Fustia

Playing Sherlock Holmes here…

Re: the $27-$80 million “art heist” in Pebble Beach… we all agree it smells fishy, but the question has been “how are they going to make money off it, especially if the paintings are not insured?”

Simple: the money isn’t >going< to be made; it's already been made.

I suspect the Dr is a patsy in all this, and it’s been engineered by his “partner” (he of notorious background) once he saw how much $$ in art the good Dr had.

I suspect that the art was stolen and sold on the art black market during the trip from Boston to California, and that the money has already changed hands.

The “theft” here in Pebble Beach is a cover-up for that. And a clever criminal would have (between Mass and CA) not only sold off the originals, but substituted fakes, knowing that no true appraisers would see them before the scam was perpetrated… but that they would be good enough to keep the Dr and any insurance agent at bay for at least a few days….

That’s my take on the second-largest art heist in US history.

Yours truly

Sherlock Holmes

(& yes, I did send a copy of this hypothesis to the Sheriff of Monterey County on October 8, 2009.)