Missing A Masterpiece? Call FBI's Art Crime Team [audio 5 min 6 sec]
Before Robert Wittman came along, the FBI treated stolen art in the same way it treated any ordinary property crime. But Wittman, a former FBI agent, saw art crime as different from a car theft or a bank robbery; it wasn't perpetrated by your average thief, and it wasn't sold to your run-of-the-mill fence or pawnbroker.
"It has got a different group of people involved in it," Wittman says. "You have to have some knowledge of what has been taken in order to determine where it might end up."
The FBI now has an entire team of agents devoted to art theft. The agents, who receive special art training, have recovered more than 850 stolen items of cultural and artistic significance. But there was a time when the FBI had just one art crimes investigator; Wittman remembers it well.
Read entire article at National Public Radio: All Things Considered
"It has got a different group of people involved in it," Wittman says. "You have to have some knowledge of what has been taken in order to determine where it might end up."
The FBI now has an entire team of agents devoted to art theft. The agents, who receive special art training, have recovered more than 850 stolen items of cultural and artistic significance. But there was a time when the FBI had just one art crimes investigator; Wittman remembers it well.