Tossed onto a cheaply made table that was jammed into the corner of a unkempt hotel room, the rare oil painting’s quality was evident despite the dim light and squalid surroundings. A gruff thief sat alongside it, seduced into the open and actively sought by police in connection with the robbery from which the painting went missing. The seedy hotel was a gathering spot of choice.
Two accomplices, who seemingly would have preferred to complete the transaction with their concealed semiautomatic weapons, fidgeted around behind their gang’s leader, never taking their eyes off of the stolen painting or the man that they were about to trust to fence it for them. That man, probably someone the thieves should not have trusted, was undercover FBI Special Agent Robert K. Wittman.
“Yeah, its dangerous,” recalled a recently retired Wittman in a nonchalant manner. Wittman, who was the senior investigator for the Art Crime Team (ACT), has traveled to more than 20 countries following up leads on stolen artworks. He is regarded as one of the most famous art crime investigators in the world today †nicknamed by his peers as a “modern-day Indiana Jones.”
The above-mentioned painting, recovered by Wittman and ACT, joined a host of others in being returned to its rightful owners. The thieves, arrested by Wittman and ACT, joined a host of others as well †those behind bars in a federal penitentiary.
Wittman is personally responsible for the return of more than $225 million in art and antiques and has been instrumental in apprehending, prosecuting and convicting numerous individuals in these crimes. Wittman, who retired this past September after 20 years of service, is now free to discuss the stings, recoveries and events from his career as an FBI agent, or at least some of them.
Not all of Wittman’s rendezvous fit the bill of a made-for-television miniseries, although he confesses that “75 percent were cloak and dagger †from shady back rooms to five-star hotels, to yachts and auction houses.” Along the way, the special agent has “played roles as an authenticator, art professor and a very, very high-end buyer. Each role takes a different type of background, but there is a single common thread, an understanding of the business side of the world,” he says with the smile of a man in the know.
How dangerous is it? Without batting an eye, Wittman responds, “The last three big heists I investigated were all crimes committed at gunpoint; in one case, when the individuals were captured, one of them had a hand grenade and machine gun. Yeah, it is dangerous.”
There is an estimated $200 billion art market worldwide. Of that amount, the United States accounts for approximately 40 percent †roughly $80 billion a year, and within that figure, the criminal aspect accounts for an estimated $6 billion. “It is rated the fourth largest criminal activity in the world, behind drugs, guns and money laundering,” says Wittman.
While the commission of art crimes is not all that prevalent in the United States, about $2‴ billion annually, America’s involvement is still substantial.
“The United States is the largest consumer country †we buy,” says Wittman. He describes the major markets for stolen art as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Miami †with items from South America coming in through Miami, and New York being the gateway for the East Coast. “It has to do with ports and location. Pre-Columbian typically comes in on the West Coast and Dallas. Native American materials are filtered through Phoenix, Santa Fe and Albuquerque.”
Born in Japan, the son of a US serviceman serving during the Korean War, Wittman returned stateside with his parents as a toddler in 1958. Involvement with his family’s business in Baltimore began at an early age and, although he would not realize it for a couple decades, it would have a profound effect on his career.
“My dad collected and sold Oriental antiques. He had a shop on Howard Street, which was the prime street in Baltimore for antiques. It was there about ten years,” he said. “My parents had antiques all over the house, so I was cognizant of them and knew growing up that I had to be careful of them.” When his father’s health began failing, Wittman would help out in the shop on Saturdays, and it was there that he learned the trade.
Wittman attended Towsend University and left there with a political science degree, after which he worked in the newspaper industry. “Ten years after college is when I decided to go into the FBI,” he said. A decision prompted “after seeing racial prejudice in the late 1950s and early 1960s, after the Korean War †it was the Civil Rights angle †protecting people and protecting their constitutional rights,” he stated.
“I was surprised,” he said with a smile. “I applied in February and in September I was in Quantico.” Usually a prolonged period, Wittman was on the fast track.
In 1988, he graduated from the academy and became a special agent in the Philadelphia field office. Being the new guy on squad, Wittman was assigned to work with another agent who was involved with art theft cases. “Art property crime was not considered a high priority at all,” he said with chagrin. “Agent Bob Bazin had two cases open at that time, both involving thefts from museums in Philadelphia.
“They were successes,” he said with pride.
“The first case I worked on with Bazin was the theft of a Rodin mask, ‘The Man with the Broken Nose,’ stolen at gunpoint from the Rodin Museum on Philadelphia’s Museum Mile in November 1988. We recovered it about six months later. It was the first time I know of in US history where a firearm was used in the commission of museum theft, and that it was actually discharged,” he said.
“A white male went in with a 25 Raven pistol, a small silver pistol that looked like a lighter,” and committed the crime. “One of the guards did not believe it was a real gun, so he shot off a round into the wall. It was helpful later when we caught him; he still had the gun with him.”
The thief’s intentions were to sell the mask, then valued at about $75,000, at an auction. There was so much heat about the theft, however, that he went underground, wrapped it up and hid it under his mother’s water heater.
Simultaneously, a second case, the theft of a crystal ball from the University of Pennsylvania’s museum, took a while longer to crack. Said to be one of the largest crystal balls in the world, and estimated to be worth $300,000, it was recovered two years later, in 1991. “I suspect it was a fraternity prank. Don’t know for a fact, but it is now back where it belongs, the centerpiece in Oriental Hall in the museum,” Wittman noted.
With the quick closure of two high-profile cases behind him and a good knowledge of antiques, Wittman was the agent of choice to work cases involving art crimes for the next decade, until being handpicked to head up the ACT unit in 2005.
“Originally, they were going to call it the ‘Federal Art Recovery Team,’ but the initials didn’t work out so well,” said Wittman with one of his characteristic smiles. “Don’t put that in the article,” he recanted quickly. Only time will tell exactly how deep his sense of humor is.
“The Art Crime Team started with eight members and now comprises 12 members all around country,” stated Wittman as he steered the conversation back toward a more conservative and serious tone. “That is a legacy that I left, one I was very proud of.”
Under Wittman’s guidance and supervision, ACT recovered more than 850 works of art valued at more than $130 million.
Early on in his career, the FBI enrolled Wittman in classes at the Barnes Foundation so that he could acquire a background in art history. Later, he was sent to Gemological Institute of America in Santa Monica, Calif., for diamond and jewelry training.
He quickly found himself tracking down stolen paintings, setting up sting operations, working with Interpol and other worldwide art crime organizations and chumming it up with thieves in an effort to have them let down their guard and step out from the shadows.
“Criminals follow money. The crooks see the value of these antiques and they go where the antiques are,” says Wittman.
Cases investigated by Wittman include a theft at the Pennsbury Manor, the historical home of William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania. “Three local individuals on a Friday night kicked in the door and ransacked the place. Their plans were to sell everything at local auction. But the next day the front page of every newspaper in the area was plastered with the story, so they took everything, put it in plastic bags and dumped it all in the Delaware River.”
Roughly $100,000 worth of original William Penn artifacts, including a pewter plate given to Penn and his wife as a wedding gift, were recovered by police dive teams, although “we did lose a Sixteenth Century jewelry casket, which floated away down the river,” he said. The trio was prosecuted for their crimes by Wittman’s cohort in the pursuit of justice in the world of art crimes since 1989, US Assistant Attorney Robert Goldman.
“Bob and I have been together since 1989,” says Wittman fondly. “We have worked dozens of cases. I, myself, was involved in a total of 40‵0 cases with Bob, all cases that have convictions or outcomes.”
Goldman, now on his own after leaving the US Attorney’s office in 2006, followed by a two-plus-year stint with the Philadelphia-based law firm Fox Rothschild until this past January, has an extensive background in courtroom litigation, with some 30 years of experience. He graduated from the School of Law at Villanova in 1977, an undergraduate of the University of Virginia with a history major. He began a career as a prosecutor soon after graduation and was appointed an assistant US attorney more than more than 22 years ago.
The Penn case also resulted in the first prosecution and convictions under a federal Theft of a Major Artwork statute that Wittman and Goldman effectively used for the first time, ushered into law in 1990 by Senator Ted Kennedy after the Isabel Stewart Gardner Museum robbery in Boston.
The return of the manuscript for Pearl Buck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Good Earth , written in 1930, is also a feather in Wittman’s cap. The manuscript, missing for many years, was discovered at a local auction and, through Wittman’s efforts, returned. It is currently back on view at the Pearl S. Buck Foundation.
There is also the recovery of numerous paintings stolen from a private estate in Madrid, Spain. Recovery included 17 paintings; especially poignant were two by Francisco Goya, valued at $50 million.
The recovery of Rembrandt’s “Self-Portrait” from 1630, valued at $36 million, stolen from the Swedish National Museum in Stockholm, was also a major accomplishment. As was the recovery of five Norman Rockwell paintings stolen from a private gallery in Minneapolis, reportedly worth $1 million, that were discovered in a Brazilian farmhouse.
Then there was the theft of an 1862 Tiffany presentation sword awarded to Admiral John Worden for his heroic command aboard the USS Monitor during its Civil War battle with the CSS Virginia (Merrimac). Stolen from the US Naval Academy in 1932, it was recovered by Wittman’s team.
Two of the cases Wittman often refers to during the numerous speaking engagements that he hosts involve the looting of the Royal Tomb of the Lord of Sipan in Peru and the recovery of Geronimo’s eagle feather war bonnet.
Wittman has lectured at institutions such as the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Museum of Fine Art, Boston, and the Minneapolis Institute of Art.
In the Peruvian looting, Wittman arranged a sting operation that took place in a rest area on the New Jersey Turnpike. It resulted in the recovery of a 2,000-year-old golden pre-Columbian piece of body armor known as a back-flap that was valued at $1.2 million.
Goldman refers to this case as one of the most rewarding cases he was ever involved with, actually a participant in the sting operation in Peru, because he was able to be a key player in the return of a national treasure. “When we recover these things, it lets future generations see, feel and touch the past. They provide a critical connection to past generations,” says Goldman. “These objects, whether General Meade’s sword from the Battle of Gettysburg or the Peruvian back-flap, show us how we became part of the civilization that we are. They teach us lessons of both our historical strengths and weaknesses.”
“The tragedy of art theft,” according to Wittman, is that “we, as a culture, lose our history when someone commits that type of crime. Stealing cars or robbing banks †they don’t carry the cultural impact that will be felt for generations to come as art theft does.”
“The last case I did involved four paintings stolen from Musee des Beaux-Arts in Nice, France. They were stolen at gunpoint in August 2007 and were recovered after a yearlong investigation involving a fairly extensive undercover case investigation,” said Wittman. The special agent was undercover in Miami and trying to convince the French thieves to sell the paintings to him. Recovered and since returned to the museum, the paintings were “Allegory of Life” and “The Allegory of Water” by Peter Brueghel, the Elder, and Hendrik von Balen, circa 1611; “Cliffs Near Dieppe” by Claude Monet, 1897; and “The Lane of Poplars at Moret” by Alfred Sisley, 1890.
Unfortunately, a lot of unrecovered stolen material winds up in the dealer network, usually acquired and marketed by traders who represent the pieces as items with clear title. Of the art and artifacts stolen, Wittman says that 85 percent of the materials are unidentifiable. “Most pieces are stolen from homes,” he says, adding that the recovery rate “is about five percent.”
Once an item is identified as stolen, however, there is little that can be done not to ensure that the average dealer does not become the next victim in the crime. “Know not only what you are buying, but who you are buying it from” is Wittman’s sage advice.
Paintings that appear on the market and are later identified as stolen are subject to a seizure warrant executed by the authorities. “We seize the painting and then the person is interviewed. If they were a good faith buyer, they may lose their investment, but they would not be arrested. In the United States, you cannot sell stolen property or transfer good title,” he says.
“Stealing the art is easier than selling the art,” says Wittman. “High-profile, high-dollar items will tend to get a lot of publicity, which means thieves can’t move it quickly, so it may take a long time to resurface. Such is the case with recognizable original artwork. Mass produced or limited edition items are a whole different ball game due to the fact that there may be no distinguishable marks that will clearly identify the piece as stolen property.”
In regard to the crook, “There is never a stereotypical person †there isn’t a profile, it could be anyone. Honestly,” he says, “it’s about how much money the criminal can make from that theft.”
Accolades continue to be bestowed upon Wittman. In 2000, he was awarded the Peruvian Order of Merit for Distinguished Service, presented by the president of Peru. In 2001, the Outstanding Contributions in Law Enforcement Award, presented by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft. In 2003, he was presented the White Cross of Law Enforcement Merit Medal by the Spanish National Police, and in 2004, the Robert Burke Memorial Award for Excellence in Cultural Property Protection by the Smithsonian Institution.
Similar awards have been bestowed to Goldman. In 2006, he was presented the Smithsonian Burke Award for Excellence in Cultural Property Protection. He was selected as a “Super Lawyer” by Philadelphia Magazine and Law & Politics Magazine that same year and also in 2007. And he received the Department of Justice Director’s Award for Superior Performance as an assistant US attorney for his investigation and prosecution of museum and art theft cases in 2001.
Now that two key players are no longer associated with the federal government and its art crimes investigations, “There is a big void out there,” remarks Goldman. “The government does not have the manpower or resources to apply the proper scrutiny to these cases. They don’t have the staying power. Bob loves what he does, he is committed. This is his daily bread.”
Has retirement slowed either of them down? Not at all. Wittman is as busy as ever conducting his own investigations as a private consultant and investigator in art security and recovery matters †and calling on his old friend Goldman to aid in the legal assistance aspect.
Wittman’s new company, Robert Wittman, Inc, Art Security Consulting, has tapped into a niche market, working with galleries, individuals and insurance companies to aid in the recovery of stolen works of art.
“We find stolen paintings, heirlooms, stolen pieces that are owned by families and try to get them back; we investigate fraud and investigate fake art,” says Wittman. “When you can’t use law enforcement, instead of letting go, we shake the trees and dredge the rivers and the chances of recovery improves dramatically.”
Goldman’s new company, Robert E. Goldman LLC, provides him the flexibility to better represent clients. “Without the tight restrictions of the government or the firm, I am able to be much more effective.” At 56 years of age, Goldman commented, “I am enjoying myself as a lawyer now more than ever.” Citing a father who is 90 years old and still a lawyer, Goldman confided, “I think I am about halfway through my career.”
When Wittman is asked about his most satisfying and rewarding case, a smile creeps across his face as he says, “The next one is the most satisfying. There’s always a next one and the next one is always the best one.”
Wittman may be contacted at 610-361-8929 or www.robertwittmaninc.com ; Goldman may be reached via email at [email protected] .
