Art crime

Polychrome 17th-century statue that was stolen from a church in 2007 is returned to Mexico

The artefact had been recovered from a US gallery in 2017, but since then its status was a mystery

Manhattan District Attorney's Office returns antiquities worth a total of $500,000 to Mexico

The trove of 30 Mesoamerican objects includes a ceremonial trophy for the first ball game

Looted Etruscan treasures seized after ‘tomb raiders’ post works online

Italian police used wire taps and drone surveillance to intercept the thieves

US authorities return antiquities valued at $10m to India

The repatriated artefacts—1,440 in all—included pieces that had passed through the New York galleries of Subhash Kapoor and Nancy Wiener

Fake Banksy haul seized by Italian police

Vast Europe-wide art fraud operation led to 38 suspects being arrested

‘Everything went wrong’: Warhol prints stolen and damaged in bungled Netherlands heist

Two of the vulnerable works were damaged and abandoned, while two others were apparently too large to fit in the getaway car and so were cut out of their frames

Footloose fraudster Anna Sorokin voted off Dancing with the Stars

While she inspired Inventing Anna on Netflix, Sorokin struggled to reinvent herself as a top-tier dancer during her short stint on the reality competition show

Disgraced adviser Lisa Schiff's art holdings planned for auction at Phillips starting in November

Bankruptcy trustees have proposed selling hundreds of works through the auction house, with hopes to recover up to $2m

Alleged leader of ‘biggest art fraud in the world’ sentenced in Canada

Prosecutors described David Voss as the leader of a forgery ring that created thousands of fake works by Norval Morrisseau

From ‘Soho scammer’ to television dancer: Anna Sorokin will compete on Dancing with the Stars

The purported German heiress’s grand plans to open a Manhattan art club unravelled in 2018 and were the subject of the Netflix series “Inventing Anna”

Collection of Salvator Mundi Museum in Brooklyn confirmed as safe after break-in

The small storefront institution, devoted to objects and ephemera related to the most expensive painting ever sold, will reopen soon

Art crimeanalysis

Who should be able to profit from art criminals’ stories?

Television series linked to convicted fraudsters such as Inigo Philbrick and Anna Delvey raise ethical and legal questions

$1.2m Picasso drawing purchased with allegedly misappropriated funds recovered by US officials

The work on paper, purchased at Christie’s New York in 2014, was allegedly paid for with money embezzled from Malaysia’s 1MDB sovereign investment fund

Former New Orleans police officer indicted for allegedly orchestrating ill-fated art insurance scam

Christian Claus faces decades in prison for faking an art heist that would have netted a co-conspirator a $128,500 insurance payout

Operators of New York auction house charged with illegal sales of ivory and rhino horn artefacts

The Manhattan District Attorney's Office has charged the owners of Merces Gallery with selling prohibited animal products online

Former Vatican employee arrested for allegedly trying to sell Bernini manuscript

The 18-page document had previously disappeared from the Holy See's official archive

Alleged ringleader of Canada’s ‘biggest art fraud’ pleads guilty

David Voss reportedly led a forgery operation that created more than 1,500 fake Norval Morrisseau works over 23 years

‘We’ve got our man’ says British Museum chair as BBC programme digs deep into thefts

George Osborne’s comments were made on Thief at the British Museum, which has been released both as a one-off television show and a radio series

Officials in New York return antiquities worth $14m to Pakistan

Some of the 133 objects being repatriated are associated with the antiquities smugglers Subhash Kapoor and Richard Beale

British Museum recovers a further 268 stolen objects

The institution’s chair George Osborne has described the total number of items returned as a result that “few expected”, though more than 800 remain missing

Theft of Bronze Age gold artefacts from UK museum sparks fresh concerns about lack of government investment in sector

A bracelet and torc dating back thousands of years were taken from Cambridgeshire’s Ely Museum last week, shining a light on underfunding and its potential impact on security

Painting stolen from Chatsworth House 45 years ago discovered at auction

The oil on wood painting by Eramus Quelliness II was taken in a raid in 1979, though the thieves left behind much more valuable works

Stolen Italian landscape returned to Oxford's Christ Church Picture Gallery from Romania

Police are appealing for information about two other paintings stolen in the same 2020 burglary

Art fraudster Inigo Philbrick’s glamorous rise and dramatic fall to become television series

A production company working with HBO has optioned a memoir by Philbrick’s former friend and business partner Orlando Whitfield

Man who sold 145 fraudulent Peter Max paintings sentenced to 14 months in prison

More than 40 people bought what they thought were original paintings by Max, but were in fact prints to which the seller had added paint and signatures

The Week in Art podcast | Inigo Philbrick and art world fraud, Hong Kong’s new security law, a Maharaja’s sword

Is a return for the disgraced art dealer that unthinkable? Plus, how Article 23 might impact the art sector, and a closer look at a royal weapon coming on show in London

Art forger who duped collectors with fake Renaissance woodblock prints sentenced to more than four years in prison

Earl Marshawn Washington had pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and mail fraud this past summer

British Museum’s legal action over thefts is ‘locking the stable door after the horse has bolted’, experts say

The museum's former acting head of the Greece and Rome department, Peter Higgs, is facing legal action after being accused of stealing up to 2,000 objects