NEW YORK—2008 was quite a year for art crime, featuring a stolen Caravaggio that turned out to be a fake, gun-wielding thieves and under-the-table ransoms, and something of a real-life Thomas Crown affair. But for every art theft that makes headlines, tens of thousands slip under the radar of the international media. Most people assume that art crime consists of only a handful of museum heists each year; in actuality, it has become the third-highest–grossing world criminal trade over the past 40 years, regularly perpetrated by or on behalf of organized crime syndicates and used to fund other illicit activities, such as drugs or arms trades. So while art thefts may be fascinating and certainly sexy to read about, we must keep in mind their sinister side and gather what lessons we can from them.

1. São Paulo Museum of Art – São Paulo, Brazil
December 20, 2007 (recovered January 8, 2008)
Last December, Portrait of Suzanne Bloch by Pablo Picasso, worth around $50 million, and The Coffee Worker by Brazilian artist Candido Portinari (estimated value $6 million) were stolen from the São Paulo Museum of Art during a night raid while guards were changing shifts. CCTV caught three men opening a locked entryway with a crowbar and a car jack, lifting the two paintings off the wall, and leaving, all in under three minutes. While the trend in museum thefts over the past five years has been toward quick and daring entries — allowing alarm systems to go off but escaping in under three minutes (the standard response time for police in a major city is three to five minutes) — in this case, the thieves were faster than necessary: The museum had no alarms. The uninsured artworks were recovered soon after, and, although a bit after-the-fact, the museum received a $1.7 million grant to improve its woeful security system. This theft seems to have inspired other criminals, however: Another São Paulo museum was robbed in broad daylight of two more Picassos and two Brazilian paintings on June 13, 2008.

2. Foundation E.G. Bührle Collection – Zürich, Switzerland
February 11
Another smash-and-grab blitz theft took place in February, when the Bührle Collection was robbed by armed, masked men during open hours. Thieves grabbed art near the entrance, including works by Degas, Cezanne, Van Gogh, and Monet, valued around a total $163 million.  This style of theft has historically been the signature move of organized crime, and a week earlier, two Picassos had been stolen from another exhibition in Zürich, suggesting that a local gang had developed a taste for fine art. Two of the Bührle Collection works — the Monet and the Van Gogh — were recovered quickly, but under suspicious circumstances: They were “discovered” in an unlocked car parked down the street from the museum. This indicates that a ransom was paid under the table to the thieves, who then returned two of the stolen works by leaving them in the car. It seems that only enough money could be raised to get back these, as the other two are still missing. In many countries it is illegal to pay ransom to criminals, with the belief that it will encourage future thefts, so of course, no official public statement was made as to how the recovered works “miraculously” appeared. But history reiterates that paying ransom can be like playing with fire. The Addison Gallery in Massachusetts was burgled of a number of silver objects in 1968, paid a ransom for their recovery, and then was burgled again of the same objects by the same thieves soon after — who this time melted the goods and sold the raw silver. Thus the thieves profited twice from the same victim, and the gallery ended up losing both its treasures and its money.

3. Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia – Vancouver, Canada
May 24
In a precise and dramatic heist, thieves made off with 15 golden artworks, three pieces of Mexican jewelry, and 12 objects by renowned Haida artist Bill Reid. The crime was timed to coincide with a guard’s habitual cigarette break, and the criminals showed a considerable knowledge of the museum’s security measures and how to counteract them: They wore gas masks and doused the entrance with bear spray to stop anyone trying to intervene, disabled the museum’s surveillance systems, and managed not to set off any alarms. The art world feared that this theft was one of a growing breed over the past few years, of stealing art in order to melt it down for the value of its raw materials. In this case the gold would have fetched about CAN$15,000 (US$12,300), while the complete artworks were valued at $2 million. The museum posted a $50,000 reward in an attempt to dissuade the thieves from melting the pieces, hoping to show them they could earn more by returning the works intact. The investigation led to a local Vancouver gang of jewelry thieves, who seemed to have been unsure about how to profit from their heist. The Bill Reid works were recovered intact, but the Mexican jewelry had been dismantled in order to sell the precious stones and metals separately.