A Girl Who Has a Skill to Draw Instagram Art Theft
"It seemed like a overnice neighborhood to accept bad habits in," wrote Raymond Chandler in the classic detective novel The Big Sleep . Chandler wasn't talking about the art earth specifically, but the sentiment captures some of its well-heeled, occasionally unscrupulous dealings.
Right now now, in that location'south the mounting world-wide search for art dealer Inigo Philbrick, whose laundry listing of alleged crimes include selling a work he didn't own to multiple collectors, holding $xiv million dollars of fine art hostage, and so seeming to disappear. But that'southward nada new under the crooked sunday of art scamming. As we kick off the roaring 2020s nosotros thought nosotros'd round up the other leading stories of shady dealers, forgers, and thieves from the past two decades.
Stéphane Breitwieser
Stéphane Breitwieser in 2006. Photo by Jef-Infojef via Wikimedia Commons.
The Scam: This notorious Frenchman stole at least 239 works from 172 museums throughout Europe between 1995 to 2001. Consistency was his skill: Supposedly he robbed an artwork every fifteen days or so, oftentimes with the assist of his former girlfriend Anne-Catherine Kleinklauss, who would stand as lookout as he removed paintings from their frames. What makes Breitwieser so intriguing is that his thieving lacked any financial necessity. Instead, he saw himself as something of a connoisseur, with a gustation particularly for 16th- and 17th-century works. His nigh expensive pinched painting was Lucas Cranach the Elder'south Sybille, Princess of Cleves, which was estimated to be valued at £5-£5.6 million.
How He Got Caught: He couldn't quit while he was alee. In November of 2001, Breitwieser filched a 16th-century bugle, of which just iii are known to exist, from the Richard Wagner Museum in Lucerne, but a guard spotted him before he escaped. Seemingly insatiable, Breitwieser returned to the museum only 2 days later. A journalist named Erich Eisner happened to exist walking his domestic dog by the museum and, when he noticed a homo who seemed out of identify, surveying the museum, he alerted the very same baby-sit who had spied Breitwieser a few days earlier. He was arrested in Switzerland, but it took regime several weeks to become a search warrant for his home in France and in that fourth dimension the thief's spooked mother apparently destroyed a number of works, for which she was ultimately served just over 2 years in prison.
Where He Is Now: Breitweiser would wind up spending two years in prison Switzerland before being extradited to France, where in 2005 he would be sentenced to an boosted 3 years by a court in Strasbourg. Subsequently he was released he wrote an autobiography of his exploits called Confessions of an Fine art Thief . Simply fifty-fifty that publishing success couldn't satisfy his thirst for theft and in 2011, police discovered xxx stolen works in his home, landing him in prison for 3 more than years. And just this past February he was arrested once again, this fourth dimension in relation to a 19th-century paperweight he tried to sell on eBay.
Anna Delvey
Anna Sorokin, aka Anna Delvey, in a courtroom during her trial in New York. Photo by Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images.
The Scam: Here'southward the takeaway: the ethos of "false it till you brand it" can go desperately wrong. The Russian-built-in Anna Sorokin decided she wanted a taste of the good life and arrived in New York a few years dorsum a new woman—really. She adopted the persona of Anna Delvey, an imaginary German heiress with a fortune of €60 million, and set up almost splurging on luxury hotels, lavish meals, and whirlwind vacations to the tune of $200,000. But like any good brand-believe trust-funder, she also had her pulse on the cultural scene and her calendar included setting up the so-called Anna Delvey Foundation, a "members-only" arts club on Park Avenue, for which she was in the ill-fated process of securing loans when she was arrested.
How She Got Caught: Delvey made a number of missteps that eventually caught upwards with her, including changing her place of birth on official documents, spending too flagrantly, and crossing a sometime friend who ultimately participated in an NYPD sting. Subsequently a dramatic 22-day courtroom trial—in which Delvey's lawyer likened his "moxie"-filled client to Frank Sinatra—an unrepentant Delvey, who seemed almost concerned about her wardrobe, was c onvicted on a total of eight counts, including 1000 larceny in the first, second, and third degrees, and theft of services. She was sentenced to four to 12 years in prison by the New York State Supreme Courtroom—a insufficiently harsh punishment compared to some other swindlers. She was too ordered to pay $198,956 in restitution and $24,000 in fines.
Where She Is Now: Delvey is serving time on Rikers Isle and volition eventually be moved to a prison house in upstate New York. Her story will soon exist coming to a goggle box most you lot in the grade of Inventing Anna , a forthcoming Netflix serial about the infamous Soho grifter, played by Julia Garner. And maybe life in prison isn't all bad— Page 6 reports she's found dear behind confined.
Glafira Rosales
Glafira Rosales (center) leaves Manhattan Federal Court in 2013. Photo by: Jefferson Siegel/NY Daily News via Getty Images.
The Scam: Information technology was thepièce de résistance of art scams. In the mid-1990s, Long Isle art dealer Glafira Rosales approached New York City'south Knoedler Gallery with a trove of "masterpieces" by the likes of Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, which she claimed were consigned by a clandestine collector called, ahem, "Mr. 10." Somehow, these dubious works wound up being sold for tens of millions of dollars and into a number of prestigious collections between 1994 and 2009. A phony Rothko painting was even purchased past Domenico De Sole, a Sotheby's board member who said he'd had no reason to doubt "the most trusted, oldest, most of import gallery" at the fourth dimension. Ann Freedman, the former director of Knoedler Gallery, has long maintained her innocence in the scam, despite overlooking even the most egregious of cautionary measures—which many of Knoedler's victims say they find unlikely.
How She Got Caught: The mystery drove seemed to keep growing in scope. In 2011, amid financial troubles, the gallery, which had opened in 1846, shuttered its doors and the house of cards began to tumble. In late 2011, the New York Times published a story about a lawsuit filed confronting the gallery by collector Pierre Lagrange who believed he'd been duped into purchasing a fake Pollock. As the story unfolded it was eventually discovered that Rosales's beau Jose Carlos Bergantiños Diaz and his blood brother had hired Queens-based Chinese painter Pei-Shen Qia to create the myriad "mid-century" works, and in a very public trial In 2013, Rosales ultimately plead guilty to wire fraud, tax evasion, and money laundering.
Where She Is Now: Only Rosales received any punishment, serving three months in prison, and house arrest in 2017. She was also ordered to pay $81 million dollars to the victims. The Diaz brothers fled to Spain, where their extradition has not been granted. Qia, who was paid comparatively meagerly for his forgeries, fled to China where he claims not to know his works were beingness sold as originals. Freedman remains a free woman.
Mark Landis
From left: Registrar Mathew Leininger, directors Jennifer Grausman and Sam Cullman, forger Mark Landis and co-director and editor Mark Becker from "Art and Craft" at the Tribeca Flick Festival. Photo past Larry Busacca/Getty Images.
The Scam: A priest, a philanthropist, and an art forger walk into a museum and… well, they're all the same person. This oddball instance tells the story of a human being who only wanted to see his art in museums and didn't care whose name was on it. For decades, Mark Landis went near altruistic his fakes to museums under various names, and sometimes disguised himself as a faux Jesuit priest named Male parent Arthur Scott . Landis had trained at the Fine art Institute of Chicago, then attempted to open a gallery, merely meeting with financial woes, and on the verge of moving back to Mississippi, he wanted to try to practise one remarkable thing. His thinking? He painted a version of a Maynard Dixon piece of work and donated information technology to a California museum as an original. Meeting with success, he continued to donate his own paintings to many smaller museums for 30 years, posing as artists as famed as René Magritte to many smaller, more obscure artists. His most remarkable skill as a forger was not his meticulousness, then much every bit his ability to work very apace and in a number of styles.
How He Got Defenseless: A museum registrar past the name Mathew Leininger ultimately began to unravel the ruse in 2007, when he double checked documentation on a Paul Signac painting that had been donated to the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, only to find that identical works had been donated to several other museums by Landis (under his various aliases). In 2010, exposes followed in the Art Newspaper and the Financial Times and the jig was upward (except not really!).
Where He Is Now: Altruistic works, even phony ones, to museums without any financial incentive, it turns out, is not against the law—so Landis never actually saw whatever consequences for his deceptions — though the costs of his donations to museums cost something to the tune of $5 million. In 2014, Art and Arts and crafts , a documentary about his life, came out, and museums have made an effort to expose his works. That said, Landis seems undeterred and has attempted to donate dozens more forgeries even later on his story was exposed.
Larry Salander
Larry Salander and his ex-wife Julie. Photo: Patrick McMullan.
The Scam: Phone call this a case of how the mighty have fallen. In 2003, Salander-O'Reilly Galleries was named the best gallery in the world by the Robb Study . By 2007, Earl Davis, son of the creative person Stuart Davis and a friend of Salander, made the heartbreaking discovery that his friend had stolen and covertly sold 90 works past his father, leaving the younger Davis financially destroyed. Davis wasn't the only one swindled by Salander, who had a taste for bigwig victims and bilked the like of tennis champion John McEnroe and Rober De Niro, Jr.
How He Got Defenseless:Salander's Ponzi schemes began to collapse on each other. Inorthward the spring of 2009, he was charged with 13 counts of outset-caste chiliad larceny, 10 counts of second-caste grand larceny, among a slew of other charges. A year later, in March 2010, he pleaded guilty to 29 felony counts of grand larceny and admitted to selling numerous artworks without permission after falling backside on the $154,000-a-calendar month rent of the gallery's 71 Street Infinite.
Where He Is Now: Salander was sentenced to 6 to 18 years in prison and is currently serving that sentence on Rikers Island.
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Source: https://news.artnet.com/art-world/5-notorious-art-swindlers-1734696