Fowl play: The criminals stealing elite racing pigeons

60 Minutes Overtime Fowl play: The criminals stealing elite racing pigeons .chip { background-image: url('/fly/bundles/cbsnewscore/images/chip-bgd/chip-bgd-60-minutes-overtime.jpg'); } By Sharyn Alfonsi, Sharyn Alfonsi Correspondent, 60 Minutes Sharyn Alfonsi is an award-winning correspondent for 60 Minutes. Read Full Bio Sharyn Alfonsi, Aliza Chasan, Aliza Chasan Digital Content Producer Aliza Chasan is a Digital Content Producer for "60 Minutes" and CBSNews.com. She has previously written for outlets including PIX11 News, The New York Daily News, Inside Edition and DNAinfo. Aliza covers trending news, often focusing on crime and politics. Read Full Bio Aliza Chasan, Guy Campanile Guy Campanile Guy Campanile is a veteran producer for 60 Minutes. In more than 35 years at CBS News, he reported on major stories including 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, the war against terrorism, the Great Recession, and seven U.S. presidential races. Read Full Bio Guy Campanile April 26, 2026 / 7:00 PM EDT / CBS News Add CBS News on Google 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 inside...