
Serial art thief arrested again - antigizmo
https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/serial-art-thief-stephane-breitwieser-arrested-again
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saagarjha
> Most of the loot was hidden in his family home. Subsequently, his mother
> destroyed and threw away dozens of paintings and drawings, some by Cranach,
> Bruegel and Watteau, and dumped more than a hundred works into a canal. A
> pious woman, she chose not to destroy a Medieval sculpture of the Virgin
> Mary, abandoning it instead in a forest chapel.

I'm curious why she chose to do this. Was she trying to hide the evidence? Did
she just consider the art to be junk?

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staticautomatic
Omg she threw away a Breugel that should be prison time.

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brianpgordon
Destroying that much evidence should be prison time anyway, Breugel or not.

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c3534l
I was amazed that someone could steal so much art and imagined a sophisicated
and expert professional thief with a brilliant mind for security and a taste
in art. But apparently he just picked it up off the wall and walked out the
door with it. You can't get away with that at most grocery stores.

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legohead
There was a Russian guy recently that did exactly that [1], and then swat
showed up at his home not long after.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0V8APbxMqM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0V8APbxMqM)

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gnulinux
Wait WTF how does that even work? The guy picked up the painting while an
entire crowd was looking at it, and proceeded to walk away... That's Borat
level absurdity.

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jacquesm
Many years ago at a car trade show in Amsterdam a high end luxury car was
stolen under the noses of 10's of thousands of visitors and attendants. Thief
#1 put a scratch in the paint of the car, thieves #2, #3 and #4 calmly drove a
flatbed truck backwards through the crowded tradeshow to the stand of the
brand whose car was stolen and pushed it on to remove the 'damaged car' from
the trade show floor at the instructions of unseen higher ups. Their major
high tech tools to get away with all this was blue overalls with the brand
logo on their backs and breast pockets.

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slap
Got a link about that theft?

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jacquesm
It was _well_ before the days of the internet, and it happened at Amsterdam
Auto RAI.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AutoRAI](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AutoRAI)

Possibly some newspaper morgue has an article about it, it caused quite a few
giggles at the time. The funny thing is that nobody could describe the perps
but everybody could describe their overalls.

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PakG1
I couldn't understand why people steal famous art because there can't be any
buyers who would feel safe about displaying it in their homes. There's no
market to fence it. I tried googling for an answer and found only the
explanation that there's no good rhyme or reason, the thieves are just that
stupid. [https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/here-s-why-art-thieves-
st...](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/here-s-why-art-thieves-steal-
paintings-they-can-t-n657656)

~~~
roscorollo
I've looked into this before, following the same question you had. The most
logical answer I found was the criminal version of an insurance policy.

Basically they would steal said artwork but instead of selling, the point is
to keep it in hidden storage. Then if at some point further down the line the
criminal gets arrested in relation to another crime, they use the location of
the artwork as leverage during plea bargaining.

This is one of the major theories in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
heists in the 90's.

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tonyedgecombe
I think this was going on with the mafia because the Italian legal system was
conducive to it.

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buboard
is he a serial prisoner now?

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samstave
Serial art thief pants himself into a corner... A clear picture emerges...

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escapologybb
I think we may only be getting the broad strokes…

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tonyedgecombe
He will end up in the rogues gallery.

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droithomme
> Most of the loot was hidden in his family home. Subsequently, his mother
> destroyed and threw away dozens of paintings and drawings, some by Cranach,
> Bruegel and Watteau, and dumped more than a hundred works into a canal. A
> pious woman, she chose not to destroy a Medieval sculpture of the Virgin
> Mary, abandoning it instead in a forest chapel.

His mother is a terrible person who should go to prison for life for
intentional destruction of irreplaceable cultural items in order to cover up
serious crimes.

As far as the thief himself goes his own culpability is much less than hers.

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heyjudy
Netherlands extremely rarely gives anyone an actual life sentence for
anything. Plus, it's a property crime, and depends if she had knowledge of
their value and intent based on that. Also, you'd need to lock-up half of the
European aristocracy and most galleries for taking, and not willingly-
returning, works taken from WW2 Holocaust victims and survivors. So in the
grand scheme of things, she's, at most, a committer of criminal mischief.

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droithomme
> you'd need to lock-up half of the European aristocracy...

Is that bad?

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jacquesm
Suggest nickname change ;)

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wayanon
Mental illness.

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sfifs
I wonder if the fact that serial anything criminals exist at all indicates
that the criminal justice system might be broken? I wonder if the deterrence
aspect of law enforcement is actually working in Western countries.

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nordsieck
> I wonder if the fact that serial anything criminals exist at all indicates
> that the criminal justice system might be broken?

I'm a serial jay walker. I'm not sure that's evidence of the crumbling of
western civilization.

I don't think the law should aim to eliminate all crime. In my opinion, there
are systemic limits to how efficient law enforcement can me: clamp down too
hard on type 2 errors, and type 1 errors rear their ugly heads.

Which isn't to say that what we've got is the best that can be.

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daef
I've heard the term jaywalking a few times (with a dispiseful tone) and looked
it up now. the concept doesnt even make sense to me. here the 'weaker' have
precedence over the 'stronger'. plus there's always the 'vertrauensgrundsatz'
(principle of reliance) that states that you have to rely on others to behave
correct (except children), but as soon as they give you a sign that this might
not be the case it's _your_ duty to compensate. man I'm glad not to live in
the land of the free.....

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hesk
Ignoring a red light as a pedestrian carries a 5 € fine in Germany [1]. 10 €
if it causes an accident. Jaywalking (crossing the street where you're not
supposed to) also carries a 10 € fine.

[1]
[https://www.bussgeldkatalog.org/fussgaenger/](https://www.bussgeldkatalog.org/fussgaenger/)

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saagarjha
That’s a pretty small fine for some pretty serious consequences…

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tonyedgecombe
It probably isn't meant to be punitive, just a deterrent. A 5p charge for
plastic bags cut the usage massively in the UK.

