According to modern books on art theft e.g. FBI agent Robert K. Wittman's memoir and journalistic research into famous modern art heists, the answer is probably not, at least as far as art crime goes. While there appears to be evidence that there are criminal gangs who specialize in dealing with stolen art, it's extremely unlikely that their operations are being bankrolled by a secretive, wealthy benefactor who hides away his stolen treasures for private use. There is one book called Stolen Masterpiece Tracker by a retired FBI agent named Thomas McShane which claims that almost every art theft ever is absolutely ordered by some rich person who hires a team of criminals, however he offers absolutely no evidence to support this and quite frankly the rest of the book makes him sound like a bit of a loony old man so I can't say I trust what he says (not a terrible read if you're really interested in the topic though).





The boring truth is that, as far as we can tell, most art is stolen as a type of black market collateral or bearer bond. Valuable paintings and other artworks are often bartered for drugs, held as collateral on loans between groups, and sometimes used like retirement funds for career criminals. I can't recall which exact painting it was, but a few years ago I was reading a news article, and one of the works listed in Museum of the Missing was found practically by accident when police raided an apartment looking for a suitcase of drugs, only to find that the case had already been exchanged for the stolen painting.




The laws in various countries for the statute of limitations and ownership also make using pieces as long term investments reasonably practical. If a thief can steal a painting and successfully hide it from law enforcement for the period outlined by the law, they can legally claim themselves as the rightful owners of that piece, even if they were convicted and served time for its theft. This often ends up being a few decades but nonetheless, for someone who has no legal money to invest it's a tempting prospect, especially when the punishments for such crimes are relatively lenient.




Other times it's the thieves themselves who want to keep the artwork for their personal collections. A recent example is a French man (sorry for the wiki link but I can't remember which books he was listed in) who simply liked the art so much that he wanted it for himself. There was a similar case investigated by the FBI of a man in New York a few years back who liked to use his stolen art to help him seduce the young men he brought home.




tl;dr As far as art crime goes, there are several motives for thefts, but as far as we can tell none of them involve a greedy billionaire hiring a gang to provide him with his own secret room of treasures. It's certainly possible that statistically there are one or two people like that in the world, but even if this were the case it would only account for a very tiny percentage of art thefts. In reality it's mostly just regular people being greedy.


If you're interested in learning about art crime I highly suggest starting with The Rescue Artist by Edward Dolnick. He's a good writer and is very thorough in his research. Other books I've enjoyed in addition to the ones I already linked are Provenance, The Forger's Spell, and The Gardener Heist. There are plenty of other great books on thefts throughout the more modern era, such as The Napoleon of Crime and Flawless that aren't strictly art related but still good reads.




*Sorry I don't list more specific citations, but it's been a while since I've read most of these and it's hard to remember which information came from which books or was shared among several books.



Edit: typo

Yeah, its pretty untold, except for this book which goes into great detail about the events of it. Quite a good read!

A book was written about this not too long ago. Pretty good read.

The heist is the subject of the book Flawless: Inside the Largest Diamond Heist in History by Scott Andrew Selby and Greg Campbell.

Flawless

Paramount Pictures acquired the rights to create a film about the heist. It will be produced by J.J. Abrams.

Taken from wikipedia

Related, if you want to read a good book about a caper, check out Flawless.

Theft of art and antiquities if the 3rd or 4th largest black market industry in the world (it's difficult for experts to gauge...if memory serves, drugs and weapons are #'s 1 and 2 respectively; this type of theft is very close in $ amount to human trafficking).

Theft of this size is rare, but less rare with jewels than, say, paintings. A famous painting worth many millions of dollars is difficult to fence. Jewels, which can be removed from settings and cut, are easier to traffic.

You'd be amazed at how easy it is to steal extremely high value items like this. If interested, a couple great books to read are Hot Art, Flawless, or just about anything here.

There are actually a lot of diamonds, but just 20-30 % of raw-diamonds are usable as gemstones...70-80%, as mentioned, are used in other industries. Paths in underground mines or tunnels get drilled with tools, which have diamonds attached to them. Because of there density, they can cut through tones of hard rock.

There are two factors that determines the price of diamonds.

1. Quality

In the diamond industry they talk about "the 4 C's"


Color - pretty self-explaining

Clarity - how many (if any) impurities are visible? How pure is the stone?

Carat - how dense, big and heavy is the stone?

Cut - in which way was the rough diamond processed?

So, the "perfect stone" has to be in an orthodox color with no impurities, as big as an Orange and perfectly cut (preferably the "Heart and Arrows"-cut , which was invented in Antwerp...diamond capital of the world). To give you an idea, -0,1 Carat can mean 100-200 Bucks of lost value. Finding diamonds out of those 20-30 % where all C's are on the highest level isn't easy because they are rare...maybe not as rare as the diamond industry wants use to believe, but rare enough.

which brings me to the next point

2. Monopolization

All diamond mines on this planet are owned by just a few companies that have complete control over the market price. They can regulate the sale price by holding back these rough-diamonds, even though the demand for them are as high as ever ( supply DOWN + demand UP = price UP).
The rest of the industry (cutter, salesman etc.) doesn't mind neither, because they get rich as well. If the market would by flooded with rough-diamonds the price would decrease.

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If you want to lean more about the diamond industry I can recommend the Book "Flawless: Inside the Largest Diamond Heist in History" by Greg Campbell (author of "Blood Diamond"). It's manly about the biggest diamond heist in history made in Antwerp on February 15, 2003 (Loot: $108 million worth of diamonds). But besides that, it explores the diamond industry, gives insight into the Turin diamond Mafia ("School of Turin") and explains diamond trade in general. It is one of the most interesting books I red in recent memory.

Read Flawless. It's a great read and addresses some of the issues with the wired article