The Hialeah affair - Crime

South Florida CEO, March, 2003 by Tina Wingate

Call it a B-movie version of "The Thomas Crown Affair." After all, a Hialeah hotel is not exactly the setting for a showdown with international art thieves. Nonetheless, that was the place where police tracked down two Impressionist masterpieces which had been heisted from a private mansion in Naples. It turns out that the thieves--two from Miami, one from Hialeah--were perpetrating an ordinary B&E at the home when they noticed the paintings by Monet and Renoir, and grabbed them as an afterthought--along with a couple of expensive watches. After returning to Miami with the booty, the three men sold one of the watches to an undercover cop posing as a bookie. They tipped the bookie to the art, who then arranged for a former FBI investigator to impersonate a Romanian millionaire interested in buying the paintings. His "chauffeur," another undercover cop, confirmed the paintings were in the hotel room and signaled for police to move in. Next time, guys, stick to televisions and VCRs.

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