Canada becoming a hub for art crime

Fraud and theft of high-end art is becoming increasingly common, yet Canada’s police lack the know-how and manpower to fight it.

According to an article in next month’s Canadian Criminal Law Review, art crime is a global industry that generates billions of dollars of illegal income each year. And despite recent incidents of art-related crime in Canada, there are only four police officers in the country trained to detect and prosecute such crimes. All four are located in Montreal. Two of them are attending school part-time to get art-history degrees. Last week a Québec City man named Richard McClintock was convicted after police raided his apartment and found forged paintings that, if they had been real, would have sold for $1.5-million.