Who doesn't like a good art heist story? I'm personally a fan.

Oh, yeah, 100%. Who doesn't love the high-low mix of the exclusive art world versus the sneaky underworld of being a criminal?

Well, this heist enters into new territory. Our Thiefs didn't shimmy a museum wall to gain access to one-of-a-kind artwork, but the facility was extremely secure.

That would be the famed Rikers Island. Historically, the largest jail complex in the United States.

Well, you have to wonder, why was an original artwork by the famed surrealist Salvador Dali hanging in a house of detention at all?

Not to mention who stole it And how.

Welcome to ScamTown, an Apple original podcast, produced by FunMeter. I'm Brian Liz Arte.

And I'm James Lee Hernández.

We're filmmakers who've been trading stories now for quite some time, obsessed and compelled to bring some of our favorites to life.

We love a surprising heist, an intricate scam, or just pulling back the curtain on something you think you know, entering a world that's stranger than fiction and writing that line between comedy and tragedy.

This is Scametown, a place for our favorite stories that do just that. Today's episode, The Rikers Island, Dali.

Rikers Island, just a few miles from Midtown Manhattan.

All you have to do is say Rikers Island, and it conjures up vivid images of dangerous, decrepit, unsanitary, and often overcrowded conditions for New York City residents charged with a crime. Inmates there are awaiting trial or just serving short sentences.

Amid skyrocketing violence, staffing shortages, chronic medical neglect, some are calling Rikers a death trap.

The notorious sprawling jail opened in 1932 on an island made mostly of landfill. Sometimes the inmates there feel discarded, too. It's basically a dump.

What are some words you'd use to describe Rikers Island?

Hell, plain and simple.

The New York Times has called it the City's Island of the Damed. So you got to wonder why the renowned Spanish painter, Salvador Dali, agreed to lead an art class in the most unlikely place to lead an art class, this remote jail.

Before we go any further, and for those living under a rock or did not pay attention in high school, a quick Dali primer.

I'm Dr. Elliot King. I am an art historian, and I've been specializing in Salvador Dali's work for about 20 years. Surrealism is very often misunderstood. It's meant to be a really emancipatory form of creativity. The goal is actually to capture the way that your mind works when it is free from moral and esthetic considerations.

I can't make out just what a place it was.

Much of Dali's work looks like you're visually eavesdropping on someone else's dream.

But there weren't any walls, just a lot of curtains with eyes painted on.

Alfred Hitchcock even turned to the artist to help him populate a surreal dream sequence filled with watching eyeballs and faceless men in his 1945 film, Speled Out.

He's most famous by far for the soft clocks. It looks like they've been heated up and they're just flaccid and liquefying and dripping down, and so the flies are attracting to them. He was inspired to do them by looking at a soft camembert cheese that was melting on the radiator.

Beyond liquefied clocks, Dali was afraid of grasshoppers, so he painted quite a few of those. There are double image paintings. He even dabbled in religious imagery. Rather than simply being art famous, he was a ginormous pop culture personality and instantly recognizable.

He looked like he's from another planet.

I think when most people think of Dali, they have to associate the mustache with a man.

It was thin, curly, and waxed, basically the mother of all mustaches.

It keeps getting longer and longer and longer until you get to the 1950s, where the points of it go all the way up to his eyeballs. He became one of the first artists, I'd say, who was probably more famous for the way he looked than the way he paint it.

I think Daulea helped establish that when you're an artist, you have to look the part. Frida Kahlo embraced her eyebrows or Unibrow. Andy Warhol had his famous gray wig.

That was a wig? Daulea's was at the top.

There have been four main motives which moved the artist Daulea, and they are sex, terror, vanity, and venerish.

Well, you have to add money to that list as well. For instance, DALLES was more than happy to do commercials if it meant a decent paycheck. Take, for instance, this classic one from Alca Seltzer.

First, It dissolves. Happy bubbles, but devoted bubbles.

This is a commercial. He's there in a white smock with sequins.

And the Alca Seltzer shoots into the stomach.

Here, it neutralizes that bad excess acid.

He has his brush and he puts his brush up against a model.

Those beautiful places will feel beautiful again. Al Kasselser is a work of art, truly one of a kind, like Dali.

He figured out pretty quickly that all publicity is good publicity.

He was essentially an influencer decades ahead of his time.

Well, Brian, that love of headlines was part of the reason Dali agreed to lead an art therapy class for inmates on Rikers Island during his annual winter stay in New York City.

He would have likely brought his Pet Ocelot Baboo along, too. But on February 26, 1965, the day he was scheduled to teach, the artist woke up with a fever.

So in his suite at the St. Regis Hotel, he dashed off a black and red India ink drawing on paper of a crucifixion.

It looks similar to a painting he had done called the Christ of St. John of the Cross, a very famous painting because it has the head of Christ pointed downwards and the arms up. Looks like it has a gash in the side of Christ where he was stabbed with the spear, then splatters coming across from outside of of the bowed head.

To be sure, there are a lot of splatters and drips.

The cross and Crown of thorns stand out the most. And then the dedication in Dali's own handwriting with misspellings. For the dining room of the prisoners, Rikers Island, and his initials are scrawled underneath.

Dali sends his friend and business associate to present this specially created work to the New York City Correction Commissioner. As intended, the work decorates the inmate's cafeteria for 16 years. But true to the island, the piece takes a beating over the years, accumulating brown and red food spots.

It gets hit with an occasional ketchup squirt and splash with coffee.

Sounds like they're having a lot of food fights in there. So it finally gets placed under glass.

But that doesn't exactly protect it.

Eventually, someone threw another coffee cup at it and smashed the glass and got yet more coffee on said painting. And so they decided to move it down to the basement. And it was in the basement for a while.

Soon after officials rediscovered the artwork, they considered selling it to raise money during one of New York City's cash-strapped phases during the '80s, while Dalí was still alive. Mind you, this is years before before his painting started to go for millions. At the time, it was such an unpopular idea that they actually chose not to sell it.

So the piece is re-hung with a fancy new frame in a lobby only accessible to visitors and jail employees. It's locked in a display case near a Pepsi machine, a water fountain, and some nearby pay phones. Joseph Ruso has worked on Rikers Island for decades as a corrections officer. He's currently President of the Union representing Deputy and Assistant Deputy Wardens.

The purpose of the painting was for the inmates, not for us. But after the inmates started vandalizing it, they moved it away from the inmates.

Next to the drawing, they thought it was a good idea to put a small plaque from the warden saying, This piece was estimated to be worth a million dollars, which basically is like saying, Come and steal me.

So in jail filled with thousands of convicted or suspected lawbreakers, you're going to advertise the worth of something like this? It feels like they're asking for it.

It was supposedly safe. Nonetheless, on March first, 2003, the drawing goes missing.

As you know, the Salvador Dali painting was removed from the inmate's cafeteria so that they wouldn't damage or destroy it. Who knew that it might have been safer left in the cafeteria?

Around midnight, alarm bells rang out. Rikers Island was on full lockdown. Was an inmate making a break for it? No. Someone had pulled the fire alarm. A fire drill was held the night of the theft.

That's Rose Gilhern, former Commissioner of the City's Department of Investigation.

In other words, the culprits pulled a fast one by creating a disturbance, clearing out the lobby where the artwork was displayed.

And non-participants were removed from the area and participants remained behind to affect the theft.

Early the next morning, an employee noticed that something was a miss. There was a drawing in its typical spot, but it was different.

You can see that the original painting is in a wooden gilted frame, and the fake is not in a frame. It's basically a poster were staple gunned to the display case, and the artist, for lack of a better word, painted a frame around the poster.

You're planning to replace an original framed artwork on Only to insert a fake with a frame painted on?

Yeah, in this case, stapled gunned to the display case.

Classy.

So there actually isn't the frame, but there are some gold markings that are meant to, I guess, fool one into thinking that it's still in that gilded frame.

That wasn't the only giveaway. The fake was also noticeably smaller.

I mean, if you were going to do this the right way, you were supposed to make the copy the exact same size. It was like it got shrunk in the wash.

Art heist are the thing of movies. You read Thomas Crown Affair or something. You expect people to come repelling through the ceiling with something really exciting and clever. I don't know why this part of the master the plan wasn't better thought out in terms of the size and everything else, because the painting really wasn't being cared for very well. I can imagine that people might not have noticed too quickly if it had been a halfway decent reproduction.

It was very poor reproduction. And to my surprise, staff noticed. I would guess we wouldn't. I didn't think anybody was paying attention to this painting, and I never noticed this painting.

Apparently, it was an officer who prayed near the drawing every day, who first noticed something was off.

So investigators were called in. At first, Ruso suspected the usual suspects.

Right away, I think, what the inmates do, rip it down, rip it apart.

Except the glass on the display case was not broken or meddled with at all. So it could have only been an inmate if they had the key.

And if they had access during a fire drill, two words come to mind, James.

Pizza party.Inside Job.Inside Job.

We're not talking about a handful of employees. It's actually thousands. Rikers isn't just one big jail. There are a half dozen buildings that house inmates, plus a hospital and a disease unit.

So 12,000 people were being held at the same time, plus all the civilian and uniformed employees. Wouldn't someone on the janitorial staff have a key to clean the display case?

Yeah, except because of the fire alarm, only certain employees were on the premises and had access to the locked art inside the Eric M. Taylor building lobby.

So when investigators were called the day after the fire alarm, they immediately check surveillance footage. But But, conveniently, the cameras weren't working that night, so there was no recording of any shenanigans near the artwork, but there was some grainy footage of a car leaving the island. Investigators believed that it was transporting the original piece of art to its now illegal new home.

It didn't take long for officials at Rikers Island to figure out it was an employee vehicle. And within three months, former Bronx district attorney, Robert Johnson, held a press conference about the high suspects. We are announcing today that we are unstealing indictments with respect to four employees of the Department of Correction, two assistant deputy wardens, Mitchell Hochhauser and Benny Nuzo, and two correction officers, Greg Sokel and Timothy Pina. Each of the four is being charged with grand lust in the second degree.

Felony charges. They were facing up to 15 years in prison.

We are alleging by this indictment that the four conspired and did, in fact, steal a painting that had been donated to the inmates by the world of renowned artist Salvador Dali.

Talk about a movie plot, going from guard to inmate. That'd be tough. Pretty sure having worn the uniform doesn't make for a fun time in the general population.

This crime is a result of Shameless arrogance fueled by greed, that it represents a serious betrayal of the public trust, but also undermines the professionalism of a vast majority of the Correction Department employees who perform their duties with dedication and integrity.

At any given time, about 7,000 officers work for the Department of Corrections.

Remember how we said at the beginning that Rikers was basically hell on Earth for inmates? Well, it can be brutal for workers, too. After decades of working on the island, Joseph Ruso should know. He says guards and deputy wardens struggled to serve out their time on the island, too.

I'm sorry to say this. I'm talking about my people here. Don't say this lightly. You got to be desperate to work here. As a 27-year New York City employee, the environment that you're working in is broken and hostile, and it should be avoided at all costs.

Ruso says he's had battered and bruised and skirmishes with inmates countless times over the years. He's even broken bones in both of his hands. In his 50s, he still doesn't look like somebody who would back down from a fight. His white button down shirt works like a highlighter pen on his muscles. Overall, he says, compared to his colleagues, he feels resilient.

The vast majority of people dread coming to work. They hate it, and they can't wait for this to end by any means.

In short, even though the guards and middle manager wardens could make upwards of six figures and a full pension after 20, or in some cases, 25 years, many of the people who operate the jail can't hack it for that long.

As they're walking out the door, I can't deal with this anymore, and they're leaving. Newer people that come on the job, they quit two or three a day.

Brian, smells like motive to me.

Yeah, I'd say so.

This sounds like a political answer, but I believe this to be very true. The vast majority of us are working people, and we're not committing crimes. Certainly, I would not tell you that every one of us is an upstanding, law-abiding citizen. We have some bad apples in there. Once the pressure was on them, they folded immediately. So these are not hardened criminals. It seems like they were almost bumbling criminals that were not really committed to doing this.

As in, one of the suspects confessed right after the heist. According to court documents and reporting at the time of the investigation, a lower-ranking correctional officer, Timothy Pina, opened up to investigators, unspooling his version of how this caper went down. He alleged the two higher-ranking deputy wardens approached him about five months before. He thought they were joking at first, but then they started taking photos of the Dali. And a month before the heist, he was told the plan was a go. Pina was supposed to man the security desk in the main lobby.

He agrees to wear a wire on one of his co-conspirators, another guard and fellow carpool buddy, Greg Sokol. They meet at a coffee shop and share how stressful the fallout from the caper is now that the heat is on. The two head out, and within minutes, Greg is stopped and questioned by investigators. And just Just as quickly as Pina flipped, so did he, and confessed to his part of the scheme.

This new confessor, Sokol, agrees to wear a wire himself on the remaining alleged conspirators, the two higher up assistant deputy wardens.

That's a lot of wires. It seems easy.

Easy in one sense that they agree to wear wires, but difficult to actually hear what's on some of these recordings because jails aren't necessarily quiet places. They're They're having conversations in an empty locker room near a boiler, and so they're picking up some stuff, but not everything.

After the arraignment, the dolly is still missing. Three of the four officers strike plea deals with prosecutors, but Assistant Deputy Warden, Benny Nuzo, is the lone holdout. Investigators believe that he was the one that drove off with the artwork on the security footage, and...

They explain how this happened. Admit guilt. They all suffered because of this. And then they named someone who's completely innocent and had nothing to do with it as the Ring leader. Wow, what's the chances of that?

Naturally, Nuzo hires representation.

My name is Joe Takapina, and I'm a lawyer.

I'm a draw lawyer. Takapina is a former prosecutor turned attorney to the stars. The walls of his offices in Manhattan's Upper East Side are filled with photos of all the celebrities he's represented over the years.

A Rod, Alex Rodriguez, Meek Mill, Asap Rocky, Jay Z, and former President, President Trump, Michael Rubin of Fanatics, the owner of the 76ers.

That is quite the resume list.

True. And add on top of that, an assistant Deputy Jail Warden accused of art theft.

He accepted Benny Nuzo as a new client because he was intrigued.

So That case ranks up there, probably the most memorable and certainly the wildest case of them all.

It certainly didn't look easy from the outset.

It was a case that, at first glance, looked pretty damning. They started flipping on each other, wearing wires on each other. And Benny was the only one who stood strong and didn't let his knees buckle. He was a tough guy, and he was a ward and was like, I didn't do it. I'm not taking a plea. I'm not losing my pension. I'll go to trial.

On the one hand, the prosecution had his client on tape, possibly contradicting his claim of innocence. On the other, this was an inside job turned inside out.

Look, this clearly was not done by the French Connection. Conspirators, this was a very low-level heist, if you will, with not a lot of thought put into it. And that's why it took exactly about a day and a half for them to crack the case.

Also relevant, who are these guards planning to sell the Dali to? Coffee stains and all.

Especially if the original is supposed to be hanging up in the prison.

Running off with priceless art is certainly the stuff of movies, but no amount of security has kept real-life themes from trying, and they make away with the goods more often than you think. According to the FBI, less than 10% of missing art is ever recovered.

Painting Sightings like Portrait of a Young Man by Raphael and The Concert by Vermeer have been missing for decades. Rewards promising millions of dollars haven't brought them back.

It's not something you sell easily or readily. I mean, look, to put this mildly, this was not really a well-thought-out caper from A to Z. There was no end game here at all.

So about a year after the heist, in May of 2004, they had to court. Now, with everything you've heard so far, you might think this is an open and shut case. But let me assure you, there are more surprises to come.

Tekapina's first strategy was to challenge the actual worth of the now-immortal dolly drawing. His witness was not only a dolly art appraiser, but someone he'd actually worked with.

We had an expert witness who was one of Dauley's closest friends, so he was terrific. I mean, he just really put the value of this thing next to nil because of its condition and all the host of other factors.

Meaning those food stains in basement, water damage. Also, it was a somewhat undetailed drawing versus a finely-rendered oil painting. Remember, he did this the morning he was sick. I'll tell you, nothing I do when I'm sick ever seems that good.

I've actually puked on the floor and it looked like a Jackson Pollack to the flu. Takapina's expert put the worth at $20,000, not the hundreds of thousands of dollars alleged by our prosecution, nor the million dollars that the plaque in the jail house said.

Casting doubt on the value was massive. Because it could mean the difference between a felony and a serious sentence or not.

Obviously, anything over $250,000 was a high-level grand lourcing, and that's what they were really playing for. But it carried up state jail time, double-digit jail time. Anything under the $25,000 range, my recollection is, was that it becomes a misdemeanor.

The next point in the defense was, how did anyone know that the stolen artwork was the real McCoy?

Exactly. And since the prosecution had yet to recover the drawing, all they had was a photograph. Not being able to inspect the work itself is known in the art world as hypothetical assessment.

The biggest challenge is, how do you defend a client who was recorded? That's approaching magic trickery level.

We had a tape recording, then I thought I had some wiggle room with. The case was built primarily on the words of cooperating witnesses, people who are motivated to blame other people, to get out from under.

On a crucial recording for the prosecution, Nuzo allegedly says, Don't worry about the painting. They'll never find it.

Yikes. But as we know, the tape was partially inaudible because it was recorded in a basement of the jail.

So they played the tape. They present the jury with their transcripts, their version. I then cross-examined the witness. I presented the witness and the jury with my own transcript, which I made some subtle changes in without pointing out where the subtle changes were.

All right, this is pretty wild. I don't even know what to say.

I didn't know that you could actually do that. Alter what's in an original transcript.

One of the subtle changes were, I don't know where the painting is, or who knows if they'll ever find it again. I don't know where it is. We changed some words that would have implicated Benanuzo to words that would have exonerated Ben and Uso. I got through that chunk, and I stopped and I said, Do you have any changes to the transcript, or is everything on that transcript what you just heard in that tape? And he read it. He's like, Yeah, that's exactly what I heard. So we went right along. And so he adopted our version of the transcript. So if the guy who made the tape and was part of that conversation can't tell you which version is the accurate one, how can you know which version is the accurate one?

Have we talked about your favorite courtroom scene?

I have a few.

Wait a minute. I think I know. You've definitely... Yeah, there's one. Yeah. What is it?

Well, number one has to be a few good men. I'll answer the question. You want answers? I think I'm entitled. You want answers.

I want the truth.

You can't handle the truth.

I thought it was my cousin Vinnie.

That was like-That's number two. Okay. Number two, the Buick skylock. Can't make those marks without pod's attraction, which was not available on the 64 Buick skylock. That's, I mean, it's just marvelous. But the Dark Horse, probably my number three is legally blonde.

Exactly. Because isn't it the first cardinal rule of perm maintenance that you're forbidden to wet your hair for at least 24 4 hours after getting a perm at the risk of deactivating the ammonium thiglokylate?

Setting up an entire defense around not washing your hair within a certain amount of time after getting a perm is brilliant.

So to sum everything up, You could say that Ticapina roast the jury's marshmallow on the open fires of doubt.

I ask you to return a verdict that's consistent with an utter failure to prove this case beyond a reasonable doubt. That's consistent with what Greg Socle said he heard any news of saying on that tape the second time around, which is he didn't know, he didn't do it. I ask you to stick to your guns, whatever they may be, and whatever you come out with, we will all look by that decision. We thank you very, very much. Thank you, Your Honor.

The jury deliberated only for a few hours before reaching a verdict. Nuzo and the team nervously returned to court.

The first count was grand larsy in the first I agree. That was the big one. And the jury said not guilty. And my partner Chad and I, and Vinnie said over there, just I felt the tension from our bodies just exhaled, both of us simultaneously, because that was big time jail. Oh, my God, we got the misdemeanor. I'm thinking, now they really devalued this thing. We did a great job. They get to the pettit larceny, and then they say not guilty. I look at Chad and go, Is that not the And he said, No, that's it. And I had this strange... You know, as a toddler, you learn to be a poker player and have a poker face. I looked at the jury like, What? Are you sure? And I was really Happy, obviously. Surprised, to put it mildly, but not as surprised as my client.

Benny Nuzo says quick thank yous to his attorneys, and then he hauls ass out of there.

I mean, we're talking no high fives, no hugs of relief, no No impromptu press conference, no victory cigar out on the steps in front of the courthouse.

He's just gone.

Is he kidding me? I said, What? That's what he got. Thanks. And he leaves. Not like, Oh, my God, you guys saved my life. Nothing. He just left like that. And I called him and said, Benny, it's Joe. I said, Why did you run out like that? He goes, I was afraid the jury was going to change their mind. I started laughing so hard. He goes, I just had to get out of there before they changed their mind. So he thought he exited the building. Literally, that's his exact words. And we laughed so hard about that.

They really swung for the fences and pulled it off.

Right. And Tacopina became such a fan of Salvador Dali after working on this case, he purchased his very own piece. One of Dali's original sketches now decorates his waiting room. But Dali's other work in question?

Still missing and never recovered.

But keep hope alive. I, for one, would be scouring thrift stores in the Bronx if I lived in New York.

Isn't it just perfect that the painting is never recovered? And the guy that's accused of having the hood spa and the the wherewithal, the keep his cool, the never break, never to admit it. And they say he either has it or he destroyed it, and he never confessed. It just works perfectly.

Nuzo didn't get off Scott During the search of Nuzo's mother's house, investigators looking for the missing art found some other stolen items.

We're talking about some pretty serious theft here. I'm kidding. The property he illegally boosted from Rikers included two lockers, a blue metal gun box, two gray blankets, 13 hardcover logbooks, two boxes of legal folders, two boxes of Manila folders, and two parking logbooks. All things he probably could have gotten from Staples for like 300 bucks.

Right. And don't forget the three pack of yellow legal pads.

They estimated that all of this was worth $1,000 52 bucks. I guess I always underestimate how much I'm going to spend when I go to Staples.

Yeah. And the lockers are probably the big ticket item. Sure. He wasn't looking at any jail time, but due to the fact it was that much money, they were able to fire him, which meant he was not able to receive his full pension.

Well, it looks like they did make something stick.

Only one of the guards who admitted guilt in the heist served time behind bars. He did one year.

In exchange for their plea deals, the other two were given probation.

Now, the real question is, whoever made that bogus, shrunken drawing with a painted on frame should have at least have done community service or something. I mean, I want to know who did that.

I wonder who did that. But the real question I have is, is that painting currently hanging at Rikers right now? And how much is that one worth?

That's definitely at least five bucks. Oh, you know what? A couple of boxes of chocolate milk.

There should be a plaque next to it with its value.

Five chocolate milks. Brian, I'll sum this all up by a quote from the man himself, Salvador Dali. One day, it will have to be officially admitted that what we have chrissened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams.

On the next episode, an unusual scam by the Italian Mafia to fool American consumers.

We are talking about one of the most important, if not the most important clan of the Ndrangeda ever since God knows when.

That's next week on ScamTown. Scamtown is an Apple original podcast, produced by FunMeter. New episodes come out each Monday. If you want to check out a few extras from our show, you can find us at fundmeterofficial on Instagram.

The show is hosted and executive-produced by us.

I'm Brian Lizzarte. And I'm James Lee Hernández.

Kathleen Horin produced this episode. Clarissa Sosen was our researcher.

Our senior producer is Christopher Olen. Our co-executive producers are Shannon Pence, Nicole Laffer, and Matt Kay.

The show was edited and sound designed by Jude Brewer. Final mixing by Ben Freer from Fiddleleaf Sound.

Music for the podcast was composed by James Newbury. Additional music by Five Alarm. And thanks to WNYC.

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