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

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

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Jordan Harbinger: [00:00:00] Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On The Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people, and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker through long-form conversations with a variety of amazing folks, from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers, and performers, even the occasional organized crime figure, gold smuggler, hacker, or real-life pirate.

And if you're new to the show, or you want to tell your friends about the show, I suggest our episode starter packs. These are collections of some of our favorite episodes on topics like persuasion and negotiation, psychology and geopolitics, disinformation, China, North Korea, crime and cults, and more.

That'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show. Just visit jordanharbinger.com/start, or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. Today, we're talking with Arthur Brand, the Indiana Jones of the art world, which sounds like a fake job until you've realized he's [00:01:00] recovered stolen Picassos, Van Goghs, Nazi-looted treasures, ancient religious relics, and apparently whatever else Europe keeps misplacing in attics, basements, and even Ikea bags.

Art crime sounds niche, like something for rich weirdos with linen pants and suspiciously quiet tax attorneys, but it's a multi-billion dollar underworld involving mafias, terrorists, smugglers, forgers, war criminals, and thieves who are somehow smart enough to steal a Picasso, but then dumb enough to brag about it on Tinder.

Today, we're getting into stolen Jewish family art, Nazi loot, forged masterpieces, priceless relics sitting on kitchen counters, why criminals steal museum pieces that they then can't sell, and how Arthur negotiates with people who have extremely expensive things that they absolutely should not have.

This one's a bit of a ride. Here we go with Arthur Brand. So you're an art detective. I feel like there's not that many of those around, are there?

Arthur Brand: No. There are some ex-police officers who worked in the police squad [00:02:00] and now working for insurance companies. There are some art lawyers, but they are not really searching.

When they find something, they are being called. And then you have some provenance researchers. They study the history of an object to see if something is wrong with that history.

Jordan Harbinger: I see.

Arthur Brand: Which might indicate that something has been stolen. But sometimes I think I'm the only civilian who's really trying to go out there and try to recover stolen art.

Jordan Harbinger: You've so many interesting stories. You've gotten art stolen by Nazis, jewel heists, museum heists, and people call you the Indiana Jones of the art world, which is kind of fun. You're missing the hat, and I guess you're not a professor, so it's not exactly totally accurate, but whatever.

Arthur Brand: I miss a lot more, don't worry.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah?

Arthur Brand: To be Indiana Jones. I don't even have a driver's license, you know. That's

Jordan Harbinger: funny. Why- you don't need a driver's license? I guess you live in the Netherlands, so you just take-

Arthur Brand: Yeah ...

Jordan Harbinger: transit everywhere.

Arthur Brand: Well, I live in Amsterdam, and you know these big cities, a car is horrible. So like most Dutch [00:03:00] men, I drive a bicycle.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that... I didn't even think about that.

Arthur Brand: So I, I drive around.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Wow, the fact that you don't have a license, though, that's crazy somehow. That's, I guess you don't need it. Unbelievable. Yeah.

Arthur Brand: It's a very small country, and we have very good public transport, and that's fine.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. I can't relate. I live in the United States.

So you've recovered something like 200 or over 200 stolen or missing works of art. I'm curious how these investigations work, and I've got a bunch of questions about how this all goes. The recent, well, recent-ish Louvre incident from last year, that's something I want to discuss later for sure. But when I started originally researching this, I thought, "Okay, art crime, this is going to be really small.

There's a reason there's not many art detectives. Probably almost nobody is stealing art. It's only something you see in movies." But actually, I was reading a bunch of the articles that you've written and things you've written on your website and shows you've been on. Art crime is worth about eight billion euros.

That's what you said. [00:04:00] And that's an order of magnitude larger than I thought.

Arthur Brand: The regular art market is, like, 70, 80 billion, and part of that is illegal. Art theft from museums, from private individuals, forgeries, illicit antiquities. In many countries, people dig in the ground, you know, or with a metal detector.

So it's quite a big thing. And it's not that much surprising because there are a lot of art collectors in the world. Almost everybody has a painting or a little statue at his home, so it's a big market. And when there's a big market and a lot of money, and it's not a real science, so it's not that difficult to fake something.

you attract a certain kind of people, and that's who we are fighting.

Jordan Harbinger: I suppose that's true. There's so much gray area. So there's art heists, illegal, right? Thieves stealing art. And there's people who buy things from auctions that I suppose maybe have been authenticated and have been for sale before and were bought from one person to another with certificates or however it goes.

But I remember interviewing a guy on [00:05:00] the show a few years ago, and he had sort of a bug up his you-know-what about searching for this lost city in, I want to say Ecuador or El Salvador or something. And he found it. He found it using LIDAR from an airplane, and then they hiked through this really dangerous, really thick jungle where there's all these dangerous snakes and things like that.

And he found all these relics and artifacts, and they were basically just being stolen at a crazy high rate because I think the country that was hosting it was like, "Look, we can't keep a battalion of soldiers here in the middle of nowhere. It's expensive, and there's nobody around." So there was one or two guys, and they could steal at will, their friends could steal at will, and other people could steal when they were turned facing east, the guys who were coming from the west- Yeah, exactly

and steal things right out of the ground. But even this guy who had found the city, he's an older guy, he had all this crazy stuff in his house. I was like, "Oh, what is this statue of this lion on the ground?" And he go, "Oh, yeah, I brought that back from Ecuador or some..." And I'm thinking, can you do that? Can you just pick something out of the ground and fly [00:06:00] home with it?

That doesn't seem like you should do that.

Arthur Brand: No, you can't. And every time when an archaeolo- ologist dies, her or his collection comes at auction. And I always take an extra look because suddenly, as an archeologist, if you die and you have a collection of 2,000 pieces, where does it come from? And surprisingly, all these objects match with the places you have been digging.

Jordan Harbinger: Right.

Arthur Brand: Of course, not every archeologist is dead, but we have some surprises there.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that makes sense. If you have a, I don't know, a sarcophagus from a Pharaoh in your garage, you probably didn't pick it up at a garage sale or a flea market. Yeah. And the eight billion euro figure is not just something that you made up, by the way.

I, I think you based that figure on info from the CIA, which calculated, and this surprised me, that art is the third largest criminal money flow in the world. So first of all, what are the other two? Drugs and guns, or drugs and people or something?

Arthur Brand: I think something like that. And [00:07:00] some people dispute it, that it's not the third or fourth, but who cares, you know?

It's eight billion. It's one of the biggest in the world. And the mafia bosses, states even, states, everybody's involved. It's about money, you know. The bottom line in the art world is money. They want you and, and me to believe it's about beauty, but it's not. It's only about greed.

Jordan Harbinger: You mentioned in one of the articles, I should say, it's the Italian mafia, which I'm always surprised still exists, but I guess of course it does.

The IRA, which I thought, the Irish Republican Army, I thought that was done in the '80s or the '90s, but apparently not. You got the Taliban. You have ISIS. You have states like Iran, which I guess just loot their own antiquities basically. Exactly, yes. I don't know how that works.

Arthur Brand: I can give you an example.

There was this guy in Syria, and he found 12 golden Roman coins, 2,000 years old. So, uh, he found them and he thought, "If I try to sell it like other people do, they might catch me and punish me." You know, you don't want to be punished in Syria. So what did he do? [00:08:00] He went to the police. So the police said, "What do you have?"

He said, "I have 12 golden Roman coins I found while working on my land." And they beat the shit out of him.

Jordan Harbinger: Ah.

Arthur Brand: Because they thought that he came there because they would hear something, and they suspected that he probably had found 40 or 50, and only turned 12 in. So they beat the shit out of him, and later he found out that these two 12 pieces made it to the black market.

In many countries, if you find something, people try to sell it on the black market. If you go to the police station, one thing for sure, it might be resold by them. There are a lot of examples of this. And these soils in the Middle East, they are so rich of this stuff. If you dig there, you find something.

And if you're poor and you find a golden helmet, what you going to do?

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Arthur Brand: I- You want to be beaten up by the police, or you find someone to sell it to.

Jordan Harbinger: That's true. Yeah, I suppose if you live in the mountains of Iran and, I don't know, you take shelter in a cave when you're herding your [00:09:00] sheep, and then one day you, I don't know, find something in the cave.

You go to the local police. They, like you said, beat you up, or they steal it from you and sell it, or you just, I don't know, try and sell it yourself or keep it in your house as an heirloom until you figure out what to do with it.

Arthur Brand: They hang you in Iran. It, it has happened. People took shelter in a cave, I don't know, for the wet or for the heat, and they found one of the biggest treasures ever.

And the police got on a trail and hung them.

Jordan Harbinger: Is this in Iran?

Arthur Brand: Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh my God. The amount of injustice that happens over there is just shocking.

Arthur Brand: And the worst is that in, in many of these countries you are being punished, but the same people who punish you, they take it from you and put it on the black market.

There are so many examples of this. It's so corrupt.

Jordan Harbinger: It's so disappointing. I mean, Syria of course, is a, a crazy failed state. I had a friend, actually this is quite related to what you're talking about here on the show. I had a friend who went to Syria, I want to say maybe 10 years ago. So during the civil war.

He just went there because he's crazy. And he [00:10:00] told me that one of the things he was doing was going around, he had local friends and they would say like, "Oh, I have this backgammon set that is hundreds of years old, a centuries old backgammon game set, or this other kind of game. And would you buy this? Because I have to escape and I've got to walk to, I don't know, Turkey, and I can't bring this thing with me because I'm bringing my kids. I'm bringing a blanket. I'm bringing a thing of water." So he would give them money for their journey and he would bring this thing back and he would take their name and say like, "If your family wants this back in 20 years, call me."

And he lives in New Zealand. So he basically has a museum in his house in New Zealand of just stuff from Syria, little statues, games, carvings, wall hangings, rugs that are family heirlooms from all these people that he met that he basically traded for cash and, and a little card with his phone number on it.

And he says, "Have your grandkids call me if they want this back and I'll, I'll give it to them."

Arthur Brand: That sounds like a good deal. The problem in these countries is [00:11:00] there are terrorist groups now. Let me give you one example. The German Secret Service revealed 50 years ago that Mohamed Atta, the guy, the leader of the guys who flew into the World Trade Center, he was studying in Germany.

And a year before these attacks, he went to his professor and says, "We have a bunch of Buddha statues from Afghanistan. Uh, we would like to sell them at Sotheby's or Christie's. What should I do?" And the professor said, "What do I know? You cannot just sell stuff like that. It might be looted." And he even said, "According to the German Secret Service, we want to buy a plane."

And at that time, nobody would imagine that these planes would be used for this horrible event. But it turns out that apparently even Osama bin Laden tried to gain money from looting. So that shows you who the players are in this field. It's scary.

Jordan Harbinger: It is scary. The, the people involved in this [00:12:00] are unsavory characters.

Exactly. To give people an idea of what you do and, and how you do it, tell me about this stolen Persian relic. This is called the Diwan of Hafez.

Arthur Brand: Oh, that was a great story, and we were filming that live for television. I had at the time my own television series in the Netherlands. It was stolen in 2007 from an Iranian German.

But Hafez is one of the most famous poets in Iran from the 15th century, or a little bit before. And this was one of the first books, one of the first prints, so it was a very special book, his poems. It w- had, uh, all this gold inside. It was stolen from this guy, and of course, he was trying to track it down.

And I was tracking it down in London, and then we were filming. I recovered it, and I wanted to bring it to Germany to this guy and to hand it over to him. And then live on television, the Dutch police called me, a friend of mine, and [00:13:00] he said, "Arthur, we were just called by the German Secret Service that the Iranians found out that you have this book, and they are now sending a team to the Netherlands.

What are you going to do?"

Jordan Harbinger: So, and when you say team, by the way, you don't mean diplomats are going to call you, right?

Arthur Brand: I prefer to think so, but no, of course not. There was, in my street, there was protection. There were some cars. But it was quite scary. We put it on television because it happened all live. So they told me, "You don't travel to Germany."

And the place I wanted to hand it over in Germany was a police station with the German police, but they called it off. They said, "No way you're coming here." So I said, "Thank you so much. I'm a civilian. Let somebody protect me."

Jordan Harbinger: The Germans said, "Don't come here because we can't protect you from the Iranian Secret Service, who's going to operate in Germany and try and, what, kill you and take this book?"

Arthur Brand: It sounds like a crazy story, but you can call the Dutch police and ask them. They were in my series.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. This is documented in a bunch of articles on [00:14:00] news websites. I obviously fact-checked some of this before I had you on.

Arthur Brand: The Iranians found this book so important that they just wanted to kidnap it.

They thought, "It's somewhere out there. It's this idiot, this Dutchman has it. He stands no chance against our team," so they send a team over.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow. Did they find the team at all? Did they have eyes on these guys, or they just had no idea?

Arthur Brand: No. I returned it very soon to, to the man in question. They came here to Amsterdam and handed it over, and I thought, "Good luck with it. Go away."

Jordan Harbinger: So is that guy okay? Because he flew back to Germany- Yeah, he's okay ... with this priceless relic, and the Iranians are looking for him, too.

Arthur Brand: Probably when they found out that the Secret Service was involved, the German Secret Service and the Dutch, they backed off. But talking about killing, there are hitmen active in the Netherlands and in Spain, you can read it in the newspapers, sent by the Iranian government, killing political opponents, refugees in Europe.

So it is a bit of scary, these guys.

Jordan Harbinger: There was a story [00:15:00] recently, actually. I'm going to get the details wrong, but I think he was essentially a, a custodian or a janitor at some business, and he got murdered, and the Dutch Secret Service was like, "Why did the Iranians kill a random immigrant who's been here for 40 years?"

And it turned out that guy in Iran had put a bomb in a meeting of the The ayatollahs during the Islamic Revolution, he killed a bunch of them and then he fled to Europe, ended up in the Netherlands under a totally different name and identity, and he got spotted somehow in a photo. And they said, "That's this guy that we've been looking for 40 years."

And they went and killed him, which is crazy.

Arthur Brand: Yeah. No, but it's not the only case. There are more cases. They tried to kill some politician in Spain. It's not the people you want to have as a neighbor.

Jordan Harbinger: No, exactly. So this book, Divan-e Hafez, was an ancient book, and a random guy, a random Iranian just had it in his possession.

Is it a family heirloom for hi- Like how did he get it?

Arthur Brand: In the past century, in the [00:16:00] 1920s, '30s, '40s, '50s, it was easier to get your hands on something special. Today we have the internet and there are more people collecting. But in those days it was... You could even buy a Van Gogh 100 years ago for a reasonable price.

And some people saw this painting thinking, "What is it worth? It's nothing. He never sold anything. I like it. Give me 10." And these people did the right thing. So in the old days you still could find a little treasure somewhere. It's over, of course, with the internet and all the people searching everywhere.

But those were the good days. Good old days.

Jordan Harbinger: It's interesting you mention this because I lived in Ukraine for a summer, so like three months, and this is in 2002. People had internet, but it was like dial in, use your email service, download your email, get out. It wasn't browsing the web or anything, especially not in Ukraine during that time.

And you could go to these flea markets and you could look at things. There's no Van Gogh paintings hanging out, but you could go to these flea markets and people would be selling family [00:17:00] heirlooms and stuff like that from the Soviet Union because they needed money. And there were no foreigners there.

And so they would all come to me and be like, "Hey, I've got to show you this. You're going to want to see this." And so I remember going and thinking, "Man, I wish I had more money and a bigger suitcase," because there was a guy who showed me all of this really nice teacups and plates, and on the bottom of the plates had a swastika because it was all made by the Nazis.

Arthur Brand: Oh yeah. I've been there too in 10 years later trying to find some paintings that were stolen in the Netherlands. The museum hired me, and I found out that the paintings were stolen by a Ukrainian guy. He took them to Ukraine and the police found out about it. They went into his home, they arrested him, and they took the paintings.

And they should have brought them back to the Netherlands, but they didn't. They gave it as presents to their chiefs or whatever you call them. And I find it out, and that was also a big case where I had to encounter a secret service. The Ukrainian SBU in this case. That was also a scary one. I went once to Ukraine and I went to [00:18:00] this market where you were.

I even bought a Wehrmacht passport from one of the German Army. It was... You could buy it everywhere there. I was thinking, uh, all the stuff that must be there. Many stuff from Russia, from the czars. Ended up in Europe in the 1920s from the last century, 100 years ago, because all these people had to flee Russia because the communists entered, and they took all their belongings with them, and they sold them here for small prices, and now these pieces do millions.

Fabergé eggs, you know, stuff like that.

Jordan Harbinger: Fabergé eggs. Yes, these are flea markets, so I didn't see any Fabergé eggs. But I would see Nazi silverware, Nazi cups and plates, lots of documents, lots of military uniforms, lots of war medals. In fact, back then, there was a trend, and all these guys are probably dead now, but back 25 years ago, there was a trend where if you were an old guy and you had fought in World War II, you would have your blazer and your suit on and your hat, and you would just wear all of your war [00:19:00] medals, or at least a bunch of them, while you were walking.

I would see these old guys walking, and I had nothing to do. I was just there to learn Russian. So I would stop and say, "Hey, what is this all about?" And these guys couldn't wait to talk because they were going to the park to talk to other old guys. So they find an American kid that's interested in the medals that he got on, and I remember this guy was like, "Tomorrow, come to the park and I'll show you my Order of Stalin," or, "My Order of Lenin."

I forget which it was. I think it was Stalin, actually. And he would, he had this medal, and it was like... This was like a plate. It was like a square tea saucer, and it had a certificate. And he's like, "I got this for..." And I don't fully understand his story, because it was in Russian and my Russian was middling.

But he had done something basically like Medal of Freedom, some sort of heroic anti-Nazi thing involving explosions and fire. And he had gotten this really important award. He wanted to sell it to me because he needed money, so I gave him money. And when I tried to fly home with it, I got robbed by the customs agents in Ukraine, who stole all of my money and my PalmPilot [00:20:00] and all these war medals.

And they stopped when they saw that because they called somebody from upstairs to come down, and he goes, "Where did you get this?" And I said, "Oh, it's from an old guy in the park along with everything else." And they were like, "Oh." They were relieved, because the guy even told me, he goes, "Oh, I'm glad, because if this was actually somebody that you knew, I think we'd have a bigger problem."

Because they don't want to rob somebody whose grandfather had this basically Medal of Freedom, because they're a big deal if, if you have that. And I thought, this poor old guy sold this to me for 50 bucks. He just needed the cash and didn't care about it. It's clearly a national treasure because they had to call the head honcho from customs while they were committing a crime and robbing a tourist to make sure that they weren't going to get bent over for it.

Arthur Brand: And that's the reason why sometimes rich people, there was a, a dictatorship, a revolution. They lose their position, they flee, and they take all their belongings with them. They have to sell them for a very low price, and that's how people spot these hidden treasures. That's how it goes.

Jordan Harbinger: Now, a quick word from our sponsors, none of whom, to my knowledge, [00:21:00] have ever tried to hide a stolen Van Gogh in an Ikea bag.

Strong brand safety so far. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Ground News. One thing Arthur Brand talks about today is how easy it is to fool people when they only see part of the picture. A forged painting can look completely authentic until you compare it with other evidence. I think the same thing happens with the news, and that's why I like Ground News.

It lets you compare coverage of the same story from across the political spectrum, so you can see how different outlets frame the exact same events. For example, I was looking at a new CSIS report estimating that the war in Ukraine has caused more than two million military casualties since 2022. Ground News found dozens of sources covering the story.

The Guardian's headline focused on the overall human cost, "More than two million military casualties caused by Russia's invasion." Meanwhile, Stars and Stripes emphasized Russia's losses. "Russia's staggering losses push Ukraine war casualties past two million." Same report, same data, different emphasis. And that's why Ground News is so useful.

It helps you see not just what's being [00:22:00] reported, but how it's being reported. Go to groundnews.com/jordan to get 40% off their unlimited access vantage subscription. That's groundnews.com/jordan. Again, groundnews.com/jordan. Use that link so they know we sent you. That helps support the show. And if you like conversations we have on this show about following the evidence instead of jumping to conclusions, I think you'll appreciate Ground News' mission as well.

This episode is also sponsored by K12. As parents, we all want our kids in a learning environment where they feel supported, motivated, and able to do their best. And the challenge is every kid is different. What works for one child may not be the right fit for another, which is why K12-powered schools are definitely worth a look.

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Students can enroll at any time during the school year, so you don't have to wait for some perfect window. See how K12-powered schools can help unlock your child's full potential. Learn more at k12.com/jordan, the letter K, the number 12, .com/jordan. Hey, a lot of you might not know, using our promo code doesn't just get you a discount, it really does help the show too.

We don't really earn a commission directly from each sale, but when companies see that people respond to our ads and use the codes, they're more likely to renew and continue their partnerships with us. So 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 I, 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 [00:24:00] 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

Arthur Brand: were a smuggler.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. I didn't think I was smuggling, but I accidentally smuggled some of the stuff out. The rest of it was just in a box. If I'd known I was going to get robbed, I didn't think anybody'd be interested in that.

If I thought I was going to get robbed at the actual airport, I would've 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've 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.

Arthur Brand: Of course. I 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, in Ukraine and other countries, and you see a picture of a man, of a woman, probably Jewish or Hungarian or whatever, on forced [00:25:00] 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?

Jordan Harbinger: 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." But 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.

Arthur Brand: Can you read the name still?

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, yeah. It's, it's all written in German, but it's a work passport, basically, is what it says.

Arthur Brand: It's not that difficult these days. You just put it on X and try to ask the public to help.

Jordan Harbinger: That's a good point. I could just tweet it [00:26:00] 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.

Arthur Brand: 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.

Jordan Harbinger: It 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, I was 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."

Arthur Brand: At least it's somewhere. It has not been destroyed.

But in my field, in the art recovery, World War II was the biggest art theft in history. Adolf Hitler, Hermann Göring [00:27:00] both were art lovers. They stole millions of pieces all around Europe from private individuals, museums, especially from Jewish collectors, of course, and 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.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow.

Arthur Brand: 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.

Jordan Harbinger: You said you recovered something today. What did you recover today?

Arthur Brand: 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 Goudstikker. He was a Dutch art dealer, Dutch Jewish. The 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. [00:28:00] So Goudstikker really is a symbolic name for the looting 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 hou- 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. Our real last name is Seifert." And Seifert is a very familiar name, especially in the Netherlands. Seifert was the highest collaborating Dutchman and 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 '45. So he was the head of this legion. He was killed in '43 by the Dutch resistance, and the Germans [00:29:00] retaliated. Dozens of Dutchmen 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. So 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, uh, he faints.

He steps up later, and then his grandmother takes him to the hallway and she said, "Do you know this painting?" And he says, "Yes, I've seen it my whole life." And then she turns it around and there is this label of Goudstikker. And she says, "This is stolen from the famous Goudstikker collection. It was stolen from this Jewish family.

It's in our family for decades. It's our family secret. Nobody ever is allowed to know." So he faints again. Two dark secrets like this in one day. And he knew they would never give it back. So he then [00:30:00] 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 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. And after five hours, they handed over the painting to us.

Jordan Harbinger: So they had to be shamed into doing the right thing, but at least they did.

Arthur Brand: 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 [00:31:00] painting, and I see the same label, Goudstikker. Do you think it has been stolen, too?" Because Goudstikker, 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 Goudstikker 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.

Jordan Harbinger: 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? You 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 [00:32:00] 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.

Arthur Brand: These are worth tens of thousands, but we have recovered paintings also worth millions. But in this case, it's more the symbolism. A Goudstikker 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. And 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 Goudstikker. Also the descendants of a Nazi. So you can imagine how many of those [00:33:00] paintings are still within some families with these last names.

It's horrible.

Jordan Harbinger: 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."

Arthur Brand: Oh, I would love to go there with you.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, man.

Arthur Brand: To see what they have.

Jordan Harbinger: I love stuff like this. I actually last year went hiking through Argentina and 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 a Airbnb, right? You 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, I can [00:34:00] read between those lines," because before 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."

And 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've just been random refugees who didn't want to live in a broken country.

Arthur Brand: Of course, but there is a chance that indeed...

I was in Buenos Aires, and th- they have, 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 [00:35:00] looking for them and they were drinking their beers in, um, in Buenos Aires.

Crazy stuff, yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: 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. Yeah.

Arthur Brand: That's a real great story.

There was this, the son of Eichmann, of course, they didn't tell anybody that who they were. Eichmann was li- 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, [00:36:00] and this guy went to the home of Eichmann to see if he could take a picture and then send it back to Israel.

And these pictures, you can Google them up. It's crazy, these pictures. So he knocks on the door and he asks some questions, and he, then he takes pictures of Eichmann. He sends it 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.

Jordan Harbinger: Imagine finding somebody like that. Yeah, he told the story of just tackling him and he... 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."

Arthur Brand: It, it was the Garibaldi Street, I think. I, I, I even remember the street.

It's not that I know all these details.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, he tackled him in the road and was just like, "Hey, Israel's got you."

Arthur Brand: 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 [00:37:00] down. They were bending over, and then Eichmann passed and they, and then they said something to him, and they took him in the car and took him away.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, he basically woke up in an Israeli prison. What a nightmare for that guy. Not that he didn't deserve it.

And 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 then his last words were something like, "Death to the Jews." So they knew they got the right

Arthur Brand: guy. He was nuts, 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.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, not a defense.

So back to the stolen art here. Most stolen artwork never resurfaces. I've got to wonder why. Is it just sitting in some collector's house? It's this, in a storage unit in a free port somewhere. [00:38:00] 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.

Arthur Brand: 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. And 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, uh, 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 [00:39:00] worth 10, 20, 30 million, and we try to find a Dr. No, 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, 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 a Dr.

No, so when they have a lead to a certain group, one of them dresses up like Dr. No and approaches the ggroup. And that's the trick. Whenever the Dr. No shows up, it's always a policeman in disguise.

Jordan Harbinger: 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 [00:40:00] 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?

Arthur Brand: 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.

You 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 Dutch man, Michel van Rijn. He was at the top of the pyramid. Scotland Yard says Michel van Rijn was responsible for 90% of all the art 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 Dutch man, by the way. He got shot at, 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, but he started a website saying, [00:41:00] "I'm now an informant, and I will reveal everything I know about all the key players 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 there are a lot of forgery. 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, uh, he invited me in and 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?" I, 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 [00:42:00] 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." And he said, "Oh my God, I have so many enemies, I thought it was a bomb."

Jordan Harbinger: Ah. So he, he was, he was going to have you do it.

Arthur Brand: 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, um, 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, he was working with the police, but on the other hand, I [00:43:00] suspected him being involved still 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 his sleep, so he escaped his killers.

Jordan Harbinger: Ah, okay. So I guess he's not coming on the show anytime soon, because he does sound like an interesting guy.

Arthur Brand: Yeah, he was.

Jordan Harbinger: So, and I know you had your TV show, The Art Detective, which makes perfect sense. It seems like you launched quite a cool career off this.

But 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?

Arthur Brand: They 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 sell it to a museum for 10, 15 million. It's a [00:44:00] dangerous game, but there's so much money involved, and it's a cleaner game than dealing in drugs.

Jordan Harbinger: The Egypt stuff is wild to me. I, I took a, a little sailboat, I think it was called a felucca, up the Nile, and when you're around Giza or whatever, you got all these pyramids, there's antiquities everywhere.

There's even stuff in water canals. There's 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, I remember going to the bathroom and one of the guys on 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 ship this whole plate right out and put it in a case, and you could sell it, and it's priceless."

Arthur Brand: And that's what they do. They probably missed this one.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Arthur Brand: But that's what they do. That's how many of this stuff ended up in our museums.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Arthur Brand: The museums in the Western world are full with stuff from... Some [00:45:00] of it bought legally, you know, but much of this stuff has been looted. And again, I have to say, people from the state were, most of the time they were involved.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, people from the state, so Egyptian government basically. Yeah. Is like, because you've got to smuggle it out somehow.

Arthur Brand: I knew some Jordanian diplomats who used their diplomatic status to smuggle everything out of the country, what they could take with them.

Jordan Harbinger: From Egypt or from Jordan?

Arthur Brand: Lebanon and Jordan. Yeah, Jordan, too. Yeah. Wow.

Jordan Harbinger: 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.

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That is take a moment, support our amazing sponsors. They make the show possible. All the deals, discount codes, and ways to support us are searchable and clickable on the website at jordanharbinger.com/deals. If you can't remember the name of a sponsor or you can't find a code, email me Jordan@jordanharbinger.com.

We'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, what was this thing, this Olmec head that was just fake?

Arthur Brand: 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 twice against him. And I always told him, "Leonardo, when you die, I'm going to write a book about you." And he said, [00:49:00] "Wait till I die."

Jordan Harbinger: Wait till I damn dead.

Arthur Brand: And that, that moment is now here. He was a very charismatic man. He went into the jungle there in Guatemala and 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 are only 17, and it's the national pride of Mexico. The Dutch, we have the Sunflowers of Van Gogh, and they have the Olmec heads. There are only 17 existing. And then another, number 18, showed up in Spain during an exhibition, and the owner was Leonardo Patterson.

So somebody from Mexico called me, an, a state official, and said, "Can you [00:50:00] do some research? Because this has been looted." They don't fall off the tree in Italy, you know? They-

Jordan Harbinger: They weigh between six and 50 tons- Exactly ... and they're between five 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 area of the Mexican Gulf Coast, 1500 to 400 BC.

So these are ancient and

Arthur Brand: massive. Yeah, so they asked me to try to find out when was it smuggled out of Mexico. So 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, [00:51:00] somebody involved with Nazism, his, his family. They sold stuff for the SS. But anyway, a very important man, and he said, "Arthur, Leonardo sold me the Olmec head, but I want to show you some pictures."

And he gave me the pictures, and you can find them on my website, arthurbrandt.com. These pictures are... You see a man with a cap on carving this head out of a big stone. In 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.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, wow.

Arthur Brand: So I published this piece is fake. So all the experts in the world said, "You are nuts. You are ridiculous." And then the, the next day I published these photos.

Jordan Harbinger: So what [00:52:00] percentage of art is forged, you think?

Arthur Brand: I think around 30%. Wow. If you buy something at Sotheby's and Christie's it's, it's far lower of course than if you buy it in a small auction house on eBay.

But generally said, 30% of all the artworks in the world are fake.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow. Imagine if 30% of the currency in the world was fake, right? So if 30% of art is forged, what do you think the percentage of art in museums is fake?

Arthur Brand: I know of some museums that half of it is fake.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow.

Arthur Brand: 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, uh, you don't want to go to... And I think 40% of all the Latin American, the pre-Colombian arts from the Aztecs, the Indian, the Incas, et cetera, in the museums all around the world is fake.

Jordan Harbinger: Damn, that's crazy.

Arthur Brand: You can earn a [00:53:00] lot with fakes. And the trick is this what they do.

Some looters find a coin hordes 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. So they gain double. They first loot the stuff and then they make some copies.

Jordan Harbinger: 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 have stolen property in your home, [00:54:00] so we're going to go ahead and get that."

Arthur Brand: No. Unfortunately, you can't. There is a statute of limitations, which means that a certain period of time you cannot take it away. It'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 the Netherlands and most countries in the world, it's absolutely not done.

Jordan Harbinger: 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 a- and here it is," I feel like they could make a law that says that doesn't apply to that kind of thing.

Arthur Brand: That'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 Goudstikker in their possession, that trial will start pretty soon. They now called [00:55:00] 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 the statute of limitations. Right.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Arthur Brand: I helped some Jewish families to recover stolen art. We 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 concentrations camp. He or she comes back almost crippled. After two years, he or she goes to a museum, sees this painting that belonged to her 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 [00:56:00] said, "You should be lucky that y- you survived the war. Go away."

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that's terrible.

Arthur Brand: 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.

Jordan Harbinger: 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?

Arthur Brand: I can tell you why. Because first of all, if you're sitting on it, you start to get nervous- Yeah. ... 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 now. So what do they do? They sell it to an- 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 [00:57:00] really wants this painting. What can they do with it? So in the end, it ends up in a group of drug lords, whomever, who have no idea anymore who the original thief is. In 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." It'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 [00:58:00] we have a lead, the police or myself, it's very hard to prove that they have it in their possession. Y- you can raid their homes. It's never there. They don't leave the stolen Van Gogh under their bed. So the problem is, if you raid their hhomes. 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 the Netherlands. It made headlines all around the world. It was 2,400 years old. It 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 the 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 [00:59:00] police will wiretap you the next three years And 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 convinced 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?

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, the best informants? Isn't it just criminals?

Arthur Brand: No.

Jordan Harbinger: No? Wives or girlfriends. "Hey, this guy I used to date had this." Ah, you see. Yeah, that totally makes sense.

Arthur Brand: I, I had this German woman a couple of weeks ago on, on WhatsApp, and she sent me a picture of a stolen painting hanging on a wall.

And I said, "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 [01:00:00] ex-husband."

Jordan Harbinger: Oh my gosh.

Arthur Brand: So those are the best.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow.

Arthur Brand: The more divorces, the more stolen art we will get back.

Jordan Harbinger: That's amazing. Yeah, I suppose that makes sense. 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 w- it's a stain on the family, and nobody wants to return it because it's embarrassing.

Can you arrange for this to be returned?"

Arthur Brand: 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, on top of it because you destroy cultural heritage. So they said, [01:01:00] "Is there any police involved?"

I said, "No, there's a statute of limitations and nobody can touch you, but it would be great to bring this painting back." And I said, "You can come and get it." And 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, uh.

Jordan Harbinger: You have some priceless piece of art sitting in your house. Are you not worried someone's going to rob your house?

Arthur Brand: No, 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?

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that's a good point.

Arthur Brand: Maybe I have a hidden camera somewhere, you know?

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, at least, I hope you at least have a camera, a couple cameras hanging out. I would assume as you get more and more [01:02:00] well-known, leads come from really unexpected avenues. What's this about getting a tip? You found somebody on Tinder, or somebody had matched with somebody on Tinder.

Arthur Brand: Oh, that's a great story.

Was this, uh, Picasso stolen in 2012 from the National Gallery in Athens. A 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 from television, so I have this strange story." And I said, "What is it?" "I met this Greek man on Tinder of all places. So 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 had told me, and I couldn't believe it. [01:03:00] 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 back. But it's another lead you get from a woman.

Women are the best, Jordan.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow.

Arthur Brand: At least in my field. We need them very hard to solve these cases.

Jordan Harbinger: What'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 s- shagging that they met on a dating app.

At that point, just go straight to jail. What are you doing? They're so stupid.

Arthur Brand: We know that the Russians send these beautiful ladies to English politicians to get all the secrets out of them. Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: Unbelievable.

Arthur Brand: We men are, uh, weak.

Jordan Harbinger: That is true.

Arthur Brand: That's for sure.

Jordan Harbinger: 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.

Arthur Brand: Yeah, [01:04:00] that one, but I also recovered a Picasso stolen in 1999 from France from the yacht of a sheik. And that piece was, when I recovered it, like $50 or $60 million worth.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, wow, from a sheik's yacht. Oh my God. How did you get it off a boat?

Arthur Brand: Repairmen. 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.

I told them on Wednesday to the police. So I hang it on my wall for one night, and it 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 [01:05:00] it, to have this painting on my wall.

When I recovered a 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 they said, "No way, Arthur. We take it with us. You're not going to fool us, uh, again."

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, no kidding. Wow, do you get a reward for finding these things or not?

Arthur Brand: 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, 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 ne- year.

What makes 2 million difference on 20 billion? And if there's a reward, I always refuse it because I work closely with the police. I am not police. I have to say it to people who listen, maybe people in the criminal world thinking, "I have a [01:06:00] story. I should call Arthur." But I always ask permission to the police to dig into a story, and I can never do anything illegal, you know?

I always want to have permission from a prosecutor, and I work now for 50 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- Yeah ... is like one or two people.

Jordan Harbinger: 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-a said, "Oh, wow, how big is your team?"

And he said, "It was just me until I retired, and now there's no one."

Arthur Brand: Yeah, in Belgium we had one. In the Netherlands we have three to four. In England they have three or four

Jordan Harbinger: Robert Wittman. Does that name ring a bell?

Arthur Brand: Rob Wittman. Yeah. He was by the FBI. He has written a book about... What was it named? He's a great guy.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Art Crime. I can't remember the name of the book. It's, I interviewed him in 2020.

Arthur Brand: Yeah. I have his book here somewhere.

Jordan Harbinger: Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the [01:07:00] World's Stolen Treasures. Yeah.

Arthur Brand: 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.

We 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 are 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, knock on..." And I say, "Yeah, but you wear a gun. You know, I go there on my bicycle."

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, he needs a warrant, the equivalent of a warrant from a judge, and they have to say, "What probable cause do you have? What do you want to ask? You've 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?"

Arthur Brand: [01:08:00] 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, it 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.

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 the, this theory of his.

Jordan Harbinger: Theory of evolution.

Arthur Brand: 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." [01:09:00] 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. They 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 to leave it there at a home of a priest.

Sometimes they leave it on a 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.

Jordan Harbinger: 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... I know you say Van Gogh, but I can't, 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 [01:10:00] 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've 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.

Arthur Brand: Yeah. He is one of the biggest art thieves in the world. He stole two Van Goghs in 2002. He sold them to a very famous mafia boss. His name is Raffaele Imperiale.

He was the second most wanted person in Italy. Can you imagine, in Italy, Raffaele Imperiale. He sold them to Raffaele Imperiale, and when Raffaele Imperiale had... 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 stolen Van Goghs. We turn them in, you will have to lower the sentence."

So Okkie, um, sold them to Raffaele Imperiale, a boss of the mafia, who used them to make a deal with Italian justice when he was caught for drugs I am an art detective and he is an art thief, and he is quite well known and I'm a little bit [01:11:00] 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 Okkie, my arch enemy, because we live in the same town. Right, your nemesis. And he was walking straight to the Van Gogh Museum. So I jumped out and I knocked on his shoulder and I said, "Okkie, do you know who I am?"

And he said, "Yes, you are this idiot, this art detective." 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.

And 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 eyes, and it was 20 [01:12:00] 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.

Jordan Harbinger: More 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. Don't forget about our newsletter, Wee Bit Wiser. It is specific and practical, and it'll have an immediate impact on your decisions, psychology, and relationships.

It'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 [01:13:00] show. Jordanharbinger.com/news

Arthur Brand: is where you can find it. Now for the rest of my conversation with Arthur Brand.

Jordan Harbinger: Really some cat and mouse James Bond stuff here.

It's like playing poker with Le Chiffre, right, and the guy who bleeds from his eyeball when he has a bad hand. It's really incredible. It's such a small world

Arthur Brand: Yeah, you must understand that in most art thefts there is nobody killed. Okkie never laid his hands on anybody during his lifetime. I'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 Okkie, "Okkie, you are a very good person from inside, but you do very stupid and bad things, or 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 Okkie's case, was dealing in [01:14:00] drugs.

All his neighbors were burglars, so not trying to excuse this, but you have different kinds of criminals. Some are not really bad. They're only doing bad stuff.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. They're not dangerous, you mean, right?

Arthur Brand: They're not dangerous and they're not, deep down inside, they are 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?

Jordan Harbinger: Yes, of course. I agree.

Arthur Brand: Somebody who's, who's selling tons of drugs where people die from it, that's another level. It's not that hard to sit with Okkie and have a beer, and I have to do it because it's my work.

Jordan Harbinger: Another favorite story of mine, your doorbell rings. Outside there's a man holding a large blue bag, and in it is a painting called The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring. This guy had just gotten it from another criminal, and he gives it to you and walks away.

Arthur Brand: It was stolen 2020 in the Netherlands, and the police caught the thief [01:15:00] and the buyer, the guy who bought it.

It was a drug lord. He thought, "If I buy this 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 they, we don't do the Netherlands. So the police had everybody in jail, the thief, the buyer, but they didn't want to give the painting back.

And then after a while, with the help of Okkie, by the way, somebody approached me saying, "Look, this piece, I know where it is hidden, where the guy who's 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.

That's [01:16:00] 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, 1:00, 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?" he said. Then I turn around, I 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, [01:17:00] and I had all these interviews. So two days after, I thought, "Let's watch Instagram, what people say. They will congratulate me." But nothing of that. The first hundred were, "Why is that idiot not wearing white gloves?"

Jordan Harbinger: 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.

Arthur Brand: Exactly. That's what I wrote.

Jordan Harbinger: 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.

Arthur Brand: Yeah. With glass. But the funny thing is we return it to the museum, and with the police, of course. And now they show the IKEA bag also as-

Jordan Harbinger: That's right

Arthur Brand: a piece of history.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow.

Arthur Brand: So next to the Van Gogh, you have this IKEA bag, this plastic IKEA bag.

Jordan Harbinger: 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.

Tell me [01:18:00] what you find in the box that just, somebody just leaves this on your porch.

Arthur Brand: Yes. Some weeks before that, thieves entered a cathedral, a 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.

Uh, 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 1,000, 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." Then he comes home and he sees it's not gold, it's gilded copper, whatever, and it contains the blood drops of Jesus.

You don't have to be a religious person to start to get a [01:19:00] little bit nervous. I know a lot of thieves who always tell me, "Arthur, 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 re- 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?" And 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 no 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 [01:20:00] went downstairs. I ran down the stairs. I took it up and there, it was not only the blood of Jesus, what they had stolen, this relic, but also other stuff, and I start to 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 1,000 years, people have gone to this church during the plague, during the Crusades, praying there for their daughters and childrens, believing that these were the blood drops from JeJesus. So had it in my home for a couple of weeks because the French police were on holiday, as was the Dutch police.

So, that's where

Jordan Harbinger: I've got to pause you, right? Because when I said it's 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." And 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?

Arthur Brand: 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 [01:21:00] much for so many people. I put it there, and I didn't curse for these two, three weeks I had it in my home.

When I took a shower, I put a towel ... Yes, maybe it's crazy, but I put a towel around me. Okay. I never was naked in front of it. It really felt religious to me. If 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.

You 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.

Jordan Harbinger: I just can't believe the police were like, "Yeah, we'll get it, but you've 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.

Arthur Brand: The thing was, nobody was killed. It was safe at my home. They knew I would enjoy it, [01:22:00] and they would enjoy the sunbathing at whatever beach they were.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, exactly. Like, "We're drinking on a beach smoking unfiltered cigarettes.

Call us in two months." What the heck?

Arthur Brand: But they know it's safe here, and they have to fill in the paperwork.

Jordan Harbinger: Right, and who wants to deal with

Arthur Brand: all that? And to be honest, I didn't push them.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I kind of relate. I'm not even religious, and if I had a ancient artifact from a church and they said, "We w- need you to hold onto it for a few weeks," I'd think that's pretty cool.

Thanks for trusting me with that. What I'm curious about as well is s- some of these recent heists. There was the Louvre heist. We touched on this. Where 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 y- 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 [01:23:00] it has any value on the black market.

Arthur Brand: Yes. When Oky sometimes is being asked, "Why did you steal these two Van Goghs? Because 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-thieves 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 heist, 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."

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Okay.

Arthur Brand: And that's what they did. It was so easy.

I don't know if you have seen clips of it. They, they went up to the first floor with a, an electronic ladder

Jordan Harbinger: So they use a cherry picker to go up to the second floor window and they just open the window?

Arthur Brand: And they open the window, yeah, with something, and they go in and take out the [01:24:00] stuff, and they slowly go down by the electric ladder, and they just go away and said, "Merci beaucoup."

Jordan Harbinger: Wow, and this is like five-minute heist.

Arthur Brand: Yeah, something like five minutes. And then they have the crown jewels, the French crown jewels, and they're driving up, off with them on their motorcycles. And now all these guys are in jail, but we have no clue where the stuff is.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh.

Arthur Brand: And what you said is they cut it down.

It's worth like 80 million, all these jewels together.

Jordan Harbinger: 18 million? Wow.

Arthur Brand: No, 80. 80 million. Eight, eight- Oh, my God ... 80's eight-zero, 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 5 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.

Jordan Harbinger: That's crazy. So a, 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. That's only in [01:25:00] the movies. 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.

Arthur Brand: 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's listening now, whatever village you live in or, or town, everybody has his 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." And they start thinking, "Don't we have a local museum?"

Jordan Harbinger: Right, because if you can rob the Louvre, you can rob the museum in your second-tier city.

Arthur Brand: 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. [01:26:00]

Jordan Harbinger: 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 there, they sell things, but you probably have armed security.

There's more vaults. People maybe look at a display or a photo, and then somebody's got to go get the piece for you. You've 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 n- and not security.

Arthur Brand: 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 ladder or whatever. They jump in, and they walk away. Nobody 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. [01:27:00] As you said, they should be open for the public and not turn them into a Fort Knox. It 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. Of 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 ladder or whatever, they just take a gun.

They walk in and say, "Where is this painting?"

Jordan Harbinger: So then they make you unlock it or they just start shooting people. Yeah, I mean, they're going to get it anyway is, 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?

Like, because diamonds have inclusions and stuff, right? There's little specks in there. Can you fingerprint important jewels [01:28:00] 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?

Arthur Brand: 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.

But 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. So, um

Jordan Harbinger: 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. [01:29:00] 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, Odalisque on the Terrace, and Cezanne, I guess you would pronounce it that way.

Cezanne. You can tell I know a lot about art. Cezanne'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?

Arthur Brand: 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 art related to money, and 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 [01:30:00] instead of paintings they now target gold, silver, and diamonds. Because these idiots in Italy, what are they going to do with these paintings?

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that was my question. Where are they going?

Arthur Brand: It's not worth... It's 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 and, 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, I think it was in 2019. The police was informed that some thieves would target a church, Breughel we say in the Netherlands, was hanging.

A very nice important painting by Breughel. 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 [01:31:00] then found out that the police had tricked them out.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Was there a tracking device in the frame or anything like that?

Arthur Brand: No, they put up... They are Italians. Yeah, they probably only put some cameras there that didn't work.

In the end they never caught the thieves.

Jordan Harbinger: Of course. Oh, my gosh.

Arthur Brand: I love the Italians, by the way. Yeah, it's my favorite people, but you know what I mean.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, it seems like they... And they have the biggest art squad, too, of anywhere in the world.

Arthur Brand: 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, of uncovered treasures. And 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.

Jordan Harbinger: You've 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 fricking frame, guys? Come on. Wow, this is just [01:32:00] insanely interesting. At some point we've got to do another one of these-

Arthur Brand: And at this very moment I'm cracking a case, a theft in the Netherlands, and I do it with, I was interviewed by two American journalists who have their own newspaper.

They are six and nine years old, two little girls. They interviewed me, uh, for their printed newspaper.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow.

Arthur Brand: 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 need, always need Okkie or another ex-criminal.

Sometimes you just need two smart girls of six and nine years old.

Jordan Harbinger: Amazing. Two little Nancy Drew fans. I don't know if people know who that is. There was a little detective stories when I was a kid. Unbelievable. Th- so interesting, man. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I 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.

Arthur Brand: Yeah, and it shouldn't [01:33:00] 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 and the Mona Lisa, for example, was not a famous painting before 1911.

Jordan Harbinger: Really?

Arthur Brand: Until it got stolen.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, I didn't know that.

Arthur Brand: 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.

Jordan Harbinger: I see. So when you have a painting that famous, the security I would hope is a little bit better than the window's locked and don't worry, we close the door at night.

Arthur Brand: One of the biggest collection in the world is in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. And in 1990, it has a Vermeer, a Rembrandt. And in 1990 there was a knock on the door. Two guys were sitting [01:34:00] 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 the 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 worth of paintings.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh my God.

Arthur Brand: You and I could have pulled it off, Jordan. We are not the smartest, but you and I could have done it, you know?

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. There's not a whole lot of trickery. This is not Ocean's 11 if you just knock on the door- Exactly ... pretend to be a cop and then steal over the course of an hour and a half.

Arthur Brand: Yeah.

Sometimes 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?"

Jordan Harbinger: I went to go see Edvard [01:35:00] 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 and ran.

Arthur Brand: It has been stolen twice already. And there is this clip, I think it was the 1994 case that it was stolen.

There were these guys, they put a ladder to the wall of the museum to the first floor. The ladder 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."

Jordan Harbinger: Oh my God. "

Arthur Brand: Goodbye." So it has been stolen twice. So if it's gets stolen the third time, we have proof, Jordan.

Jordan Harbinger: 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. This is absolutely fascinating.

Arthur Brand: No, it was great, Jordan. You're welcome.

Jordan Harbinger: You're about to hear a [01:36:00] preview of The Jordan Harbinger Show with a skilled art forger who made millions selling his fakes.

Ken Perenyi: 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 were led to my door. They uncovered a mountain of evidence against me.

Jordan Harbinger: But they never actually got you. Why did it go away? Why did you never get indicted? And how are we having this conversation?

Ken Perenyi: I guess that's the greatest story of all.

Jordan Harbinger: 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 [01:37:00] 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. I've 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. As 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/deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show. Don't forget about Six Minute Networking as well over at sixminutenetworking.com.

I'm @jordanharbinger on both Twitter and Instagram, or just hit me on LinkedIn. And this show is created in association with PodcastOne. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jase Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Tadas Sidlauskas, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The 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, [01:38:00] 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.