Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by Fnord666 on Monday February 26 2018, @02:33AM   Printer-friendly
from the do-you-have-anything-to-declare? dept.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/02/24/588537379/customs-agents-search-a-bus-near-paris-and-discover-a-stolen-degas-painting

In December 2009, a small painting by Edgar Degas was quietly stolen from the Cantini museum in Marseille, France. Museum staff discovered Les Choristes was missing when they arrived in the morning, and the prosecutor suggested it could be an inside job because the painting had been unscrewed from the wall and there was no evidence of a break-in. An investigation was launched, but nine years went by and the 1877 painting — worth an estimated $1 million — wasn't seen again.

That was until last Friday, when French customs agents happened to check a bus parked at a highway stop about 18 miles east of Paris. The officers opened a suitcase in the luggage compartment, and there it was: vibrant pastels in red, orange, and yellow, depicting a chorus from the opera Don Juan. In the lower left hand corner: Degas' signature. The agents asked the bus passengers who owned the suitcase. No one claimed it.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 26 2018, @02:52AM (6 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 26 2018, @02:52AM (#643712)

    Shouldn't they have taken the other suitcases (one at a time) and found out who owned them? By process of elimination they *may* have been able to find the thief. It would also help if the driver remembered loading more than one suitcase for any one passenger (or how many passengers didn't have anything in the luggage compartment.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 26 2018, @03:00AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 26 2018, @03:00AM (#643714)

    Why do agents board buses and then search the luggage to begin with? That sounds quite authoritarian.

    • (Score: 4, Informative) by frojack on Monday February 26 2018, @03:57AM (1 child)

      by frojack (1554) on Monday February 26 2018, @03:57AM (#643745) Journal

      No, it sounds like a tip off.

      Or a paid ransom resulting in a anonymous phone call.

      --
      No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
      • (Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday February 26 2018, @02:40PM

        by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us (6553) on Monday February 26 2018, @02:40PM (#643945) Journal

        Interesting. Because if no one spoke up to claim it, they didn't have the ability to dust the case for prints / take prints of everyone on board? (And the answer might be that the suitcase wasn't printable due to construction...) Makes much more sense that they were operating on a tip.

        --
        This sig for rent.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 26 2018, @03:13AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 26 2018, @03:13AM (#643721)

    Bus passengers tend to travel light, so many may have nothing but carry-on. Then there would have been other passengers with more than one piece of luggage. Busses (and trains) also tend not to have cargo manifests like air-craft. They just take whatever you leave in the 'cargo' area and put it in the hold when they've opened it up.

    Unless the bus was at a border crossing, it's odd that a customs agent was searching the cargo area and started opening suitcases without passengers present. Maybe they did, maybe that was the only 'unclaimed' piece of luggage, so they opened it up.

    Also, bus/coach security is pretty lax. It may have been loaded in by someone not on the bus, and was being 'received' by someone else at the destination. No record of travel, no record of shipment.

    The real smart thing (assuming they didn't open the case in the presence of passengers), would have been to close the case back up (sans painting), and follow the case to see who picks it up at the other end.

    • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday February 26 2018, @03:44AM

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Monday February 26 2018, @03:44AM (#643734) Journal

      That's probably the best idea. The only improvement I can think of, is IF they happened to have a GPS tracking device at hand, they could have plopped that into the suitcase. I don't suppose that a small group of customs agents are likely to have a suitable device at hand though.

  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Monday February 26 2018, @03:42AM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday February 26 2018, @03:42AM (#643732) Journal

    Shouldn't they have taken the other suitcases (one at a time) and found out who owned them?

    You're making the broad assumption that the owner of the suitcase was on the bus. I think this AC [soylentnews.org] had it right. Someone paid the ransom and the police were told where to find the painting. It would have been easy to mill around with the passengers, toss the suitcase on board somewhere, and then walk off.