Priceless (Clarity Coast Omegaverse Book 2)

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Robert Wittman (...) is the former senior investigator/creator of the FBI's national art crime team and author of Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World's Stolen Treasures.

I was surprised actually to read that Art Crime is a $6 billion dollar a year industry. Do you think it's more now since you've written the book or do you think it's gone down?

I thought it was interesting in the book, you mentioned that these guys are not in it because they love art. It's just pure greed.

I read in your book that thieves, and this was, it made me like cringe so hard. Often thieves destroy the art if they know they're being investigated. So your prime directive is to get the art and getting the thief as a bonus.

It's weird where you find some of this stuff, right? Like you write in the book about finding was it a giant Chinese ancient crystal ball found in like a housekeeper's room or a garage, stuff like that.

You mentioned something that I thought was actually quite genius in the book. And I'm not sure if I'm reading into this too much, but you call this the decoy, where you find a bond with the target that doesn't have anything to do with the case at hand.

You're talking about the fact that you had been to dinner at his house. You knew his family. He and I had become friends as the only way we could do the business. Ultimately, he was arrested. He was caught. Yeah, he wrote me a note. He said that he was devastated by the fact that I was in undercover agent and that's the situation.

And you feel deflated when the operation is over. What's going on there? That's not something I expected to see or hear.

You also mentioned there's a lot of little undercover stories in the book that I think are pretty fascinating. If something makes you nervous, like getting in a target's car, don't do it. Just make an excuse. It seems like that's a great tip, but also probably really hard to do in the moment, especially if you can kind of almost just taste the deal is right in front of you, right? It's just like you're ready to close it, but something just doesn't sit quite right.

I know that I'm trying to lead you to this story where was it you that used all these photos from like the FBI stolen art website or something like that?

I read that you always call your wife before undercover busts. Why do that? What does that do for you?

I thought of him when you wrote that you inspected the paintings using UV because the UV coding on an old painting is there and it's pretty uniform because of the age.

The book title is priceless links to that will be in the show notes if you buy any book from any of our guests please use the website links it does help support the show and yes they work in other countries too worksheets for the episode in the show notes transcripts for the episode in the show notes i'm at Jordan Harbinger on twitter instagram you can hit me on linkedin i'm teaching you how to connect with great people and manage relationships similar to what bob Whitman had to do as an undercover only you probably won't get shot at or find any stolen art but anyway that's it jordan harbinger.com slash course it's a free course dig that well before you get thirsty most of the guests on the show subscribe to the course and the newsletter come join us you'll be in smart company this shows created an association with podcast one and my amazing team including Jen Harbinger jay sanderson robber fogarty Ian baird milio campo josh ballard and gabriel misrahi remember we rise by lifting others the fee for this show this free show is that you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting if you know somebody who's interested in undercover work art art theft heists then share this episode with them hopefully you find something great in every episode so please share the show with those you care about and the meantime do your best to apply what you hear on this show so you can live what you listen and we'll see you next time