Variety: Graham King's PRICELESS deal
Graham King is developing a feature version of "Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World's Stolen Treasures," the just-published memoir by Robert K. Wittman.
King's GK Films snapped up rights late last week to the book, four days after it was published.The tome recounts Wittman's 20-year stint as the FBI's resident art theft expert. It's already on the New York Times Bestseller List.
The Associated Press: A "Stunning Autobiography"
Adopting the false but carefully documented identity of Bob Clay, a shady art dealer with a taste for contraband, Wittman successfully infiltrated domestic and international criminal networks to recover more than $225 million worth of stolen cultural property - items ranging from a Rembrandt self-portrait to an original copy of the U.S. Bill of Rights.
The Boston Globe: Book Alleges Turf War Ruined Gardner Heist Lead
The FBI was on the trail of recovering the principal masterpieces stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum from a criminal gang in Corsica two years ago only to have its efforts dashed, in part because of bureaucratic infighting among federal agents and supervisors.
NPR: Missing A Masterpiece? Call the FBI's Art Crime Team
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.
The Wall Street Journal: From the Art World to the Underworld
Shortly after 9 a.m. on June 4, three men drove to a seaside promenade near Marseilles, their van carrying paintings by Brueghel, Sisley and Monet. The art had been stolen at gunpoint from the Museum of Fine Arts in Nice last August. Now a Frenchman working for an American art dealer was supposed to show up and buy four works for $4.6 million in cash.
USA WEEKEND Magazine: Ex-FBI agent's new book debunks myths.
What you've heard about art crime isn't true: Thieves rarely hit the jackpot. Famous pieces too hot to sell.
ARTnews: A Crime Waiting To Happen
What are the theories of two of the world's top art-theft sleuths about the heist early Thursday morning of paintings by Picasso, Matisse, Braque, Modigliani, and Leger worth at least $120 million from the Museum of Modern Art in Paris? "It was a crime waiting to happen," said Robert K. Wittman, who with John Shiffman has written the memoir Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World's Stolen Treasures.
The Philadelphia Inquirer: Experts Studying Paris Art Heist Clues
Who done it? The theft of five paintings worth $112 million from the Modern Art Museum in Paris on Thursday left experts on two continents studying clues to one of the largest heists in modern times.
The Washington Post: Heist-proof museums?
Last week's $123 million heist of cubist and post-impressionist works at the Paris Museum of Modern Art continues a rash of painting pilferage in Europe over the past decade, with sensational headlines vaulting across the Atlantic. Van Goghs vanish in Amsterdam in 2002! "The Scream" swiped in Oslo in '04! Picassos purloined in Paris in '07 and '09!
