Maybe whenever you hear those stories about a famous work of art being stolen and later recovered, they’ve actually just stolen the forgery and the galley just puts up a new fake one.
The robbers then can’t sell it because they have a worthless fake and the ‘real’ one is clearly on display in the gallery, and they can’t expose the fraud because then they’d out themselves and go to jail.
Maybe whenever you hear those stories about a famous work of art being stolen and later recovered, they’ve actually just stolen the forgery and the galley just puts up a new fake one.
The robbers then can’t sell it because they have a worthless fake and the ‘real’ one is clearly on display in the gallery, and they can’t expose the fraud because then they’d out themselves and go to jail.
The perfect scam!