Art Fraud

Patrick Fitzgerald, the highly respected U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, announced yesterday the indictment of "seven defendants, including three Europeans and residents of Florida, New York and Illinois" for international art fraud:

Two separate indictments allege that the defendants sold thousands of counterfeit prints – at prices well in excess of their value – to victims in the United States, Canada, Australia, Europe and Japan. The indictments allege that the defendants together reaped more than $5 million in illegal proceeds from the separate, but overlapping fraud schemes. In both cases, investigators tracked the distribution of bogus works, purportedly by such artists as Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, Roy Lichtenstein, Joan Miro, Andy Warhol and others, from counterfeit distributors to an art dealer in north suburban Northbrook, who allegedly sold the inauthentic prints to victims, primarily through eBay, an internet auction web site.

Click here for a complete copy of the actual legal indictment.

Both casual buyers and professional art collectors are easy marks for art frauds. Your best protection is to buy contemporary art direct from the artist and legacy art from reputable galleries and dealers. If that "master" print on Ebay looks too good to be true, chances are it is a fake.