Crimes of deceit and forgery affect the art market in a generally beneficial way. The members of the art trade — gallerists, auction houses, dealers, middlemen, and sellers — all benefit, earning money even if the item they are handling is not what they claim it to be. Only the buyer who overpays for a fake or misrepresented work suffers. But the buyer only loses out if the work is proven to be false. If the buyer and the world at large remain blissfully ignorant, then the perceived value of the work remains consistent — which is why it is in the best interest of all involved to believe that the art in question is exactly what they hope it to be.

Art Theft
Art theft affects the art trade less than other categories of art crime, to a large extent because stolen art is rarely offered on the market. In this Internet age, police and dealers worldwide can be notified of stolen goods in minutes, making it difficult for criminals to “shop” stolen art. Rather, criminals profit from art theft in a variety of ways that tend not to involve resale. For famous works, there is basically no market, black or otherwise. Famous art is either offered for ransom (such as the Munch paintings stolen in 2004) or traded on a closed black-market system among organized criminals for an equivalent value of another illicit good, such as drugs or arms. Within this system, a work’s value is generally marked at seven to ten percent of its legitimate auction value — the amount that criminals could sell it for, were they willing to run the risk of seeking a buyer. Experts have discovered this black-market price because it is the value at which undercover police posing as criminal buyers were offered stolen art.

Less recognizable artworks and antiquities are often altered in some way, provided false provenance, and then sold on an open market in which the actual owner is never revealed, or on a gray market (this would include objects that “fell off a truck” or that are stored in the basement of a legitimate dealer’s shop). In such cases, the art trade can actually benefit from criminal activity. With more objects to sell, the trade will make more money, provided the illicit origins of the artworks can be disguised.

The final and most alarming method of profit from stolen works is the sale of raw materials. Since 2005, there has been a rash of thefts of bronze and copper artworks and objects, following the astronomical rise in the price of these raw materials. Masterpieces such as Henry Moore’s Reclining Nude, a two-ton object stolen from the Henry Moore Foundation in December 2005, was almost certainly chopped into pieces and sold for scrap, earning perhaps as little as £3,000 ($5,800). The work carried a £2 million insurance policy.

Antiquities Looting
Perhaps comprising as much as 75 percent of all art crime, antiquities looting is the most difficult crime to catch. Objects taken directly out of the earth or the sea will not appear on stolen art registries, because the objects never existed, at least not to the knowledge of contemporary society, before their illicit excavation. Looted antiquities can often be sold on an open market for full value, even without a false provenance suggesting they were legitimately excavated and exported. Since the legitimate antiquities trade is laced with questionable characters and objects with incomplete provenances, the nature of this market provides shadows in which criminals can hide. Although buying a looted artifact might seem relatively harmless, trade in illicit antiquities has been identified as a major funding source for terrorist groups. As with art theft, the art trade can actually benefit from antiquities looting. New, exciting antiquities on the market benefit the trade — even if money from the transactions is going into the pockets of criminals.

Art crime is a subtle and fascinating world, one in which even the best-intentioned dealer or collector could be supporting organized crime through their purchases. Buyer beware.