The list of missing works was later transferred to a business called the Art Loss Register.

"We are the world's largest database of stolen art," ALR Executive Director Chris Marinello said. "We now list more than 180,000 items, from paintings looted during the Holocaust to anything of value. We have a team of people who just search auction houses, dealer stock, eBay. Twenty-four hours a day, they pore over auctions, shows and fairs. When we find something, we call it a match and start trying to recover it."

From time to time, the folks at the Art Loss Register call BYU. Sometimes the match isn't a fit. Sometimes BYU can't make a good claim to a work and relinquishes its claim.

Last year, the ALR found what Marinello called a very nice couple in Florida trying to sell a painting that the ALR database said belonged to BYU.

"I felt bad telling her," he said.

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BYU's art collection exploded in size and significance in 1959 when The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints acquired the estate of Mahonri Mackintosh Young on behalf of the university.

The grandson of Brigham Young, Mahonri Young's art collection numbered more than 10,000 pieces, including Rembrandt etchings and works by Monet, Homer, Courbet and Weir, who was Young's father-in-law.

A large part of the collection was Young's own work, created by an enigmatic man who had left Utah to study and work in New York and Paris.

Young painted "Port Washington Point, Long Island, NY," in 1912. Investigators learned it was missing when they did the inventory of the collection in 1986.

The Florida couple who had it were innocent.

"What's sad is many of these people are good-faith purchasers," Lemmon said.

Several years ago, a New Mexico art dealer sent BYU a Maynard Dixon painting to see if the university wanted to buy it. It turned out to be one of the missing works.

"We're not buying it," Lemmon told the dealer. "We're keeping it."

The Art Loss Register's Marinello said the Florida couple was lucky. They got their money back.

"Part of what we do is try to get people back their money," he said. "I found out where she bought it from and contacted that person and followed the history. Eventually, I found somebody who did not do their homework, didn't do due diligence. That person did not get their money back, but we were able to get the nice couple made whole."

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