Just spent 10 mins reading, good story but abridged version:<p>- An Italian Louvre worker, Vincenzo Perugia, stole the Mona Lisa, claiming his motivation was that the French had stolen works from Italy.<p>- Years later he attempted to give it back but claim a reward. He changed his story a few times about how he stole it.<p>- The revelation of the larger crime was that a slick con-man claimed he helped Vincenzo steal the work for the purpose of selling credible fakes to a handful of American millionaires since it was widely reported that the original was stolen.
What's interesting is that there are people willing to pay millions to have a piece of art that they can't show to anybody or brag about it.
I guess these people are true art lovers.
The story is entertaining, but the con-man angle tacked at the end is highly dubious. Even if there was reason to believe that Valfierno even existed, its hard to swallow a century-old third-hand tale from an admitted con-man without a shred of evidence. Moreover, there's nothing about his story that explains the theft and plenty that contradicts known details. Sometimes lone nuts really do commit crimes beyond their stature.