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

The inside of a cathedral.
(Image credit: iStock)

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.

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.