2003. Baghdad falls. Over the 36 -hour period the Iraq Museum is unprotected, 15,000 antiquities are stolen. The cash raised from their sale will be used by terrorists to fund a deadly campaign. These treasures from the ancient lands of Mesopotamia are irreplaceable. Their value to the story of human history? Beyond measure.

Curator of the J. Paul Getty Museum's antiquities collection, Marion True, is in disgrace. Her downfall is brought about by jet-setting antiquities dealer, Robin Symes, and his lover and business partner, shipping heir, Christo Michaelides.

A tiny fragment of papyrus worth more than its weight in gold is the beginning of the end for superstar Oxford don, Dirk Obbink. It's the latest chapter in the pillage of Ancient Egypt, where looting is a way of life. Police lay bare a billion-dollar black-market sacrificing children's lives in the hunt for the pharaohs' treasure.

December 2021 - Michael Steinhardt, the largest private collector of antiquities in the world, is forced to turn over $70 million dollars' worth of stolen loot and banned from collecting for life. Steinhardt's undoing comes after a four-year investigation into the connection between Sicilian organised crime and the trafficking of antiquities, known as Operation Demetra.

It's a routine day for the customs officials at Memphis Tennessee airport when they pry open a shipment labelled "tile samples". What they find inside is a priceless collection of antiquities looted from archaeological sites across the Middle East. The consequences of this scandal will hit home for one of America's most powerful business dynasties - the Green Family of Hobby Lobby fame.

2012. The search of a flat in Munich, owned by elderly recluse, Cornelius Gurlitt, uncovers one of the most extraordinary stashes of lost art.  It reveals how Gurlitt's part-Jewish father, Hildebrand, struck a deal with the devil - and became an art dealer for Adolf Hitler. How do museums and collectors today justify holding onto art stolen from Jewish families murdered in the Holocaust?