1354: Arthur Brand | Recovering the World's Stolen Masterpieces

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25:08So if you decide to sign up for anything, use our code. It's usually Jordan. It's not always that though. You can double check on the deals page. It's a great win, you get a great deal, and you help keep the show thriving. Thank you for your support. Now, back to Arthur Brand. So this is somewhat unrelated to art, but when I was in Ukraine, I did buy a lot of stuff that I didn't get stolen. Not all of it got stolen. Some of it was hidden really well or accidentally hidden well, or I had flat documents put in books and they didn't look in there. And I have this - Oh, you were a smuggler. Yeah. I didn't think I was smuggling, but I accidentally smuggled some of the stuff out.

25:41The rest of it was just in a box. If I'd known I was going to get robbed, I didn't think anybody would be interested in that. if I thought I was going to get robbed at the actual airport, I would have smuggled the rest of it home or mailed it or something. But I found these work documents that are like Nazi work documents for maybe a Jewish guy or a Hungarian guy. I got to look at it again because it's been 25 years, but I bought them. It's occurred to me now as an adult that I should probably try to return these documents to the family of the person who the documents are for because this is dark, but it could be the last photo of that person.

26:13I know. I went to Argentina and I saw stuff there too, you know, at the market. Many Nazis went to Argentina. I saw stuff too in Ukraine and other countries. And you see a picture of a man or a woman, probably Jewish or Hungarian or whatever, on false labor. And probably they didn't survive. And probably their family never knew what became of them. If you have such a passport or whatever, a pass, of course, you know, it's a real hunt to try to find out who was he or she. Is somebody alive? I definitely would do that if I were you, you know. So how do I do that? Because I've gone to the Jewish Museum in LA and they were kind of like, yeah, we'll hold it for you or we'll put it on display or we'll show it.

26:56But they're like, we can't help you find these people. And there's got to be an organization that helps find these people because it's their personal property that I picked up from somebody in Ukraine who's probably either fought Nazis and killed them and took that out of their drawer, or their work camp might have been in Ukraine and they raided it and that was a document in a box somewhere. Somebody's got to care. Can you read the name still? Oh, yeah. It's all written in German, but it's a work passport, basically, is what it says. It's not that difficult these days. You just put it on X and try to ask the public to help.

27:28That's a good point. I could just tweet it with a photo and say, can anybody help me find this person? Yeah, that's true. And it's interesting. It does have personal information for the person that could narrow it down. It's been a while since I looked at it. It's literally right next to me in a box. But it's got the town where he was, the camp where he was, and it's got his name and a photograph of him. So, yeah, it's haunting. Yeah, sad stories because you know almost for sure that these people never made it back. And you see sometimes the fear in their eyes when this picture was taken. It's so sad, this whole story and this whole World War II story.

28:00It is sad. Yes, you're right. This is not a smiling photo of this person. It's a mugshot, but he's scared. Yeah. So I feel like as a kid, when I bought it, I was like, oh, this is kind of cool. You know, it's 20 years old or something. But now as an adult, I'm like, oh, gosh, if that was my great grandfather, I would want to have this, not have it in Jordan Harbinger's attic. At least in some way, it has not been destroyed. But in my field, in the art recovery, World War II was the biggest art theft in history. Art of Hitler, Hermann Göring, both were art lovers. They stole millions of pieces all around Europe from private individuals, museums, especially from Jewish collectors, of course.

28:39And still a few hundred thousand are gone. They are missing. And even today I recovered one, by the way. It's fresh from the press. Wow. And two weeks ago we had, of course, I don't know if you heard about that one. We had a big one, a very big one related to World War II. You said you recovered something today. What did you recover today? It has to do something with two weeks ago. It was one of the craziest cases in my career. World War II was the biggest art theft in history. They stole a lot from Jewish families. One of those families was Goudsteker. He was a Dutch art dealer, Dutch Jewish.

29:14The Germans entered the Netherlands. He fled to England by boat. But at night, he went upstairs on the boat and he fell and he died. So Goering personally came to the Netherlands and confiscated his entire collection of 1 ,200 paintings. So Goudsteker really is a symbolic name for the Luton by the Germans. And then a couple of months I was called by some young man. And he said to me, Arthur, there is a big secret. And I said, what? And he said, I was at the home of my grandmother and she told me a secret. So his grandmother told him, listen, our last name, we changed it after World War II. This is not our real last name.

29:58Our real last name is Seifert. And Seifert is a very familiar name, especially in the Netherlands. Seifert was the highest collaborating Dutch man in a Dutch general in World War II. He helped the Nazis. He became the general of the Dutch Voluntary Legion who fought in Leningrad. They even fought it at the last days in Berlin to defend Adolf Hitler in 1945. So he was the head of this legion. He was killed in 1943 by the Dutch resistance and the Germans retaliated. Dozens of Dutch men have been killed because of that. When he was assassinated, it made the front page of the New York Times at the time in 1943.

30:40So this guy faints. You can imagine you are a fresh young boy, just out of college. you want to make it and then your grandmother tells you the family secret we are the descendants of waffen ss general so he steps up he feigns he steps up later and then his grandmother takes him to the hallway and she said do you know this painting i says yes i've seen it my whole life and then she turns it around and there is this label of goud sticker and she says this is stolen from the famous goud sticker collection it was stolen from this jewish family it's in our family for decades. It's our family secret.

31:18Nobody ever is allowed to know. So he faints again. Two dark secrets like these in one day. And he knew they would never give it back. So he then approached me and he says, I have all the proof. Put it in the press. If not, they will not give it back. If you call them, they will say we don't have it and they will destroy it. If you put it in the press with all the evidence, they might return it. So So two weeks ago, Monday morning, we put it in the press. It went all over the world. Dutch general, Nazi general, his family has looted Nazi art hanging on the wall. You can imagine the headline, you know.

31:57And after five hours, they handed over the painting to us. So they had to be shamed into doing the right thing. But at least they did. Yeah. We didn't mention their new last name. I don't want to hurt people. It's not their fault that their family member was a Nazi general. But if you are such a family and you have a looted painting on your wall, stolen from Jews, that's one bridge too far. And they had 80 years to do the right thing and they didn't. A couple of days ago, we were called by another person who said, I turned around my painting and I see the same label, Goudsteker. Do you think it has been stolen too?

32:35Because Goudsteker, of course, was a big art dealer. And before he fled, he had a regular business before the Nazis came. So some of these paintings were sold legally. So he sent us these pictures. I did some research. And yes, it is another Goudsticker painting that was stolen. So he sent us back a message saying, I want it to be returned to the family. So it's two times in two weeks, you know. It's crazy weeks for us. Yeah. Wow. It would just be wild to me to have something returned after 80 years or whatever. And I suppose if your family flees, it doesn't matter if you were rich when you lived in the Netherlands, you might have a normal existence now, especially if your great-great-grandfather, whatever it is, died on the boat on the way to fleeing, right?

33:23You could have just been like a regular Joe at that point because you leave with nothing and you start your life over as a young person in another country, in England or whatever. So then what? You get portrait of a young girl from this collection and then you get another one and these are worth millions of dollars. These are worth tens of thousands, but we have recovered paintings also worth millions. But in this case, it's more the symbolism. A Goudsticker in the home of the descendants of a Nazi general. It's the worst you can get. We had the same case in Argentina half a year ago. It was also a Nazi who escaped to Argentina.

33:59And some Dutch journalist followed his family. He died. They wanted to do an interview. And these people didn't want to talk about it. And then they looked their address up and they saw on the internet that they were selling their home. So they watched these pictures and above the sofa they saw one of these stolen paintings that he took with him when he escaped to Argentina. It was hanging above the sofa. Also a Goudstiegel. Also the descendants of a Nazi. So you can imagine how many of those paintings are still within some families with these last names. It's horrible. That's wild. Imagine you go to an estate sale in Argentina and they say, yeah, there's some paintings in the attic that don't really match the decor of the house.

34:43Oh, I would love to go there with you. Oh, man. To see what they have. I love stuff like this. I actually last year went hiking through Argentina, went to Patagonia, but we didn't go through the typical tourist route. We would stop at farmers' houses and stuff like that. And we found one place, they had a beautiful deck and a beautiful big farm and they were German. And I thought, oh, how interesting. There's Germans in the middle of nowhere in Argentina. and I speak German. So when they were serving us tea and stuff, because they had basically like a little business, if you're a hiker or you, they have Airbnb, right?

35:13You can rent one of the rooms in their house and it's really nice. And I said, oh, where in Germany are you from? And the girl was like, oh, I'm not from Germany. My mom's from Germany. I'll go get her. So this older lady comes up and I said, oh, where are you from? East Germany or West Germany? And she goes, oh, when I left, it was just Germany. And I thought, okay, well, I can read between those lines because for the partition of Germany, so World War II. And then I said, where exactly? And she said, oh, it's this part of southwest Germany. And I said, oh, when did you leave? And she says, a long time ago.

35:42And I said, when? Look, you can guess by someone's age, there's a certain window which they left. And then she hedged and didn't really want to talk about it anymore and just said, your German's really good, and then walked away. And I thought, I'm pretty sure I struck a nerve because I'm in the middle of Argentina. I'm in the middle of the countryside. These people are German. They left during World War II or slightly thereafter, why are they all the way out here in the middle of nowhere? Look, they could have just been random refugees who didn't want to live in a broken country. Of course, but there is a chance that indeed...

36:11I was in Buenos Aires, and they still have this bar, this restaurant, ABC it's called, as far as I remember. That was the German pub where, after the war, Mengele drank his beer, together with Eichmann and all these other high-ranking Nazis. They were all in the same bar. We were looking for them and they were drinking their beers in Buenos Aires. Crazy stuff, yeah. When I was in college, I went to a talk and this guy, I can't remember exactly what secret service he worked for, but he went undercover or something like that in Buenos Aires and eventually tackled Adolf Eichmann and basically tied him up and took him to Israel.

36:50Yeah. That's a real great story. There was this, the son of Eichmann, of course, they didn't tell anybody that who they were. Well, Eichmann was living there with his son, and his son had a girlfriend, and she was Jewish. So he visited her parents' home, and he said his last name. And then the father started to think, this could be the Eichmann we are searching for. So he informed the Mossad. I don't know if they were called the Mossad already in those years. And they didn't trust him first because he was a blind man. But then finally they sent somebody over. And this guy went to the home of Eichmann to see if he could take a picture and then send it back to Israel.

37:37And these pictures, you can Google them up. It's crazy, these pictures. So he knocks on the door and he asks some questions. And then he takes pictures of Eichmann. He sends them back to Israel. They watch it. They think it's not him. But when they see the pictures, they know, oh, my God, this is Adolf Eichmann. Crazy story. Fascinating story. Imagine finding somebody like that. Yeah, he told the story of just tackling him. And I can't remember what he said, but he said something like, I got you now. You thought you got away with it. We got you now. It was the Garibaldi Street, I think. I even remember the street.

38:12It's not that I know all these details. Yeah, he tackled him in the road and was just like, hey, Israel's got you. Yeah, they were standing there. They had a car standing there. It was late at night. Eichmann would come back from his work with the bus, but he wasn't in it. So they waited a little bit more. They were standing there with a car as if the car had broken down. They were bending over. And then Eichmann passed and then they said something to him and they took him in the car and took him away. Yeah, he basically woke up in an Israeli prison. What a nightmare for that guy. Not that he didn't deserve it.

38:45And I think he had pretended to be contrite about the whole thing and denied who he was. And then they knew who he was. They had him dead to rights. They gave him a trial and then they hung him and his last words were something like death to the Jews. So they knew they got the right guy. And his defense was, yeah, I only took orders. Most Nazis to their defense, they said, yeah, they ordered me to do it. But then the prosecutor said, so if everybody only took orders, we only can blame Adolf Hitler and nobody else because he gave the orders. So in the end, everybody would have walked free and only Adolf Hitler would have hanged.

39:18Yeah, not a defense. So back to the stolen art here. Most stolen artwork never resurfaces. I got to wonder why. Is it just sitting in some collector's house? It's in a storage unit in a free port somewhere. Nazi art, I kind of get it. The person who has it now doesn't even know where it came from. It was given to them by their mom or dad who got it from their mom or dad. Yeah, what happens with, there is this movie, Dr. No, the first James Bond movie. You probably have seen it. It's from 1962. A year before, they stole a very important painting from the National Gallery in England, a painting by Goya.

39:53And the painting was still somewhere out there. They hadn't recovered it. So when the writers were writing the script for James Bond, they thought, let's pretend that Dr. No, a villain who was fighting James Bond in this first James Bond movie, that he has this painting. So when James Bond enters the home of his opponent, Dr. No, he sees this painting. Of course, it was a copy, but they pretend as if it was the real one. And then James Bond says, aha, here is that stolen painting. People watching that, thieves who normally steal your car, they think, oh my God, why don't we steal a painting from a museum worth 10, 20, 30 million, and we try to find a Dr.

40:34No, a guy who's rich and has his private stolen art collection, and then we can retire. So a lot of these people who steal art think that there is a Dr. No out there, but that's Hollywood. There is no Dr. No, because if you have money, you're not going to buy a stolen piece of art. You cannot leave it to your children. You cannot show it to your friends. If you die, where do you leave it? You cannot sell it. So Dr. No doesn't exist. The funny thing is the police knows that these thieves are searching for Dr. No. So when they have a lead to a certain group, one of them dresses up like Dr. No and approaches the group.

41:15And that's the trick. Whenever Dr. No shows up, It's always a policeman in disguise. Got it. Okay. You said that you discovered the illegal art trade is run by just a few dozen people working together in varying alliances, and they're at the top of the pyramid. The treasure robbers, the forgers, the smugglers, the art thieves are all below them. Who are these people? If it's a few dozen people running the illegal art trade, what, are they just gangsters, or who are these people? They are gangsters, of course, but it's not your local gangster. If you want to be active in the art world, you have to speak your language.

41:48You have to know how you drink wine. So normally they are black sheep from very decent families. And one of the biggest in the 70s, 80s and 90s was a Dutchman, Michel van Rijn. He was at the top of the pyramid. Scotland Yard said Michel van Rijn was responsible for 90 % of all the odd crime in the world and wants us to believe he's also responsible for the other 10%. Typical van Rijn. So in the 90s he got shot at in the Netherlands. He was a Dutchman, by the way. He got showed that. So he went to England and he started to become an informant for Scotland Yard. Normally, when you become an informant, you keep it a secret.

42:27But he started a website saying, I'm now an informant and I will reveal everything I know about all the key plays in the art market and all the shady business that's going on. And when I started to collect art, I found out pretty soon that there are a lot of forgeries. So I stumbled upon his website, reading it, and I sent him an email. I said, Mr. van Rijn, it's good to hear that you're on the good side right now. Keep up the good work. And then he invited me over to England. And he thought, oh, he's a young Dutch guy. Let him come over. So I went there to Park Lane, a fancy address there. And he invited me in.

43:06And I sat down. He didn't speak to me. And I was sitting watching him, you know, the former greatest art criminal in the world, turning informant. and then the doorbell rang and he said open the door so I opened the door and it was the mailman with a package and he said who was it and I told him who it was and I said I have to make an important phone call you cannot hear it you go outside and you can open the package so I opened the package there was a book inside and then I listened to the door listening if he was still on the phone and he wasn't probably he hadn't phoned at all so I entered the door and he was sitting there with his two fingers in his ear and he said what is it and I said a book he said oh my I have so many enemies, I thought it was a bomb.

43:47So he was going to have you do it. I was just half an hour in his home. So I was watching him. He was smiling, relieved. And I thought, oh my God, this is nuts. I thought, I should go home now. If my mother knows this, she's going to kill me. But I thought, if I want to have some adventure in my life, I better stick around. And that's what I did. And he introduced me to mafia bosses, to people within the FBI, journalists, informants. And then in 2009, after a couple of years, I helped him with his website. I found out that he was still a little bit one foot in, one foot out. He was an informant.

44:28He was working with the police. But on the other hand, I suspected him being involved in some other stuff. Then I left and I started for myself. And here we are. Michel, by the way, died two years ago. He died in the sleep, so he escaped his killers. Ah, okay. So I guess he's not coming on the show anytime soon, because he does sound like an interesting guy. Yeah, he was. So, and I know you had your TV show, Art Detective, which makes perfect sense. It seems like you launched quite a cool career off this. Okay, so if the illegal art trade is run by just a few dozen people, and this is an$8 billion market, these people are insanely wealthy, or am I misunderstanding the numbers?

45:06They have so much money. Imagine that some guy in Egypt is working on his land and finds a Greek bronze statue. He sells this to a middleman for, let's say,$10 ,000. The middleman sells it to a dealer in the United States for, let's say,$200 ,000. And then they put it at auction or they set it to a museum for$10 ,000,$15 ,000 ,000. It's a dangerous game, but there's so much money involved, and it's a cleaner game than dealing in drugs. The Egypt stuff is wild to me. I took a little sailboat, I think it was called a Feluca, up the Nile. And when you're around Giza or whatever, you got all these pyramids, there's antiquities everywhere.

45:45There's even stuff in water canals, just a statue of a lion tipped over in the canal. And they don't even bother to get it out of there because there's a million more. But if you go away from there, remember going to the bathroom and one of the guys in the boat was like, hey, check this out. He moves a bush and there's a little wall there and the wall has a staircase behind it. and inside the staircase, you can go down a little bit before it gets too dark and you can see hieroglyphics on the ceiling. And I just thought to myself, we're in the middle of absolutely nowhere. If you are an art thief, you could chip this whole plate right out and put it in a case and you could sell it and it's priceless.

46:19And that's what they do. They probably miss this one. Yeah. But that's what they do. That's how many of this stuff ended up in our museums. Yeah. The museums in the Western world are full with stuff from, some of it bought legally, you know, but much of this stuff has been looted. And again, I have to say, people from the state where most of the time they were involved. Oh, people from the state. So Egyptian government, basically. Yeah, because you got to smuggle it out somehow. I knew some Jordanian diplomats who used their diplomatic status to smuggle everything out of the country where they could take with them.

46:53From Egypt or from Jordan? Lebanon and Jordan. Yeah, Jordan too. Yeah. Wow. More with Arthur brand in a moment, but first, a quick break from the only people in this episode not trying to sell a forged Matisse to a guy named Oleg in a Geneva parking garage. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by HomeServe. We've had enough surprise home repairs to know they happen, well, never at a convenient time. We've had a pipe leaking in the ceiling, a broken air conditioner, a water heater that randomly quit on us, and when something like that happens, you're scrambling. You're calling around.

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48:21Savings compared to renewal price void in Florida. This episode is also sponsored in part by BetterHelp. We have come a long way when it comes to talking about mental health. People are more willing to discuss stress, burnout, anxiety, and the challenges that they're dealing with. But what's interesting is that even though we talk about it more, actually reaching out for support can still feel like a hurdle. BetterHelp recently released its 2026 State of Stigma report, and the findings really stood out. 2 ,000 Americans surveyed revealed that 85 % believe getting support is wise, yet 74 % say that society discourages people from doing so.

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49:51We're happy to surface codes for you. It's that important that you support those who support the show. Now, back to Arthur Brand. The forgery examples are crazy too. I mean, was this thing, this Olmec head that was just fake? Oh yeah, that was so great. This man, Leonardo Patterson, such a fascinating story. When he died last year, they gave him an obituary in the New York Times. They interviewed me for it. And they asked me, how was this man? Because he was the biggest looter of Latin America. And I testified thrice against him. And I always told him, Leonardo, when you die, I'm going to write a book about you.

50:29And he said, wait till I die. Wait till I'm dead. And that moment is now here. He was a very charismatic man. He went into the jungle there in Guatemala, in Peru, everywhere around Latin America. and he took entire palaces out, everything that he could find, gold, silver, and an Olmec head. The Olmecs were an old Mexican tribe, 3 ,000 years old, and they made these huge stone heads. You have to Google them. They are so great. And there were only 17, and it's the national pride of Mexico. The Dutch, we have the sunflowers of Van Gogh, and they have the All Make hats. There are only 17 existing.

51:15And then another, number 18, showed up in Spain during an exhibition, and the owner was Leonardo Patterson. So somebody from Mexico called me, a state official, and said, can you do some research? Because this has been looted. They don't fall off the tree in Italy, you know. They weigh between 6 and 50 tons, and they're between 5 feet to 11 feet tall. So these are absolutely massive. And they were carved by the ancient Olmec civilization of Mesoamerica, which is now in Mexican Gulf Coast, the era of the Mexican Gulf Coast, 1500 to 400 BC. So these are ancient and massive. So they asked me to try to find out when was it smuggled out of Mexico.

52:00So I hang around Leonardo and then I got my hands on some pictures because this Olmec head was 100 % authentic. That was for sure. I did some research. Many experts in the world, the biggest experts said this piece is 3 ,000 years old. So no question about it. So then I had to find out when was it found and smuggled out of Mexico because that's illegal. and then after a couple of years I was called by somebody in Germany also somebody involved with Nazism his family they sold stuff for the SS but anyway a very important man and he said Arthur Leonardo sold me the All Make hat but I want to show you some pictures and he gave me the pictures and you can find them on my website arthurbrand.com these pictures are you see a man with a cap on, carving this head out of a big stone.

53:00In other words, either the Olmecs had cameras or this was a modern forgery. And the worst was that the experts who had said that this piece was authentic were also responsible for most of the pieces we see nowadays in museums all over the world and in private collections. Oh, wow. So I published this piece as fake. All the experts in the world say, you are nuts, you are ridiculous. And then the next day I publish these photos. So what percentage of art is forged, you think? I think around 30%. If you buy something at Sotheby's and Christie's, it's far lower, of course. And if you buy it in a small auction, I was on eBay.

53:42But generally said, 30 % of all the artworks in the world are fake. Wow. Imagine if 30 % of the currency in the world was fake. So if 30 % of art is forged, what do you think the percentage of art in museums is fake? I know of some museums that half of it is fake. Wow. There was this museum in France that was dedicated to one painter, I forgot his name. And then it came out that 55 % of every painting in that museum was a fake. So people started to ask their money back, oh, you don't want to go through. and I think 40 % of all the Latin American, the pre-Columbian arts from the Aztecs, the Indian, the Incas, etc.

54:25in the museums all around the world is fake. Damn, that's crazy. You can earn a lot with fake. And the trick is this, what they do. Some looters find a coin hoard or some Roman statues, some Greek statues and they want to put it on the market and they know they're going to get a lot of money on the black market for each piece. but they have these pieces in their hands and they think, why don't we make a few copies and we double our profit? So whenever a looter comes to a shady art dealer with some of these statues, they always try to pick out the fakes because they always mix it up with fakes.

55:03So they gain double. They first loot the stuff and then they make some copies. Jeez, this is just absolutely fascinating. Something I meant to ask before, if somebody in, I don't know, the Netherlands has Nazi art that their grandfather took from a Jewish family or Jewish art dealer, can the police recover the art? If you see it in a photo for a property ad like they did in Argentina, can the police go, okay, well, you've stolen property in your home, so we're going to go ahead and get that? No, unfortunately you can't. There is a statute of limitations, which means that a certain period of time, you cannot take it away.

55:39It's too long ago. Argentina, they did it, but I'm not sure if it's legally okay what they did. And in the United States, we now have a new law there, which goes into the direction that maybe in the near future, it will be possible. But in Anelans and most countries in the world, it's absolutely not done. Because I understand the statute of limitations, but that usually applies to, hey, this person assaulted you, but it was 20 years ago. There's no witnesses. The evidence is all gone. But I mean, if you say, hey, this was stolen from Jews during World War II, and here it is, I feel like they could make a law that says that doesn't apply to that kind of thing.

56:15That's an interesting thing, because everybody's hoping for that. And in Argentina, the case against this family of Nazi descendants who had this other painting of Gautz taken in their possession, that trial will start pretty soon. They now called me, I cannot say too much about it, but And the Argentinians, they are trying to recover these pieces, saying, look, what the Nazis did will never expire. It was against humanity. And it's, of course, a very normal way of thinking. Why didn't we think of that before? Sorry for my French, but f*** the statute of limitations. I helped some Jewish families to recover stolen out.

56:55We found a piece in the Louvre, in the Royal Dutch Collection. That was a scandal. Some of these families, 50, 60 people, and only one made it back from the concentration camp. He or she comes back, almost crippled. After two years, he or she goes to a museum, sees this painting that belonged to a family. And what happened in the first decades in France, in the Netherlands, in Germany, in England, everywhere around the world, when this person went to the museum director saying, sir, this piece belongs to us. I am the only one who came back. You know what they told these Jews? They said, you should be lucky that you survived the war.

57:33Go away. Yeah, that's terrible. And until 20 years ago, they had no chance to get these pieces back. Only in the last 20 years, there is now a small window of getting some of this stuff back. And we should encourage that. Yeah, of course. That's absolutely insane. But also par for the course, especially after the war. I read a lot of the recovery of art is done without police, but it's negotiated. And I know you facilitate that. So tell me about that. First of all, why would somebody give stolen art back in the first place? If I'm sitting on a valuable painting, what the heck do I want to give it back for?

58:04I can tell you why. Because first of all, if you're sitting on it, you start to get nervous because you won't be able to sell it. If it has been stolen from a museum, for example. Let's go back a little bit further. You steal a painting. You try to find a doctor. So what do they do? They sell it to another criminal or they use it as a bargaining chip or they use it as collateral in a drug deal. So it goes from one criminal group to another. Nobody really wants this painting. What can they do with it? So in the end, it ends up in a group of drug lords, who have no idea anymore who the original thief is.

58:39In most cases, the thief has already been sentenced. He's already out of jail, maybe 10 years. So this painting is going around in the underworld. Nobody really wants to have it, because you cannot put it on your wall. You cannot do anything with it. And when the police finds out, they're going to hunt you down. So if you have stolen property in your possession, a painting of Van Gogh, or with the Louvre, you know, what was stolen there, these diamonds belonging to the Napoleonic era, you cannot do anything with it. In case of diamonds, you can reshape them, but let's go back to paintings. So what happens then is there is never a thief who calls me or the police saying, I stole a Van Gogh yesterday.

59:20It's never the thief himself. It's always somebody else who hears something. or it ends up in a group who got it through a drug deal. So when we have a lead, the police or myself, it's very hard to prove that they have it in their possession. You can raid their homes, it's never there. They don't leave this stone of Vegach under their bed. So the problem is, if you raid their homes... You will not find it and they will burn it. There have been many examples of pieces that have never come back. There was a golden helmet stolen last year in Netherlands. It made headlines all around the world. It was 2 ,400 years old.

59:57It belonged to Romania. They had lent it to the Netherlands. It was stolen. They got the thieves, like in the Louvre. They have the thieves arrested. But where is the loot? So what happens after a couple of years, it goes from group to group, and then somebody tips it off, or we find out who they are. So then you go to them and you say, look, I know you have this stolen painting. And they say, I don't have it. And then I say, yes, you have it. And if I know, the police knows. The problem is we cannot prove it. But your problem is we know you have it, so the police will wiretap you the next three years.

1:00:34and your aunt and your neighbor and all the criminals you are dealing with because probably you are a drug lord. So what are we going to do? So in many cases, you can convince them with the golden helmet. We convince them to give it back because then they would get three years in jail instead of six years for this robbery. The French police is probably doing the same now with them who are in jail. So there are a lot of reasons why they would give something back. Sometimes somebody calls because he hopes to get a reward. And in many cases, the best informants. Make a guess. Who are the best informants for me?

1:01:07Oh, the best informants? Isn't it just criminals? No. No? Wives or girlfriends. Hey, this guy I used to date. Yeah, that totally makes sense. I had this German woman a couple of weeks ago on WhatsApp, and she sent me a picture of a stolen painting hanging in a wall. And I said to him, how are you so sure that it's in that and that address in Munich? And she said, because it's the home of my ex-husband. Oh, my gosh. So those are the best. Wow. The more divorces, the more stolen art we will get back. That's amazing. Yeah, I suppose that makes sense. Do you get a suspicious girlfriend or another criminal who's jealous or somebody who realizes they can't sell the art they've stolen or somebody who says, hey, my dad had this and it's a stain on the family and nobody wants to return it because it's embarrassing.

1:01:52Can you arrange for this to be returned? I have a painting here at my home right now, which I recovered a painting stolen in World War II half a year ago and then I was called by another family saying, Mr. Brandt, we've also a painting stolen in World War II. We have no idea where our father bought it, probably at auction somewhere in the 70s. Nobody knew at the time. We get stuck with it and we don't want to destroy it because first of all, you don't destroy art. That's what Hitler did. And if art is stolen and you destroy it, you get a punishment for that on top of it because you destroy cultural heritage.

1:02:29So they said, is there any police of home? They said, no, there's a statute of limitations. Nobody can touch you. But it would be great to bring this painting back. And I said, you can come and get it. That's what I did. So it's still at my home right now because I want to leave it with the police. And they said, no way, Arthur, because we cannot be involved. So we are now waiting to bring it back to the country where it was stolen from a museum. And we bring it there to the embassy and it will be a big ceremony. year. You have some priceless piece of art sitting in your house. Are you not worried someone's going to rob your house?

1:03:02No, I don't. First of all, this stuff is not in my home for a long period of time. And believe me, you're not going to steal art from the art detective because they know I will come after them and the Dutch police will come after them. And in the end, they cannot do anything with it. If you steal this painting, what are you going to do with it? Yeah, that's a good point. Maybe I have a hit a camera somewhere. Yeah, I hope you at least have a couple cameras hanging out. I would assume as you get more and more well-known, leads come from really unexpected avenues. What's this about getting a tip?

1:03:34You found somebody on Tinder or somebody had matched with somebody on Tinder. Oh, that's a great story. What's this? Picasso stolen in 2012 from the National Gallery in Athens. Picasso, a very special Picasso, because Picasso had given it to the Greek people for their resistance during World War II. So it was a national Picasso. It was hanging there. It was stolen in 2012. Everybody was looking for it all around Europe. And then I got a call from a woman. And she said, Arthur, I know you're from television, so I have this strange story. And I said, what is it? I met this Greek man on Tinder, of all places.

1:04:16So we are doing our thing, you know, in bed. And he starts telling me about a Picasso he stole. And I said, yeah, right. And he said, no, I stole the Picasso from the National Gallery. And she told me, and I couldn't believe it. I thought, he's bragging. But then I started studying his history of this man. And I got my hands on some pictures. And then we knew, oh, my God, this man is telling the truth. So he got arrested in Athens. And we got this Picasso bag. But it's another lead you get from a woman. women are the best at Yarden. Wow. At least in my field. We need them very hard to solve these cases.

1:04:57What's crazy to me is these guys are complete morons, right? They're smart enough to pull off an art heist, but they're too freaking stupid not to tell random women that they're shagging that they met on a dating app. At that point, just go straight to jail. What are you doing? They're so stupid. We know that the Russians sent these beautiful ladies to English politicians to get all the secrets out of them. Yeah, unbelievable. We men are weak. That is true. That's for sure. What are some of the most valuable things you've recovered? The Picasso has to be quite valuable, that national Picasso. That must have been serious.

1:05:30Yeah, that one. But I also recovered a Picasso stolen in 1999 from France, from the Yacht of a Sheikh. And that piece was, when I recovered it, like$50 or$60 million worth. Oh, wow. From a Sheikh's yacht. Oh, my God. How did you get it off a boat? Repairment. They were doing some repairing there and the next day it was gone. So when I got it back, I hang it on my wall for one night. I told the police, first of all, we called the French police and they said, there is this statute of limitations. We cannot do anything. Please bring it back. So we did our best. And finally, I got this piece back together with the Dutch police, but they didn't know I would receive it on Tuesday.

1:06:10I told them on Wednesday to the police. so I hang it on my wall for one night and that was so great to have this Picasso. I was sitting there the entire evening watching my own Picasso. Wow. And for this part of my work, you don't get paid much, hardly anything. So that's the satisfaction I get out of it to have this painting on my wall. When I recovered the Van Gogh, it was, by the way, in the same room I had it here. I wanted to have it on my wall for a night but the police was there already and I said, no way, Arthur. We take it with us. You're not going to fool us again. Yeah, no kidding. Wow.

1:06:47Do you get a reward for finding these things or not? No. First of all, there is hardly ever a reward. Museums are mostly not insured. It's too much. Insurance companies hardly hire people to recover this art because they don't care. In most cases, they don't care because we are talking here about a billion dollar business, all these underwriters, all these insurance companies. And when something gets stolen, they just raise the price at the end of the year. What makes two million difference on 20 billion? And if there was a reward, I always refuse it because I work closely with the police. I am not police.

1:07:25I have to say it to people who listen, maybe people in the criminal world thinking, I have a story I should co-author. But I always ask permission to the police to dig into a story. And I can never do anything illegal. I always want to have permission from a prosecutor. And I work now for 15 years with the Dutch police and the Spanish police and the German police. And you don't want to lose that trust. In most countries, the art squad is like one or two people. There was a guy on my show years ago. I can't remember his name, but he was working for the FBI and he was on the art squad. And I said, oh, wow, how big is your team?

1:08:02And he said, it was just me until I retired. And now there's no one. Yeah. In Belgium, we had one. In the Netherlands, we have three to four. In England, they have three or four. Robert Whitman. Does that name ring a bell? Robert Whitman. Yeah. He was by the FBI. He has written a book about, what was it named? He's a great guy. Yeah. Art Crime. I can't remember the name of the book. I interviewed him in 2020. Yeah. I have his book here somewhere. Priceless. How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World's Stolen Treasures. Yeah. He had some advantages because he was working for the FBI. but I know that I have my own advantages because the FBI and police squads are normally very bureaucratic and that's always the downside of it.

1:08:44We are civilians and people don't realize we have a lot of rights. In some cases, we are allowed to do more than a police officer. Once a police friend of mine said, Arthur, you're so lucky you can go to a criminal that you suspect who's owning a stolen painting, you just knock on his door. He says, when I want to do it, I have to fill in a lot of paperwork. Probably I won't get permission. And you just jump on your bicycle. You go there and knock on. And I say, yeah, but you wear a gun. You know, I go there on my bicycle. Yeah, he needs a warrant, the equivalent of a warrant from a judge. And they have to say, what probable cause do you have?

1:09:21What do you want to ask? You got to make sure you read him his rights or something. And you just show up and go, hey, man, have you seen this painting? I feel like you might know the guy who took this. And the guy goes, all right, come on inside. You want a beer? The thing is that most people do not realize is a lot of people, decent civilians who have their normal daily job, they are afraid of the police. And why? Because they are so decent. When the police is around, something is happening. They don't want to get involved. They think if they buy something and it turns out to be stolen, it could be a car.

1:09:53It could be a necklace. It could be a painting. if they go to the police, that the police will lock them up, will hear them out. They don't want to be in that mess. So it's always great. A couple of years ago, a notebook of Charles Darwin was stolen somewhere in England. It was a very important notebook because he wrote down this theory of his. Theory of evolution? Yeah. So it was stolen and it was a great loss. And then two or three years after that, they found a package on the doorstep saying, have a great Easter, sorry for this, here you have it back. So sometimes people regret what they do, or sometimes they get something in their possession, but they don't want to go to the police.

1:10:36They prefer to throw it away in the river. And then it's great that they just leave it somewhere. Sometimes they go to a church, leave it there at the home of a priest. Sometimes they leave it on the doorstep. Sometimes they call me. That's the way it works. But again, I have to say, it's not like we let people get away. Every step I do, it's always in cooperation and with permission from the prosecutor. You have some serious stories under your belt. I love this one story. It's one of the world's most notorious art thieves. I think his name is Octave Durham, also lives in Amsterdam. You were chasing him in 2002 for having stolen two Van Gogh.

1:11:12I know you say Van Gogh, but I can't get used to that. The following year, Durham was arrested. He serves two years in prison. Wasn't you who caught him. But the first time you guys see each other is on the streets of Amsterdam in late 2018. And you just stare at each other. And then later on, you go for a beer. And I just thought that was such a funny kind of visual, right? Because you see this guy and you're like, I'm pretty sure that's that big art thief. And it's like, screw it. We got to go for a beer. And this guy, he's interesting. He doesn't use violence in any of his art heists. He refuses to do that.

1:11:44Yeah, he is one of the biggest art thieves in the world. He stole two Van Goghs in 2002. to. He sold them to a very famous mafia boss. His name is Raffel Imperiale. He was the second most wanted person in Italy. Can you imagine in Italy? Raffel Imperiale. He sold them to Raffel Imperiale. And when Raffel Imperiale is a drug lord, when he had a court case and they wanted to give him 20 years, and then his lawyer said, we have two Staten Frankocht's. We turn them in, you will have to lower the sentence. So Occhi sold them to Raffel Imperiale, a boss of the mafia, who used them to make a deal with Italian justice when he was caught for drugs.

1:12:23I am an art detective and he is an art thief. And he is quite well known and I'm a little bit known. So we knew each other. We never met. And then I was sitting in this restaurant next to the Van Gogh Museum of all places. I was sitting there at night and I was eating there with somebody and I saw somebody passing by the restaurant. It was dark, but I recognized him. That was Occhi. my arch enemy because we live in the same town and he was walking straight to the van Gogh museum so I jumped out and I knocked on his shoulder and I said okie do you know who I am and he said yes you are this idiot this arbitrator and I said where are you heading to don't tell me you are heading again to the van Gogh museum and he said oh no please no it was just a nightmare he stole these van Goghs he spent years in jail he got a fine of half a million more or less so it was a nightmare for him.

1:13:17And then after a couple of months, we saw each other on the street again, and we did this stare down, you know. I saw him walking, he saw me walking, and we stopped, and we walked each other in the ice, and it was 20 meters between us. And then we walked over, and we went to drink a beer. He probably wanted to know all the stuff that I knew. He already stopped being a thief, but there were still some cases that had not reached the statute of limitations. So he probably wanted to get into my head to know what I know. And I, of course, wanted to get into his head. But in the end, we became friends and he helped me recover some important pieces like the Van Gogh that I recovered in 2023 that was stolen in the Netherlands.

1:14:04More in a minute. First, a few sponsors, because unlike stolen museum jewelry, these offers are actually easier to use when they're not broken into pieces and sold in Dubai. We'll be right back.

1:14:18Evening. Buyer's remorse. Buy a new car? I'll be moving in. Let's get started. Sorry, I think there's been a mistake. I bought it from Carvana. You what? Yeah, great price. I even have seven days to love it or return it. So there's no... No, no buyer's remorse. More like buyer's rejoice? I guess I'll let myself out. Congratulations. I mean it. Buyer's rejoice. Buy your car today on Carvana. Limitations and exclusions may apply. See our seven-day return policy at Corvana.com. Don't forget about our newsletter, We Bit Wiser. It is specific and practical, and it'll have an immediate impact on your decisions, psychology, and relationships.

1:14:54It's an under-two-minute read every Wednesday, almost. And if you haven't signed up yet, I invite you to come check it out. It's a great companion to the show. JordanHarbinger.com slash news is where you can find it. Now for the rest of my conversation with Arthur Brand. Really some cat-and-mouse James Bond stuff here. It's like playing poker with Le Chiffre, right? And the guy that bleeds from his eyeball when he has a bad hand. It's really incredible. It's such a small world. Yeah, you must understand that in most art thefts, there is nobody killed. Oki never laid his hand on anybody during his lifetime.

1:15:28I'm not saying this is not crime. Don't misunderstand me. It's crime. It's severe crime. But it's not drug. It's not killing. You know what I mean? I always tell Oki, Oki, you are a very good person from inside. but you do very stupid and bad things. You did them. But it doesn't mean that somebody has to be a bad person. I have to learn to understand that some criminals, not all, some are really lunatics, but some are just regular people who had a bad education, whose father, like in Ockie's case, was dealing in drugs. All his neighbors were burglars. So not trying to excuse this, but you have different kinds of criminals.

1:16:08Some are not really bad. They're only doing bad stuff. Yeah, they're not dangerous, you mean, right? They're not dangerous, and deep down inside, they're not real bad people. They do stupid things. They steal, which they shouldn't. But that's something different than being a serial killer, you know? Yes, of course. I agree. Somebody who's selling tons of drugs where people die from it. That's another level. It's not that hard to sit with Occy and have a beer. And I have to do it because it's my work. Another favorite story of mine, your doorbell rings. Outside, there's a man holding a large blue bag.

1:16:43And in it is a painting called The Parsonage Garden at Noonan in Spring. This guy had just gotten it from another criminal, and he gives it to you and walks away. It was stolen in 2020 in the Netherlands, and the police caught the thief and the buyer, the guy who bought it. It was a drug lord. He thought, if I buy the stolen Van Gogh and they give me seven years for drug-related cases, I will show the Van Gogh and say, look, give me less. But we don't do that in the Netherlands. They do it in Italy, but we don't do it in the Netherlands. So the police had everybody in jail, the thief, the buyer, but they didn't want to give the painting back.

1:17:21And then after a while, with the help of Occhi, by the way, somebody approached me saying, look, this piece, I know where it is hidden. Where the guy who is now in jail for drug stuff, I know where it's hidden. Nobody can sell it. It's a headache if they get caught. It's all problematic. And I have a score to settle with this guy. And it was about a woman, of course. And he said, I want to bring it back. I don't want to get arrested. So I talked to the prosecutor and we were very excited, of course. We thought we're going to get it back. And we could prove that this guy had nothing to do. Of course, he was not from the Salvation Army.

1:18:00That's obvious. But he was not involved in this case. We allowed him to do it and he brought it back to my home. So I opened the door. Of course, the police was everywhere just for my protection. I didn't need it, but they wanted it. And the guy was standing there on a Monday morning, one o 'clock with an Ikea bag and out of it stuck a pillow you can watch it on my Instagram account we have filmed it there is this pillow full of blood and I said what the heck and he said yeah it was hidden somewhere and they had built a trap with glass so I cut my hand and I said but in an Ikea bag and then he says Arthur I bring you back this this Van Gogh it's going to be front page all around the world tomorrow and it did it made the Wall Street Journal front page are you going to complain.

1:18:46He said, then I turn around and walk away. I said, no way. Give it. And thank you so very much. And then we filmed it. And I walk up the stairs and I take out the pillow full of blood and there it was. And I put it on Instagram the next day, this film. And I had all this interview. So two days after I thought, let's watch Instagram. What people say, they will congratulate me, but nothing of that. The first hundred where, why is it idiots not wearing white gloves. You're going to hate to find out where that painting was for the last few years if you're worried about me not wearing gloves. Exactly.

1:19:21That's what I wrote. Yeah. Like, no white gloves. It's been in an Ikea bag with some criminal's blood all over it for the past few hours. And before that, it was in a hole in a garage. With gloves. But the funny thing is, we returned it to the museum and with the police, of course. And now they show the Ikea bag also as a piece of history. Wow. So next to the Van Gogh, you have this Ikea bag, this plastic Ikea bag. The plastic Ikea bag that has Van Gogh paint chips and blood in it. This is probably one of my top stories. This is the most European thing I've heard in a while. In the summer of 2022, you answer the doorbell and there's a box.

1:19:59Tell me what you find in the box that somebody just leaves this on your porch. Yes. Some weeks before that, thieves entered a cathedral or church in France. and they stole a small box of gold. The problem was it wasn't gold, it was gilded. And the next day when they opened the newspapers, they found out that the small box they had stolen contained, according to legend, blood drops of Jesus Christ. It was a Catholic relic. And according to history, when Jesus was crucified, they took some blood drops of him, they survived, and they were already for 1 ,500 years in that church. So the thief, he had entered this church seeing this golden basket, thinking, oh my God, I have a golden basket.

1:20:48And then he comes home and he sees it's not gold, it's gilded copper, whatever. And it contains the blood wrapped from Jesus. You don't have to be a religious person to start to get a little bit nervous. I know a lot of thieves who always tell me, I wouldn't steal from a church, not a penny. I've never done that because it's bad karma. So what happens? Then I was approached by somebody by email saying, look, I know the guy who did this. He repents. He wanted to return it to the church, but they have put on cameras now. What are we going to do? Are we going to do it to throw it in the trash or can we put it on your front door?

1:21:29And I said, of course, when are you going to bring it? And they said, we are not going to tell you because we don't want the police to be there. and you cannot put the police on your doorstep for three months at night and day there's not money for that they have other things to do and it still could be a joke you never know and then after a week or two my doorbell rang at night I looked out the window I live on the third floor I looked down and I saw nobody but I saw this big box there so I went downstairs I went down the stairs. I took it up and it was not only the blood of Jesus what they had stolen, this relic, but also other stuff.

1:22:09And I started unboxing it. And in the end, the blood of Jesus came out. And I'm a Catholic and whether it's the real blood of Jesus, it doesn't matter. More than a thousand years, people have gone to this church during the plague, during the crusades, praying there for their daughters and children, believing that these where the plot was for Jesus. So I had it in my home for a couple of weeks because the French police on holiday, as was the Dutch police. That's where I got to pause you, right? Because when I said this is the most European thing ever, you call the French police and Dutch police, and they're like, hey, we're actually on vacation, so just call us in a couple of months.

1:22:43And in the meantime, you've got this relic with the supposed blood of Christ. And where is it? Like next to your toaster on your kitchen counter? Where are you keeping this thing? No, I put it in my living room. Not because I'm a Catholic, But it's such a precious relic, so important, so old. It means so much for so many people. I put it there, and I didn't curse for these two or three weeks I had it in my home. When I took a shower, I put a towel. Maybe it's crazy, but I put a towel around me. I never was naked in front of it. It really felt religious to me. For 1 ,000 or 1 ,500 years, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people, even in the year 1050, when they're praying, there was so much praying on this relic.

1:23:27You feel it. It's strange. Maybe I imagine it, but there is this aura around it that you feel it's something special. I wanted to respect that. And when they took it away, when the Dutch police came to collect it because the French were ready, it was hard to say goodbye. I just can't believe the police were like, yeah, we'll get it, but you got to call us back in September because everybody's on vacation. They just don't solve crime over the summer. That's so European. I don't understand. The thing was, nobody was killed. It was safe at my home. They knew I would enjoy it and they would enjoy the sunbathing at whatever beach there were.

1:24:03Yeah, exactly. Like we're drinking on a beach, smoking unfiltered cigarettes. Call us in two months. What the heck? But they know it's safe here and they have to fill in the paperwork. Right. And who wants to deal with all that? And to be honest, I didn't push them. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I kind of relate. I'm not even religious. And if I had an ancient artifact from a church and they said, we need you to hold on to it for a few weeks, I think that's pretty cool. Thanks for trusting me with that. What I'm curious about as well as some of these recent heists, there was the Louvre heist. We touched on this.

1:24:34Where do I even begin? Why would you steal something from a super secure, famous place? And as I understand it, they took it apart for the stones, right? So if you just want the gemstones, what are you doing? Because you said they can't steal something that's so famous they can't sell it. So they steal something that's super famous and then they just rip the stones out. It seems like you're incurring a bunch of risk just to dismantle the thing. And by dismantling it, it's way less valuable. But I guess it's the only way it has any value on the black market. Yes. When Occy sometimes is being asked, why did you steal these two Van Goghs?

1:25:07Because you were a millionaire already at the time because you stole so many stuff 24 years ago. His simple answer was, because I could. And with the Louvre, people have been thinking about all the ex-thiefs I know, they always brag about their biggest theft. It can be anything. And they all dream, of course, of robbing the Louvre. They are now making a movie already about this. So it gives you credibility in the criminal world. So they probably went there looking around thinking, oh my God, this is going to be easy. Yeah, okay. And that's what they did. It was so easy. I don't know if you have seen clips of it.

1:25:47They went up to the first floor with an electronic ladder. So they use a cherry picker to go up to the second floor window, and they just open the window? And they open the window, yeah, with something, and they go in and take out the stuff, and they slowly go down by the electric ladder, and they just go away and say merci beaucoup. Wow, and this is like a five-minute heist. Yeah, something like five minutes. And then they have the crown jewels, the French crown jewels, and they're driving up with them on their motorcycles. And now all these guys are in jail, but we have no clue where the stuff is.

1:26:24Oh. And what you said is they cut it down. It's worth like 80 million, all these jewels together. 18 million? Wow. No, 80. 80 million? Oh, my God. 80, 8-0, yeah. And of course, you cannot sell it. Nobody will touch it. But if you sell them separately, you reshape a little bit the diamonds, it's still like five to 10 million. It's still a lot of money. And that's probably what they wanted to do or maybe already have done. That's the big question. That's crazy. So a lot of people would think this is a commissioned heist, right? Some villain says, I want this, go get it. But you said, Dr. No doesn't exist.

1:26:59That's only in the movie. So it just seems like there's got to be an easier way to get gemstones. why go after a priceless historical artifact just to get raw materials? It seems like way too much risk when you could just go rob a jewelry store. A jewelry shop is better protected these days. That's the whole thing. Because they know they are a target and they are very well protected. And museums are not. And the bad thing is, all the thieves all around the world, everybody who is listening now, whatever village you live in or town, everybody has this local group of thieves. They all saw this happening, and they thought, lying on the couch, oh my God, they did it at the Louvre.

1:27:39And they start thinking, don't we have a local museum? Right, because if you can rob the Louvre, you can rob the museum in your second-tier city. Exactly. So on the same day that the Louvre was robbed, I was called out of my bed by the Dutch police. The same night, another museum was robbed in France, and they stole a hoard of gold coins. The same night. It's crazy to me and probably everyone listening that it's easier to steal from a museum because they're designed for public access, right? In a jewelry store, other locations, they sell things, but you probably have armed security. There's more vaults.

1:28:15People maybe look at a display or a photo and then somebody's got to go get the piece for you. You got to make an appointment. So there's ironically more security at stores. And I guess if you're Tiffany & Co. or Cartier, you have a big budget for security. But if you're a public museum like the Louvre, you're spending your money on other things and not security. Exactly. And 10 years ago or a couple of years ago, they did an investigation there and they wrote a report saying it's not good. Somebody could jump on the first floor with an electronic letter or whatever. They jump in and they walk away.

1:28:47Nobody read this report as it always goes. They pay for reports and they never read it. And this exactly happened. And now they're gone. The French crown jewels. But it's too easy to blame museums. As you said, they should be open for the public. You cannot turn them into a Fort Knox. It's just not going to happen. You go there with your children. We don't want armed guards in Western Europe. We don't want to have shootings with thieves or whatever. In some cases, these museums are in very old buildings from the 16th, 17th, 18th century, historical buildings. So it is difficult to protect a museum.

1:29:25Of course, they should do whatever they can, But I've cracked cases in which the theft was at gunpoint. So if they cannot take an electric letter or whatever, they just take a gun. They walk in and say, where's this painting? So then they make you unlock it or they just start shooting people. Yeah, I mean, they're going to get it anyway is sort of the moral of the story. This is probably not a thing. But can you identify a gemstone by looking at it with a microscope or something? Because diamonds have inclusions and stuff, right? There's little specks in there. can you fingerprint important jewels somehow and then like 10 years from now someone shows up with a ring and it's like wow that gemstone the fingerprint on this thing is it's actually from this crown jewels that was stolen 10 20 years ago where did you get this oh i got it from this jewel can you trace things like that or is that not a thing i know some do have a fingerprint you have to put it in there in the diamond as far as i know some of them do have it i even heard once that they all have, the bigger ones have their own passport with some things written in it.

1:30:29But maybe I say something very stupid, Jordan, but I think that's the case. So it's not impossible to recover these diamonds, but the diamonds from 200 years ago don't have it. Recently, there was also a massive heist. This is Magnani Rocca Foundation near Parma, Italy. Four Hooded Thieves, this is in March 2026, Four Hooded Thieves executed a lightning-fast break-in at night, making off with three priceless paintings in under three minutes. So these are pros. The paintings stolen include Pierre-Auguste Renoir's Les Poissons, which I guess the fish, approximately$7 million in value. Matisse's, I'm going to butcher this, Oralisque on the Terrace, and Cézanne, I guess you would pronounce it that way.

1:31:16Cézanne, you can tell I know a lot about art. Cézanne's Still Life with Cherries. The total haul is over$10 million. and the museum and the police, they keep the robbery a secret and they had some sort of undercover investigation. It seems like there's more art crime now than there ever was. Is that accurate or are we just hearing about it more? It has always been there. I always say on Monday, art was invented. On Tuesday, the first art was stolen. On the third day, the first art was faked. But what we do see is from the 80s, we had some record prices for Van Goghs and stuff like that. So people started to talk more about arts related to money.

1:31:50and then you see a rise. And in the last 10 years, we see that instead of stealing paintings, in this case in Italy, they stole paintings, but instead of paintings, they now target gold, silver, and diamonds. Because these idiots in Italy, what are they going to do with these paintings? Yeah, that was my question. Where are they going? It's not worth five years, six years in jail. It's worth nothing. You cannot do anything with it. I have no idea why they did it, but we will find out because the Italians will find them sooner or later. There was this funny story in Italy a couple of years ago.

1:32:25I think it was in 2019. The police was informed that some thieves would target a church. Breugel, we say in the Netherlands, was hanging. A very nice, important painting by Breugel. They knew they were going to target it. And they thought, we can remove the painting, but then they will target another church. So the painting got stolen. Everybody was mad in Italy. and then the police revealed three days after the theft, we knew they were coming, so we replaced it with a forgery. So the thieves walked away with a fake painting. So they were probably happy for three days and then found out that the police had tricked them out.

1:33:03Yeah. Was there a tracking device in the frame or anything like that? No, they put up their Italians. They probably only put some cameras there that didn't work. In the end, they never called the thieves. Of course. Oh, my gosh. I love the Italians, by the way. It's my favorite people. but you know what I mean. Yeah, it seems like that. And they have the biggest art squad, too, of anywhere in the world. 300 men and women. That's obvious because Italy has this tradition, you know. If you walk around Italy, the only thing you see is old stuff, antiquities. The soil is full of uncovered treasures.

1:33:37And, of course, Italy is also the country of the mafia. When you combine the biggest treasury in the world and the biggest criminal group in the world all together in a small country, this is what you get. You got to wonder, what are those guys doing if they can't catch the thief and they know they're coming and they even managed to swap the painting out? It's like, you couldn't put an air tag in the freaking frame, guys? Come on. Wow, this is just insanely interesting. At some point, we've got to do another one of these. And at this very moment, I'm cracking a gaze, Thefted and Hellens, and I do it with, I was interviewed by two American journalists who have their own newspaper.

1:34:13They are six and nine years old, two little girls. They interviewed me for their printed newspaper. Wow. And I promised them one day we would crack a case together and we are now in the process of cracking that case together. They're helping me now and let's see if we manage to do it. You don't always need Occy or another ex-criminal. Sometimes you just need two smart girls of six and nine years old. Amazing. Two little Nancy Drew fans. I don't know if people know who that is. There was little detective stories when I was a kid. Unbelievable. So interesting, man. And thank you so much for coming on the show.

1:34:46I know it took a while to arrange, but I just find this endlessly fascinating. Any sort of art crime is interesting to me. Forgeries, heists. I think people just have a soft spot for this. The world loves hearing about it. That's why it makes front page news. Yeah, and it shouldn't be, you know, it's still crime. But then again, when something is stolen and it's being returned, it's a good story. And in most cases, nobody gets killed. It's not a dirty game. It's stealing beautiful art and hopefully we recover it. The Mona Lisa, for example, was not a famous painting before 1911. Really? Until it got stolen.

1:35:22I didn't know that. It was stolen and then the attention of the entire world was focused on this painting and everybody thought, this is a great painting. This is the Mona Lisa. And that's one of the reasons why it's the most famous painting in the world. One of the reasons is because it was stolen in 1911. I see. So when you have a painting that famous, the security, I would hope, is a little bit better than the windows locked and don't worry, we close the door at night. It's got to be better than that. one of the biggest collections in the world is in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston and in 1990 it has a Vermeer or a Rembrandt and in 1990 there was a knock on the door two guys were sitting there two guards one of them was a student he was smoking pot the entire day and they were told never open the door not even for the Pope or whatever so there are two police officers knock at the door and they say we have to enter because we got a complaint and they say no we cannot and then one opened the door the police entered and said gentlemen this is a robbery and they turned off the alarm and they were in for i think 80 minutes and they took for half a billion word of pain oh my god you and i could have pulled it off jordan we are not the smartest but you and i could have done it you know yeah there's not a whole lot of trickery this is not oceans 11 if you just knock on the door and pretend to be a cop and then steal over the course of an hour and a half.

1:36:47Sometimes the easier the idea, the better it works. You don't have to jump out of an airplane on top of a museum with a parachute. You just knock on the door and say, can I have a pee? I went to go see Edward Munch's The Scream, and I remember thinking, I could just grab that and rip it off the wall and run out. And then I thought, no, of course you couldn't. There's about a ton of hidden security. There's lasers and stuff you probably can't even see. And now that I think about it, no, I probably really could have just taken it off the wall It has been stolen twice already. And there is this clip.

1:37:19I think it was the 1994 case that it was stolen. There were these guys. They put a letter to the wall of the museum, to the first floor. The letter falls on the floor. They almost break their legs. They go up again, knock out a window, and they walk out with one of the most expensive paintings in the world. They left a note saying, thank you very much for the bad security. Oh, my God. Goodbye. So it has been stolen twice. So if it gets stolen the third time, we have to prove, Jordan. Yep. Yeah, that's right. I shouldn't have telegraphed my intention. Now you know it wasn't me. Or was it? Arthur, thank you very much for coming on the show, man.

1:37:54This is absolutely fascinating. No, it was great, Jordan. You're welcome. You're about to hear a preview of the Jordan Harbinger Show with a skilled art forger who made millions selling his fakes. I was a storehouse of knowledge of how to create an illusion, present it to a experienced expert, and bring him to the inevitable conclusion that the painting is genuine. We flooded the market with my paintings, and eventually the FBI led to my door. They uncovered a mountain of evidence against me. But they never actually got you. Why did it go away? Why did you never get indicted? How are we having this conversation?

1:38:45I guess that's the greatest story of all. To hear details of how Ken Perenni evaded the scrutiny of everyone from the mafia to the FBI and lived to tell the tale, check out episode 282 of The Jordan Harbinger Show. Big thank you to Arthur Brand. I mean, the guy has had stolen Van Goghs delivered to his door, religious relics left on his counter, and cat and mouse beers with actual art thieves. Meanwhile, I get nervous when FedEx says my package was left with resident, and I don't know which resident. Got to go to Amsterdam at some point and interview him and that famous thief together. I think that would be a really fun episode.

1:39:19As usual, all things Arthur Brand will be in the show notes on the website. Advertisers, deals, discount codes, and ways to support the show also on the website at jordanharbinger.com slash deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show. Don't forget about 6-Minute Networking as well over at 6minutenetworking.com. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram, or just hit me on LinkedIn, and this show is created in association with Podcast One. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Tata Sidlowskis, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others.

1:39:49The fee for the show is you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. In fact, the greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about. So if you know somebody who's interested in true crime, art crime, or organized crime, definitely share this episode with them. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn. And we'll see you next time.

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