Financial mogul Jeffrey Gundlach knows there is no honor among thieves. He’s offering a $1.7 million reward for information leading to the return of his art collection as well as other luxury items, including a Porsche sports car, stolen from his Santa Monica, Calif. home.
The bond fund manager stunned the art world with his gigantic reward, hoping one or more of the thieves turns rat. Museums normally don’t offer rewards like that.
Burglars struck sometime between the afternoon of Sept 12 and the night of Sept 14, while the bond trader was out of town. Police say they have no suspects at the moment.
The thieves are either highly professional with international connections, or lucky amateurs. Selling stolen art is extremely difficult unless some one knows a private collector, who is willing to buy the works solely for his own pleasure with no plans to ever display them.
That fact that other items were stolen suggest the burglars were not international art thieves.
In all, thieves got away with more than $10 million in luxury items, including paintings by Jasper Johns and Dutch abstract artist Piet Mondrian. They also cleaned out his jewelry, his wine cellar and his garage, where he kept his $100,000 plus Porsche Carrera 4S sports car.
He’s counting on the thieves to take care of his art works. He’ll only pay if they are returned undamaged. He’s divided up the reward money as well.
He’s put a flat $200,000 bounty for tips leading to the return of all 13 works stolen. And, he’s added a $1 million reward for a 1936 Mondrian oil paining called Composition (A) En Rouge Et Blanc. He’s also slapped $500,000 three other works: a 1956 Johns piece, Green Target and Joseph Cornell’s, box collages Medici Princess and Pinturicchio Boy.
Other pieces are by Frank Stella, Franz Kline, Guy Rose, Philip Guston and Hanson Duvall Puthuff.
Gundlach is offering the rewards “no questions asked.”