The Art of the Con: The Most Notorious Fakes, Frauds, and Forgeries in the Art World

by Anthony M. Amore

  Another art dealer, former New York City police officer Thomas Wallace—who the Amiels alleged was deeply involved in organized crime—testified against the family. Like his father-in-law Coffaro, Wallace had met with the Amiel women to discuss operations in the post-Leon era and had been in the practice of purchasing pieces he knew to be counterfeit from their operation. The Amiels told him they would continue to sell him prints, but according to Joanne, they would not provide certificates of authenticity and would sell only on an “as is” basis. Wallace also assisted the Amiels in an inventory of their facility, and he testified that he saw large quantities of prints, some signed and some not. Again, each stack consisted of just one or two pencil-signed copies at the top with the rest unsigned, just as Leon had preferred. Wallace also purchased 20 pieces from the Amiels. When two were found to be unsigned, he returned them to Sarina, apparently the team’s best forger, who took care of it for him.

  Yet another art dealer was called to the stand to testify to the Amiels’ illicit operation. Lawrence Groeger had begun purchasing prints from Leon in 1988 and knew they were fraudulent based on the number available. During his meeting with the women in early 1989, he informed them that he was having a problem with galleries in California. “[A]lot of the galleries were aware of the fact that there were multiple copies of Miró prints available for sale.” This, he said, “created a lot of suspicion regarding the authenticity of the prints.” Though the Amiels told Groeger that they would protect him in the California market, his largest customer, the Upstairs Gallery, was raided by the Los Angeles Police Department later that year, with many of the prints that were seized having come through him from the Amiels. Groeger met again with the Amiels seeking documentation for the works, and though Joanne promised to help, it never came. Soon thereafter, Groeger himself was raided by police who confiscated 60 pieces of inventory and a set of prints that he had intended to return to the Amiels. All of it was found to be counterfeit.

  The evidence presented at trial was overwhelming, and all of the Amiel women were found guilty by the jury. Kathryn, Joanne, and Sarina Amiel were given sentences of 78, 46, and 33 months in prison, respectively. And Operation Bogart continued with gusto, having placed Leon Amiel at the center of the large-scale international scheme that authorities believed resulted in more than $500 million in counterfeit art sales.

  Operation Bogart netted another crooked dealer in 1993, putting Chicago art dealer Donald Austin behind the defendant’s table in federal court. At his high point, Austin, a former barber, had opened nearly 30 art galleries in Chicago, Michigan, and California. By the 1980s, his chain was bringing in about $34 million per year in sales of art priced from the hundreds to a few thousand dollars.27 But during a raid of Austin’s headquarters by the FTC in 1988, they found questionable works attributed to Dalí, Picasso, Chagall, and Miró—the hallmarks of the Amiels’ involvement. Austin had once allegedly said, “One day we’ll all be sitting in jail because of Leon Amiel.”28 And he was correct: he was convicted of fraud charges and sentenced to 102 months in a federal prison.

  Austin’s involvement with prints obtained through Amiel was described in court from the witness stand by an art wholesaler from Northbrook, Illinois, named Michael Zabrin. Zabrin’s involvement in art fraud first emerged in 1989, not as a con man, but as a victim, when the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office charged self-described art “emulator” Tony Tetro with 45 felony counts for fabricating and distributing watercolors and lithographs. In addition to Miró and Chagall, Tetro—described at the time as “one of the largest art forgers on the West Coast”—forged 29 watercolors by Hiro Yamagata. Tetro and his accomplice, art dealer Mark Sawicki, defrauded four gallery owners including Zabrin.29

  But Zabrin was anything but a victim when it came to peddling counterfeit art. A college graduate from a middle-class background, he turned an affinity for collecting prints into a lucrative career selling and consigning them. Eager to ensure a constant flow of art, he found a reliable source in none other than Philip Coffaro, the Long Island art dealer who had become a pipeline for Leon Amiel’s operation. Short and curly haired with a bushy mustache, Zabrin was eager to meet the legendary publisher, and when he discovered that a close friend was a distant relative of Amiel’s, an audience was granted. Soon, Zabrin had access to the Amiel mother lode of counterfeit art. He was no innocent dupe. He later recounted that when he would choose prints that bore no signature for purchase, Amiel’s daughter “taught me to leave the room.” Upon his return, the prints would all bear the autographs of the artists.30

  Postal Inspector Jack Ellis would later recall that Zabrin “seemed like the cog” in the Amiel operation. Together with another postal inspector, James Tendick, and David Spiegel of the FTC, Ellis formed a plan to squeeze Zabrin for information. Using an art dealer as a cooperating witness and an undercover postal inspector as her assistant, the feds purchased two Miró prints for which Zabrin provided signed certificates of authenticity. The prints were fakes. When the undercover officer later visited Zabrin’s home, she took notice of a large number of Miró, Picasso, and Andy Warhol prints. In October 1990, federal agents raided Zabrin’s business and seized his records. Then came the squeeze: the feds told Zabrin that he could face 20 years in prison for his crimes or he could cooperate with the authorities in hope of being granted some leniency. He quickly opted for the latter.31

  Zabrin immediately became a key figure in the successful prosecution of the Amiels. Postal inspectors were able to gather damning evidence against Philip Coffaro thanks to Zabrin’s work and then turned him into a government witness against the Amiel women as well as Groeger, Austin, and Ted Robertson of California, who had been identified as an active member of the counterfeit Dalí ring by Jack Ellis’s predecessor, Postal Inspector Robert DeMuro. Robertson was not only dealing Dalís; he had broadened his counterfeiting horizons to include Erté, Picasso, Miró, and Chagall. To demonstrate his bona fides, Robertson even gave one prospective buyer a copy of a videotape showing him at Erté’s birthday party. Unaware of the raids that had been carried out and of Coffaro’s status as a government cooperator, Robertson approached Coffaro’s business with a number of fake Picasso prints and Erté gouaches. He was ultimately arrested in his apartment in France in March 1992.32 He pleaded guilty to two counts of fraud in federal court in New York.

  For his efforts assisting the federal investigation into the enormous counterfeit lithograph ring, prosecutors recommended that the court be lenient toward Zabrin and the judge complied, sentencing him to just one year and a day in prison, which the con man served at a low-security prison camp just hours from his home in Illinois. Except for the separation from his wife and two young daughters, his time in prison didn’t provide the sort of punishment that was perhaps necessary to scare him straight. Zabrin told Chicago magazine, “I had no idea what to expect, but after I got acclimated and realized I could get along with everybody, it actually turned out to be fun. It was like a camp for bad boys.”33

  After his release from federal prison, Zabrin returned to what he knew best: selling fine art prints. His time away was brief enough—only ten months at the camp and a short stint at a halfway house—to ensure that some of his connections were still active. Zabrin would soon form a new network, bringing on a business associate who could handle internet sales for him, a venture that would bring him hundreds of thousands of dollars. And though his prior pipeline of counterfeit prints were now serving long prison sentences, Zabrin found new sources to funnel fraudulent fine art to him. These included Jerome Bengis and an Italian national named Elio Bonfiglioli, whose counterfeit prints were considered to be of high quality. There was also James Kennedy, a man described as “a virtual caricature of the dealer con artist” who was fond of partying, alcohol, and drugs.34

  There was one other individual who provided prints to Zabrin, and the name was all too familiar: Leon Amiel Jr. Despite his name, he was ac
tually Leon’s grandson, and he had access to a cache of his grandfather’s prints that had not been seized by federal agents years earlier in the raids that resulted in the arrest of his grandmother, mother, aunts, and sister. Leon Jr. was eager to follow in the footsteps of his famous namesake and jumped feetfirst into the world of trafficking in counterfeit prints, using the online auction site eBay and other means to sell his illicit goods.35 Meanwhile, his coconspirator Kennedy would forge the signatures of artists such as Alexander Calder, Chagall, Miró, and Picasso on the prints he received from Leon Jr. Eventually, however, eBay caught on to the scheme used by Leon Jr., which included a system of placing bids for his own items in order to artificially inflate their prices. The massive auction site suspended Leon Jr.’s account and his activities, as well as those of Zabrin, Kennedy, and others who came to the attention—once again—of federal investigators.

  Zabrin didn’t confine his criminal activities to just art scams. In 2001, Zabrin was arrested and convicted for shoplifting a handbag off a display rack at Neiman Marcus. Four years later he would also be arrested for shoplifting a crystal figurine from Saks Fifth Avenue. But it wasn’t until May 6, 2006, when postal inspectors and FBI agents executed a search warrant at Zabrin’s home, that he was again facing serious prison time. This time, agents discovered a number of counterfeit prints and records regarding the sale of other pieces via art galleries and the internet. In one instance, investigators discovered that a customer returned a piece that was found to be counterfeit and was issued a refund by Zabrin, who in turn resold the same piece as authentic. The investigators also determined that Zabrin was receiving the bad prints from Bonfiglioli, Bengis, Kennedy, and Amiel’s grandson.

  Zabrin knew the routine and quickly agreed to again enter into what was perhaps his second-best role after con man—government informant. Zabrin wore a wire and made a number of recordings for the feds that helped them to bring criminal fraud charges, still apparently pending, against the other members of the ring. According to assistant U.S. attorneys Nancy DePodesta and Stephen Heinze, “[Zabrin], unlike many criminal defendants, readily admitted the scope of his criminal conduct and was forthcoming when asked questions regarding other subjects and aspects of the investigation.”36 However, all was not well with Zabrin’s performance: federal investigators discovered that Zabrin’s addiction to pulling off scams was so strong that he had perpetrated a new one even while being handled as a federal informant.

  Agents running the investigation orchestrated calls from Zabrin to a particular target. In an astonishingly risky and bold scheme, Zabrin made additional calls to the target unbeknownst to his federal agent handlers. In these unauthorized calls, Zabrin negotiated two separate purchases for a total of eight Chagall lithographs that would be financed by his business partner. However, Zabrin told his partner that he had only purchased six, with the intent to sell the remaining two for his own profit behind his partner’s back.

  Federal agents and prosecutors were irate, as they realized that this sort of unscrupulous behavior seriously jeopardized Zabrin’s usefulness as a cooperator and eventual witness at trial. Zabrin’s ploy proved self-destructive. This time, prosecutors made no pleas to the sentencing judge for leniency. Instead, the assistant U.S. attorneys assigned to the case were harsh in their recommendation to federal judge Robert Dow. Dismissing the defense attorney’s excuses of mental illness for his behavior, they described Zabrin as “a very cunning individual who is able to effectively lie and manipulate others for personal gain.” Zabrin, they argued, “poses a serious risk of recidivism”; they added that his crimes “constitute a thoroughly planned-out scheme to defraud hundreds of people over a period of several years.”37

  Despite his cooperation and assistance, Judge Dow agreed with prosecutors and dealt with Zabrin severely, sentencing him to nine years in federal prison. Meanwhile, the grandson of the man who reigned over this enormous counterfeit lithograph scam like a mafia don also pleaded guilty in federal court for his role in feeding fraudulent fine art to unsuspecting buyers. On June 15, 2011, U.S. District Court judge Joan Gottschall heard Leon Amiel Jr. ask for mercy, choking up as he told her “my children are my life.” Judge Gottschall, who could have sent Leon Jr. away for nine years in prison, was sympathetic to his request and sentenced him to only two. She cited his commitment to his family, his mental problems, and a family history of emotional and physical abuse in her ruling. “He (was) being raised by criminals,” she said.38

  Ten

  The Telescam

  Forged and faked paintings are completely different things from their stolen counterparts. Stolen paintings are hidden away, banished from human contact, and stashed in attics, basements, storage units, and drug hides. But phony paintings live a different life. They hang on walls in homes, galleries, and even museums. They are like amateur boxers, jutting out their glass jaws and daring the observer to punch. However, the scam that moves the painting from knowing forger to unsuspecting buyer is ideally and most commonly pulled off in private, in a one-on-one meeting between the con artist and the buyer, who wants to believe they’ve found something special at a price that is even more special. And that’s what makes the scam pulled off by Kristine Eubanks so audacious.

  Eubanks, assisted by her husband Gerald Sullivan, was the brains behind an enterprise called Fine Art Treasures Gallery, which broadcasted a televised art auction for six hours every Friday and Saturday night on Dish Network and DirecTV. As her website advertised, her “auction show offers the best in fine art, original paintings, museum quality prints, bronze statues and other great art that will accent your home or office or make a beautiful gift.”1 Eubanks, a Chicago native, had an unusually diverse professional background for a founder of a television art auction. She followed her dreams of working in Hollywood, and eventually moved to California where she served as executive vice president and partner at Elixer Entertainment, a film production company out of Los Angeles. After a successful stint at Elixer, Eubanks embarked on a career in marketing with Iwerks Entertainment in Burbank, a firm that developed special-format movie theaters. A driven, competitive businesswoman, she also studied fine art photography, an endeavor that served as a primer on the high-value prints and lithographs. And in the early 2000s, she discovered a burgeoning new form of art print called a giclée, which would open up new possibilities for her.

  On her website for the television show, Eubanks provided a list of useful art-related terms for the novice art buyer. Posting the definitions made sense: part of the business model of Fine Art Treasures Gallery was clearly the marketing of high-end art to middle-class consumers who otherwise would not have access to the works of famous artists and who might be making their first foray into the purchase of art. Everything from “Artist Proof” to “Watercolor” was defined. The definition she supplied for giclée, however, was equal parts explanation and sales pitch. It read: “A giclée is a fine art print produced from state-of-the-art digital print-making and intuitive artistic treatment on archival watercolor paper or canvas that lasts for at least 75 years. Because of its archival quality, giclée fine art prints, [sic] are increasingly sought after by major galleries, museums, and private collections to help preserve fine art for generations to come.”2

  Interestingly, the folk rock musician Graham Nash was at the forefront of the creation of giclée prints. Nash, an accomplished digital photographer, was credited with the first use of inkjet printing in a fine art application, when in 1991 he made samples of his work using the giclée process on a high-tech—and very expensive—IRIS 3047 commercial graphics printer. In fact, Nash coined the term digigraph for this new form, but it didn’t stick. It was an associate of his in the field of high-quality print production, Jack Duganne, who assigned the term giclée to the process in order to give the product a bit more panache when an artist for whom he had made some of the prints asked him what she should call them. “I was looking for a French or Italian word, b
ecause so many art techniques have foreign names,” he said. Adopting the French word for a jet nozzle—gicleur—because of the way the inkjet printer sprays color onto the paper, he opted for the word giclée, meaning something that was sprayed.3

  The rapid and continuous improvement in the quality of commercially available high-end printers, combined with the fact that they are becoming more and more affordable, has led to an increase in the production of giclée works by popular artists. Today, giclée prints can be of such great quality that they appear in museums, both as digital copies of works being stored for preservation and as original works in exhibitions. Even noteworthy artists such as Frank Stella, Robert Rauschenberg, and David Hockney have been known to create giclée works.

  Kristine Eubanks saw the potential that giclée held from an entrepreneurial perspective, and she placed an advertisement in the trade publication Art Business News, offering high-quality printing on canvas under the company name Finer Image. Martha O’Brien, whose husband John was an up-and-coming, well-regarded California artist, happened upon the ad. John O’Brien painted works best described as Contemporary Romantic Realism, creating images influenced by the Impressionists but in a style uniquely his own. His paintings included Parisian settings, landscapes, Irish life, Art Deco, and street scenes. He had studied his craft abroad and at the Art Students League of New York, alumni of which include Frederic Remington, Norman Rockwell, Roy Lichtenstein, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Jackson Pollock, just to name a very few.4 With giclées still relatively unknown to many artists, O’Brien was initially apprehensive. “He didn’t like the idea of his work being cheapened,” Martha, a ballet teacher, recalled. But Finer Image provided him with a sample giclée and O’Brien was floored.5 “He couldn’t believe the color jumped out so brilliantly,” Martha said. The O’Briens began ordering custom printing for John’s artwork by sending Eubanks’s company high-resolution images of the work via photographic slides, and sometimes even sent originals for Finer Image to sell to a client. Then Eubanks made them a great offer: if O’Brien entered into an exclusive printing arrangement with Finer Image, they would realize a substantial income using their mass-marketing abilities—Eubanks’s forte. O’Brien’s works would get more exposure, be sold on a greater scale, and be of very high quality, all without sacrificing control because he’d be signing every piece. He was all in.6