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Everyone has heard about thieves breaking into museums or homes of the wealthy and stealing art so they can sell it on the black market.
But thieves stealing the art off of the walls of Taco Bell restaurants because there is a lucrative underground market for it?
Apparently.
According to a story published on Wednesday by SFGate.com, this is a real thing that is not only happening now, it’s been going on for years.
In 2003, artist Mark Smith met with Taco Bell executives and convinced them to place some of his art placed in the company’s restaurants.
For over a decade, Smith’s art sat on the walls of Taco Bells all over America with hardly any attention being paid to them.
Then, in 2015, someone stole one of his pieces of art from a Taco Bell in Westlake, Ohio. This was the second time thieves had tried to take one of his paintings from that particular Taco Bell.
“Deep in the trenches of Reddit, there are threads explaining how most paintings from these remodels wind up in the trash — but every now and then, they reappear on secondhand sites like Mercari and eBay for $300 to $750,” Ariana Bindman of SFGate.com writes.
Some of Smith’s Taco Bell art is being sold for more, much more. One piece appeared recently on eBay with a price of $10,000 attached to it.
It turns out that a lot of these listings that sell Mark Smith’s art are being posted by former Taco Bell employees, including managers who say they took the art during restaurant renovations.
So if you happen to run across one of the prints of Smith’s three paintings that Taco Bell chose to put in their restaurants over the past 20-plus years – “Drive Thru Man,” “Mothman,” or “Empty” – you now know where it came from and why it is so expensive.