FBI’s Art Crime Team

Tax Dollars well spent. The FBI maintains a team of special agents and prosecutors that can be dispatched anywhere in the United States or around the world to help in the sleuthing and recovery of stolen masterpieces.

The FBI is already famous for its Ten Most Wanted list. But did you know it also maintains a Ten Most Wanted Art Crimes list? Right now on that list are rare paintings, such as DaVinci’s Madonna of the Yarnwinder and a very rare Stradivarius Violin.

The FBI has assisted with the recovery of Munch’s The Scream and rare artifacts looted from the museums of Baghdad.

The FBI established a rapid deployment Art Crime Team in 2004. The team is composed of twelve Special Agents, each responsible for addressing art and cultural property crime cases in an assigned geographic region. The Art Crime Team is coordinated through the FBI’s Art Theft Program, located at FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C. Art Crime Team agents receive specialized training in art and cultural property investigations and assist in art related investigations worldwide in cooperation with foreign law enforcement officials and FBI Legal Attach offices. The U.S. Department of Justice has assigned three Special Trial Attorneys to the Art Crime Team for prosecutive support.

Since its inception, the Art Crime Team has recovered over 850 items of cultural property with a value exceeding $65 million.

The Art Crime Team has recently reopened a cold case file on the stolen painting by Norman Rockwell of the Russian Schoolroom.