
A 20th-Century Master Scam (1999) - cubecul
https://www.nytimes.com/1999/07/18/magazine/a-20th-century-master-scam.html
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s5fs
My dad served time for painting and selling forgeries, FBI claims he was
passing works off for over 30 years and he ended up getting popped for wire
fraud (soliciting buyers via email). All his works had provenance, turns out
the dealer who was certifying his work was in a bad spot and was willing to
vouch for what was obviously not authentic stuff.

The problem with art is that people have been forging works forever. It's
impossible to get a feel for how many fakes are out there because so much art
is passed down within families and never makes it onto the market and
therefore never seen by experts who can spot a forgery.

My old man claims the whole art world is in on the take. Picasso claimed he
painted fakes all the time and Matisse famously said "I have painted 2000
pictures. 5000 of them are in the USA."

The predatory nature of the art world allows for fakes to more easily enter
the market. For instance, my dad was selling his pieces for a couple grand
each and the dealer he sold to was reselling them for upwards of 20x what was
paid (per court documents). If it seems too good to be true, it didn't seem to
matter. The dealer wasn't charged and is probably still quite happy to sell
fakes for a huge profit, caveat emptor and all that.

Anyways, that's my observation from the sidelines of the art world. I prefer
stable investments like Beanie Babies and Nascar collectable plates, not
paintings.

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jbeckham
He is now in jail again for defrauding a 71 year old woman out of £700,000.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Drewe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Drewe)

~~~
CommieBobDole
Important to note that this is the guy who was actually running the fraud -
the artist creating the forgeries served 4 months in prison and now makes an
apparently successful living painting reproductions and original works.

[http://www.johnmyatt.com/](http://www.johnmyatt.com/)

