Stolen Art Blogs

Fellow appraiser Paticia Davis sent me an interesting and fun article from the New York Times magazine section.  It is called Heist, by Virginia Heffernan and is about a blogger who tracks stolen art called Turbo Paul.

As I just posted the Journal article excerpt on art crime and after the Paris musuems thefts, this is a very timely article.  Turbo Paul has two blogs, and claims in a past life he was a seller of stolen art.  The article is interesting to read and Heffernan finds the blogs by Turbo Paul to be entertaining. She reports that ex-FBI art crime sleuth Robert Wittman also reads them, but only for the entertainment value.  I guess that is fair warning to be careful in what you take away from the posts.

Links to the blogs by Turbo Paul are http://arthostage.blogspot.com/ and http://stolenvermeer.blogspot.com/

Heffernan states

After the Paris heist, Turbo Paul had also, evidently, conversed with all kinds of unusual suspects, giving intelligence, getting it, pretending he knew more or less than he did.

On his blog, he dispensed some unsolicited advice to the French authorities at the Banditry Repression Brigade of Paris (B.R.B.-P.P.), warning them that their covert strategies to recover the art had been compromised: “Undercover B.R.B. have been made, so your presence is hindering the quick return. Stand down and don’t make the arrest as this will not guarantee the safe return of the art. They won’t fall for the same sting used to get back the two Picassos stolen in 2007 from Picasso’s granddaughter.”

Undercover B.R.B. have been made! They won’t fall for that 2007 nonsense. This sounded more like a ransom note than a blog post. That effect is vintage Turbo Paul, who told me by e-mail: “I regard myself as a firewall between the underworld and law enforcement.” I admire the way Art Hostage sends half-coded signals to disparate populations. I further appreciate how, like a good airport thriller, the blog hints to those of us who know nothing about $100 million heists that we’re missing something — potentially everything — about this great big world of good and evil.

Were you really a crook? I asked Turbo Paul, emboldened by the speedy and anonymous Skype chat, his favored means of communication. “Of course,” he wrote back quickly. “I was good as an organizer, tried to be a burglar but was too noisy, so better to sit at a hotel waiting for the stolen art to arrive.” Turbo Paul sees himself as Fagin, the “receiver of stolen goods” in “Oliver Twist” ; he even named his son Oliver.

To read the full NYT article, click HERE.