A multibillion-dollar global black market deals in gold, diamonds and other precious metals and jewels stolen from museums and private collections
After a group of thieves brazenly broke into Paris’s Louvre Museum and snatched eight pieces of jewelry that form part of France’s crown jewels, the chase is on to find them before they filter into the black market.
The fear: that these historic artifacts could be dismantled and sold for parts.
“Everybody in the business is talking about this right now,” said Robert Wittman, a former art-crime investigator with the Federal Bureau of Investigation who runs his own art-recovery practice. By everybody, he means both jewelry thieves and the private investigating firms who make a living hunting them down.
