The real thief was at that moment sitting in his apartment on the rue de l’Hôpital Saint-Louis, within walking distance of the Louvre, with the painting concealed in a trunk.
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## Theories Without Evidence
The investigation’s failure to identify the real culprit — compounded by the high-profile false arrest of Apollinaire — opened the case to public theorizing on a scale that was unusual even for a major crime.
The *New York Times* ran a headline about French public indignation. A far-right French publication, *Action Française*, blamed Jewish dealers in an accusation with no factual basis. Amateur investigators generated sightings of the painting across Europe and beyond — it had reportedly been seen in Brazil, in Russia, in Japan. A New York ship was searched based on a tip. The millionaire financier J.P. Morgan was accused by some theorists of having commissioned the theft to acquire the painting for himself. The German government was suspected by others of arranging the theft to embarrass France.
None of these theories had documentary support. Morgan denied any involvement. No German connection was established. The sightings were false.
A theory that has persisted in popular accounts and has been raised periodically since is the Valfierno story. According to a 1932 article by the American journalist Karl Decker, a Argentine con man named Eduardo de Valfierno had orchestrated the theft not to sell the original but to sell forged copies. The logic runs: Valfierno had commissioned six copies of the Mona Lisa before the theft. Once the original was gone and its image was appearing on front pages across the world, he sold each copy to a wealthy individual as the genuine stolen painting, pocketing a fortune while the original stayed hidden with Peruggia, who had been the unwitting instrument of a broader scheme.