Andy Warhol prints stolen from wall of LA movie studio and replaced with fakes

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A family's set of original Andy Warhol prints stolen from their LA studio
They were replaced at some point by the thief with identical fakes
The prints were his controversial 10 Portraits of Jews of the 20th Century
Bonham's auction house was reportedly searched by LA police
It's believed someone tried to sell one of the prints via the company

Published: 09:56 EST, 8 September 2015 | Updated: 10:28 EST, 8 September 2015

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A family's set of original Andy Warhol prints have been surreptitiously taken off the walls of an LA business and replaced with fakes by a mystery cat burglar.

Hanging on display at the owner's movie editing studios in LA, the pictures were famed silk screen prints of Warhol's 10 Portraits of Jews of the 20th Century.

Originally purchased by the movie studio owner in the 1980s, a member of his family realised the silk screens were sagging and took them to be reframed, TMZ reported.

Pictured is Albert Einstein (left) and Sarah Bernhardt (right) from Andy Warhol's 10 Portraits of Jews in the 20th Century

Also featuring in Warhol's series of portraits was an image of the Marx Brothers comedy group. Pictured right is former Israel Prime Minister Golda Meir

Left is Louis Brandeis, a lawyer and Supreme Court Judge. Right is novelist Gertrude Stein

However, he was stunned when he was told the prints were fakes - which meant his family's originals had been swapped out for fakes at some point in the past three decades.

The website reported LAPD had recently raided Bonham's for sale records after it was thought someone had tried to sell one via the auction house.

Famous art and the vast sums of money such pieces can fetch on the black market means there is still a lucrative demand for art thievery.

Only four years ago another set of famed Warhols went missing. In 2009, his unique portraits of Muhammad Ali, Jack Nicklaus, Pele, Dorothy Hamill and other athletic superstars worth $10million - were stolen from a collector's home.

Police said the collection of 10 silk screen paintings of famous athletes of the 1970s was taken from the home of businessman Richard Weisman - who had commissioned the iconic pop artist in 1977 to create the portraits.

A commissioned portrait of Weisman was also stolen, said Detective Mark Sommer of the Los Angeles Police Department's art theft detail.

Two more portraits included in the set were of scientist Sigmund Freud and philosopher Martin Buber

At the time, a $1 million reward was offered for information leading to the return of the paintings, which police described as a 'very clean crime' that required no 'ransacking' of the art owner's home.

Warhol became internationally famous in the 1960s for his iconic image of a Campbell's soup can, his avant-garde films and his parties that mixed celebrities, artists, intellectuals and other beautiful people at his New York studio called 'The Factory.'

At the time, art recovery expert Robert Wittman, a former investigator for the FBI's national art crime team, said about 95 per cent of stolen art, especially well known pieces, were recovered.

'The real art in an art theft is not the stealing but the selling,' he said. 'People know what they are. You can't sell it to the industry, it's not going back to the market and you also can't sell it at auction.'