Bio

Former FBI Special Agent Thomas McShane is one of the world’s foremost authorities on the billion-dollar art theft business. For the past 36 years, he has chased down $900 million worth of stolen paintings and other invaluable artifacts, returning them to a glittering list of museums, governments, and individual collectors. From Rembrandts taken from The Leon Bonnat Museum in Bayonne, France, to van Goghs snatched from the Armand Hammer Galleries across from Trump Plaza in New York, Thomas McShane was the man called upon to bring these world treasures back to their rightful owners. McShane joined the FBI in late 1968 after graduating from Fordham Law School. Randomly assigned to the New York field office’s art division, he took night classes on the classics at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Sotheby’s auction house. McShane’s expertise, combined with his steel nerves, prompted then FBI Director William H. Webster to name him senior investigator of the FBI’s elite Art Squad. McShane is currently an attorney specializing in museum security, forgery exposure, and art theft recovery.