museum theft

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Thieves With Bats, Axes Raid Paris Museum

Crime takes place in front of visitors and employees

(Newser) - Four thieves carrying axes and baseball bats and wearing hoods and helmets entered a Paris museum after it opened on Wednesday, breaking into a display case and taking precious artifacts from one exhibit while visitors and employees watched. No one was injured, Le Monde reports. The crime occurred about 10:...

Auctioneer Returns Watch That Traveled World With a President

Gift to Theodore Roosevelt was stolen from museum in 1987

(Newser) - A pocket watch that traveled the world with a president, even going into battle, has made one more journey so it can be displayed for the first time since it was stolen in 1987. Theodore Roosevelt, who was president from 1901 to 1909, was given the watch by his sister...

Loot From British Museum Started Showing Up on eBay

Officials say they've recovered some of the possibly 2K items stolen

(Newser) - The head of trustees at the British Museum said Saturday that the museum has recovered some of the 2,000 items believed to have been stolen by an insider, but he admitted that the 264-year-old institution does not have records of everything in its vast collection. Chairman of Trustees George...

UK, Swiss Police Sting Recovers Ming Vase

Operation broke up ring of thieves, officials say

(Newser) - A sting operation at a London hotel helped authorities recover a 15th-century Chinese vase worth about $2.5 million and break up the criminal ring believed to have stolen the artifact from a Swiss museum, British police said Saturday. The vase, which dates to the Yongle period of the Ming...

British Museum Reveals 'Highly Unusual Incident'

Says worker stole gold and jewels and has been fired

(Newser) - The British Museum in London has suffered a "highly unusual incident," per the museum's director: the alleged theft of items by a staff member. The BBC reports the unnamed employee has been fired and the museum plans to take legal action. For now, police are investigating, with...

Prosecutors List Artwork, Memorabilia Lost to Theft Ring

Nine are charged in crimes over more than 20 years

(Newser) - Federal authorities have announced charges against a ring of nine people for thefts of millions of dollars' worth of paintings, sports memorabilia, and other valuables, including an Andy Warhol silkscreen, a Jackson Pollock painting, and nine World Series rings belonging to the late Yankees Hall of Famer Yogi Berra. The...

Path of 3K-Year-Old Ring Winds Back to Greece
Greece Has Ancient Ring Back
May 21, 2022 5:30 PM CDT

Greece Has Ancient Ring Back

Swedish museum turns over gold piece stolen during World War II

(Newser) - A gold signet ring more than 3,000 years old that was stolen from an Aegean island in World War II, crossed the Atlantic, was bought by a Nobel Prize-winning Hungarian scientist, and ended up in a Swedish museum has found its way back to Greece. It was the latest...

He Admits to a Dozen Museum Heists, Gets Day in Jail

Pennsylvania's Thomas Gavin helped trace stolen firearms after confession

(Newser) - A Pennsylvania man will spend exactly one day in jail after admitting to stealing historic artifacts from more than a dozen museums in at least four states. Montgomery County's Thomas Gavin busted into museums along the US East Coast in the 1960s and '70s, taking mostly antique firearms,...

In 4 Museum Heists, Thieves Went After the Same Thing

A fortune's worth of Nazi uniforms stolen in Europe since March

(Newser) - Thieves set up a roadblock of tires, parked a fake police car beside it, then smashed down the door of the Eyewitness War Museum in the Netherlands, from which they took $1.5 million in World War II memorabilia in just five minutes, per the New York Times . "It...

Museum Planned to Destroy Deadly Poison. Thieves Got to It First

Safe containing curare vial is stolen in the Netherlands

(Newser) - Where's Indiana Jones when you need him? Authorities are trying to track down an ancient vial containing a deadly poison, stolen from the Dutch national museum of science and medicine this week. Thieves broke into an outbuilding at Leiden's Rijksmuseum Boerhaave and took a refrigerator-sized safe holding a...

Thieves Steal Rhino Heads From Irish Museum

Animals were killed more than a century ago

(Newser) - Masked men stole stuffed rhinoceros heads containing eight valuable horns from the warehouse of Ireland's National Museum, a heist being linked to an Irish Gypsy gang that specializes in such raids across Europe. Police said three men raided the storeroom in Swords, north of Dublin, on Wednesday night and...

Picasso, Matisse, Monet Works Stolen in Huge Heist

Several paintings lifted from Kunsthal Museum

(Newser) - Several paintings have been stolen in an overnight break-in at a Dutch museum, including a Picasso, a Matisse, and two Monets, the BBC reports. The Kunsthal Museum has no permanent collection, and is currently showing works by more than 150 famous artists as part of the Triton Foundation's 20th...

Thieves Swipe $3.2M Artifacts From UK Museum

Police arrested three, but yet to recover Chinese artifacts

(Newser) - Two Chinese artifacts with an estimated combined value of $3.2 million have been stolen from a British museum, authorities said yesterday. Two men and a woman from the West Midlands area have been arrested in connection with the Thursday night theft at Durham University's Oriental Museum, but the...

Armed Robbers Loot Greek Olympic Museum

Priceless artifacts from ancient Games stolen

(Newser) - As if Greece didn't have enough problems: A pair of armed robbers have stolen dozens of artifacts from a museum located at the birthplace of the Olympic Games, the BBC reports. The stolen items, mostly bronze and clay statuettes, were of "incalculable" value, officials say. Police say the...

11 Jailed Over Egypt Van Gogh Theft

Officials convicted of incompetence, negligence

(Newser) - An Egyptian court has ruled that 11 Culture Ministry officials should spend the next 3 years under tighter lock and key than they kept a $50 million Van Gogh painting. The officials, who plan to appeal, were convicted of incompetence and gross negligence over the theft of Poppy Flowers from...

Egyptian Art Minister Busted in $50M Van Gogh Theft

Other officials detained, accused of negligence

(Newser) - The Egyptian government's head of fine arts has been arrested and accused of negligence in the theft of a $50 million Van Gogh painting . The work, known as Poppy Flowers or Vase With Flowers, was stolen from a Cairo museum during the day over the weekend. None of the alarms...

Recovered $50M Van Gogh Actually ... Still Missing

'Poppy Flowers' was taken from museum in Egypt

(Newser) - Despite reports of a quick recovery , a $50 million Vincent van Gogh painting is still missing from Egypt's Mahmoud Khalil Museum. The minister of culture said police confiscated the artwork, known as Poppy Flowers or Vase With Flowers, at an airport in Cairo from an Italian couple just hours after...

Cops Quickly Recover Stolen $50M Van Gogh

'Poppy Flowers' was taken from museum in Egypt

(Newser) - A $50 million painting by Vincent van Gogh has gone missing from a museum in Cairo, and it's not the first time. Police in Egypt have put airports and seaports on alert for the artwork, which goes by Poppy Flowers or Vase With Flowers. It's not clear how thieves got...

Thieves Grab Stolen Antiquities Exhibit

Recovered black-market items back on the black market

(Newser) - A museum exhibit featuring "Antiquities Theft in Israel" has become the victim of antiquities theft in Israel. Thieves broke into the museum in Ashdod, southern Israel, and stole the display of items recovered from the black market, the Telegraph reports. The antiquities theft squad that recovered the items, including...

Thieves Grab 30 Paintings in France

Picasso, Rousseau works vanish after Degas is stolen

(Newser) - Brazen thieves grabbed $1.5 million worth of paintings by Picasso, Rousseau and other artists from a home in southern France while the owner was vacationing in Sweden. Discovery of the theft in the medieval town of La Cadière d'Azur occurred less than a week after a $1.6...

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