Widespread reports of ISIS selling illicitly obtained artifacts have brought to light the importance of ensuring the legality of purchased items. Museums, and to a lesser extent private collectors, often claim to have followed the letter of the law. More often than should be acceptable, their claims have been proven false. Here are 10 interesting cases of archaeological or artistic theft.

10 Italian Conquest Of Ethiopia

In 1937, just before the onset of World War II, Italian soldiers under the direction of Benito Mussolini came to the town of Aksum (or Axum), which housed one of Ethiopia’s most revered treasures—the Obelisk of Aksum, a monument which dates back to the fourth century AD. (Technically, it’s a stele, as it doesn’t have a pyramid at the top.) The city of Aksum was of the holiest places in Ethiopia and a central figure in the rise of Coptic Christianity in the country.

The Italians were pushed out of Ethiopia at the end the war and signed a peace treaty just a few years later, which included the condition that they return any looted artifacts within 18 months. While many items were repatriated, the stele remained outside a United Nations building in Rome. Two more treaties were signed over the coming decades, each with the condition of repatriation, but it never budged. It was finally returned in 2005, though it had to be broken into three pieces for the voyage, as it stands over 24 meters (79 ft) tall and weighs 160 tons. (It was rebuilt when it arrived in Ethiopia.) The stele was described as the largest and heaviest object to ever be transported by air.

One of the main concerns that the Italians raised (one commonly raised by countries asked to return stolen goods) was that the Ethiopians would not take care of it. Italy’s deputy minister of culture, Vittorio Sgarbi, said at the time: “Italy cannot give its consent for a monument well kept and restored to be taken to a war zone, and leave it there with the risk of having it destroyed.” He even threatened to resign if the stele was ever returned, though he didn’t follow through with it. When it was damaged in a severe thunderstorm, he finally relented, saying, “After all, it has already been damaged, so we might as well give it back.”

9 Looting Of The Old Summer Palace

Following the defeat of Chinese forces in the Second Opium War, the United Kingdom found itself in Beijing and also in need of, shall we say, “compensation.” To that end, British forces, with a little help from the French, descended on the city and made a beeline straight to Yuanmingyuan (Garden of Perfect Brightness). Since looting had been a recognized byproduct of war for millennia as well as the fact that they need to pay their soldiers and defer the cost of the dead, the Europeans began to take anything they could lay their hands on, while an envoy went to the Chinese to discuss peace talks.

However, the envoy never reached its goal, as they were taken prisoner by the Chinese and tortured until they were dead. Angered beyond belief and out for vengeance, the commander of the British forces, the eighth earl of Elgin, ordered his army to burn Yuanmingyuan to the ground. (If the name Elgin sounds familiar, it’s because his father was the same Lord Elgin who “acquired” the Parthenon [aka Elgin] Marbles.) One of the items stolen was a Pekinese dog, which was given to Queen Victoria and named “Looty.”

Chinese officials estimate that about 1.5 million items were pilfered from the site by the end of the war, with nothing but rubble left behind. Its looting is still a sore spot for the Chinese. Yuanmingyuan was purported to be the greatest collection of art and architecture in the entire country, and virtually nothing survived the British destruction. Even the British recognized its beauty, as a participating officer said at the time: “You can scarcely imagine the beauty and magnificence of the places we burnt. It made one’s heart sore to burn them.”

Investigators have spent decades trying to recover the artifacts, with most of their requests falling on deaf ears. One of Elgin’s descendants, showing a complete lack of understanding, said, “These things happen. It’s important to go ahead, rather than look back all the time.”

8 Russo-Japanese War

Fought between two countries with imperialistic ambitions in Manchuria and Korea, the Russo-Japanese war lasted for nearly two years just after the beginning of the 20th century. In the end, Japan emerged victorious, and it was the first major military conflict in modern times in which an Asian country defeated a European nation. As the area known as Manchuria spans territory both in Russia as well as in China, Japanese forces often found themselves on Chinese land.

Though an estimated 3.6 million artifacts were looted in the time between the First Sino-Japanese War and the end of WWII, one of the most sought after relics was stolen during the Russo-Japanese War—the Honglujing Stele. With its construction dating back nearly 1,300 years, the stele is believed to be of the utmost importance in the study of the Bohai Kingdom. Very few people, even Japanese researchers, have been allowed to look at it.

Housed in the Tokyo Imperial Palace for over a century, the Japanese consider the 9-ton Honglujing Stele to be a “trophy” of their victory in the war as well as the property of the emperor. Thus, they’ve rebuffed Chinese demands to return it.

7 Construction Of The East Indian Railway

Much like the more famous Koh-i-Noor diamond, the Sultanganj Buddha has been a point of contention between the Indian and British governments since its removal from India in 1861. It was discovered by E.B. Harris, the local engineer for the British, during the construction of a station yard at the North Indian town of Sultanganj. It was believed to have been buried in an effort to hide it. Harris himself said, “From these discoveries I conclude that the resident monks had only just time to bury the colossal copper statue of Buddha before making their escape from the Vihar.” The Sultanganj Buddha was whisked away to Britain in the following months and brought to Birmingham by an industrialist involved in the construction of the railway.

Atop a list of stolen treasures that the Indian government would like returned, the statue, which dates back as far as AD 500, has remained in Birmingham. Like all British museums, the Birmingham Museum has steadfastly refused to return it, standing by laws which forbid it from returning major artifacts. (Small, in other words less valuable, items are routinely returned, however.) The British maintain that they have proper ownership of the bronze Buddha, claiming that Harris was the only one who realized its value and saved it from being melted down by the locals.

6 The Morean War

Though the Republic of Venice longer exists, and its naval commander, Franceso Morosini, is more well-known for his destruction and subsequent looting of the Parthenon in Athens, they were also responsible for the theft of a number of artifacts, chief among them being the Piraeus Lion. Thanks to their veneration of Saint Mark, their patron saint, the Venetians would often search for depictions of lions to loot during their conquests.

During the Great Turkish War, a conflict waged between the Ottoman Empire and a collection of European nations collectively known as the Holy League. Various smaller wars between the countries broke out as well. One of them was known as the Morean War, and it was basically between Venice and the Ottoman Empire. As the war raged on, the Venetians and Morosini found themselves in Athens and were determined to take the city. Once they succeeded, the looting began, with the most valuable monument being the white marble lion located in Piraeus, the Athenian harbor.

With its construction dating back to the fourth century BC, the Piraeus Lion had stood in the Greek city for nearly 1,500 years before Morosini and his Venetian soldiers looted it and brought it to the Venetian Arsenal, where it remains to this day.

5 Napoleon’s Conquest Of Italy

Setting an example for future dictators like Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, Napoleon Bonaparte wished to fill his newly constructed Louvre museum with a virtual encyclopedia of artistic history. He, and much of France’s elite, believed that the French people had better taste and would appreciate the plundered artifacts better than anyone else. Setting themselves apart from most entries on this list, however, they actually stole from fellow Europeans.

First on Napoleon’s long list of victims, which included one of the first coordinated lootings of Egypt, was Italy. The Louvre, briefly known as the Musee Napoleon, was to be the home for the spoils of war, an idea which owes its origins to the Convention Nationale, which deemed valuable works of art as viable for payment for war debts. Some of Italy’s greatest works, including Correggio’s Madonna of St. Jerome and Raphael’s Transfiguration, found their way to France thanks to that decision.

When he was done looting, Napoleon referred to the plundered art as harvest, saying that they would have “all that there is of the beautiful in Italy.” Although they initially felt the legality of their acquisition to be beyond reproach, the French government returned many of the paintings after Napoleon’s abdication and subsequent exile. Some, however still remain in Paris.

4 Excavation Of The Karun Treasure

While they weren’t personally involved in the excavation and eventual theft and export of nearly 200 pieces from the Karun Treasure, the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art was well aware that they were illicitly obtained and are just as culpable. In fact, they knew from the beginning. Thomas Hoving, the director of the Met, said in his memoirs, “If the Turks come up with the proof from there side, we’ll give the East Greek treasure back. [ . . . ]We took our chances when we bought the material.” (This was very much in the middle of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” period for US museums.)

Collectively known as the Karun Treasure or the Lydian Hoard, the pieces were discovered in 1965, looted from Iron Age burial mounds in western Turkey. Nearly 2,500 years old, the 363 artifacts were unearthed by local treasure hunters and smuggled out of the country over the following two years. Though they were briefly displayed at the Met during the 1980s, the pieces were eventually returned to Turkey in 1993.

To add even more intrigue to this story, one of the most prized pieces in the collection, a hippocamp brooch purported to belong to King Croesus of Lydia, was found to be a replica in 2006. The director of the museum in which they were held later admitted to swapping out the real one in order to settle gambling debts. (He blamed his bad luck on an ancient curse said to reside in the brooch.) It was eventually found a few years later and returned to the museum.

3 Looting Of Berlin During WWII

Though Russia has since returned a handful of the artifacts that their armed forces looted during the aftermath of Nazi Germany’s surrender, many of them still remain locked away in Russian museums and private collections. (However, if you ask Russia, they’ll say that over 90 percent of them have been returned.) Chief among them is Priam’s Treasure, a collection of artifacts discovered at Hisarlik, which is generally accepted to be site of ancient Troy.

Unearthed by an amateur archaeologist named Heinrich Schliemann, the find dates back 4,500 years, centuries before the originally purported owner, King Priam of Troy, was said to have lived. Originally illegally smuggled out of Turkey, the collection of copper artifacts, which includes an exquisite diadem known as the “Jewels of Helen,” found their way to Berlin, where they remained until the Soviets looted them in 1945. Seen by the Russians as the spoils of war (or “trophy art”) the very existence of Priam’s Treasure was denied for decades before it finally turned up in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow in 1993.

The artifacts’ return, either to Germany or Turkey, seems unlikely, as the Russian government has deemed the artwork and artifacts that they’ve kept as payment for the “moral crimes” which Nazi Germany perpetrated on the Russian people. To sum up their attitude, the longtime director of the Pushkin Museum said in an interview in 2012: “A country is liable, with its own cultural treasures, for the damage it inflicts on the cultural heritage of another nation.”

2 Amarna Excavation

Dating back 3,500 years, the bust of Queen Nefertiti, wife of the infamous pharaoh Akhenaten, was discovered by a German archaeologist named Ludwig Borchardt on December 6, 1912. Found in the remains of Thutmose’s workshop in the dig site known as Amarna, the bust was smuggled out of the country and hidden from Egyptian authorities, who had agreed to split the found artifacts. Germany disputes this version of events, claiming that everything was legal and aboveboard.

Recognizing the value of the piece, which has since gone on to gain a reputation as an icon of feminine beauty, Borchardt was said to have “wanted to save the bust for us,” according to a secretary in the German Oriental Company, who was present at the time. It was initially kept in the private residence of the excavation’s financier. Later, it was displayed as a counterpoint to Tutankhamun’s funerary mask, which had brought worldwide acclaim to the British when it was showcased.

Egyptian efforts to repatriate the bust have proved fruitless over the decades, as countless German officials have refused to give the notion a second glance. Adolf Hitler himself declared: “I will never relinquish the head of the Queen,” as it was one of his favorite pieces.

1 Benin Expedition Of 1897

A punitive expedition in retaliation for an attack on the British military known as the Benin Massacre, the Benin Expedition of 1897 was led by Rear-Admiral Harry Rawson, and it had the express intent of destroying every Benin town or village and plundering anything of value along the way as reparations. By the end of Britain’s reign of destruction, the Kingdom of Benin was no more, wiped off the face of the Earth.

When Benin artifacts finally made their way to London, their reception was incredible, with every museum from Europe and the United States hoping to get their hands on a piece of the treasure. (Germany was especially enamored with the looted artwork.) Perhaps the most noteworthy of all the artwork are the Benin Bronzes, a collection of more than 1,000 metal plaques which commemorate the battles, kings, queens, and mythology of the Edo people. They date back to the 13th century AD. Europeans became enamored with African culture after their “discovery,” astonished that a culture so “primitive” and “savage” could have produced something of such high quality.

In 2019, US law enforcement arrested over 800,000 people for larceny/theft. This is separate from burglary. It’s safe to say that theft is a major crime in the US and it’s the crime with the third highest arrest rate after DUI and drug-related crimes. Knowing that will help give this list a little context as there are some staggering theft statistics in the world at large.

10. Millions of Pets Are Stolen Every Year

Some things are more desirable to thieves than others. Or at least it seems like they should be. Cash has to be the most tempting item for any thief. Then you have things like cars, electronics, sneakers, drugs, and so much more. It turns out that pets are pretty high on the list as well. People will absolutely steal your pet.

It’s hard to put precise numbers on pet theft since it’s also possible a pet ran away, got lost, and then someone adopted it thinking it was a stray. Or maybe the animal wandered off and came back and the owners thought it was stolen but returned. So stats are fuzzy, but in 2017 around 360,000 residents in the UK were convinced someone had stolen their cat. Of those, 55% got their cat back. 

In America the numbers can be fuzzy as well. The Humane Society merges stats for stolen and lost pets together. Their stats say 10 million pets are lost or stolen every year. The American Kennel Club has more refined numbers and estimates two million dogs were stolen from their owners in 2020. That number rose in subsequent years and was blamed on a rise in demand during the pandemic.

9. One Million Parking Cones are Stolen Every Year

Parking cones are a ubiquitous part of the driving experience. We see those orange cones on the side of the road constantly during construction or around worksites and accidents. Most of us probably don’t think twice about them, but someone sure does. One million traffic cones are stolen per year in America. 

If you’re struggling to figure out why anyone would steal a parking cone, you’ll be equally surprised to learn many towns have had to deal with this for years. It got so bad in Coventry, Connecticut that local authorities started begging thieves to bring them back. The town would set them out after storms to warn residents of downed trees and power lines and the next day almost all would be gone. 

In the UK, police have sometimes resorted to amnesty days where people who have taken cones can return them with no questions asked hoping to recoup losses. The cones can cost around $20 and it’s taxpayers who foot the bill. 

8. 10% of Employees Admit to Stealing Toilet Paper From Work

Have you ever stolen from work? If you said no, you’re in the minority. According to the US Chamber of Commerce, 75% of employees have stolen something from their work. But what does that mean? Are they stealing cash from the till? Fries from the fryer? Computers from the office?  Well, it’s a tough one to break down.

Aside from things of great value, small things are just as likely to be targeted. Maybe more so, because you might figure no one would miss something insignificant like toilet paper. In one survey, 61% of office workers admitted to stealing from work and one in 10 of them was stealing toilet paper. 

It’s not just office workers, of course. A hotel cleaner was caught with a garbage bag full of 66 toilet paper rolls he stole from his job in 2020. He claimed to be donating them to a friend who was out of work. 

In some contexts, stealing toilet paper makes a little more sense. Recall the early days of the pandemic when people were hoarding toilet paper and there were even fights over in stores. In 2020, police recovered a truck loaded with 18,000 pounds of stolen toilet paper. 

7. Thieves Once Stole $18 Million in Maple Syrup

One quart of organic Vermont maple syrup costs about $22 from Walmart. That’s a good amount of syrup, too. It should last a while, depending on your penchant for pancakes. So keep that in mind in relation to this story about a team of thieves in Canada who stole $18 million worth of maple syrup.

Between 2011 and 2012, a group of thieves worked together to make off with 9,600 barrels of maple syrup from a Quebec warehouse. Officials thought nearly $30 million had been stolen at first but a recount of missing barrels brought it down to that slim $18 million.

After the suspects were caught, authorities reclaimed around 70% of the stolen syrup but the rest was believed to have been sold to Americans. So over $5 million in purloined syrup found its way to US waffles. 

6. Up to 380,000 Guns are Stolen Every Year in America

In 2020 it was estimated that there were 433.9 million guns in America. That’s 1.3 guns for everyone in the country. With that many guns around you just know someone has to be stealing them, and they definitely are. There are up to 380,000 guns stolen from private owners every year in America. 

The ATF’s numbers show that, between 2017 and 2021, over one million guns were stolen. They also pointed out that these were reported thefts and there is no federal law requiring you to report a stolen gun and most states don’t have one, either. That means the true number of stolen guns is likely a lot higher.

Gun theft is not just a big city crime, either. The town of Jonesboro, Arkansas, with a population of under 80,000, had reported over 40 gun thefts in 2022 by April of that year. 

5. One in Five Americans Had Their Identity Stolen in 2021

By now most of us are aware of identity theft and that we need to be careful when sharing sensitive information, especially online. Less well known may be how prevalent identity theft is. In the year 2021, one in five Americans were the victim of identity theft. That cost people about $56 billion in losses. Around 33% of all Americans had experienced identity theft by the year 2018. 

In a global sense, Americans are definitely leading the pack, suffering identity theft at twice the global average. The research also showed a lot of this was because of poor habits relating to security. For instance, 44% of people who took part in the survey that produced these results didn’t have password-protected wi-fi at home.

Another alarming stat is that, in 2016, 11% of victims of identity theft didn’t want to file a police report, likely out of embarrassment. As these types of crimes have become more and more common, it’s a reasonable assumption that there are also higher numbers than being reported for this same reason. 

4. Porch Thieves Steal  260 Million Packages Per Year 

If you spend a lot of time online, you have no doubt heard of porch thieves. Videos of these thieves taken from Ring cameras and other home security have been around for years. These are thieves who see a package left on someone’s porch, something from Amazon or other kinds of package delivery, and will simply walk up and steal the box before the rightful owner gets home.

The reason there are so many videos of this kind of crime is because there’s just so much of this kind of crime. In 2021 alone it was estimated that 260 million packages were taken off of porches. In 2016 that worked out to 1.7 million packages being pinched from porches every single day. 

Security firm Safewise conducted a survey to determine San Francisco was the worst city in America for porch thefts. Over 75% of Americans have experienced porch theft and losses are up to $19.5 billion with average packages valued between $50 and $100.

3. Millions of Bicycles Are Stolen Every Year

In 2021 about 51 million Americans rode bikes. It’s even more popular in Europe where you can find enormous populations of cycling enthusiasts in major cities. It’s estimated 90% of the people in the Netherlands regularly cycle. As with anything that’s popular there are thieves waiting in the wings to ruin it for everyone. 

It’s estimated that around 4 million bicycles are stolen every year in Europe, many of them unreported. In the US, that number is around two million. The under-reporting of bike theft makes it hard to get concrete numbers, with at least once registry services estimating that only one in five thefts is ever reported.

2. $75 Million in Used Cooking Oil is Stolen Every Year

There’s an old saying that goes “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” and that’s very true in the world of oil. Used cooking oil from restaurants was once considered nothing but a trash by-product from making french fries and chicken. Now it’s a huge business. 

Old cooking oil, which restaurants sometimes store outside in sealed barrels until it can be picked up, can be used for many purposes if it’s cleaned and recycled but the biggest one is biodiesel. It is just old oil and not that much different from the oil we already refine into gasoline. 

While gas prices have continued to rise over the years, biodiesel is actually even more expensive. In April 2023 a gallon of gasoline in America averaged $3.69 but the most expensive kind of biodiesel averaged $4.95 per gallon. If it can be made from buckets of trash behind fast food restaurants, you can see why some people might want to steal it. And steal it they do.

America produces over 2.5 billion gallons of used cooking oil every year.  About $75 million in used oil is stolen in the same time period. The whole industry was set up to be very tempting to thieves. Restaurants can’t legally just throw the stuff out, it has to be taken somewhere to be processed. There are laws requiring that a certain amount of biodiesel be used every year, too, so the demand continues to grow. 

1. Dairy Farmers Lose Up To $100 Million a Year in Milk Crate Thefts

How many milk crates have you seen in places that weren’t grocery stores in your life? Milk crates in basements, garages, backyards, wherever. Those plastic cubes are used the world over for storing and organizing people’s junks and, of course, for shipping milk. But most of those crates that don’t have milk in them are supposed to. They were never purchased; they were stolen, and the expense is part of the reason you pay as much as you do for milk. 

Dairy farmers pay for those crates and when they get stolen, new ones need to be purchased. Every year, dairy farmers lose up to $100 million in milk crate theft, a number which is hard to comprehend given what we’re talking about. 

The number of crates works out to between 20 to 25 million. Just try to imagine what people need with 25 million milk crates if they’re not in the dairy industry already. The problem had a bit of light shined on it back in 2021 when the Milk Crate Challenge became a thing on TikTok and people were sharing videos of themselves stacking precarious milk crate structures and trying to climb them. 

Each crate costs about $4 and they only end up at the grocery store to ship the milk. Stores are meant to return them so they can be reused but, obviously, that doesn’t happen nearly as often as it should.