Art Heist Two: The Isabella Gardner Museum

Where: Boston
When: 1990
Why it's impressive: The highest-value art heist in history was pulled off by guys in fake mustaches.

Shealah Craighead/WireImage/Getty Images
The Isabella Gardner Museum in Boston was the site of the highest-value art heist in history.

Two men managed to steal $200 million to $300 million in paintings using the art of disguise. At around 1:30 a.m. on March 18, 1990, thieves knocked in the museum's door. The museum guards on duty looked out and saw two police officers with big black mustaches they would later recall as being laughable [source: Boston.com]. The mustached officers said they were there to check out a reported disturbance. The guards let them in to look around.

Within minutes, the guards found themselves bound, and the thieves spent the next hour or so gathering three Rembrandts, five Degas sketches, a Vermeer and a Manet painting, a Shang Dynasty Chinese vase and a bronze eagle that topped a Napoleon-era flag. While they were tearing one of the Rembrandts from its frame, an alarm went off, but they located the source, smashed it silent, and went about their business. The police never showed up because it was simply an internal alarm meant to tell guards when people were getting too close to the art [source: Boston.com]. The thieves were apparently not art lovers themselves as they actually cut the canvases from their frames. They told the guards the museum would be receiving a ransom demand, and then made two trips to get all of the works to their car [source: Crime Library].

But the museum never received a ransom demand. The thieves are still at large, and none of the works has been recovered, despite a $5 million reward put up by the museum. Someone sent a letter to the museum in 1994, claiming he or she would return the works but nothing came of it [source: Boston.com]. The FBI continues to investigate the crime. The district attorney of Boston has even promised not to prosecute whoever returns the works [source: Boston.com].