Not very well thought out caper

Generally true. Perhaps Oldman got sloppy because he was so distracted by the mystique of Claire.

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Please put some dashes above your sig line so I won't think it's part of your dumb post.

The auction of Claire's parents goods would have been a multi-million dollar auction -- Virgil works ALONE? He has no staff that research such things? How would he know that it was really her parent's stuff (or house) and not stolen? He'd be in big trouble auctioning off stolen goods.

Any real auction house has multiple employees JUST to do research and background checks, they have museum people come in to authentic stuff -- pay for carbon testing and the like -- there is never just ONE auctioneer, but several -- they have TEAMS of young people from colleges (art students, history students) who do internships and handle stuff. To get by all those people would be quite an act.

The HOUSE that Claire is in -- in LONDON -- would be something like a $50 million dollar estate. Auction houses auction property all the time. Sotheby's has a whole real estate division, and you'd better believe they have their own title searches and experts, appraisers, etc. The ownership of real estate is ALWAYS a public record.

Anyways: where did Billy and the others get all those priceless antiques? even just to rent them? FOR MONTHS ON END? with insurance? it was thousands of pieces of art and antiques and decorator items, including some statues (the one they hid behind) that was a 10 ft tall antique MARBLE statue, that had to weigh TONS -- you'd need a giant CRANE just to bring it into the house!

All this, just to play a nasty trick on Virgil -- because he dissed Billy's forgery paintings? Where did Billy get the MILLIONS to carry this off? And remember; he likely cannot sell any of the very famous paintings without raising suspicions. The SELLERS (from the original auctions, that Billy was the shill buyer for) would get very suspicious and they'd figure the whole scam out.