Series: Association for Research into Crimes Against Art

In 1969, during a Boston snowstorm, a crate containing Pablo Picasso’s Portrait of a Woman and a Musketeer vanished from Logan Airport. It should have gone to a Milwaukee gallery—but instead ended up in the closet of Bill Rummel, a young forklift operator. What followed was a stranger-than-fiction chain of events: FBI agents on the hunt, whispers of Whitey Bulger’s...

Art theft has risen from an occasional event involving the trophies of the wealthy and elite, into a multi-billion-dollar annual criminal industry. It is run almost entirely by organised crime groups, serving as a significant funding source for terrorism. It has been listed among the highest-grossing criminal trades worldwide. When ARCA (the Association for Research into Crimes against Art) began,...