Today’s Portrait of a Museum Thief Changes for the Worse
Think of an art thief and you typically picture a cat burglar—someone stealthy, cunning, with a high degree of planning and deception. But today’s museum thief is in a different category.
Museum thefts are becoming increasingly aggressive, with more violence and force involved. Europol claims this change in targets indicates the involvement of new criminal networks and the ease of illicit resale.
Offenders are breaching European museum premises and display cases with sledgehammers, axes, crowbars, and even explosives, Europol wrote in its spotlight report Changing Tactics, Changing Targets: The Evolving Nature of Museum Heists. In some cases, thieves physically assaulted or restrained staff.
In one 2025 heist in The Netherlands, perpetrators used explosives to enter the Dutch Drents Museum and steal several golden archeological artifacts. In 2024, hooded suspects armed with baseball bats and axes broke into the Musée Cognacq-Jay in France; they took seven gold and diamond objects. In the now-infamous 2025 heist at the Louvre Museum in Paris, thieves broke a window, threatened guards and visitors, and smashed display cases to steal historic jewelry.
“Across reported cases, the use of force is closely linked to targeted operations, suggesting prior identification of specific objects and pre-planned execution,” Europol reported.
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The Changing Model of Museum Thieves |
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Traditional Traffickers |
Emerging Aggressors |
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Organized core group: Operates through a tightly structured criminal network built around a central leader |
Ad hoc and decentralized: Recruited through social media, often with no prior connections to the client or each other |
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Non-violent specialist: Relies on stealth, calculated planning, and avoiding physical violence |
High risk of violence: Ready to deploy violence to achieve aims |
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Niche expertise: Specializes in organized property crime and cultural goods trafficking |
Cross-market opportunists: Active in other criminal markets, not just museum heists. Focused on profit potential |
In the past two years, thieves targeted collections of precious metals and stones, which are likely preferred targets because of their increasing value. By melting down precious metals and removing gemstones to sell separately, illicit sales are harder for law enforcement to detect and trace than paintings or other works.
Precious metals and jewels “are attractive to criminal networks due to their visibility, accessibility, and the perception that museum security measures are less robust than those in jewelry stores,” the report said. Unlike jewelers, museums are semipublic spaces that are designed to provide access to items of cultural heritage, putting invaluable relics and artworks within arm’s reach of visitors.
Ancient Chinese porcelain artifacts are also being targeted more frequently, likely because of high demand and the ease of sale on the art market. In a September 2025 heist, thieves smashed a window to steal three “national treasures” of Chinese porcelain from the Adrien Dubouché National Museum in Limoges, France—a haul worth upwards of 9.5 million euros ($11 million).
Because of the change in targets, “Security teams should no longer assess an object primarily by cultural or insured value,” says Ibrahim Bulut, senior security consultant and museum security expert with Expertise and Security Consultants, based out of Belgium. “They also need to consider its criminal attractiveness: portability, visibility, ease of removal, material value, ability to dismantle or melt it down, and demand within illicit markets.”
Bulut is also a board member of the ICOM International Committee for Museum Security and teaches at the Association for Research into Crimes Against Art (ARCA) in Italy.
He recommends that museum security personnel reassess their organizations’ collections object by object, evaluating not just which objects are the most valuable but which are most attractive to motivated offenders, what can be removed quickly, and what can be monetized or disposed of immediately.
Museums should also measure the complete chain of delay, detection, verification, and intervention, he says.
“Museums should test how long it actually takes an offender to breach the perimeter, reach a target, defeat the display case, and leave—and compare that with the real time required to detect, verify and physically intervene,” Bulut explains. “A sophisticated alarm system has limited value if an offender can complete the attack before an effective response can occur.”
The thefts Europol cited in the report exhibit targeted thefts and deliberate preparation, rather than indiscriminate looting. This behavior means that security teams need to remain aware of repeat visitors, unusual photography, interest in access points, staff routines, closing procedures, temporary exhibition logistics, and other pre-attack indicators, Bulut says.
The report noted that these thefts are potentially crime-as-a-service incidents, where thieves are recruited to steal specific high-value goods, although this is still an emerging trend, not a universal model.
“Alternatively, some criminal actors and networks, typically active in other criminal markets, realized the low-risk, high-profit potential of museum heists,” the report said.
A sophisticated alarm system has limited value if an offender can complete the attack before an effective response can occur.
The increased rate of violence during these thefts should prompt changes in museums, too, Bulut says.
“If offenders are increasingly willing to threaten or assault staff, then procedures designed around a conventional burglary alarm are no longer sufficient,” he says. “Guards, visitor-facing staff, and control-room operators need clear instructions on personal safety, escalation, communications, preservation of life, lockdown or controlled evacuation, and the point at which intervention becomes a law-enforcement responsibility.”
He adds, “Museums should stop asking whether their security systems comply with yesterday’s design assumptions and start asking whether those systems can actually defeat tomorrow’s attack scenario.
“That does not mean turning museums into fortresses. It means moving from a predominantly equipment-based security model toward an intelligence-led, object-specific, and time-based protection strategy. Understand what criminals want, identify how they are likely to attack, create meaningful physical delay, detect and verify rapidly, prepare staff for confrontation, and ensure that intervention can realistically occur before the object is lost.
“The threat is no longer only ‘Can someone get in?’ The real question is: Can a determined offender identify the right target, break through quickly, use force if challenged and leave before our security concept has time to work?’” Bulut continues. “That is the question I believe every museum risk assessment should now be built around.”
