A Brilliant Russian Thief Stole A $185,000 Painting By Taking It Off A Crowded Museum's Wall And Leaving In Broad Daylight

RFERL- A suspect has been detained in the theft of a 20th-century painting by a Russian artist from Moscow’s state-run Tretyakov Gallery and the artwork has been recovered, officials say. The Interior Ministry said on January 28 that the 1908 painting of mountain ridges by Arkhip Kuindzhi had been hidden at a construction site outside Moscow.

The painting was stolen on January 27 from the Tretyakov Gallery during opening hours. Video-surveillance footage published in Russian media showed a man calmly taking a painting off the wall at the Tretyakovka Gallery before carrying it through a room filled with visitors. The stolen work — titled Ai-Petri. Crimea — depicts a mountain on the Crimea Peninsula. It had an insurance value of $185,000.

Go Boris Go!!! Who has time for all the scheming and other bullshit that goes into a Danny Ocean heist? That’s for the birds. You don’t become a criminal because you want to work hard. You become a criminal because you want to get money by doing as little work as possible. No need to scout a place for months to figure out when the security guards switch shifts or do a shitload of yoga so you can Catherine Zeta-Jones the laser nets.

Fuck all that. Just grip it and rip it in front of a room full of strangers and act like you are just doing your job Bill Belichick style. How many people are truly going to say something? It’s not like they know every employee of the museum. Shit, even people in the museum probably thought some new guy was told by a manager to move the painting and didn’t think anything of it. Boris just acted like he was supposed to be taking that painting and nobody gave a fuck. In fact, the only museum found out the painting was gone was because some idiot lost their coat

Police told the TASS news agency that the painting’s absence was noticed after officers were called to the gallery to investigate a missing fur coat and looked through surveillance footage.

Billy McFarland would shed a tear reading this story if his ass wasn’t locked in the clink. Everything about this is the perfect crime. And yes I know the cops ended up finding this guy and recovering the painting. But even after it happened, Boris still had an out. All he had to say was that the entire robbery was itself performance art about how life is about the illusion of power and how important it is to act like you are doing what you are supposed to be doing and he instantly would be off the hook. To be honest, he could probably charge the art museum for performing said artwork and they would either have to pay up or admit that art itself is a bunch of bullshit, which no person that is involved in the arts would ever do because all swear some sort of omerta once they get into the art game that can never be broken.

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