The 50 Biggest Street Art Arrests

A history of street art's relationship with the law.

Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

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.

Complex's 50 Biggest Street Art Arrests 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.

COPE2, New York

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.

MAP, New York

Date: 2006.

Punishment: Four months in prison.

MAP was on the top 50 of the NY Vandal Squad's "Worst Of The Worst" list when a police officer standing behind him saw him smash the window of an A train with a hammer.

He was found with nine cans of paint, rocks, markers, gloves, and a wax stick. Police suspected he was trying to take out someone else's tag, but since the window was destroyed, they couldn't be sure. He was charged with criminal mischief. The head of the Transit Bureau called the arrest "a really good grab."

MAP was sentenced to four months on Rikers. He had already been arrested at least ten times for graffiti.

PER, DAIM and HESH, New York

Date: 1995.

Punishment: PER: Community service. DAIM and HESH: Unknown.

In the summer of 1995, PER met up with DAIM and HESH from Germany in the South Bronx. Their plan that day was to do a legal mural on a "formerly desecrated" handball court with full permission of the school's principal.

While painting they were watched and photographed by the vandal squad. A short time later all three were arrested in front of waiting news crews. DAIM and HESH had their passports confiscated.

All three were charged with unknown offenses. PER was given community service because he couldn't provide written proof that all the legal walls he'd secured through verbal agreements over the years were done with permission. The principal was given a public reprimand for "permitting vandalism on city-owned property."

SMASH

Date: 2006.

Punishment: Unknown.

SMASH was the number-one target of transit police when he was arrested in 2006.

"He's the king of acid etching. He's done the most we've ever seen," said a member of the Transit Division Vandal Squad.

He was arrested after police raided the house where he lived with his grandmother. The outcome is unknown.

FISTA, Sheffield, UK

Date: 1996.

Punishment: Five years in prison.

UK writer FISTA gained international attention when he received a five-year sentence for graffiti in 1996. At the time it was considered a remarkably heavy punishment.

City councillor Francis Butler originally tried to discourage FISTA from writing with a concerted clean-up effort. But once it became apparent that was only making him more prevalent, Butler took to the radio with a plea for FISTA's true identity. A bunch of people came through with a government name, and FISTA received the kind of punishment that one article called "a public hanging, to deter others."

Butler felt regret about the sentence's severity. He told The Independent: "I'm aware that we're not a listening society and that there are no conventional outlets for people who are disadvantaged to express themselves artistically.

FISTA was released after a year.

ESPO, New York

Date: 1999.

Punishment: Five days of community service.

In 1999, ESPO's house was raided and he was arrested for vandalism and criminal possession of a weapon—a pair of decorative brass knuckles hanging on a wall.

The raid came a day before an event he was throwing with "culture jammer" Joey Skaggs. To protest Mayor Giuliani's blocking of funding for the Sensation exhibition over an elephant-dung-and-porn portrait of the Virgin Mary, they organized an event in Washington Square Park where New Yorkers could hurl wads of dung at ESPO's picture of the mayor for a buck apiece.

Many felt this was a politically motivated arrest, but police said ESPO had been the subject of investigation "for months," presumably because of the number of storefront grates he was painting with his fictional "Exterior Surface Painting Outreach" at the time.

Charged with criminal mischief, ESPO accepted a plea bargain and received five days of community service. He retired from illegal street art the following year.

KET, New York

Date: 2006.

Punishment: Over $12,000 in fines and restitution, three years probation, community service of a public mural.

When KET's house was raided in 2006, he had no previous criminal record and had never been caught doing graffiti. But with the seizure of his home computer, the city maintained they could build a case based on "photographs of illegal subway graffiti that were entered into [his] home computer only hours after identical work was discovered on subway cars," according to The New York Times.

KET was charged with 14 criminal counts of trespass, criminal mischief and making graffiti.

Represented by Ron Kuby, prodigy of the late William Kunstler, KET decided not to go to trial. He pleaded guilty to one count each in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens in what Kuby called "the triborough tour." He received fines adding up to over $12,000. The other 11 charges were dropped.

KET has suggested that his arrest was an attempt to intimidate Marc Ecko, who brought a graffiti-related First Amendment lawsuit against the city the same year. KET and Ecko had worked on projects together in the past.

ZEVS, Hong Kong

Date: 2009.

Location: Two weeks prison, suspended.

In Hong Kong for an exhibition of his "liquidated logos," French street artist ZEVS kicked things off by placing a dripping, black pair of Chanel C's above the window of the local Armani flagship. He was arrested with two local residents at around 4am, and appeared in court the next day. He pleaded guilty to one count of criminal damage.

Prosecutors said that part of the facade would have to be removed and replaced entirely at a cost of roughly $870,000 USD. ZEVS called the sum "surrealistic" [sic] and said he had deliberately used a water-based paint that had proven easy to remove before.

While waiting to face trial, ZEVS spent several weeks in jail. During that time, he arranged for a European graffiti-removal team to come and scrub the building with a special solution.

At trial he was given two weeks jail, wholly suspended. The owners of the building reportedly attempted to sue him again for damages.

MCKOY/BANOS, Singapore

Date: 2010.

Punishment: Five months prison, three strokes of the cane.

In 2010, a Swiss man who had been living in Singapore for two years was arrested for writing MCKOY/BANOS on a train in the Changi Depot. He was two days away from leaving to start a new job back in Switzerland. The other man accused of involvement had already left the country.

The case caused an uproar in Singapore. Not because of the graf--SMRT staff let the piece run for two days, thinking it was an advertisement--but because the train yard was exposed as a soft target for terrorists, a sensitive issue in the region.

In court, the man pleaded guilty to two charges of vandalism and trespassing in a protected place. He received five months in jail and three strokes of the cane.

An appeal to reduce the sentence weirdly increased it by two months. The man was eventually released after less than five months for good behavior. He flew back to Switzerland and was immediately arrested for graffiti offenses there.

Shepard Fairey, Denver and Boston

Date: Denver: 2008. Boston: 2009.

Punishment: Denver: $171 dollars in court fees, $500 bond, six months unsupervised probation. Boston: $2,000 restitution, ban on carrying any postering or graffiti-related items in Boston for two years.

Denver: While Shepard Fairey was in town for the Manifest Hope art show, the Democratic National Convention was stirring up police activity downtown. On a postering mission with several others, Fairey and friends saw several police officers in full riot gear running up the hill. Trying to escape, they were blocked by more police with guns and were quickly arrested.

At his 6 a.m. arraignment, Fairey pleaded guilty to the charge of Interference with Police Authority. This in exchange for having the charge of Posting Unauthorized Posters dropped. He was released on bond/bail, with six months unsupervised probation.

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Boston: "According to Peel magazine's David Combs, Shepard Fairey's 2009 arrest was part of a political argument that had nothing to do with street art whatsoever.

In January 2009, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino had just won a month-long battle to freeze the wages of all Boston city workers for a year--including those of police. Menino was publically photographed with Fairey around the same time, who was in town to prepare for the opening of his 20-year retrospective at the city's Institute of Contemporary Art.

On the opening night of the show, Combs and Fairey were sharing a cab to the ICA when they noticed an unmarked SUV tailing them. When their taxi accidentally missed the turn-off, the SUV prevented them from turning around. Police quickly exited the vehicle and arrested Fairey for incidents of vandalism in Boston.

Combs believes the plan was to arrest Fairey in front of waiting fans and media, thus embarrassing Mayor Menino by association. That plan fell apart however when the taxi missed the turn-off, and Fairey was arrested quietly near the parking lot instead.

In court, Fairey pleaded guilty to three charges of vandalism and was ordered to pay $2,000 to notorious anti-graffiti community group, the Neighborhood Association of Back Bay. He was also banned from carrying stickers, posters, wheat paste, brushes and any other graffiti instruments in Boston for two years.

Chad Muska, Los Angeles

Date: 2011.

Punishment: Released on $20,000 bail.

On July 13, 2011, pro-skater Chad Muska tweeted: "I have a feeling tonight is going to be another one of those nights. I should just stay in... But I won't." Hours later, he was apprehended outside the Roosevelt Hotel for writing MUSKA and MUSKA KILLS on two buildings in the vicinity.

Camera phone footage of the incident surfaced, showing two black security guards holding Muska captive while he dropped a couple of casual N-bombs. He was taken into custody and released on $20,000 bail.

By then the story had broken and Muska's graffiti had paled in comparison to his racially charged language. In the midst of the media attention, Muska took to his Twitter to defend himself ("I'm not racist! I'm ghetto!"), but just over a day later, he posted an apology to YouTube. No information has been released whether he'll be charged for the graffiti.

DESA, New York

Date: 1996.

Punishment: A year in jail.

DESA was the subject of several increasingly high profile arrests in the '90s.

His biggest came when he was arrested for six trains while on probation for threatening an anti-graffiti community group. He was sentenced to between one and three years in jail and was the subject of a front page story in The Daily News that called him "the city's worst graffiti punk."

A month after being paroled, he was caught again doing graffiti in Brooklyn. He told police at the time he was "addicted," and was sentenced to another year in jail.

KEO, New York

Date: 2003.

Punishment: Five years probation.

In August of 2003, an aide for Presidential candidate Howard Dean wanted a graffiti background for a promotional event in Bryant Park. Despite being "leery from the jump," KEO needed the money at the time and took the job.

Dean's opponents immediately seized on the graffiti background, saying it sent the wrong message. Republican politician James Oddo and Mayor Michael Bloomberg put pressure on the Vandal Squad to get KEO arrested. He was picked up on an outstanding warrant arriving home from a trip filming Bomb The System. The warrant had been issued in 1999 for graffiti on subway cars at 148th and Lenox. One report said an officer who worked the case in '99 recognized KEO's work from a newspaper article discussing his role in the Howard Dean controversy.

KEO was charged with one felony count of criminal mischief. He was represented by Ron Kuby, and because of the case's high profile, the city offered little chance for leniency. KEO took a plea that got him five years probation.

BUKET, Los Angeles

Date: 2008.

Punishment: Three years and eight months jail, $117,196 restitution.

When BUKET's daytime hits on an MTA bus and busy Hollywood freeway went viral on YouTube, Sheriff's Deputy Devin Vanderlaan told The Los Angeles Times: “If he's brave enough to tag on an MTA bus in the middle of the day, I've gotta find out who this guy is.”

The start of the video featured a shoutout from Evidence of Dilated Peoples fame for the graff movie War 4. Most news outlets mistook this as BUKET bragging, and Evidence found his face wrongfully splashed across local media as one of LA's most wanted. This inspired the Evidence song, "It Wasn't Me.”

Once arrested, BUKET pleaded guilty to 32 counts of felony vandalism, and was released from jail for time already served. He was also given restitution to pay of more than $100,000.

Later he was re-arrested and charged with five new counts of felony vandalism. Despite having all but one charge dropped, he was given another $14,000 in fines and sentenced to three years, eight months in prison.

COST, New York

Date: 1995.

Punishment: Five years probation, 200 days of community service, $2,126 in restitution.

When COST was arrested in 1995, the media considered him and REVS to be New York's most prolific vandals.

COST's address was revealed by a police informant. He was arrested after a stakeout caught him putting a sticker on a mailbox. It was hoped he would not be connected to the COST graffiti all over the city. However after carving his tag, COSTER, across the top of the courtroom door, he eventually admitted to being COST.

He pleaded guilty to putting a sticker on a Queens Tribune box and for writing on a subway poster. In court, the judge estimated that COST had done over $100 million in damages. He fined him $2,126 in restitution, and gave him 200 days of graffiti clean-up. He denied the prosecution's request for jail, in order to spare tax payers. "This is a serious sentence so that you can be an example to anyone who thinks they can get away with this," he said in final sentencing.

COST's Wikipedia page says that he decided to retire from illegal graffiti soon after.

REVS, New York

Date: 2000.

Punishment: Unknown.

After COST was arrested, REVS went underground—literally—and accomplished "one of the most extensive and sustained graffiti projects of all time," according to Brian Thomas Gallagher, deputy editor of The New York Observer. He was referring to the wall-sized diary entries REVS scrawled throughout New York's subway tunnels. Police supposedly spent hours analyzing them for clues to his true identity, including birthplace, date of birth, and birth weight (8 lb 3oz, in case you were wondering).

In 2000, REVS was caught in the act and arrested. He said he was set up by another writer known to him.

REVS was charged with graffiti, trespassing, and stolen property for the subway worker uniform he was wearing. Because of it, "Everybody who saw him with the buckets of paint just thought he belonged down there," said Gallagher.

REVS held his first and only gallery show in Philadelphia that year to raise money for a lawyer.

CHAKA, Los Angeles

Date: 1991.

Punishment: Three years probation, two years of counseling, 1,560 hours of community service.

When he was caught and charged in 1991, the prosecution called CHAKA "the most prolific tagger ever in Los Angeles." He was 18 years old.

Charged with 48 counts of vandalism, trespassing and $500,000 in damages, the police estimated there were at least 10,000 CHAKA tags up and down the state of California. Others said that was a severe underestimate.

CHAKA was fined and sentenced to a year in jail, but released for five months already served and given 1,560 hours of graffiti-removal.

A day after his court appearance, CHAKA was re-arrested for tagging the elevator door of the courthouse. The incident made the news, but the outcome is unknown.

"Camera Man" Carl, New York

Date: 1995.

Punishment: Unknown.

The "CNN of graffiti" in the '90s, Camera Man Carl and his company, Videograf productions were the subjects of a high profile arrest after he was caught videotaping a crew of writers in 1995.

News crews gathered to capture his "walk of shame" outside the 104th Precinct building unexpectedly caught a piece of graffiti history when he yelled, "Videograf Productions! We promote graffiti!"

He later told Vibe magazine that although they were trying to prosecute him as a writer, for more than ten years he'd been 100% behind the camera. "I follow the writers, they don't follow me."

In 2000, Carl was the subject of a four-hour raid, with hundreds of videotapes and $20,000 worth of equipment seized.

UTAH and ETHER, Chicago/New York

Date: 2009.

Punishment: Her: Six months in Rikers, six months in Boston prison, $10,000 in renumeration, five years probation, five-year ban on going to Boston. Him: Six months in prison, one year probation, ten thousand dollars in restitution.

UTAH and ETHER had one of the most highly publicized arrests when they were arrested coming back from Europe in 2009. They were often referred to as the "Bonnie and Clyde of graffiti" in the mainstream media.

UTAH—who'd changed her flight to Chicago's O'Hare International Airport upon learning she was wanted—was extradited to New York on charges of criminal mischief and burglary. One source told Newsday, "We consider her the number one active female tagger, possibly in the country, definitely in New York.”

ETHER, who'd been noticed by the MBTA (Metropolitan Boston Transit Authority) as early as 2005, was arrested by MBTA Transit Police as he flew in to JFK International.

Even though UTAH's lawyer said the probable outcome would be a "lengthy suspended sentence," she ended up doing nearly six months on Rikers. Upon her release, she was required to face court in Boston, where she pleaded guilty to 13 charges. She then served six months in the state of Massachusetts.

The following year, ETHER pleaded guilty to seven counts of vandalizing property in Boston. He was sentenced to a year inside, with six months to serve and the balance suspended on a probationary period of one year. He was also required to pay $10,000 in restitution to the MBTA.

JA, New York

Date: 1988.

Punishment: $10,000 fine.

JA made headlines in the late '80s when he was sued by the city for doing a bunch of subway cars and signs along the Henry Hudson parkway. According to Newsday, "Police sources remember the Koch administration picking on JA because of his father's celebrity." Even at a time when the city had decided it wasn't worth it to sue writers for damages (SANE/SMITH excepted), under David Dinkins' mayorship, JA was fined at least $10,000 dollars to set a public example.

SANESMITH, New York

Date: 1988.

Punishment: Charges dropped.

SANESMITH were the targets of the largest-ever case to be brought against graffiti writers at the time: three million dollars, or around six million today, for painting the Brooklyn Bridge.

They managed to do it in two hours one Tuesday evening, standing on ledges that were “only a foot-and-a-half wide.”

“He's just one of these kids who has no intention of stopping,” said the Transit Deputy Inspector at the time, referring to SANE (RIP). “He thinks it's art and we're fools to think otherwise.”

Jennifer Toth's book The Mole People said the lawsuit was partly to discourage other writers from attempting such dangerous locations, partly a ruse to try and get the two writers to rat. They did not. Instead, they were represented by legendary lawyer, the late William Kunstler, and "somehow the city lost its will to pursue the matter,” said SMITH. “We wound up moving out to avoid all the unwanted police attention, and the bridge got painted a second time the following year. I guess no one learned their lesson."

GKAE, Los Angeles

Date: 1997

Punishment: $99,470 fine, 1,000 hours of graffiti cleanup, around four years in maximum security prison.

In 1997, GKAE became the target of a Highway Patrol Graffiti Task Force cop who tied him to the name GANKE. It was the tag he'd been arrested and fined $43,000 for in 1993.

Talk on the Internet revealed GKAE had moved to Seattle. Six weeks later he was caught when police ran a warrants check on him for drinking underage at a party.

GKAE waived extradition and came back to California, the first time a graffiti writer was ever taken interstate to face charges.

He spent the better part of a year in jail before pleading guilty to a felony vandalism charge. It was rumored to be the biggest property damage case in history, estimated at four million dollars. Prosecutors even used a professional voice analyst to match GKAE to his infamous appearance on the Gabrielle talk show.

At sentencing, GKAE was fined nearly $100,000 dollars and given 1,000 hours of clean-up duty.

A couple of years later, a security guard saw GKAE writing on a Hollywood studio wall and recorded his license plate. He was judged as having violated his parole at least twice since his last conviction.

In a 1999 interview with EKLIPS from a maximum security prison, GKAE said he had just finished doing 16 months, and was about to start a three-year term.

Michael Jerome Stewart, New York

Date: 1983

On September 15, 1983, Michael Jerome Stewart was arrested for graffiti in a Manhattan subway station. Thirty minutes later he arrived at Bellevue Hospital Center in a coma, his hands and legs bound. Police said he was violent and that physical force had to be used. This conflicted with his family's description of a "retiring and almost docile 135-pound young artist."

The same day Stewart was arrested, the Committee Against Racially Motivated Police Violence was holding a national news conference. Since he was a young, black man arrested by an all-white team of cops, they brought Stewart's plight to national attention. Stewart never regained consciousness to tell his story: he died 13 days later.

Six police eventually went to the high profile trial for the case. Although the official cause of death was listed as cardiac arrest, the physician who witnessed the autopsy on behalf of the family believes Smith was strangled. Later, a "lost" coroner's report was unable to confirm or deny this.

The defendants in the case were eventually acquitted by an all-white jury, citing lack of evidence.

The case troubled Jean Michel Basquiat, who created the drawing Defacement (The Death Of Michael Stewart)in his memory. The character of Radio Raheem in Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing is also meant to be an allusion to Stewart.

NEO, New York

Date: 2010.

Punishment: Three years probation, $700 in restitution, gun license permanently revoked, mandatory participation in the "paint straight" program.

In 2009, police noted that '80s writer NEO was making a comeback. They knew he was a cop; informants had told them as much and he'd mentioned it in interviews. But he also implied he was "crippled."

The birth date on NEO's MySpace page was the same as that of an NYPD officer who had retired on a disability pension after injuring himself in 2001. On August 3, 2010, police arrested and charged the former cop as NEO.

He didn't deny that he was once the man behind the '80s tag. However, he claimed the NEO they were after was an imitator: he walked with a cane and was unable to get up in those kinds of spots anymore. At trial nearly two years later, the judge found him guilty of one tag over the Clearview Expressway. He was fined, given a lengthy probation period, and ordered to participate in Brooklyn's "Paint Straight" art program.

He was still denying the charge, even on his way out of court: "I didn't do the graffiti on the highway," he said. "That's why I fought this all along."

REVOK, Los Angeles

Date: 2011.

Punishment: 180 days in prison.

He doesn't have the longest jail sentence or the biggest fine, but REVOK's headline-making arrest in 2011 was the biggest in terms of media exposure.

Through a combination of legitimate graffiti fame, a willingness to talk about his experiences, and growing social awareness around graffiti, he has inadvertently become the mainstream's unofficial poster boy of graffiti.

REVOK's legal troubles began with a deceptively innocent hit on the way to the Coachella Music Festival in 2009. Indio police arrested him in LA for prints they lifted from a cap found at the site. For financial reasons, he took a plea deal in exchange for probation. This, he says, is "how these fuckers got me by the balls."

The following October, REVOK was the subject of a high-profile arrest in Australia after police tracked illegal activity--and even his imminent departure--on Twitter. He was arrested at Melbourne Airport in front of waiting news crews and fined $15,000 AUD. The arrest was seized on for its brand-new social media novelty and introduced REVOK to mainstream news outlets on an international level.

Back in the States, REVOK was painting at a probation-approved event for his spraypaint sponsorwhen he was told police were asking for him outside. He fled, only to get picked up looking for his friend's car on the street. He was accused of violating his probation because of a nozzle in his pocket. A subsequent search of his house turned up a fake police badge, for which he was charged with impersonating a police officer (he says it was part of a Halloween costume worn by a girl he brought home), and he was also charged with possession of stolen property for a couple of milk crates.

Despite fully expecting to go to jail, REVOK was put on probation for three years.

After a relatively peaceful two-year period, REVOK had the biggest arrest of his career. He was on his way to Ireland in April last year when he was arrested at LAX and held on $320,000 bail. His crime? Failing to pay restitution, a probation violation. The story immediately hit LA news outlets and countless websites. The police press release (how many writers do you know who get press releases?) stated, "As a result of evidence discovered during his April 21 arrest, other incidents of vandalism were found in the County of Los Angeles."

For this REVOK was sentenced to 180 days in prison. During this time, "FREE REVOK" appeared on walls all over the world, perhaps proving once and for all that graffiti really is unstoppable.

He says if he even tries to paint legally now in LA, Carmen Trutanich's office will sue him for "upwards of hundreds of thousands of dollars."