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Stolen Picasso and Mondrian paintings found stashed in a ravine in Greece

237 points| prismatic | 4 years ago |nytimes.com

78 comments

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[+] klyrs|4 years ago|reply
> He took the metro into town, changed clothes in a park next to the gallery and waited until the museum’s 9 p.m. closing time, before finding a balcony with unsecured doors. When he moved a door and a beep sounded, he said, he reconsidered his course of action ... "That's when I decided that annoying the security guard was the best way to do the theft, by making him believe that there was a technical problem in the alarm zones," the suspect told the police. So he opened and closed the door several times to confuse the guards.

This is a great hack, applicable to probably most human security. Can it apply to computer security? Well, if you've ever been inclined to silence an alarm you can't diagnose...

[+] vl|4 years ago|reply
Or he is well-versed in classics - this is exactly what happens in “How to Steal a Million” with Audrey Hepburn and Peter O’Toole.
[+] alexpetralia|4 years ago|reply
There must be some infosec term for this, but I'd imagine it's close to "signal poisoning" - turning signal into noise.
[+] Cthulhu_|4 years ago|reply
Yup; over-eager virus- and malware scanners have much to answer for in that regard. And Windows' attempts at security in windows Vista I believe it was - by having an intrusive "admin approval" screen - is another example where after only a few "false alarms", people already automate hitting OK when something like that pops up without reading the details.
[+] failwhaleshark|4 years ago|reply
I guess you don't read much or watch many movies. This is a device used in almost every museum heist plot to the point that it's cliché.
[+] haunter|4 years ago|reply
And they let the Picasso painting drop on the floor lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wfmFsNec24

[+] happytoexplain|4 years ago|reply
It's frankly hard to imagine somebody putting a Picasso in that position. Look at the height of the painting! Look at how low the wall it's resting on is! Look at the surface it's sitting on! How is it that nobody there has their intuitive every-day-physics alarms going off??
[+] scudd|4 years ago|reply
Puts it back in the exact same position too
[+] stavros|4 years ago|reply
This has been a source of endless memes in Greece for the past few days. We are greatly amused and chagrined.
[+] aledalgrande|4 years ago|reply
OMG they're touching it with bare hands too to put it back in the same spot it fell from! There's an art restorer somewhere choking watching this...
[+] fogof|4 years ago|reply
The title is clickbait. It makes it sound like someone hiking in a ravine just happened to stumble upon these paintings. In actuality, the guy just felt guilty, so he confessed and gave them back. The subtitle says it all:

> Ending a long-running mystery, a construction worker guided the police to the hiding place after admitting he had taken the works in a daring one-man raid on the National Gallery in Athens in 2012.

[+] hirundo|4 years ago|reply
I think the thief does deserve leniency. He had nothing to gain by turning himself in other than guilt relief, and a lot to lose. Much respect. Prison time still seems appropriate, but a lot less than otherwise.
[+] fumblebee|4 years ago|reply
Maybe, hopefully. But this paragraph suggests that he thought the police were onto him before he turned himself in.

> According to the news reports, the suspect said he had moved the paintings there in May after reading that the police might be onto him.

[+] flycaliguy|4 years ago|reply
He didn’t even return one of the items! I feel like the thief’s lawyer is very happy about this story being leaked like this.
[+] Cthulhu_|4 years ago|reply
It kinda depends; did he steal it for himself or was it "to order", in which case it depends on whether he can help convict the bigger fry. Was it damaged? Etc. Motivation matters a lot in a case like this, I think, and of course damages because a lot of money has been spent on police and museum investigation, possibly insurance money, restoration, etc.
[+] 6502nerdface|4 years ago|reply
I wonder how the recovery of stolen artworks plays out with insurance. If a museum's (or ultimate owner's) insurance company pays out for the theft, and then a decade later the works are recovered, does the museum (or owner) have to return funds to the insurance company? What if the museum is not in a financial position to do so... could they be forced, ironically, to sell the recovered art?
[+] vlovich123|4 years ago|reply
There was an EconTalk about Art Loss Register that covered this very question [1]. The insurance company returns it as long as the original owner pays back the amount paid out with some interest. The insurance company doesn't benefit from any appreciation of the artwork though.

What's unclear though is that (as described in the same podcast), the insurance company doesn't pay out the full value of the artwork. The TV show Lupin uses this as the plot device whereby a fraudster claims the artwork is stolen to get the insurance money as a kind of temporary loan.

[1] https://www.econtalk.org/anja-shortland-on-lost-art/ @ ~minute 20

Youtube link w/ timestamp: https://youtu.be/eRbSFSZPY8s?t=1149

[+] doggosphere|4 years ago|reply
I would imagine accepting an insurance payout might require waiving/handing off any claim of ownership of the asset?
[+] watertom|4 years ago|reply
He would have been better off framing them and hanging them on the wall, nobody would believe that that construction worker had the stolen originals on his wall. The other benefit is that he would have been able to enjoy the art.
[+] dylan604|4 years ago|reply
Maybe he wasn't a surrealist, and more into classical instead?
[+] kbutler|4 years ago|reply
He did: "the suspect had kept the paintings at the home of a relative that he frequently visited to look at them,"

The article doesn't say if the relative knew they were stolen originals or presumed they were prints.

[+] shadilay|4 years ago|reply
> The Caccia sketch was damaged during the robbery and discarded, the suspect told the police.

The real crime.

Works being stolen usually adds to their value.

[+] BurningFrog|4 years ago|reply
Really?

That means some of these heists are staged!

[+] adolph|4 years ago|reply
This EconTalk podcast episode is an interview with an author of a book about the "Art Loss Register," a private registry for stolen works of art. The economic aspects of provenance and trust are likely interesting to folks interested in blockchain applications.

https://www.econtalk.org/anja-shortland-on-lost-art/

[+] TedDoesntTalk|4 years ago|reply
> The Caccia sketch was damaged during the robbery and discarded, the suspect told the police.

> Mr. Kehagioglu, the lawyer, said that his client was no regular thief and that his remorse had led to the paintings’ safe return.

I don’t understand the lawyer’s statement.

[+] aritmo|4 years ago|reply
It's 'lawyer talk'. It does not make sense, but if you are not paying attention while reading it, you would register it as something positive for the thief.
[+] re-al|4 years ago|reply
Yes.. Jack Ma got to the top doing business in China, but then proves himself to be a bad judge of the situation by making speeches against the Chinese authorities. I don't think so.

I think Jack Ma is just a figurehead (like most business people) - an actor that is there to raise the profile of the brand. I don't think he owns what they say (though I'm sure he is well remunerated).

All we can really say I think, is that his role came to an end, and he has stepped off the stage.