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You Know You’re a Lucky Thief When the Trailer You Stole Contains $250,000 Worth of Art

You’re either lucky or very well informed. However, if I were a thief and somebody told me there was a trailer parked on the streets of Los Angeles containing works from Marc Chagall, Henri Matisse, Keith Haring or Joan Miró, I’d tell him to go find another sucker who would believe that.
Keith Haring Mural 1 photo
Photo: Taís Melillo
Well, not all thieves are as circumspect as my imaginary alter-ego, since that’s exactly what happened back in November 2015. The police still can’t decide whether it was a fluke, or the thief knew exactly what he was doing. A simple way of finding out, we would imagine, is to check how many art-free trailers get stolen in L.A. on a regular basis. Not that many, we’d guess, so that makes it very likely that this wasn’t serendipity at work.

You might be wondering who keeps that kind of precious art in a trailer parked on the street, and we’d be right there with you to hear the answer. It’s probably somebody who has millions of dollars hung on their home’s walls or standing in glass displays - or, more likely, just lying around the house. The kind of person whose bathroom contains more valuable art than you can find in an entire suburbs street put together.

According to the owner’s statement quoted by LA Weekly, the trailer housed works estimated at around a quarter of a million dollars, and were there because of a “spacing issue.” In other words, the man had an excess of $250,000 in art, but was too cheap to rent a storage deposit box and chose just to keep them in a trailer. Easily made money? It could very well be the case.

The case is still under investigation as the art hasn’t been recovered yet. It might be a good time to insure your trailer, as they could become number one targets for thieves hoping to get lucky.

If you know anything that can help the case (if, say, somebody tried to sell you a Keith Haring painting at a discount in a dark alley), you can call the art theft investigators at 213-486-6940.
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About the author: Vlad Mitrache
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"Boy meets car, boy loves car, boy gets journalism degree and starts job writing and editing at a car magazine" - 5/5. (Vlad Mitrache if he was a movie)
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