In the fall of 2014, in St. Petersburg, Russia, an art expert was held under house arrest, accused of complicity in a fraud involving a painting that she had misattributed in 2009 to Russian avant-garde artist Boris Grigoryev. The painting sold for $250,000 and, two years later, was determined to be a fake. The expert denied any wrongdoing, and her arrest set the Russian museum community into a frenzy, angry and fearful that a colleague could be imprisoned for being tricked by a clever forger.1
As that controversy raged in Russia, police in Vienna announced that they were seeking victims of a Serbian gang that had sold an unknown number of counterfeit Picassos, accompanied by bogus certificates of authenticity, in Austria. Though the gang had already been identified and arrested, authorities were desperate to find and inform victims that they had been had, some for as much as €300,000.2
As the Viennese authorities wrestled with the problem of the Picassos, a legal battle raged in Australia over the seizure of paintings taken from the home of Mohamed Aman Siddique when police entered his home with a warrant in an art forgery case involving three allegedly fake Brett Whitely works that had been sold for millions of dollars by art dealer Peter Gant. Police took additional works by other artists from the home for forensic investigation, leading to legal arguments over police powers of search and seizure.3 Gant staunchly maintains his innocence. The case is still pending.
At the same time these arguments were taking place in Australia, auctioneers in Great Britain announced they would be offering for sale hundreds of sketches and paintings by the late forger Eric Hebborn, one of the few who took on the challenge of duping dealers and buyers with works in the style of Renaissance masters. The works were estimated to fetch prices ranging from £100 to £500 each.4
Just a couple of weeks prior, in New Zealand, it was announced that forgeries by Elmyr de Hory of Claude Monet paintings had surfaced at an auction in Auckland, offered for sale by a descendant of the forger living in that area.5 And over in Germany, police were busy officially charging two men with crimes related to an international art forgery ring it had uncovered 15 months prior. Investigators believe the ring of con men obtained their forgeries from studios based in Russia and Israel before being brought to Germany.6
Meanwhile, back in the United States, a documentary film titled Art and Craft was gaining attention for its depiction of the eccentric forger Mark Landis, who donated his fakes to dozens of museums without accepting any payment in return; thus he was never prosecuted. His works, featured in a touring exhibition curated by art fraud expert Colette Loll, are as fascinating as he is interesting—and bizarre.
One thing is for sure: fraud involving art is thriving. It captures the interest of casual observers interested in crime or art; it blinds buyers hoping for that one great find; and it captures the imagination of the unscrupulous con man who continues to see the possibilities that bad art holds for bringing in good money.