Art thieves tricked into thinking they stole famous painting from Italian church

A team of art thieves thought they got away with a €3 million ($3.4 million) heist, but the painting they stole from a small church in Italy is actually worth zilch.

Pieter Brueghel the Younger's The Crucifixion was donated to the Santa Maria Maddalena church in Castelnuovo Magra more than 100 years ago. Earlier this month, police were tipped off to the fact that a group of thieves planned on stealing the 17th century painting. With just the priest and the town's mayor in on the secret, the painting was replaced with a replica, and that's what was stolen recently by a gang of thieves.

Those in the know played along, with the mayor calling the theft a "hard blow for our community." Last week, he revealed the truth: That the painting was fake and he knew all along that's what had been stolen. He also thanked parishioners who could tell the painting wasn't the real thing but didn't say anything. Police are now going over surveillance footage in an attempt to track down the culprits. The painting — which actually was stolen from the church in 1981 but found several months later — remains in a safe, undisclosed location, NPR reports.