December 24, 2007

$50 million painting stolen

Thieves broke into a museum in Brazil a got away with a massive haul of valuable paintings which included a Picasso and Portinari, the raid on the Sao Paulo Museum of Art only lasted three minutes but in this small amount of time the thieves got away with the top exhibits.

Among the haul was the “Portrait of Suzanne Bloch” which was painted by Pablo Picasso in 1904, this painting alone is estimated to be worth around $50 million! The thieves used a car jack to open up a metal gate and then just smashed down the glass doors, got to the paintings on the second floor and then off they went all in under three minutes!

The total value of all the works taken could be in excess of over $100 million, but in reality to the thieves themselves the value is merely a fraction of that amount.

Source [MSNBC]