Heist 5 steps
How Three Guards Replaced the Artworks with Replicas During Shipment
Three museum guards steal their favorite artworks by substituting flawless replicas during a shipment: Roger uses his guard duties to tag the pieces for transport, Charles and a recruited street artist produce the copies, and George executes the physical swap from inside a shipping crate, leaving the museum and the wider world unaware.
Read the 5 steps as text
- 1
Roger secretly finances the replicas
Roger Barlow · Rose Barlow
Roger dips into Rose's Florida vacation savings to pay for the cat painting replica, keeping the funding hidden from her as she grows increasingly suspicious.
- 2
Charles and a street artist craft the copies
Charles Peterson · Street artist
Charles, a painter, works to reproduce the cat painting with exact fidelity, while the trio recruits a street artist to create the replicas after their initial attempts fall short of capturing the Lonely Maiden.
- 3
Roger tags the artworks for shipment
Roger Barlow
Roger volunteers to tag the artworks as they are shipped, using the shifts and shadows of the museum's routines so the three works are placed into the transport flow on the day of the swap.
- 4
George swaps originals for replicas from inside the crate
George McLendon
What it looked like: The crate appears to be an ordinary shipment containing the statue, concealing George inside.
On the day of transport, George slips into the warehouse in the crate with the statue and carries out the swap, then hides in the crate naked and unseen as dawn approaches after his posing draws a skittish response from a guard.
- 5
Counterfeits travel on while the world stays unaware
Copenhagen guard
The counterfeit Lonely Maiden ends up on display in Copenhagen, where a guard on duty glimpses it and smiles, acknowledging the successful deception as the outward world remains blissfully unaware of the theft.
