Crime: To Catch a Thief
As the FBI’s sole undercover agent dedicated to art and artifact crimes, Wittman had already recovered some $50 million in pilfered works since 1998, including five Norman Rockwell paintings missing from Minneapolis for 20 years, three of which he tracked to Brazil; 2,000-year-old gold Peruvian body armor he intercepted in Philadelphia; Geronimo’s $1.2 million feather headdress; and one of the 14 original manuscripts of the Bill of Rights, stolen during the Civil War. The United States is one of the world’s biggest consumers of stolen art, and through his work, Wittman has put Philadelphia in the center of the war against art theft — the fourth-largest international crime, after drug dealing, gun running and money laundering. Posing as a dealer or collector, Wittman sometimes lures suspects to his own backyard, often arresting them after stings in area hotels. As a result, the U.S. Attorney has prosecuted more museum thefts in Philadelphia than anywhere else in the country. This year, largely due to Wittman’s success, the FBI launched an art theft squad — eight agents throughout the country dedicated to investigating cultural theft, all trained by Wittman in Philadelphia.
Still, Wittman had never worked a case as important as the one in Madrid — not even close. The theft was the largest European art heist in several decades, and the stolen works were considered part of Spain’s national heritage. A lot was at stake. By the time the Spanish police called Wittman in June 2002 — 10 months after the robbery — Angel Flores and his gang had already sold some of the paintings, and were getting antsy about the rest. Flores, after all, was no Thomas Crown; he didn’t steal the paintings to prove he could. He was a bank robber, drug dealer and kidnapper, in it for the cash — and desperate for it quickly. He was also skittish, and knew all too well that the cops were after him. Wittman would have to be convincing.
Before he left for Spain, the FBI agent methodically turned himself into a believable art professor. First, he took a crash course in the stolen paintings from conservators at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In particular, they told him how to quickly identify Pieter Brueghel’s 16th-century surrealist work The Temptation of St. Anthony, the hardest of the lot to forge: painted on board, not canvas; in rich magentas, blues and greens; with 450-year-old cracks in the varnish. Then Wittman considered his cover. By now, he’d learned to keep his backstory as close to the truth as possible. So he’s Bob (no last name needed), married to Donna, with three teenage kids he makes a point of eating dinner with every night. He lives in the suburbs, near Pennsylvania historical spots he loves; he coaches his kids’ soccer and basketball teams, goes to almost every high-school lacrosse game. The youngest son of Baltimore antiques dealers, he’s a collector of Oriental art and Civil War artifacts, each with its own story.
Finally, Wittman sloughed his FBI persona, hanging his suit in the closet and donning instead a black golf shirt, crisp khakis and casual loafers. He told his wife where he was going, but not why or as whom. If a fellow passenger on his Madrid-bound plane asked about his trip, though, he would be ready: “I’m an art professor. I’m going to Madrid to authenticate some paintings.”
