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Tom Van Gaver awoke to find that someone had broken in and swiped his most prized possession, a 1-pound pigeon named Finn.
The untrained eye wouldn’t detect anything special in the 11-inch-tall pigeon, but Finn was incredibly quick and strong. By the time he was 1, he had won multiple championships in Belgium. He was a flying Secretariat — and a priceless stud. Van Gaver sold Finn’s offspring for up to $100,000 each.
“It’s like the Mona Lisa from the pigeon sport they stole,” Van Gaver said.
The black-and-white surveillance video from November 2024 shows a masked thief carefully inspecting and stuffing seven of Van Gaver’s pigeons into a bag. Van Gaver said in court filings that, in all, the value of the stolen birds was more than $1.6 million.
Finn’s abduction was among 35 pigeon robberies across Belgium over the last three years, part of an avian crime wave that has spread to Great Britain, South Africa and the United States, perpetrated by what insiders call the “pigeon mafia.”
Pigeon racing
There’s more to pigeons than their reputation as the “rats of the sky.” Pigeons have an extraordinary ability to find their nests despite traveling vast distances, a homing instinct so reliable it was first used in ancient Egypt and was still being relied upon by militaries as recently as World War II. The quickest pigeons average about 60 miles per hour, hitting 100 mph with strong tail winds.
Pigeon racing began in Belgium in the 1800s. Local breeders, known as fanciers, would release their birds far from home and measure the time and distance covered to return.
A modern variation, called one loft racing, is where the big money is, with prizes topping $1 million at races in South Africa, Thailand and the United States. Fanciers ship their most promising young birds, just 45 to 60 days old, to a single host loft months before race day, so the pigeons can learn to recognize it as home. Each entry costs hundreds of dollars. The more pigeons in the race, the larger the pot becomes.
The pigeons spend months becoming acclimated. Trainers release them at incrementally greater distances — 5 miles, then 10, 20, 50, and 75. Each time, the pigeons have to find their way back. Some don’t make it, lost to weather or predators.
60 Minutes got a firsthand look at the sport in October at the Algarve Golden Race in Portugal, where 7,400 pigeons from more than 30 countries competed, with 3,334 birds in the final. Each was scanned into a database by leg band, driven 300 miles from the loft and released. Six hours later, a spotter blew a whistle: the leaders were circling. The first pigeon into the loft won its owner the biggest cut of the $1.2 million purse.
The day after the race, the top finishers are auctioned to fanciers hoping to breed the next generation of champions. But those prices are chicken feed compared to what elite pigeons fetch on the largest auction platform in the sport.
Pigeon Paradise
In 1998, at 18, Nikolaas Gyselbrecht, launched a news website for breeders called Pigeon Paradise, PIPA for short, and started auctioning birds online. Today, PIPA is the Sotheby’s of the sport, doing about $46 million in pigeon sales a year.
About half of those sales go to Chinese buyers. The record was set in 2020, when a Belgian hen named New Kim sold for $1.8 million. China has more than 400,000 registered pigeon fanciers and races with purses that can exceed $16 million.
“If we don’t have China, it would be very hard to run the business,” Gyselbrecht said. “Because they make the price.”
As the fastest pigeons became a global status symbol and prize money soared, the bad guys moved in.
The “pigeon mafia”
Fanciers and investigators said they believe international gangs are behind smuggling networks that breed stolen pigeons and sell their offspring on the black market to buyers anxious to supercharge their bloodlines. In a brazen attempt in December, a briefcase filled with pigeons stuffed in socks was intercepted at Latvia’s border with Russia.
Back in Belgium, the search for Tom Van Gaver’s stolen birds was gaining ground. Sources close to the investigation told 60 Minutes police combed through security footage and cellphone data from near Van Gaver’s property and from a dozen other robberies.
The trail led to a Brussels suburb and the home of a Romanian pigeon fancier. Romanian police 1,200 miles away searched the homes of the fancier’s relatives. In all, 165 pigeons were recovered; 87 appeared to be birds stolen from Belgium. The recovered birds were taken to a secure loft near Brussels, overseen by Belgium’s national pigeon federation, and police arranged for DNA testing to match each bird to its rightful owner since the identification rings on all the pigeon’s legs had been snipped off.
The race to protect pigeons
With the “pigeon mafia” on the loose, panicked fanciers across Belgium installed motion detectors, laser sensors and surveillance cameras around their lofts. Some, worried about letting thieves know they were away from home, stopped attending races.
DNA testing has proven to be a weapon against the “pigeon mafia”. Veterinarian Ruben Lanckriet, a pioneer in genetic testing on pigeons, maintains a database of more than 70,000 birds stretching back over 10 generations.
“It has been very important in proving parentage, father and mother, for the sale of pigeons,” Lanckriet said.
His genetic library offers some protection because a stolen pigeon, or its offspring, can be identified by DNA, making the birds riskier to sell or race.
“Now we can close the case,” Lanckriet said.
Lanckriet’s analysis helped identify 20 recovered pigeons, including two of Finn’s grandchildren. Finn himself was not among them.
Eight co-conspirators were convicted after the investigation into Finn’s theft, with the mastermind sentenced to 30 months in jail. But he won’t reveal where all the stolen pigeons were taken.
The case hasn’t quite been closed for Van Gaver, who is still looking skyward for Finn.
“Where are the pigeons? Give them back,” he said. “I want my pigeon back.”
