A Hacker Posing as a Venerable British Art Dealer Swindled a Dutch Museum Out of $3.1 Million

Hackers infiltrated a sales deal
between a Dutch museum and a London art dealer and made off
with $3.1 million.

The Rijksmuseum Twenthe in Enschede, the Netherlands, was in the midst of
a months-long email negotiation with dealer Simon C. Dickinson to
purchase a prized John Constable painting when hackers
hijacked the exchange, posing as Dickinson and convincing the
museum to funnel the money into a Hong Kong bank
account.

Now the museum is attempting to
sue Dickinson, claiming the dealer should have known about the
fraud, according to Bloomberg.

In a London commercial court
this morning, Gideon Shirazi, a lawyer representing the museum,
argued that negligence on the part of the dealer’s team allowed the
thieves to steal the museum’s money. Shirazi claimed that
Dickinson’s negotiators were aware of emails between the museum and
the hackers, but did nothing to stop the transaction.

“By saying nothing, they said
everything,” he said.

Dickinson’s lawyer, Bobby
Friedman, said the museum should have independently confirmed the
legitimacy of the bank account before wiring the money, adding that
his client, a specialist in Old Master paintings,
was never aware any fraud was
taking place. Each side is accusing the other of having
been hacked.

“Instead of accepting the reality of the situation, the museum
has reacted by pursuing a series of hopeless claims against
[Dickinson], in the hope of pinning the blame for the museum’s
mistake on [the dealer],” Friedman wrote in a submission to the
court.

Meanwhile, the museum is holding
onto the painting and preventing Dickinson, who is still unpaid,
from selling the work to another buyer. A London judge has thrown out the museum’s
attempts to sue for negligence, but left open the possibility that
the museum could pursue amended claims. The judge is now weighing
who will have ownership of the painting.

“This unfortunate event highlights the dangers of cybercrime in
the art world, which is regrettable for both the museum and
Dickinson, especially when both are victims in this instance,”
Emma Ward, Dickinson’s managing director, said in a statement to
Artnet.

Arnoud Odding, the museum’s
director, first became interested in Constable’s 1824
painting A View of
Hampstead Heath: Child’s Hill, Harrow in the
Distance upon
seeing it at Dickinson’s TEFAF booth in Maastricht in
2018.

The Rijksmuseum Twenthe did not respond to
Artnet News’s request for comment.

Clarification: This article has been amended to clarify that
a London court has dismissed the museum’s initial negligence
claims.

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Swindled a Dutch Museum Out of $3.1 Million appeared first on
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