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 has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.