Robert King Wittman

Wittman was born in Tokyo, Japan, in 1955, to Yachiyo Akaishi, a Japanese national, and Robert A. Wittman, who met Akaishi while he was stationed with the US Air Force in Tokyo during the Korean War.[3] He came to the United States in 1957 and lived in Baltimore, Maryland, where his mother and father owned and ran an antique store. It was in this antique store that Wittman learned the business of art. He graduated from Calvert Hall College High School in 1973. Following high school, he attended Towson University and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science in 1980. Wittman initially found employment with a Maryland agricultural magazine where he learned how to be an effective salesman, a skill to which he attributes his success later in undercover stings. He married Donna Goodhand Wittman in 1982 and has 3 children. He joined the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1988 and was assigned to the Philadelphia Field Division where he went into the field of tracking down stolen art. His reputation within the FBI for solving art theft cases grew during the 1980s and 1990s. In 2005 Wittman was instrumental in the formation of the FBI's Art Crime Team, the first of its type. He worked closely with federal prosecutors Robert Goldman and David Locke Hall.

Agent Wittman served as a member of the Department of State's Cultural Antiquities Task Force based in Washington, D.C. He has sought to educate others in the cultural property protection community in techniques on how to avoid becoming a victim of theft or fraud and the importance of prompt reporting. He has been the FBI spokesperson for art theft matters nationally and represented the United States at numerous international conferences regarding cultural property protection. Some of those venues are The American Association of Museums (AAM) Annual Conference; J. Paul Getty Museum; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK; International conferences in Romania, Poland, Russia, Belgium, and France.

Throughout his career Wittman has received numerous awards in recognition of his outstanding service with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

• 2000- "Peruvian Order of Merit for Distinguished Service," presented by the President of Peru
• 2001- "Outstanding Contributions in Law Enforcement Award," presented by Attorney General John Ashcroft
• 2003- "White Cross of Law Enforcement Merit Medal" by the Spanish National Police
• 2004- "Robert Burke Memorial Award for Excellence in Cultural Property Protection" by the Smithsonian Institution at the National Conference on Cultural Property Protection
• 2010- "SAFE Beacon Award" by Saving Antiquities for Everyone

Wittman tells the story of his career in the memoir Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World's Stolen Treasures. It was published by The Crown Publishing Group in June 2010. Philadelphia Inquirer reporter John Shiffman was a co-writer.[11]

In 2016, he published with co-author David Kinney, The Devil's Diary: Alfred Rosenberg and the Stolen Secrets of the Third Reich, about the lost diary of Alfred Rosenberg and the man who "stole" it, Robert Kempner.

• The Lost Leonardo, 2021 film in which King Wittman is interviewed

• Robert Wittman Incorporated
• The Wall Street Journal- From the Art World to the Underworld
• Worrall, Simon (n.d.). "Heist: The Case of the Stolen Rembrandt". Reader's Digest. Archived from the original on January 23, 2009.
• FBI's Top Investigator Involving Art Theft and Art Fraud, Robert Wittman, Retires
• This Former FBI Agent Tracks Down Stolen Art for a Living