums that may use it, but I think it's a terrible idea. But I just wouldn't want the idea of panicked thieves in a room filled with valuable artwork, sculptures, whatnot, panicking and running blindly through it. I think you could do more damage from that. There's a number of security protocols that are in place today that can be used by a museum to keep their facility safe without resorting to that. From CAPM1, what criminal committed an almost
perfect crime and what was the thing that messed it up? The closest thing that came to the perfect heist would have been the Antwerp diamond heist by Leonardo Notre Blo which was in 2003. He and his crew stole about $und00 million worth of diamonds from a heavily fortified vault. They were able to defeat the alarm system and get in, get the jewels and get out. That was really the hard part. And when you're talking about diamonds and other the precious jewels, that's your best bet as a thief to actually get away with it and monetize it because these gems can be recut. Settings can be melted down.
It is a market unlike other cultural property like statues or paintings. They left garbage and other items of evidence that were related to the heist. It really led to his downfall because of course all of these items had DNA on it that were identifiable with him and his associates. you kind of expected more from them because they had put so much planning and skill into the execution of that robbery. In the end, he wasn't able to profit from it. He ended up going to prison, but as far as the heist was concerned, it was pretty close to being flawlessly executed. Clebo9 asks, "Hey, Reddit electronics, can you really disable video cameras like they did in Inside Man, or was that total bull?" There are ways to disable video
cameras. Of course, that's going to be one of the goals of a thief, whether it's for a museum or any other place. They're wireless. If they're cellular, there's ways that you can try and jam them. If it's a hard line, then you're going to try and cut into that line. The thing you need to understand though is if you disable the video cameras, it's immediately going to alert the guards that there's a situation going on and they're probably going to call the police. So, it's not as effective as it probably was in the movie. A Quora user asked, "Is it true that Picasso once stole the Mona Lisa?" So, at the time, Picasso was considered a suspect, but he did not steal it. The Mona Lisa was
stolen in 1911 by an Italian named Venenzo Puio. He did one of the classic museum thefts. He stayed in the LOFO and then pretended that he was a worker and he left the next morning with the Mona Lisa tucked under his arm. And he actually held on to that for 2 years. He brought it back to Italy and it seems that he tried to sell it. He ended up getting caught with this and during his trial he argued that he did it for patriotic reasons to repatriate this Italian piece back to Italy. He only did about a year in prison. But as a result that really became the most famous theft. But it has an unfortunate footnote because if anybody's ever been to the Lou and seen the Mona Lisa in
person, the pieces behind bulletproof glass and stansions and barriers and it's really difficult to experience the piece for what it is. But that was the museum theft of Legacia 100 years ago. Miss Uo Supupo trying to tunnel into a bank that in '8s movies don't work no more. Lol. Yeah, this I think he's you're referring to a movie that was that came out many years ago. I think it was with Jason Stratham, but it was a real event that occurred in a at a bank in the UK where group of subject subjects actually went through a like I think it was a fish and chip shop next to a bank and tuttddled in and then got into the safety deposit boxes. It would not work today because of security
protocols that were not around 40 years ago. you would not be able to tunnel into the bank uh without setting off a seismic alarms or uh motion sensors or whatnot, but back then obviously security wasn't as robust and sophisticated as it is now. Okay. And from the character rant subreddit, holy of you haven't read our scene lupin, gentleman burglar, do so. The idea of the gentleman burglar, it's online with Thomas Crown affair and Oceans 11. It's an enduring Hollywood myth. It doesn't exist. The closest thing that I could come to that's ever happened in this country is a couple Rita and Jerry Alter. And in 1985, there was a theft of a William Duning piece called Woman Ochre from the University of Arizona Art
Museum. And it was taken by a man and a woman who distracted a guard. Jerry died in like 2012. And when Rita died in 2018, the contents of her home were sold off to like a local antique store. And one of the pieces that was had been hanging in her bedroom for more than 40 years was the Dacuning piece valued about $150 million. And they had kept it purely because of the love that they had for that piece, even though it had been heavily damaged when it was stolen. That's about as close as you're going to get to the gentleman burglar construct when you're talking about Art Thief to my knowledge. From basist music man and explain like I'm five. Why would someone steal a priceless painting? Wouldn't it
be impossible to sell? You're absolutely correct. Nobody should steal a priceless painting because there is no market. It's really not priceless. It's worthless. Nobody wants to buy stolen artwork. So when you're talking about trying to move or fence stolen property that's recognizable, a painting, a Rembrandt, a Picasso, a Van Go, your actual market is shrinks because it has no investment value cuz it's stolen. Stealing it is the easy part. It's monetizing it after the theft. That's difficult. You know, when I started working art theft like more than two decades ago, it was very difficult to move a stolen piece of artwork. Now with smartphones, Google image search will tell you within a second the whole history of the piece, the provenance of that piece. Was it
ever reported stolen? Let's say you steal a very valuable Rembrandt. There might be somebody in the world who would be willing to purchase it and keep it secreted. Maybe some Russian oligarch or a drug trafficker. But the question is, how do you get in touch with that buyer? Everybody always talks about the dark web and it's like well it's not that easy to go to the dark web, right? Because if you go on the dark web and say that you have a very valuable stolen Rembrandt for sale, other people on that dark web are going to turn you in because there's probably going to be a reward. So it's really difficult to connect a thief who has a piece of stolen artwork with the very small collection of collectors who would
actually be willing to purchase it. So, as a result, these guys end up just sitting on it and stolen artwork ends up becoming more of a liability than an asset. From overchoice 6096, CCTV monitoring or unarmed security guard. Every museum is going to use a combination of both. It's important to realize when you're talking about security guards in a museum, when the museum is closed, their primary goal is not to prevent like an oceans 11 type attack. Their primary goal is to keep the collection safe from fire and flood. That's the two most destructive elements that can happen at a museum. So, you're always going to have security guards.
CCTV is, of course, it's the main stay of museum security. AI has brought surveillance video cameras just in leaps and bounds over where they were just a decade ago. There's some museums that still have this non AI security cameras where you have a couple of guards sitting glassy eyed at a bank of, you know, a hundred video monitors watching trying to look for somebody stealing something or doing something out of the ordinary. It's a herculean task. But now with AI, the camera learns what the normal museum person is going to do in a museum. Even if they're looking at one piece of artwork for hours, which is not uncommon, that's not suspicious. but it learns what is suspicious and it makes
these cameras smarter and it can detect this. So you don't need to have a couple of security guards watching this bank of cameras. The AI cameras will do it for you. And so you're seeing that museum security guards, while they're always going to be part of a security contingent at a museum, security cameras are really becoming much more and more sophisticated and they're really taking over that role. something they need to have is disaster planning because if there is a fire, if there is a flood or some other natural disaster, that's not the time when you need to figure out what are we going to do with all this artwork. And in fact, we saw this terrible situation last year with all
the wild wildfires in Los Angeles and we assisted out there because there was no place for these museums to take their precious collections as the threat of wildfires grew. You have to think about the worst possible things that can happen and plan for it. Hopefully, it'll never happen, but if it does, you need to be prepared. Very princess cute date idea. We solved the Gardener Museum heist. It's the world's largest art heist in terms of value. It's probably over a billion dollars worth of stolen artwork. So, just as St. Patrick's Day festivities in Boston were winding down, two subjects showed up at the Gardener Museum dressed as police officers, and they demanded entry. And against
protocol, the night guard let them in. And once they came into the museum, they asked the guard who else was working. He said his partner was up doing rounds. They instructed him to get his partner to come down. His partner showed up and they said, "Uh, hey, you know, I think there's a warrant for your arrest. Let me see some ID." And the guard who was at the night desk showed him his license. And they said, "Yeah, yeah, there is a warrant for your arrest. Assume the position." And these two subjects put both guards against the wall, spread eagle. So after they handcuffed the guards, they tied them up down in the basement and they spent the
next hour or so going through the museum removing 13 pieces of artwork from the walls, including Rembrandt's only known seascape and a Vermeier, which is one of only 36 ever created by Johannes Vermeier. I worked the case for 22 years. It's kind of a two-part investigation. One part was the who done it part, who actually pulled it off, and the other part is I think the more important question, which is where the piece is now. So in terms of solving, we know who did it. wasn't some Thomas Crown like reclusive billionaire. It was just a group of Boston criminals, Boston mobsters who pulled it off. But the real question to me and the one that I continue to work on is where the pieces now. I got the case in 2002, which was
more than a dozen years after the actual crime occurred. By the time I got the case, it seemed that everyone who was actually involved in the actual robbery was dead. Three members of that crew were violently murdered within a year and a half of the robbery occurring. and a fourth died under very suspicious circumstances, most likely also killed. So you have four people who were associated with the robbery who were murdered or died within a year and a half. And I think it had a chilling effect on anybody that harbored any aspirations about coming forward with information about the gardener heist. Babron 2 asked, "People don't really do bank heists anymore. What happened?" There's less currency in circulation now. Bank
heists do still occur. There's still armored car robberies, but with the security becoming so much more sophisticated, a lot of people are kind of moving away from standard currency and doing everything on their cards or Apple Pay. There's not a need to replenish banks and stores with armored cars filled with cash. And so you do see a decline in armored car robberies and bank heist as a result. Drejected Stone FBI art crimes. I didn't know they existed. So the FBI did found an art crime team in 2004 and I was one of the original members on the team. The impetus for it started about a year earlier during the war when US and
coalition forces entered Baghdad. During that period of instability, there was a 36-hour time frame when looters broke into the National Museum of Iraq, which is arguably one of the most culturally historically important museums in the world. It's it's really mankind's history. and they sold about 15,000 objects and damaged a great many others. And at the time there was a call from the US government to the FBI to you basically send in the art crime team to investigate this. And the FBI said, "Well, we don't have one." And so that was really the genesis of starting an art crime team. And so we received training from the Smithsonian and some wonderful institutions to learn about how to investigate art theft. As art
crime team members, we had to learn some of the stranger things about it, like how do we package up valuable artwork? How do we photograph it? What resources do we have available that can help us authenticate it or ship it? Typically, when the FBI seizes something, if I were to seize this laptop, I'm going to scribble my initials on it in a Sharpie and put the date, put an evidence sticker on it, and that way if I end up testifying at trial that I seized this laptop, it's a chain of custody to show that yes, this is the laptop I seized, and I know that cuz it's got my initials on it. Well, we can't do that with a priceless Rembrandt. So, we had to come up with new ways and new protocols that
the FBI could use where we could seize items of cultural property. We could store items of cultural property without damaging them so that eventually they can be returned to the institution from where they were stolen. The ditch asks, "Pro tip, when selling your dad's house in Argentina, remove the Nazi stolen art from the walls." That's a good tip. From 19 I think 1930s until 1945, the Nazis seized hundreds of thousands of pieces of artwork from Nazi controlled Europe, primarily from their Jewish owners. The Furer wanted to start his own Reichkes Museum cuz he was kind of a failed artist in his own right. Over the years, these pieces have made it out into the commercial market and they've been sold
and they've ended up on museum walls and in private collectors oblivious to the fact that it had been either seized from their Jewish owners or what were what we would call duress sales, which is Jews who needed to get out of Nazi controlled Europe would sell artwork pennies on the dollar or trade it in exchange to be allowed to leave. Well, so this is stolen property. There's databases that are out there to try and check this artwork to track it down to make sure that it goes back to its rightful owner. There's a lot of legal issues that come up with it as well. In the United States, under our stolen property laws, you can never get clear title to stolen property. Even if you purchased it legally from a reputable gallery or
from an auction house, if it's stolen, the victim from whom it was stolen has the primary right to that property. It's something that the FBI, our crime team, worked diligently on to repatriate stolen Nazi looted artwork back to the heirs of the rightful owners. There are private databases out there that you can check for a modest fee to see if this piece that you potentially want to purchase is stolen or looted. So, yeah, I would encourage anybody who's looking to buy a valuable piece of artwork to do a little bit of research to make sure that it's not stolen or wasn't looted by the Nazis. Kora asks, "Do people really believe the museum jewelry heist in Paris was actually done by
professionals?" Sounds more like lucky ass dumb thieves to me. I'm be very surprised if those stolen pieces aren't recovered intact at some point. Everybody thinks that the first thing somebody's going to do is throw it away if you steal artwork or jewelry because it's it links the crime to you. Well, there's there's places you can hide it, but if the French National Police come knocking on your door, you better have something to bargain. If you've broken down those jewels, you really don't have a bargaining chip. All right, on next question. A Quora user asked, "How are art thieves usually caught?" Well, like
I said, they may steal televisions or watches, but the typical channels that they would have to fence their stolen property is not going to be the same channels where they can go to try and sell high-end artwork. As a result, they end up sitting on it for a while and they get kind of desperate to monetize it. A thief that steals a $10 million painting, he has this vision of making a million dollars on this deal. Over time, as he can't find a buyer, that price drops and drops. Eventually, he ends up selling it to the wrong buyer because he gets desperate.
Enough people hear about the fact that he's got it, and that's usually how they get caught. There's a reason why it's so enticing for thieves to want to steal from museums. Museums are not meant to be secure storage facilities for artwork. It's not a vault. It's meant to be open to the public. It's meant to be welcoming. It's meant to give the visitors a pleasurable experience when they come in and take a look at this beautiful collection. So, because of that, artwork in museums is just easy to steal, but it's the monetizing it which is difficult. Really? Goose Name asks, "How the do thieves get caught stealing stuff when there are literal YouTube videos about picking locks and not leaving fingerprints?"
Yeah, thieves continue to get caught. And it's it's typically not going to be leaving fingerprints. It's DNA these days. Even bad thieves understand the concept of uh wearing gloves when you commit a crime because you're not going to leave fingerprints. But DNA is pervasive like the sebaceous oils in your fingertips will leave DNA or touch say like a hair follicle falls out. But you're also going to get technology is their undoing. It's surveillance cameras and the interconnectivity of all the different marketplaces that are out there. Car rentals and tolls and easy pass and pinging off cell towers. There's so much technology that's out there that it is so difficult to defeat all of that.
commit a crime, not leave any DNA behind. So, it becomes very difficult to pull these things off. They still happen, but it's harder and harder to get away with it. The core user asks, "How long after a major art heist to investigators usually continue to actively pursue leads?" Well, as the case agent on the Gardener Museum heist for 22 years, I can tell you that they don't stop. Investigators will continue to follow leads on an art heist until there's absolutely no leads left. They're not going to leave it undone. In the United States, we have what a statute of limitations, which is the period in which somebody can be charged with a crime. Back when the Gardener Museum heist happened in 1990, that statute of limitations was 5 years.
Because of the gardener heist, Senator Ted Kennedy in '94 introduced legislation to make a theft from a museum statute to our law, which makes it a 20-year statute. But even after that statute of limitations expires, investigators will still work the case because in the United States, you can never get clear title to stolen property as we discussed. And so therefore, you can always be charged with possession of stolen property. For me, getting the gardener case in 2002, I was like 12 years behind. So it took many, many years to even get up to speed and to start reintering people that were still around and available to be interviewed. And then you're you're really just following the trail. It can take years
to actually find the people who can give you answers that you're looking for. Especially when you're looking at an old case like this, people don't think that it still has any importance. It's unlike say a terrorist event or a murder which people know is extremely important and they're going to hold on to that in their memory banks. Well, that's everything for today. I hope you learned something. Thanks for watching. Heist support.
