Art theft is a crime that really doesn’t pay, which is unlikely to bother Banksy
A Banksy print worth about $40,000 was stolen in Canada 10 days ago; finding a buyer, says an expert, will be almost impossible
New York — Ten days ago, a Banksy print valued at about $40,000 was stolen from a Canadian exhibit of the artist’s work. It was a seemingly effortless crime — a man walked in, took the work off the wall, and walked out — but then, most art crimes are. The heavy lifting comes later. "The main rule is that it’s not that hard to steal art, even from museums, but it’s almost impossible to translate that art into cash," says Noah Charney, a scholar and author who’s published multiple books on art theft. Paintings can be quickly cut out of frames, and small sculptures can be tucked into bags — even jewellery can be secreted away — but finding a buyer for your art or diamonds is often impossible. "Criminals don’t understand that, because their knowledge of art crime is based on fiction and films," Charney says. There are exceptions, of course, including a much-reported theft from March 2017 when four men from an Arabic-Kurdish crime family in Germany broke into Berlin’s Bode Museum and sto...
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