North Carolina FBI Art Theft agent shares some insights on why Louvre heist case was baffling

RALEIGH, N.C. (WTVD) -- It's the heist getting attention across the globe, even from some who know a thing or two about solving these cases.

"It's amazing that they pulled this off, you know, in broad daylight," says Frank Brostrom.

In a past life, Frank Brostrom was an FBI special agent assigned to their Art Theft unit in St. Louis. He says museums often monitor for suspicious activity or pre-planning, which is why the case at the Louvre is so baffling.

"Art museums know about how people do these things and how people case items and how they steal but they got caught with their shorts down with them coming in the back way through that window. And so there's going to be a lot of heads of the organizers of the Louvre museum for a lack of security," he says.

As for the art of the heist, he says there are different motives for these kinds of crimes.

"Sometimes it's organized crime backed, and sometimes it's just that network of thieves and they have stuff lined up ahead of time, and they will take like the crown jewel they'll take the gems out of it and cut them down so they're not recognizable," Brostrom says.

But he says, unlike the movies, it's not always the perfect crime. His biggest art theft case from Saint Louis was simply some warehouse workers with a sloppy plan.

"And they're sitting around drinking a case of beer, sitting around thinking this stuff's been around a while, let's sell it," he says.

But Frank still got his cinematic moment.

He still remembers making the bust the day before Thanksgiving, knocking on a suspect's door.

"I said, here's the deal you need to turn over the artwork or you're going be in jail before Thanksgiving and the guy was just in front of me sucking air," he says.

The next day, he was in a defense attorney's office, as the suspect was ready to return to the loot.

He says some other big cases - art ransacked from war has been returned. Another case, solved decades later, involved a Norman Rockwell painting that ended up in Steven Spielberg's collection. Spielberg didn't even know it was stolen.

But he says it's not just about beautiful art, it's about the meaning behind it, and why even the FBI makes solving these cases into an art form of their own.

"Sometimes this goes back hundreds of years, thousands of years. It is the culture of America, of Europe and it's about protecting history," he says.