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The Big Sting
In 2000 two Renoirs and a Rembrandt worth $80 million were stolen in an armed daylight raid on the National Museum in Stockholm . It was a well-planned heist with the thieves making their escape by boat through the labyrinth of canals in the Swedish capital. When the ringleaders were finally traced, police discovered that the plot to carry out the robbery had been hatched by two inmates in a prison many miles away.

With the criminals behind the robbery now in custody the rest of the international gang set about trying to sell the paintings but one by one the authorities retrieved each one. The first, Renoir?s The Conversation, was retrieved in a police operation in a Stockholm café. The second, Renoir?s La Jeune Parisienne, turned up in Los Angeles during FBI surveillance of a drugs gang. The third and most valuable, the Rembrandt self portrait, was returned to the museum after a daring undercover operation by an FBI secret agent.

Using police surveillance footage and phone taps this documentary tells the story of the armed robbery and details the extraordinary sting organised by the FBI to find the works of art.