George Leslie was an architect who decided that he would earn more as a criminal, and boy howdy did he. He stole millions from banks around the place, but his biggest score was in Manhattan.
He planned for more than three years, studying the building and drawing up his own blueprints using his architectural knowledge. However, he died before it ever happened – many believe it was by one of his own men, Tom Draper. Even with Leslie out, the crime went off as planned, netting almost three million dollars – nearly eighty million now.
The Antwerp Diamond Center — $100 Million
It only took a weekend for a group of Italians to clean out the Antwerp Diamond Centre in Belgium during February 2003, but they managed to get away with over a hundred million dollars worth of bling. They cleaned out a hundred and nine safe boxes, and the bank workers came to realize what happened.
The thieves had to disable heat-sensing infrared systems (by covering the cameras with plastic bags), and they also had to disable the alarms. Finally, they stole the security videos. Sometime later, one Leonardo Notarbartolo was arrested and found to have masterminded the heist.
The Bank of England Treasury — $300 Million
Not only is this next entry one of the biggest robberies in the United Kingdom ever, but it's also a famous mystery. In May of 1990, a messenger left the Bank of England with millions of dollars in bonds. Then, as investigators believe, a man named Patrick Thomas approached him and ran away with all of those bonds, totaling about three hundred million dollars.
However, a few short months later Patrick Thomas was found dead and was never successfully charged with the crime. His partner Keith Cheeseman, however, was sentenced to jail.
The Mona Lisa Gets Stolen From the Louvre — $870 Million
The Louvre is one of the most famous museums in the world, and the Mona Lisa is one of the most famous paintings in the world – how could someone possibly steal it? Actually, few cared much about the painting before Italian handyman Vincenzo Peruggia hid in a Louvre closet and took the tiny painting with him when leaving that night.
Peruggia thought he was returning a piece of storied Italian heritage, despite the fact that King Francis I bought the painting legally after Leonardo da Vinci finished it in France. Obviously, the painting was recovered, and Peruggia spent only seven months in jail.
The Clay County Savings Association Robbery — $60,000
This one involves one of the most notorious and famous criminals in American history – Jesse James. Though he's never been officially linked to the crime, it's suspected that Jesse James is responsible. It was actually the first-ever peacetime daylight bank robbery, taking place on February thirteenth, 1866.
Between ten and thirteen men dressed as officials made a getaway with sixty thousand in cash, bonds, and even gold. Sixty thousand dollars then is worth more than a million dollars now. Whenever you hear about a train or bank robbery or something similar in a western film, this is what inspired the plot point.
Bacon Stolen From a Private Home — $33.3 Million
A lot of the art heists in this article happened at museums and the like, but this one actually happened at a private residence. In 2015, thieves broke into the home of José Capelo, who was the rightful owner of five Francis Bacon paintings worth more than thirty million dollars in total. Seven people were arrested in connection with the theft, and three of the five paintings have been recovered so far.
Seeing as it took place at a private residence, many of the heist's details have been kept private, but it's still one of the biggest art heists in Spanish history.
Russian Hackers — $100 Million
You can do some serious damage with computers nowadays. Just like Evgeniy Mikhailovitch Bogachev, AKA “Slavik.” It's a lot easier to spell, too. Better yet, ask the people that he robbed from using his Gameover Zeus and CryptoLocker software viruses, two of the most dangerous ever created.
Slavik was able to take control of over a million computers in a wide range of countries. He could even break into United States banks and steal plenty of money – about a hundred million dollars. Incredibly, Slavik still lives in Russia in a mansion – the FBI never managed to arrest him, and Russia isn't gonna help.
The Philadelphia Insectarium and Butterfly Pavilion Heist — $40,000
People will steal anything these days, including bugs. In 2018, more than forty thousand dollars of insects and lizards were lifted from the Philadelphia Insectarium and Butterfly Pavilion – the total number of animals is thought to be seven thousand! This included leopard geckos, warty glow spot roaches, and everybody's favorite big hairy spider, the tarantula.
There's a good chance all of these animals were on their way to being resold. Police found staff uniforms for the place hanging on the wall, stuck there by knives, which indicates this might have been an inside job.
The Greatest Art Heist Ever — $500 Million
The day after St. Patrick's Day in 1990 was the time of the biggest art heist in modern history. It happened at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. The stolen artwork is valued at a total of five hundred million dollars and includes a Monet, a Vermeer, a Rembrandt, and more.
The works are still missing as of 2021, and the amount of value has gotten plenty of attention. It's all too possible that these paintings have been destroyed, the mob has been involved, the guards were in on it, or something else entirely.
The Dresden Jewelry Heist — $1.2 Billion
Yes, that's a billion with a B. One of the largest art heists ever committed took place in a single minute. In 2019, thieves cut the power of the Grünes Gewölbe museum in Dresden and used an axe to smash open display cases, eventually leaving with jewelry that totaled a whopping one-point-two billion dollars.
They included some of the most famous pieces of jewelry in the world, including a sword that bears eight hundred diamonds, as well as a diamond that was almost fifty carats. Several people have been arrested for the robbery, but so far none of the pieces have been recovered.
The Amsterdam Diamond Robbery — $80 Million
Not only is this one of the biggest robberies that have ever happened, but it was also one of the few that happened in such an interesting place – an airport. In 2005, a group of ne'er-do-wells was able to make off with eighty million dollars worth of diamonds.
They entered the airport dressed as airline crew, armed with weapons, and they forcibly robbed the people transporting the jewels. They took off in a van that looked like it was part of the same airline, and many thought they would get away Scot-free. They were eventually found and arrested in 2017.
The Bee Hive Heist — $875,000
Beelieve it or not, bees can fetch a high price in the black market. In January 2017, a beekeeper north of Sacramento, California discovered this at the wrong time. You see, almond trees need to be pollinated to produce those good almonds, and grove owners will pay out the nose for bees that are trained for the job.
However, a ring of hive thefts had been happening in the area, and the trail (which was probably pretty noisy because of all the buzzing) led to one Pavel Tveretinov, who was in possession of thousands of hives. He'd probably been stung a bunch, too.
The Baker Street Robbery — $9 Million
This proves to be one of the more interesting heists in European history, taking place in 1971 in Lloyds Bank in London. It was an inside job – the gang also rented a leather shop a short distance from the bank and tunneled under the street to the bank. They blew their way through the floor and made off with nine million dollars in today's money.
There are also a lot of conspiracies about this heist. One of the most famous of which is that the thieves were hired by MI5 to snag some racy photos of Princess Margaret from one of the lock boxes.
The Pierre Hotel Heist — $3 Million
It's nice to see that there are thieves with a little bit of heart, which is what the people behind this theft proved to be. In 1972 a team of crooks bursts into the Pierre Hotel wearing fake beards and thick glasses. They took the staff of this Manhattan hotel hostage and started emptying out the cash boxes and safety deposit boxes.
They were able to make off with about three million, including cash and jewelry. However, they paid people for their time – once they had collected everything, they gave each of the hostages a twenty to make up for the whole being-taken-hostage thing.
The Nutella and Kinder Chocolate Egg Heist — $80,000
Sure, it might not be priceless jewelry or famous paintings, but chocolate can still be worth a pretty penny. The time was August 2017, and the place was Neustadt, Germany. Thieves stole a refrigerated truck that carried twenty tons of Nutella and Kinder chocolate eggs. The horror! It was worth about eighty thousand dollars.
It resulted in German police warning people in the country that if anyone tries to offer them lots of chocolate, it might be the thieves. Amazingly, the very same weekend a trailer carrying thirty tons of fruit juice was stolen in Wittenberg, about 260 miles northeast of the original robbery.
The Theft That Ended in a Toilet — $4 Million
While the pieces of art stolen from the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester, England aren't that famous, the rest of the heist's details are. It took place in 2003, and it had the thieves grabbing a few paintings, stuffing them all into a cardboard tube, and leaving them in an old toilet less than a thousand feet from the Whitworth.
Apparently, the thieves just wanted to prove the security was bad despite the museum saying that it was on par with other places. The works suffered minimal damage and returned to their regular spots not long after they were recovered. The thieves are still at large.
The Tate Insurance Scandal — $38 Million
This is a weird one. It starts normal enough: in 1994, thieves make off with a trio of paintings from the Frankfurt Schirn Kunsthalle after tying up the guards. Two of the paintings, both by J. M. W. Turner, had been loaned by the Tate in London, and another from the Kunsthalle Hamburg.
The search for the paintings took quite a long time, but the Turner paintings were eventually discovered...in the Tate. They had not only secretly been able to retrieve the paintings on their own, but they netted almost forty million pounds thanks to insurance. Legal? You'll have to ask an expert.
The Oft-Stolen Painting – $3 Million
“Jacob de Gheyn III” by Rembrandt holds a Guinness record for being the most-stolen painting ever. It's been stolen four times, including in 1966, when it and seven other paintings were lifted from the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London. Thankfully, authorities were able to apprehend one of the thieves and recover all of the paintings.
This Rembrandt was then stolen in 1973, either August or September of 1981, and sometime during 1983. Once it was found in a British army garrison in Münster, Germany, and twice it was found in random places around the country, being returned anonymously by good sorts.
A Two-Ton Statue Gets Stolen — $18 Million
Paintings are light. You aren't walking off with two tons of bronze. However, that's exactly what happened in 2005, when an outdoor sculpture by Henry Moore, “Reclining Figure,” was taken by thieves in the night. We assume it was at night since it weighed two tons.
What the thieves could have possibly done with the sculpture baffled investigators for years. It was eventually deemed likely to have been melted down for scrap and sold for approximately 1500 British pounds. At the time there was a booming market in China for scrap metal. The people responsible have never been, and likely will never be, caught.
A Caravaggio Cuts Cut Out of a Frame – Unknown
This legendary art heist still remains unsolved, and the painting unrecovered. During the night of a storm, crooks burst into the Oratory of San Lorenzo in Palermo, Italy, and cut “Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence” out of its frame, which had hung above the altar. Plenty of people thought they had the answer.
Ideas about the mafia, the painting being burned, or it being fed to animals started to float around. The painting was pronounced lost until 2017 when Italy's anti-Mafia commission reopened the case thanks to some new leads. However, those leads went nowhere, and the painting is still missing.
Just Taking Some Impressionist Paintings Off the Wall — $20 Million
Talk about daring – imagine buying a ticket to go into the Musée Marmottan in Paris in 1985, and then just taking some paintings off the wall. That's what some thieves did to take off with paintings like Claude Monet's “Impression, Sunrise,” as well as other works.
They took out guns and held nine guards and forty visitors at gunpoint as they lifted the paintings off their nails. It took five years for all nine pieces of art to be recovered at a villa in Corsica. Seven people were arrested at the same time.
The Dar Es Salaam Bank — $298 Million
Talk about eye-popping numbers! In 2007, three security guards entered the Dar es Salaam Bank, found in Iraq, and made off with almost three hundred million dollars. Like many of the other examples on this list, employees came in on Monday and found the bank door open and the money missing. The security guards were real employees, and against all odds, they seem to have gotten away completely.
Investigators never got the thieves, and it's very likely that the perps are living abroad under completely new names. Amazingly, this isn't even the biggest robbery that has happened in Iraq.
The Crown Jewelry Robbery — Unknown Cost
Thomas Blood is the kind of name that people remember, and he doesn't even have to steal England's crown jewels. Which he did. This skilled thief was also a master of disguise and entered the Tower of London dressed like an Anglican clergyman in 1671. He also hired an actress to play his wife.
He and a few friends visited the Tower, and at one point he simply announced that he was robbing the place. He was caught immediately (just a few hours), and the jewels were recovered. The cost of this would have been priceless, but thankfully it doesn't need to be calculated.
A Security Expert Steals a Cellini Masterpiece — $60 Million
“The Saliera,” a 1543 golden salt cellar sculpture, is the only piece of art attributed to Renaissance master Benvenuto Cellini that survived. In 2003, a thief took it from its resting place at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. An alarm went off, but a guard thought the alarm was just an accident.
The thief tried to ransom the art back for about twelve million dollars and was discovered to be Robert Mang, an alarm systems expert. Quite ironic. After he was collared, he led investigators to a forest outside Vienna, where the incredible piece of work had been buried in a lead box.
The Adair, Iowa, Train Robbery — $3,000
Three thousand dollars isn't the biggest score of the century, not even if this robbery took place in 1873. It's only about seventy-five thousand dollars, but the robbers of this train were after far more: gold bullion, worth almost two million in today's money. This was the famous outlaw Jesse James, and though they did make off with some, they missed the big haul.
The gold bullion wound up on another train. It was the most infamous train robbery at the time and something that a lot of people would try to emulate. Hopefully, for the robbers, at least, with a better payout.
The Simple São Paulo Heist — $50 Million
Sometimes, stealing something from a museum is as simple as walking in with some tools during a guard shift change. That's exactly what some Brazilian thieves did in 2007, carrying a hydraulic jack and a crowbar and walking into Museu de Arte de São Paulo.
They left with a pair of paintings (one Picasso and one Cândido Portinari) and they stayed missing for several weeks until a suspect named a safe house where the paintings were held. The people eventually arrested had tried to get a hefty ransom for the return of the paintings. Once everything had settled down, the museum promised to increase security.
“The Last Judgment” Heist – Unknown
What very well may be the oldest heist in this article took place all the way back in 1473 – more than five hundred years ago. It was also the first known art heist (though likely there were many, many unknown heists). It came when a triptych – a piece of art with three sections – by Hans Memling, “The Last Judgment,” was nabbed while going from Belgium to Florence.
Pirates seized the piece of art, and you might think that was the end of this piece of art, but it survived. In fact, it's available to view at the museum in Gdańsk, Poland.
The Wisconsin Cheese Heists — $200,000
This next kind of heist could only happen in the dairy state, and it's happened a bunch of times. In fact, 2016 saw a trio of high-profile cheese thefts, and we've all suffered. The cost of the heists ranges from about forty-six thousand to almost a hundred thousand. The biggest one was, incredibly, entirely Parmesan cheese.
Just how much do a hundred thousand dollars of Parmesan weigh? After some incredibly unscientific figuring, probably about nine thousand pounds. Even in Wisconsin, it just seems like there are things that would be easier to steal. At least there won't be any evidence once you're done.
A Stockholm Heist Begins an International Chase — $30 Million
In 2000, a bunch of crooks burst into the Nationalmuseum (yes, it's one word) in Stockholm, armed with a submachine gun and a number of distractions (including exploding cars) in order to lift three paintings valued at thirty million. Authorities figured it wouldn't take long for the paintings to leave the country, so an intense effort to stop a potential sale began.
This sounds like it should be playing on the big screen right now. Two of the paintings have been recovered. One was during an unrelated drug raid, the second was during a potential sale for about forty-two million dollars.
“Portrait of a Lady” Goes Missing — $60 Million
Gustav Klimt's “Portrait of a Lady” is so expensive and famous because the Austrian artist apparently painted over it midway through the process. And it was stolen in 1997. It got nabbed from the Galleria d'Arte Moderna in Piacenza, Italy, and it stayed missing until December 2019.
A year before, a gardener had been pruning ivy at the gallery when he discovered a trash bag behind a panel in the building. Inside was the painting. Two men confessed in a letter saying they had returned the painting four years after the original theft as a gift to the city. Thanks, we guess.
The Strängnäs Cathedral Heist — $7 Million
Some of the thefts here are so carefully planned out that people don't even notice the theft until days later. This is not one of those thefts. A display of royal jewels was open for public viewing at Strängnäs Cathedral near Stockholm, and in 2018 some thieves went in and bust the display glass in broad daylight.
They made off with a pair of crowns and a golden orb dated to the sixteen hundreds, racing to a waiting speedboat and escaping. The perps have still never been caught, but only a year later the jewels were found on top of a garbage can outside Stockholm.
Amateurs Steal Archaeological Artifacts From Mexico – Unknown
Stealing paintings or jewelry is one thing, but taking native artifacts seems to be a step above in terms of bad things to do. Two amateur thieves did just this in 1985, including a priceless jade death mask of a Mayan ruler. They scoped the National Museum of Archaeology in Mexico City more than fifty times before crawling through air conditioning ducts and making off with lots of pieces of Mexican culture.
Once caught, the culprits revealed they had intended to trade them for illegal substances. The story is somewhat famous in Mexico thanks to the lack of expertise on the thieves' part.
The Great Gold Robbery — $1.5 Million
That price is in today's money, but that's still a pretty good amount for a robbery, especially if it's in actual gold. Two hundred pounds of it! It's one of the biggest heists in European history, taking place in May of 1855 in Paris. The crooks were able to swap the gold with lead in the safes to keep it from being discovered quickly, but the crew was betrayed from within.
A man named Edward Agar was arrested for a different crime and ratted out to the authorities after someone from the original crew took all the money for himself.
That One Time Some Guys Stole an Entire Church – Unknown
How does something like this happen? Well, it wasn't a traditional theft, that's for sure. First off, the church was abandoned at the time – it also happened in a Russian village. This wasn't the St. John's they were making off with. They came up with the idea to sell the church to a businessman for a ruble per brick. We don't even know if that's a lot.
While it would be nice if the businessman had simply rebuilt the church somewhere else, it's more likely the bricks were repurposed in different building projects. What are they gonna do, throw an entire village in prison?
Saddam Hussein — $1 Billion
That title doesn't mean that Saddam Hussein was stolen – it means he did the stealing. It was pretty simple for him, too. He just wrote a letter asking for a billion dollars and sent his son, Qusay, to the Central Bank of Iraq. Since Hussein was a dictator, the bank couldn't really do much about it.
This “heist” was right before the American army started pushing into the country – in fact, it was a mere day before. Hussein needed three tractor-trailers to move the cash, but most of it has been recovered. However, more than three hundred million dollars are still out there.
Renaissance Works Taken From Italy's Most Secure Museum — Unknown
Despite not even having an electronic system in 1975, it was thought that the Ducal Palace in Urbino was the most secure place for art in Italy. You can probably tell where this is headed. That same year, a group of crooks made off with three Renaissance paintings by Raphael and Piero Della Francesca, most likely to sell them on the international art black market.
Since the heist and the paintings themselves were so well-known, it wasn't long before these priceless pieces of art were recovered. They've returned to their spots, and have even made a few trips.
“The Scream” Gets Stolen During the Winter Olympics – Unknown
People love to steal Munch paintings, and this one happened during the backdrop of the 1994 Winter Olympics. A version of the Edvard Munch classic was hanging in the National Museum in Oslo, while the Olympics were just two hours north. The thieves entered, cut the wire holding the painting to the wall, and left a note thanking for the lax security.
The government refused to pay a one-million-dollar ransom, believing the offer to be false. This painting was finally recovered in a hotel north of Oslo. Four men were convicted of the theft.
Paintings Stolen From a Dutch Museum Burned – Between $26 and $100 Million
Most of the time, art that is stolen gets resold so that the thieves can make a profit. That's not always the case, though. In 2012, the Kunsthal Museum in Rotterdam lost works belonging to a number of artists – including Picasso, Monet, and more – during a big heist that took only three minutes. Net worth is anywhere from twenty-six to a hundred million dollars.
Five people were arrested, and then the mother of the Romanian man responsible claimed she burned the paintings. A forensic analysis of the ash was inconclusive, so it's unsure if she was telling the truth.
The Van Gogh Lockdown Theft – Unknown
March 2020 saw a lot of galleries and museums shutting their doors and this proved to be a prime time for enterprising thieves. A heist at the Singer Laren museum in the Netherlands had robbers making off with an early Vincent Van Gogh painting, “The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring,” which is thought to be priceless.
It had been on loan from another museum, and the robber got in with a sledgehammer. While a man thought to be in connection with the theft (and others) was arrested, the painting has not been found.
Banco Central Burglary — $70 Million
It was May 2005, and a grass company had just been opened in Fortaleza, Brazil. However, it turns out that this company was less interested in sowing seeds, and more interested in digging tunnels. This “company” took three months to dig a tunnel into a nearby bank – Banco Central – and then they started making off with the cash.
They were able to steal three and a half tons of notes, a total of about seventy million dollars in United States money. This all happened during a single weekend, and then the employees noticed that the money was gone on the following Monday.
The Black Truffle Heist — $100,000
Provence, France was the site of a huge black truffle heist in 2005, with the thieves making off with about a hundred thousand dollars of the food. They were a sophisticated team, too – they used things like rope ladders and night-vision goggles, which allowed them to enter the warehouse undetected and access the special truffle refrigerators.
It's unclear what the thieves did with the goods after they made off with them, but the cops might want to keep an eye on five-star restaurants around the area.
Canada's Largest Art Heist — $2 Million
In 1972, a daring plot was hatched. That same year, it was pulled off without a hitch at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, one of Canada's biggest. Thieves descended through a skylight that was being repaired then bound and gagged several security guards. It's like a movie!
They made off with thirty-nine pieces of jewelry and eighteen paintings that totaled two million dollars at the time, but the price may very well be in the billions now – the heist included art by Delacroix, Rubens, and Rembrandt. None of the items that had been stolen have ever been found, so keep your eyes open.
The Political Heist of 1974 — $20 Million
When a priceless piece of art gets stolen, it's almost always for the money. Sometimes, however, it's to make a statement, such as when Russborough house, the Irish home of Sir Albert Beit (a British politician) was robbed in 1974. Members of the Irish Republican Army tied up Beit and pilfered art by Johannes Vermeer, Francisco Goya, and Peter Paul Rubens, which they tried to then ransom for the release of several IRA members.
Bridget Rose Dugdale pleaded guilty (and was quite happy about it) and said that the theft was in protest of the actions of the British government.
A Pair of Van Goghs Stolen From Amsterdam – Unknown
Poor Vincent just can't catch a break. Died poor after creating beautiful pieces of art, and then after his death, that same art started selling for millions. And then people start stealing them all. Few of the heists were as high-profile as thieves stealing a pair of paintings from the Amsterdam Vincent van Gogh Museum in 2002, using a fifteen-foot ladder and smashing a window.
Is that all? The paintings disappeared until 2016 when authorities found them at a farmhouse near Naples. It's thought the mafia had something to do with the theft, and several traffickers have been arrested.
The Great Beanie Baby Heist — $300,000
There were countless thefts that involved these stuffed toys, but one of them involved more than sixty thousand of them being stolen from a Ty warehouse. A collector named Ben Perri, in Illinois, found some of these missing toys and bought them for cheap (so his story goes) but he was caught and taken to court.
However, there was no evidence to indicate that he knew he was in possession of stolen goods, and he says he bought them all at a flea market. The Beanie Baby market was booming at the time, and collectors were always on the hunt.
Bad Alarms Make Stealing This van Gogh Simple — $50 Million
2010 saw one of the more brazen thefts of art in recent years — Vincent van Gogh's “Poppy Flowers” was taken from the Mohamed Mahmoud Khalil Museum in Giza, Egypt. Only nine people visited the museum that day – how come the thief wasn't spotted? Well, the painting's alarm didn't work, and neither did any of the other alarms.
This theft sent a shockwave through Egypt, with eleven culture ministry workers resigning and several guards at the museum getting arrested. The painting is still missing.
The Hatton Garden Safe Deposit Company Heist — $21 Million
London has a long history of heists, and this one has been called “the largest burglary in English legal history,” according to the courts. A group of career criminals thought to be in their sixties and seventies targeted the Hatton Garden Safe Deposit Company, making off with a mega bundle of jewels and cash.
The ringleader was Brian Reader, a seventy-six-year-old who is also thought to be behind the Baker Street Robbery. However, this has never been definitively proven. It just goes to show that sometimes the old-timers still have something to offer the world. Except for this time, it was a really costly crime.
The Boston Museum Heist — $500 Million
Super famous paintings can go for big bucks if you can find a seller. That's what the robbers in 1990 thought when they broke into the Boston Museum. They were able to cuff a few security guards, and then they started lifting paintings. They ended up with thirteen paintings, including Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Degas.
The total cost was something like five hundred million dollars, and the thieves are still out there, somewhere, enjoying their fine art and/or all the money they got from the sales. It's the biggest robbery to take place in a museum, and there are plenty of theories but no clear-cut answers.
The Brazen Harry Winston Jewel Heist — $90 Million
In December of 2008, eight women entered the Harry Winston in Paris, dressed in dresses, heels, and guns. What was that last one? Yes, they had guns, and they also had a hand grenade, and oh also they were men that were wearing wigs. Sike! They managed to make off with about ninety million dollars worth of jewels.
It was eventually determined that the mastermind was one Douadi Yahiaoui, who is responsible for a few big heists. Some of the jewels appeared in a suburb of Paris in 2011, and the police were able to track the thieves down using that information.
The Manhattan Savings Institution Heist — $2.7 Million
George Leslie was an architect who decided that he would earn more as a criminal, and boy howdy did he. He stole millions from banks around the place, but his biggest score was in Manhattan.
He planned for more than three years, studying the building and drawing up his own blueprints using his architectural knowledge. However, he died before it ever happened – many believe it was by one of his own men, Tom Draper. Even with Leslie out, the crime went off as planned, netting almost three million dollars – nearly eighty million now.
“The Scream” Gets Stolen in Broad Daylight – Unknown
The prime time to make off with some art is during the night when museums are closed, but that's too easy for some people. The Munch Museum in Oslo, in 2004, was the scene of one of these daring robberies, and it went off without a hitch. Robbers held guards and crowds at gunpoint as they lifted Munch's most famous painting, “The Scream,” as well as “Madonna.”
They then fled the scene in a black station wagon. Rumors started swirling about what was going to happen to the famous paintings, but they were recovered a few short years later. Six arrests were made.