The 50 Biggest Street Art & Graffiti Arrests (pt. 1/2)

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The war between street artists and the law shows no sign of abating. If anything, it's intensifying. The vandal squad's genuine love of catching writers is a well known phenomenon in the graffiti world. Likewise, any artist with his heart in the right place will tell you that without the illegal aspect, it just wouldn't be the same. It seems even as security measures grow tighter and legal consequences more punishing, the movement is bigger than it's ever been.



This article covers some of the more prolific, landmark, absurd, or just unlucky cases in the ongoing battle between street artists and the law. It contains only arrests and information widely reported in the news media, or from published interviews with the artists themselves. No government names or mug shots have been used. In cases where outcomes are unknown, charges are merely accusations. Every arrest here goes deeper than what has been reported in the media: please think carefully before making "corrections" in the comments.

The 50 Biggest Street Art Arrests

Yoshitomo Nara, New York

Date: 2009.
Punishment: A night in jail.
The night before the opening of his solo show at Marian Boesky Gallery, pop artist Yoshitomo Nara was arrested for drunk-drawing a character in the first avenue L train stop.
He said the night he spent in jail was “a nice experience in my life,” and “like in the movies.”
He was given an adjournment and ordered to stay out of trouble for six months. The charges were later dropped. One source estimated that if the Transit Authority hadn't cleaned Nara's work off the brick, they could have sold it for up to $10,000.


SLA, Florida

Date: 2011.
Punishment: Unknown.
For years, Florida police thought the SLA was a bunch of kids, little toys tagging the power poles of Pinellas County. But when SLA was dobbed in by a witness, they discovered an old man with a bucket and a fishing rod.
He gained international media coverage because of his age: 71 years-old. SLA admitted to spraying hundreds of local power poles over the past five years.
He explained "SLA" was his own one-man political party: "Sane Liberated Americans." This was the group he believed would take over once the American economy went under. He was charged with criminal mischief and held on a $5,000 bail.


MIDZT, Los Angeles

Date: 2010.
Punishment: Unknown.
Usually people who do friendly-looking animal art are more warmly received than people who write real graffiti. But when MIDZT was wrongfully arrested for being the infamous "cat tagger" of Los Angeles, he was treated like any other malicious vandal. CBS even sent a camera crew to follow the humiliating arrest in real time from his workplace.
Many local blogs and artists came forward to support MIDZT's protestations that he was not the cat tagger of Los Angeles. One local arts blog suggested that police knew this, but thought that MIDZT might know the real culprit and give him up. The outcome is unknown.

MOUSTACHE, New York

Date: 2011.
Punishment: Unknown.
"MOUSTACHE" was briefly famous for his calligraphic penmanship across the top lips of models in New York subway advertisements. Police say it took a two-month long investigation to catch MOUSTACHE before charging him with an underwhelming $1,500 damage. He was also slapped with comparatively harsh felony-grade mischief and graffiti making charges.

VOINA, Moscow

Punishment: Charges dropped.
On November 15, 2010, two members of politically-motivated street art collective VOINA were arrested in a house raid in Moscow. They were taken away in a white van with plastic bags over their heads, with police telling their friends they were taking them "to the woods."
VOINA are most well-known for drawing a giant penis on the elevating St. Petersburg bridge. However, they really ticked police off after overturning a bunch of cop cars—at least one with an officer inside—as part of a public performance piece called "Palace Revolution."
After four months in prison, the two VOINA members were freed when BANKSY paid 300,000 roubles each for their release. Presumably because of the amount of international attention the case received, the charges were later dropped.


Jonas Lara, Los Angeles

Punishment: $200 restitution.
Photography student Jonas Lara's case received media attention when he was arrested photographing two writers for an art project.
Initially, Lara claims, he was told he was only needed at the station for processing. Only once he was there was he charged with felony vandalism.
Lara refused to plead guilty, soon parting ways with his public defender who disagreed that as a photographer, he was within his rights to document an illegal subculture.
With the assistance of a private attorney, Lara declined three plea deals, offering instead to pay $200 in restitution to the property owner. The charge was reduced to "disturbing the peace" and he walked without a criminal record. However, it took several months to get his camera equipment back. He says police tried to trick him into giving more information about the case when he went to pick it up.

ZEB, New York

Date: 2010.
Punishment: $6,910 restitution, 25 days of community service.
Caught sending flicks to friends after a judge authorized an email wiretap, ZEB was arraigned in Queens for painting on seven New York subway cars. Some of them dated as far back as 2007, when he would only have been 15.
ZEB's lawyer argued that he was "working hard to channel his creative output in a productive way” as a student at the Chicago Art Institute. They even entered a guilty plea, to appease the prosecution. Nonetheless, ZEB received a felony conviction for graffiti.

GIRAFA, San Francisco

Date: 2009.
Punishment: $38,000 in restitution, three years probation. 
When San Jose police caught GIRAFA in 2009, they called the artist behind the nursery-style art one of "the most prolific graffiti artists in the Bay Area." He was charged with ten felony cases estimated to be worth $40,000 in damages.
"I paint giraffes to bring awareness that wild animals don't belong in zoos," he once told graff website I Love Graffiti. "Just like a painted giraffe doesn't belong on a rooftop, a city wall, or a delivery truck, right?”
GIRAFA pleaded guilty to two counts of felony vandalism and two counts of misdemeanor vandalism. He was ordered to pay $38,000 in damages to the city and property owners.


SPACE INVADER (unconfirmed), Los Angeles

Date: 2011.
Punishment: Unknown.
During the Art In The Streets exhibition last year, two French nationals were detained near the MOCA after being spotted with buckets of grout and tile pieces. According to The Los Angeles Times, the LAPD believed one of the two men to be SPACE INVADER, the renowned street artist whose preferred medium is mosaic.
The men were released while the investigation continued, and later on some SPACE INVADER-style mosaics were discovered in the Little Tokyo neighborhood, however the outcome is unknown.

VOMET, ENZO, PERVE, FEED, RUSSIA, BEAV, STEAL and SHINE

Date: 2011.
Punishment: Case pending.
In October of 2011, the Atlanta Police Department served 29 warrants for 800 accounts of graffiti to a group they accuse of being some of the best-known writers in Atlanta: VOMET, ENZO, PERVE, FEED, RUSSIA, BEAV, STEAL and SHINE. If they are correct, it will be one of the biggest take-downs in Atlanta's graffiti history. However, the process is still pending. Some trials have been pushed back. All are presumed innocent until proven otherwise.

John Scott, Los Angeles

Date: 2009.
Punishment: Three years probation, $1680 restitution.
In November 2009, a Los Angeles patrol noticed an elderly man placing stickers on the stairwell of the downtown 7th and Metro Center subway station.
For months they had been searching for an "older suspect" who had been posting hundreds of black and orange stickers that said Who is John Scott?. An Internet search led them to whoisjohnscott.com, a site selling stickers, t-shirts and hats with the slogan on them. Only when they confronted him did they see John Scott was a 73 year-old man.
For a sticker artist and an elderly gentleman, Scott's treatment seemed a little overzealous. He was arrested and held on a $20,000 bail for what The Los Angeles Times reported as "several thousand dollars in damage." He was then charged with felony-grade vandalism.
Scott pleaded no contest and got the charges downgraded to misdemeanor vandalism. He was put on probation and ordered to pay $1680 in restitution.


Travie McCoy, Berlin

Date: 2010.
Punishment: 1500 Euros.
While on tour in Berlin, the Gym Class Hero rapper tweeted: "The Berlin wall. I'm def gettin up on this before we leave tonight!!!" Less than an hour later, he posted a blurry flick of his handiwork, captioned, "Told you!!! Had to do it, blame it on the devil, everyone else does!"
Knowing it was not the devil who'd just defaced one of their most treasured historical sites, German police quickly arrested him. McCoy was required to post 1500 Euros bail before he could leave for his show in Amsterdam.

SMEAR, Los Angeles

Date: 2011.
Punishment: Two weeks prison, 45 days of graffiti cleanup.
The day after The Los Angeles Times published an article about SMEAR's newfound gallery success, his house was searched as part of a probation check. They seized markers, stickers, wheat-paste posters, prints, and a copy of the newspaper with SMEAR's article before ordering him to turn himself in for probation violation.
SMEAR was on a long probation period for tagging buses in 2007. He was also named in the unique city injunction against the MTA in 2010, which aimed to prevent him from profiting off any artwork sold under the name SMEAR. “They've obtained an unfair advantage because they gained fame and notoriety through criminal acts,” said Anne Tremblay, assistant city attorney. “This is unlawful competition.”
In court he was given two weeks in jail and 45 days of graffiti removal for posting photos of illegal graffiti on his website.

OVIEONE, New York

Date: 2009.
Punishment: Between two and four years in state prison.
OVIEONE is allegedly the first New York writer to do state prison time for graffiti.
Caught after a search warrant on his email turned up photos of graffiti on trains, he is now adverse to any kind of technological storing or sharing of graffiti.
"In case of an event that you guys want to go hit, please ... do not get anything that has to do with digital technology," he said in a YouTube video. "Don't have no digital shots on your computers, don't have memory case lying around, don't conversate [sic] through emails ... Basically don't have anything to do with Internet actions online."


DPM, London

Date: 2008.
Punishment: Four members received 18 months in prison, one member received two years, three members received suspended sentences.
British crew the DPM were first noticed by police after targeting trains and railways across Europe in 2004. They were monitored as part of a two-year investigation which allowed police to bring maximum charges. The British press called it "one of the largest graffiti conspiracies to be brought to court."
DPM defense lawyers argued the crew were just trying to achieve the same fame as those artists starring in the street art exhibition opening at the Tate Modern that day. With street artists like BLU and JR adorning the Museum's exterior, one DPM member remarked, "I know that half, if not all of the graffiti that is on the Tate Modern building is done by people who do illegal graffiti or have done illegal graffiti and have made their name doing that."
Judge Christopher Hardy said that although he admired their artistic skill, it was "a wholesale self-indulgent campaign to damage property on an industrial scale." He gave five of the eight sentenced jail time.
In support of DPM, the Anonymous Gallery in SOHO put on an exhibition called DPM: Exhibit A. Each of the crew members had work in the show next to a copy of their rap sheets.

OCP, Los Angeles

Date: 2010.
Punishment: Unknown.
OCP drew the interest of the Sheriff's Department after they were filmed tagging a bus and train in the chaos following the Lakers' 2009 championship win. The overnight raids netted drugs, weapons, and stolen property. With 31 warrants served and 15 members arrested (reports vary), Lt. Erik Ruble of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department called the OCP "thugs and menaces," which in some parts of LA would be considered a compliment.

MFONE, Pittsburgh

Date: 2007.
Punishment: Two-and-a-half to five years in prison, $234,000 in restitution, 2,500 hours of community service, probation for life.
MFONE was the number-one vandal in Pittsburgh when police arrested him in 2007. On his person was his digital camera and 80 minutes worth of video.
Along with their brand-new graffiti database, they built a case against MFONE that accused him of half a million dollars worth of damages, even linking him to another tag—"BROWN EYES"—by comparing the E's.
MFONE pleaded guilty to 79 counts of criminal vandalism and was sentenced to between two-and-a-half and five years in state prison. He was also given $234,000 worth of fines, and community service equal to full time work for a year.
The word "FORGIVE" was painted on at least three buildings in the area, including a huge display on the Arsenal Terminal building at 40th and Butler streets.
The Junobo Paint blog reported he was released after a year.


MTA, Los Angeles

Date: 2009.
Punishment: Unknown.
In a series of early morning raids, Sheriff's officials arrested seven men they claimed to be MTA, the crew behind the half-mile-long MTA blockbuster in the LA River.
After the US Army was brought in to remove the piece, a civil suit brought by Carmen Trutanich's office sought $3.7 million in graffiti-related damages for 500 incidents of MTA vandalism. The suit also sought to place an injunction on the crew, with rules usually reserved for curbing gang activity like not being allowed to associate with each other, and having to observe a curfew. In this case it would even apply to the entire state of California, not just certain neighborhoods. The legal battle is ongoing.

STAYHIGH149, New York

Date: 1973.
Punishment: Fined $20.
STAYHIGH149 's arrest came after a picture of his face appeared in an eight-page graffiti feature in New York magazine in the early '70s. The piece included pictures of STAYHIGH tags and a STAYHIGH train. With police finally able to put a face to the legendary moniker, STAYHIGH was arrested whilst "motion tagging" a month later. He was fined $20 and he decided to change his tag. He began writing VOICE OF THE GHETTO instead, which was inspired by seeing a copy of The Village Voice on the subway.

2ESAE, New York

Date: 2007.
Punishment: Three months in prison.
New York writer 2ESAE was surprised to get a three-month prison sentence in Brooklyn for graffiti: "They really had nothing on me, so I was thinking this whole time that I was going to be let off," he said.
With his public defender, he got three months on Rikers. This would overlap with a court appearance for 43 counts of criminal mischief, trespassing, and graffiti that came with a potential seven years of jail time. The second round of charges had been brought against him after footage for a documentary was turned up in a separate raid.
2ESAE's arrest was highly publicized because of his involvement with the Graffiti Research Lab, who threw a big fundraiser/going away party the night before he went to Rikers. All proceeds went to getting him a better lawyer.


TOX, London

Date: 2011.
Punishment: Twenty-seven months in prison.
Crankily dubbed "the scourge of the Underground," the prolific TOX tag had been appearing in London for nearly ten years with the last two numbers of the year next to it (i.e. TOX03, TOX04).
He was finally arrested in '11 after being caught on the CCTV that makes England the most videotaped country in the world.
At trial the defense told the court their client had retired TOX after an arrest in '05. Therefore TOX09, TOX10, and so on must be the work of TOX admirers. They even brought in ex-graffiti artist Ben Eine to testify that the TOX tags were "incredibly basic", with no "skill, flair or unique style," so anybody could have been writing them.
TOX was found guilty. As he awaited sentencing, BANKSY put a stencil up near his old house in Camden; a little boy making bubbles that spelled out T-O-X. The owners of the house quickly covered the piece with a Perspex shield. The irony of this was lost on nobody, except the judge, who gave TOX 27 months in the slammer.

POSTER BOY, New York

Date: 2009.
Punishment: Three years probation, 210 days community service, 11 months prison, reduced or suspended.
POSTER BOY was arrested by plain-clothes police at an art gallery in SoHo after his name appeared on the show flier. A short time later, The New York Times received an email saying POSTER BOY wasn't the man in question, but "a movement."
At the initial hearing, POSTER BOY maintained his innocence and refused a plea bargain. Later he pleaded guilty to two counts of criminal mischief as POSTER BOY and got the felony conviction scratched in exchange for 210 hours of community service and three years of probation.
Following a bunch of petty re-arrests and a missed court date, a few months later POSTER BOY was sentenced to 11 months on Rikers. He was out again after two weeks.


O'CLOCK, New York

Date: 2001.
Punishment: Unknown.
French legend O'CLOCK was arrested in NYC after police saw him videotaping graffiti as he traveled downtown on the Number 5 train. They stopped him at Battery Park and seized his camera, as well as several cans of paint. Upon viewing the video, they realized that they had O'CLOCK, the same tag that had appeared on an E train a few days beforehand. They then placed him at the scene of the crime by analyzing his Metrocard. O'CLOCK was charged with filming in the subways, possession of graffiti instruments, and resisting arrest. The outcome is unknown.

WYSE, Boston

Date: 2011.
Punishment: Case pending.
The man alleged to be WYSE was arrested in November last year while photographing "fresh" graffiti on a train. There were eight warrants for his arrest written between 2007 and 2010. Charged with vandalism for a minimum of 30 train cars, he is currently being held on a substantial $80,000 cash bail. “He’s a big one. They’ve been chasing him for years,” said MBTA Police Deputy Chief Lewis Best.

LA ROC, New York

Date: 2011.
Punishment: 45 days in prison.
After tagging several well-known spots in the East Village (including the Joe Strummer wall and Kenny Scharf mural on the Bowery/Houston wall at the time), LA ROC was arrested and caused to miss his own exhibition opening.
Two weeks later, he was arrested again for tagging. Heidi Follin, whose gallery represents LA ROC, said he was upset at his wife's death weeks before.
This time he was sent to Rikers Island for 45 days. After he was released, LA ROC told The Local East Village he wasn't going to do illegal graffiti anymore.


 Source: Complex