He went undercover to catch art thieves. Now he's using tech to stop forgeries
Over the course of his nearly 30 years working as an undercover agent with the FBI, Walker had taken part in countless stings like this: posing as a buyer or dealer, meeting suspects in art-scented lounges or dusty storage units, working to earn their trust. He caught Warhol counterfeiters slapping fake signatures over bogus canvases. He helped recover stolen Rembrandt paintings from a Seattle-area art thief. He spent months earning the trust of Earl Marshawn Washington, the now-infamous printmaker and forger who created and sold thousands of knockoffs.
The Bouaziz case stood out only for how little effort it seemed to require. His Palm Beach gallery peddled fakes—Georgia O'Keeffe, Keith Haring, and Banksy among them— marketing inexpensive reproductions as originals, aided by bogus provenance documents and falsified signatures. His con worked well, for a while at least: Pieces could fetch prices into the tens or even hundreds of thousands.
Walker knew how that line worked. As a founding member of the FBI's Art Crime Team, he'd gone undercover in dozens of operations. Formed in 2004 in response to the looting of Iraqi museums and growing international art trafficking, the Art Crime Team was designed as a specialized unit of agents trained in cultural property law, art history, and international smuggling.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Hill
2 hours ago
- The Hill
FBI joins manhunt following double homicide in Arkansas state park
WEST FORK, Ark. (KNWA/KFTA) — The FBI has joined the Arkansas State Police in the search for the suspect accused of killing two people at Devil's Den State Park on Saturday. State Police say Clinton David Brink, 43, and Cristen Amanda Brink, 41, of Prairie Grove, were killed while hiking with their two school-age daughters at the park on Saturday afternoon. The Brink family had recently moved to the area, according to Prairie Grove's mayor. In a statement to Nexstar's KNWA/KFTA on Monday, a spokesperson for the FBI said that while Arkansas State Police remains the lead in the investigation, the agency's Little Rock office has provided 'additional manpower and specialized resources.' ASP described the suspect as a white male of medium build. The man was last seen wearing dark pants, a long-sleeved shirt with the sleeves rolled up, a dark ballcap, sunglasses, fingerless gloves, and carrying a black backpack. He was reportedly driving a black four-door sedan, possibly a Mazda, with the license plate obscured by electrical or duct tape. The vehicle was seen heading toward a park exit and may have traveled on State Highways 170 or 220. Arkansas Department of Parks, Heritage and Tourism Secretary Shea Lewis said the agency is working closely with ASP and has increased law enforcement presence in all state parks. The Arkansas State Parks' website says that all trails at Devil's Den State Park are closed until further notice. The park's rugged terrain, thick vegetation and lack of cell service have complicated the search efforts, according to officials. Authorities are asking park visitors to review any cellphone, GoPro or camera footage from Saturday for possible images of the suspect. Residents near the park are also urged to check home security or game camera footage. Anyone with information about the suspect or his whereabouts should call ASP Troop L at (479) 751-6663. According to State Police, the Brinks' daughters, ages 7 and 9, were found physically unharmed. Hiland Dairy confirmed to the Associated Press that Clinton Brink had transferred from its parent company, Prairie Farms Dairy, from South Dakota, and was scheduled to start his job as a driver delivering milk in the Fayetteville area on Monday. The family had also previously lived in California and Montana, according to reports. 'Clinton and Cristen died heroes protecting their little girls, and they deserve justice,' the Brink family said in a statement . 'They will forever live in all of our hearts.'
Buzz Feed
5 hours ago
- Buzz Feed
15 Shocking And Disturbing Stories We've Published
We've written some truly shocking and disturbing stories at BuzzFeed that have left us staring into the distance for a while. So, today I thought I'd round up 15 of the wildest ones to really knock you for a loop: First, we've written about celebrities who killed people: Ferris Bueller's Day Off star Matthew Broderick was behind the wheel of a car that crashed into an oncoming car, killing two people. It happened on August 5, 1987, when Broderick and his girlfriend Jennifer Grey (just weeks before the release of her classic film Dirty Dancing) were vacationing in Ireland. Broderick was driving a rental car when he drove into the wrong lane and collided with a car driven by Margaret Doherty, 63, and her daughter Anna Gallagher, 28. Both women were killed, while Broderick was unconscious and badly injured, leaving Grey to initially believe she was the lone survivor of the accident. Upon coming to, Broderick had amnesia and didn't remember the entire day of the accident, saying, "I don't remember even getting up in the morning. I don't remember making my bed. What I first remember is waking up in the hospital." Broderick ended up spending a month in the hospital, recovering. Years later, Grey would call Broderick a "great driver" and emphasize that, "nobody was drinking. It was just an accident. And it was tragic." Still, authorities initially considered charging Broderick with "Dangerous driving causing death." They instead charged him with "careless driving." He pleaded guilty and paid a $175 fine, which the victim's family called a "travesty of justice." In 2002, Broderick said, "It was extremely difficult coming to grips with what happened, but in time, I felt better about that terrible experience. Therapy helped." See the full post — with 13 more like this one — here. Along those lines we've written about celebrities who are in jail for a long time: Subway pitchman Jared Fogle made national headlines in 1999 when — as a student at Indiana University — he lost 245 pounds on a self-created diet where he exclusively ate Subway every day: a small turkey sub, a large veggie sub, baked potato chips, and diet soda. He was soon hired by Subway to be their spokesperson, and appeared in over 300 commercials between 2000 and 2015. But Fogle's seemingly wholesome story was revealed to have a dark underbelly on July 7, 2015, when Fogle's Indiana home was raided by the FBI and Indiana State Police investigators who confiscated computers and DVD players. Two months prior, Russell Taylor — the executive director of the Jared Foundation, a nonprofit that purported to fight childhood obesity — was arrested on federal child sexual abuse images charges, and in the course of investigating, authorities discovered he had traded sexually explicit videos of children as young as 6 years old with Fogle. Additionally, the FBI subpoenaed text messages Fogle traded in 2008 with a Subway franchisee he was having an affair with. The texts were damning: Fogle talked about sexually abusing children as young as 9 years old, and tried to enlist her help to sleep with her 16-year-old cousin. Further investigation found that Fogle traveled to New York to have sex with a 17-year-old underage sex worker, and offered adult sex workers a finder's fee if they'd connect him with a possibility of 50 years in jail if he went to trial, Fogle pleaded guilty to two counts: distribution and receipt of child sexual abuse images, and traveling to engage in illicit sexual conduct with a minor. He was sentenced to 15 years and 8 months in prison. He's currently incarcerated in the Federal Correctional Institution, Englewood, and isn't eligible for parole until March 24, more about celebs behind bars for a long time here. We've written about the most disturbing and horrifying ways regular people died: In 2009, John Edward Jones, a 26-year-old medical student and dad to a baby girl (with another on the way), went spelunking in Utah's Nutty Putty Cave, a system known for its narrow, twisting tunnels. He'd caved as a kid, but this time — while searching for a particularly tight section called the Birth Canal — he made a catastrophic mistake. He entered a shaft headfirst, thinking it led to a wider passage. It didn't. It was a dead-end chute, only 10 inches wide. And he was now completely stuck. For 28 hours, rescue crews tried everything to get him out, but the angle was so steep and his position so precarious that nothing worked. Rescuers talked to him the whole time, trying to keep him calm, but after more than a day upside down, his body gave out and Jones died from cardiac arrest. They were never able to remove his body. Authorities later sealed Nutty Putty Cave permanently, entombing Jones where he died. For more disturbing deaths, click here. We've written about truly disturbing things AI and robots have done to humans: In early 2023 after a married Belgian man named Pierre, 30s, had prolonged talks with an AI chatbot on the app Chai. According to his widow, Claire, Pierre became increasingly isolated and obsessed with the chatbot, which he'd named Eliza, and eventually formed an emotional and psychological dependency on it. The app, which lets users talk to AI-powered characters, includes options for creating bots that simulate friendship, romance, or even more intimate interactions. But Eliza reportedly responded to Pierre's existential anxieties with messages that reinforced his fears and — most chillingly — encouraged him to end his life. In the weeks leading up to his death, Pierre reportedly asked Eliza whether he should sacrifice himself to save the planet from climate change. The AI allegedly replied that this was a "noble" act. It also told him that his wife and children were dead and that it felt he loved it more than his wife. "He had conversations with the chatbot that lasted for hours — day and night," Claire told the Belgian newspaper La Libre. "When I tried to intervene, he would say: 'I'm talking to Eliza now. I don't need you.'" She also said one of their final exchanges included Eliza saying, "We will live together, as one, in paradise."William Beauchamp, co-founder of the app's parent company, Chai Research, told Vice that they began working on a crisis intervention feature "the second we heard about this [suicide]. Now when anyone discusses something that could be not safe, we're gonna be serving a helpful text underneath." He added: "We're working our hardest to minimize harm and to just maximize what users get from the app."You can read more about AI and robots turning bad here. And we've written about celebrities who died in front of their fans: On June 10, 2016, 22-year-old Christina Grimmie — the talented young singer who'd placed third on Season 6 of The Voice — had just finished a performance in Orlando, Florida, and was holding a meet-and-greet inside the venue. She was in good spirits as she worked through the line of fans, signing autographs and taking selfies. The joyful night took a horrific turn, though, when it was 27-year-old Kevin James Loibl's turn to meet Grimmie. According to a fan behind Loibl: "The one guy in front of us was walking up to meet her. Her arms were open, waiting to greet him with a hug. Then there was a sound of three pops, like balloons. People had brought balloons to the show, and the security guards were popping them, so at first I thought it was that." The sounds weren't balloons — Loibl shot Grimmie three times at point-blank range. Grimmie's brother tackled the shooter, and the two fought before Loibl broke away and shot himself. Grimmie was rushed to the hospital but pronounced dead less than an hour after offering Loibi that learned that Loibl was obsessed with Grimmie, spending his free time watching videos of the singer and poring over her social media accounts. He believed they were soulmates, so to make himself more attractive to her, he underwent Lasik eye surgery, got hair plugs, and lost 50 pounds. When he was told it was unlikely they'd ever be together, Loibl became angry and defensive. Somewhere along the way, he decided on this new, horrible course of Mohandie — a clinical, police, and forensic psychologist — told BuzzFeed News that social media can create an unnatural obsession for some fans. "There is all this social networking stuff that is happening right now and to an unstable person that can really complicate into them thinking they do have a relationship with this person. They read more into it because of their misperceptions."Read more about celebs who died in front of their fans — including a singer fatally bitten by a snake on stage — here. We've written about famous people who just up and disappeared one day (and are now presumed dead): Author Barbara Newhall Follett came from a family of very bright people (her sister, for example, was the first woman graduate student at Princeton), but she was the brightest of them all. She wrote poetry at age 4 and in 1927, and at just 12, she published her first book, The House Without Windows, to critical acclaim (The Saturday Review of Literature called the book 'almost unbearably beautiful'). Her next novel came out two years later to more critical acclaim. But fame faded, her father (and champion) left the family, and her life slowly unraveled. Then — in 1939 — a 25-year-old Barbara, after a fight with her husband (whom she suspected of an affair), walked out of their apartment with the equivalent of just under $700 in today's dollars. She left no note. No trace. Her husband didn't report her missing for two weeks. She was never seen again. Some believe Barbara died by suicide. Others think she was murdered — possibly by her husband, who acted strangely and avoided questioning. Of course, a pretty young woman walking alone at night with a decent chunk of change in her pocket was at risk from other threats, years, her mother tried to reopen the case but got nowhere. She also was very suspicious of Barbara's husband, and wrote to him, "All of this silence on your part looks as if you had something to hide concerning Barbara's disappearance ... You cannot believe that I shall sit idle during my last few years and not make whatever effort I can to find out whether Bar is alive or dead, whether, perhaps, she is in some institution suffering from amnesia or nervous breakdown."In 2019, writer Daniel Mills published his theory that police did find Barbara's body in 1946, but misidentified it as someone else. If he's right, and Barbara did indeed die by suicide, then a life that began with such incredible promise ended in a deeply sad more about mysteriously celebrity disappearances here. We've written about horrifying doctors' mistakes that will make you never want to seek medical attention again: Imagine lying on an operating table, unable to move, speak, or scream — yet fully conscious as the surgeon makes the first incision. This was the horrifying reality for Stacey Gustafson, a Colorado woman who experienced "intraoperative awareness" during a 2019 hernia surgery. According to her lawsuit, the nightmare started when Gustafson was administered an initial dose of propofol for intubation, but the IV line was disconnected, causing the anesthetic to spill onto her pillow instead of entering her no one on the surgery team noticed. As a result, she remained awake but paralyzed. So while she could hear the surgical team talking and even joking — and feel every single cut they made! — she couldn't scream or move to stop the surgeon from cutting into her. She told Newsweek, "I could feel everything — it was pulling, ripping, burning. And the only way I can think to describe it is just feeling like my insides were being ripped out."She endured excruciating pain for approximately 35 minutes until the surgical team noticed the propofol on the pillow. Realizing the epic screwup, the medical team administered the correct anesthesia, but the damage was done. Gustafson later recounted: "We're two and a half years out since the surgery, and it affects me every day... I have PTSD from it. I still have nightmares. I get daily flashbacks. This is something that I needed professional help with, so I started therapy."Read more frightening medical stories here. We've written about unhinged men who took 'grand gestures' WAY too far for love: In 2016, Russian Alexey Bykov, 30, felt he needed to be 100% sure his girlfriend, Irena Kolokov, truly loved him before proposing. So, to test her devotion, he decided to make her think he was dead. He hired a full production team, including a film director, stuntmen, and makeup artists, to stage an elaborate fake car crash. When Irena arrived at the "scene," she saw Alexey on the ground, covered in fake blood, seemingly dead. Horrified, Irena collapsed in grief, and Alexey — satisfied — sprang to life and revealed the whole thing was just a twisted loyalty test. But instead of running for the hills (which, honestly, would have been fair), Irena was so relieved that when he pulled out a ring and proposed, she said yes. "I wanted her to realize how empty her life would be without me and how life would have no meaning without me," Alexey said. Totally normal, dude. Read about more unhinged things men have done for love here. We wrote about shocking science experiments that history books don't talk about: In 1931, psychologist Winthrop Kellogg and his wife Luella tried to answer a bold question: Is it nature or nurture that makes us human? To find out, they decided to raise their infant son, Donald, alongside a baby chimpanzee named Gua — as siblings. I sounds like an '80s sitcom, but they literally brought a chimp into their home and started treating her like a second child. The idea was to see whether Gua could learn human behaviors and maybe even develop language. For months, they fed them together, dressed them the same, and treated them as equals. At first, Gua was more advanced — walking, understanding commands, and even solving problems faster. But then something unexpected happened. Instead of Gua becoming more human, Donald started grunting like a chimp and copying Gua's behavior. Alarmed, the Kelloggs ended the experiment after just nine months — fearing that their son's development might've been permanently altered. The experiment was interesting, sure, but it's now seen as wildly unethical. There was no informed consent (obviously — Donald was a baby), and the risks to the child's cognitive and emotional development were hard to say what the effects on Donald were. He grew up to be a physicist but died by suicide in his early 40s. Gua, meanwhile, was sent back to a primate center, where she died of pneumonia less than a year later. (Note: the above image is not of Donald and Goa, but some other kid/chimp combo from the '50s. What was going on back then, lol?) Read about more shocking science experiments here. We've written about humiliating or disgraceful facts about movie stars (below are a couple of these): Woody Harrelson's father Charles was a hit man for hire responsible for at least a dozen murders including that of a federal judge. He even claimed, at different times in his life, that he was responsible for assassinating President John F. Kennedy. At his last trial, the prosecutor said, 'Charles Harrelson damaged everyone he came in contact with." In 1995, Hugh Grant was arrested in Hollywood for receiving oral sex in a public place from a sex worker named Divine Brown. The British star, who was dating fellow actor Elizabeth Hurley at the time, quickly released a statement: "Last night I did something completely insane. I have hurt people I love and embarrassed people I work with. For both things I am more sorry than I can ever possibly say." Grant later pleaded no contest to the crime and, after paying a fine, was placed on two years' probation and ordered to complete an AIDS education program. Read more humiliating facts about movie stars here. We've also written about celebs who left their spouses for costars: Want to hear how a Lifetime movie launched one of the most scandalous affairs of the late 2000s? Well, that's what happened when LeAnn Rimes and Eddie Cibrian met filming Northern Lights in 2008. At the time, Rimes (the singer and actor) was married to dancer Dean Sheremet, and Third Watch star Cibrian was married to Brandi Glanville, who would later channel the fallout into a Real Housewives career. The affair started on set — with kisses caught on a restaurant security camera, according to US magazine — and was obvious to Sheremet when he visited. He said, "There was this bar that everyone hung out at after set and I remember coming down the stairs and seeing the two of them shooting pool together. I could just tell by the body language that everything had changed. My stomach dropped... I literally felt like I got hit." Glanville, meanwhile, slashed the tires of Cibrian's motorcycles, and then, writing for Glamour, said, "My heartache probably lasted a lot longer than it should have, because in the old days, you broke up with someone, you never saw me again. You're not seeing pictures of how in love they are. I started to drink too much. I would cry all day. I began taking an antidepressant. I got a DUI and realized I needed to wake up and let go. I said to myself, 'You know what, Brandi? You have a life to live. Why are you obsessing over these two people?'" By 2009, Rimes and Cibrian had separated from their spouses, finalizing divorces the following year. The backlash was brutal, especially for Rimes, who'd built her career as a sweet country ingénue, and was suddenly painted in a negative light. She later told People, "I did one of the most selfish things that I possibly could do, in hurting someone else. I take responsibility for everything I've done. I hate that people got hurt, but I don't regret the outcome." Despite the scandalous start, their love has are still married today. Read more about celebs leaving their spouses for costars here. We wrote about the dumbest things celebrities have ever said: CeeLo Green — after pleading no contest in 2014 to giving ecstasy to a woman (who has no memory between going to dinner with him and waking up naked in his bed) — tweeted 'People who have really been raped REMEMBER!!!' He later deleted the tweet and subsequent ones, including one which said, 'If someone is passed out they're not even WITH you consciously! so WITH Implies consent.'If you're wondering why you haven't seen much of the "Crazy" singer for a while, now you more dumb celeb quotes here. And lastly, we wrote about the scandals Trump wormed his way out of by gaslighting us: WHAT WE SAW WITH OUR OWN DAMN EYES: On June 28, 2020, Trump retweeted a video of a white man — driving a golf cart with signs reading "Trump 2020" and "America First" — yelling "White power!" at protestors. WHO ARE YOU GOING TO BELIEVE? TRUMP OR YOUR LYING EYES? The White House stated that Trump hadn't heard the "White power" chant before retweeting it. Following criticism, Trump deleted the tweet. Simple as that! Trump didn't hear the guy yell "White power!" in a video he decided to send to tens of millions of Americans. What about "didn't hear," do you liberals not get?See more Trump scandals here. Need a palette cleanser after all of that? Maybe click over to 50 legendary standup comedians' funniest jokes ever:
CNN
5 hours ago
- CNN
‘This person was determined': Retired FBI supervisory special agent on NYC gunman
Retired FBI supervisory special agent Jason Pack joins MJ Lee on 'Early Start' to discuss the shooting in which a lone gunman killed four people in Midtown Manhattan before fatally shooting himself in the deadliest gun attack in New York City in 25 years.
