The FBI Recovers an Andy Warhol Print Worth $175,000 That Vanished From a Private Home in 2021

An Ohio man has agreed to plead guilty to trafficking a stolen Andy Warhol valued at roughly $175,000.

Brian Alec Light, a 58-year-old from the city of Hudson, will appear in federal court on October 28, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California.

The maximum sentence for the charge is ten years in federal prison. As part of his plea agreement, Light will also turn over the stolen artwork recovered by law enforcement, as ARTnews’ Karen K. Ho reports.

The stolen Warhol is a gray, yellow and red screenprint depicting former Soviet Union leader Vladimir Lenin. The piece, which was made in 1987, was one of 46 trial proofs.

“Each one is unique, making them much more one-of-a-kind and valued by collectors,” Phil Selway, the CEO of Hamilton Selway gallery in West Hollywood, tells ARTnews.

According to Light’s 25-page plea agreement, a thief stole the Warhol print from a home in Los Angeles County in early 2021. The victim reported the theft to both law enforcement and Hamilton Selway, which had sold the print to its current owner.

Days after the incident, the thief sold the artwork to a pawn shop. The shop’s owner contacted Light—who knew the work had been stolen—and asked him to help sell it. Light quickly arranged for the print to be sent from Beverly Hills to Dallas, where it was to be inspected ahead of a spring 2021 sale at Heritage Auctions.

An employee of the auction house contacted Hamilton Selway to ask for its opinion of the piece, per the plea agreement. Right away, gallery staffers recognized it as the stolen Warhol. They notified both the auction house and the FBI.

“We saw it was up at auction for Heritage, and we let them know there was a potential problem with the piece,” Selway tells ARTnews. “We wanted them to know something was going on there.”

Neither Heritage Auctions nor Hamilton Selway is named in the plea agreement, which was first reported by Courthouse News Service’s Matt Simons.

“On March 8, 2021, the FBI interviewed [the] defendant about the artwork and its theft,” according to the plea agreement. “The FBI agent informed [the] defendant that she was a federal agent and [that] it was a crime to lie to federal agents.”

Despite this warning, Light told the agent that he had purchased the print at a garage sale in Los Angeles for $18,000 in cash. Two days later, he emailed law enforcement a fake receipt.

The U.S. Attorney's Office says that the FBI’s art crime team is still investigating the case.

This isn’t the first missing Warhol artwork to make headlines in recent months. In March, a screenprint of the Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong vanished from a community college in California. That print is worth an estimated $50,000.

Ella Feldman | READ MORE

Ella Malena Feldman is a writer and editor based in Washington, D.C. She examines art, culture and gender in her work, which has appeared in Washington City Paper, DCist and the Austin American-Statesman.