Spider-Man art thief took $147m haul with ‘disturbing ease’
An art thief had all the climbing skills of Spider-Man, a French court was told, yet he needed none of them to walk off with more than 100 million ($147m) worth of masterpieces — including a Matisse, Picasso and Modigliani — from a Paris museum with “disconcerting ease”.
Vjeran Tomic, 49, who earned the Spider-Man nickname after scaling buildings to rob apartments, was accused of stealing five paintings after he broke into the Musee d’Art Moderne opposite the Eiffel Tower in May 2010, in what has been described as one of the biggest painting thefts in recent years.
Two alleged accomplices are being tried alongside Tomic.
For all his agility as a burglar, Tomic merely had to break one pane of glass and a padlock to carry out his daring heist, a special Paris court for serious financial crimes was told.
Peimane Ghalez-Marzban, the presiding judge, yesterday lamented the “disconcerting ease” with which the thief evaded “defective” security to steal the “priceless” masterpieces.
Paris city hall put the value of the haul at 100m but some experts said it was worth twice that amount. They have not been recovered. Three guards were on duty on the night of the theft but due to a faulty alarm system the thief was able to move around freely. The guards said they switched off the alarms two months previously and informed their superiors.
During questioning, Tomic, who has 14 previous convictions, told police he had broken into the museum only to steal a Fernand Leger work — the 1922 painting Still Life with Candlestick — but once inside was “surprised” when the alarm failed to sound. He said that, being a “veritable art lover”, he wandered around for another hour, eluding 30 closedcircuit cameras — so poor that individuals were unrecognisable — to cherrypick four other masterpieces.
He took Picasso’s Dove with Green Peas (painted in 1911), Pastoral by Henri Matisse (1906), Olive Tree near l’Estaque by Georges Braque (1906), and Woman with Fan by Amedeo Modigliani (1919).
Outside court, he told reporters, “Who am I? Arsene Lupin,” referring to the notorious French master thief.
Tomic was arrested in May, 2011, after a tipoff. Police said he confessed to the theft but refused to say who ordered it. Two men are accused of receiving the stolen paintings. JeanMichel Corvez, an antiques dealer, is accused of ordering at least one of the works in exchange for 40,000 for Tomic, who told police the order was from a “Moroccan or Saudi”.
A third defendant, Yonathan Birn, a watch dealer and repairer, is accused of hiding the five works. During questioning he broke down in tears and claimed he had thrown the lot in the bin out of panic, a claim investigators said was improbable.