The Art of the Con: The Most Notorious Fakes, Frauds, and Forgeries in the Art World
Page 21
The troubles for Eubanks did not end there, however, and the inevitable civil suits followed, with good reason. Charlene Mitchell filed suit against not only Eubanks but Princess Cruises as well, alleging that the tourism giant had committed copyright infringement, fraud, breach of fiduciary duties, conversion, and unjust enrichment. When an attorney for Princess told the New York Times that Mitchell benefited from the exposure her counterfeited works received onboard their ships, her attorney retorted, “Princess is so twisted it thinks that mass distribution of unauthorized, forged copies of artists’ works on their ships helps artists.” For her part, Mitchell said she found a better place through which to distribute her work: Park West Gallery.36
John O’Brien, the artist whose dreams were dashed by the unscrupulous actions of Eubanks, had a sadder fate than did Mitchell. In 2004, he lost his battle with melanoma, leaving behind Martha and two young daughters. As a result of the way the value of his works was diluted, his wife filed a federal civil suit against a host of individuals for damages related to the unauthorized copying and sale of her late husband’s art. In her court filing, a familiar name emerged in another scam against John. According to Martha O’Brien, around the same time that they entered into the agreement with Kristine Eubanks, the couple was contacted by Michael Zabrin, the prolific dealer in illicit counterfeit prints (see chapter 9 on Zabrin’s crimes). Zabrin told the O’Briens that he was interested in selling John’s original artworks and purchasing wholesale, signed giclées. The artist made some deals with Zabrin Fine Arts, offering Zabrin wholesale rates for works the dealer would sell at retail prices. But Zabrin’s only payments to the O’Briens were by check, and the crooked dealer stopped payment on both of them. And despite the price agreements with them, the O’Briens found that on Zabrin’s website—Fine Art Masters—John’s paintings and giclées were listed for sale at far below the price agreements, and without any authorization or compensation to the artist.
When the O’Briens eventually lost the sale of a giclée to a buyer who purchased a much cheaper one from Zabrin, the couple confronted him. Zabrin acknowledged that he bought his giclée from John’s publisher—Eubanks’s company Finer Image—knowingly accepting the difference between the “authentic” works and the 90 “cheap knock-off” works he bought and resold from Finer Image. Incredibly, not only was Zabrin unfazed by the fact that the O’Briens had found him out, he offered to sell them the forged giclées for $100 apiece. Now, with her husband deceased, Martha O’Brien continues to work tirelessly to fix the harm that the likes of Eubanks, Sullivan, Mobley, and Zabrin have done. But it is a long and likely unwinnable battle she wages.
Unfortunately for the O’Briens, they came into contact simultaneously with two legendary fraudsters, neither with a sense of ethics or an ounce of care for the impact their actions would have—not only on duped customers, but also on the artist who created their product and their future generations to come. The artist’s progeny would never realize the full earnings that his works should have gained had their integrity not been so badly damaged. Sadly, there is more of their ilk out there. As the man who successfully prosecuted the Eubanks case, David Willingham, said, “We cut the head off the snake. Just putting Kristine Eubanks in jail couldn’t really stop the type of conduct that was going on, but what it could do was drastically reduce the market for where those suppliers of fake art could sell their wares.”37 But whether that market was truly affected in the long term remains to be seen.
Eleven
The Internet
The information superhighway is a road with an endless number of off-ramps to shopping centers throughout the world. With nearly the entire planet as a potential customer, the spending power of the vast online community is enormous. E-commerce generates nearly a quarter-trillion dollars in sales for retailers in the United States alone, where it is projected by the market research firm Forrester to reach a staggering $370 billion by 2017.1 There are nearly 3 billion internet users worldwide,2 and these figures are not lost on those looking to make money, least of all the devious con men of the world.
One hardly sees a week pass without finding a bogus solicitation in his e-mail account. Whether it be a Nigerian scam involving money left behind by a heretofore unknown and now deceased distant relative, a nefarious attempt to trick a dupe into giving up a credit card number, or a get-rich-quick business proposal, online scam attempts have become an accepted part of the internet user’s daily life. Little can be done to completely avoid crossing paths with an internet crook except remaining vigilant and adhering to the warning “let the buyer beware.”
The ability to shop online is undeniably changing the way we live. For instance, bookstores are closing all over the country, unable to compete with the internet retail giant Amazon.com. The same is true for record stores, almost single-handedly undone worldwide by the invention of the MP3 and the emergence of Apple’s iTunes. And Blockbuster exists as only a memory of the old days, with video store rentals having been replaced by the likes of Amazon Prime, Netflix, and others.
Still, it’s not necessarily a negative development. Online shopping allows the consumer access to items it once could only dream of finding, never mind at lightning-quick speeds. Whether it’s the newest hot gadget or a one-of-a-kind collectible, you can probably find it for sale online. And one website offers consumers that sort of access and variety on a wider scale than any other: eBay.
eBay, founded in the mid-1990s by Pierre Omidyar, is an online auction site that describes itself as “the world’s online marketplace.” It’s a claim that is hard to refute, with the site boasting nearly 150 million buyers in 2014 shopping from 700 million global listings.3 Shoppers can search for everything from an Aardvark microphone pro-amp to a Zyzz singlet and a mind-boggling array of items in between. The genius of eBay is in the fact that the company itself doesn’t sell anything on its site other than a platform; all of the items for sale are offered as such by private parties who set prices, deliver the products, and conduct most financial transactions on their own (the latter part done through a payment service called PayPal, which, by no coincidence, was acquired by eBay). Items sold on eBay vary in prices from mere pennies to exorbitance, for, say, a Ferrari F12berlinetta ($599,900 or best offer).4
If you are an art lover, a simple eBay search can lead you to amazing finds. Take for instance the D. C. Grose painting Trading on the Plains (circa 1873–75). The painting is described as being in “perfect condition after its restoration and canvas lining by Italian technicians in religious art.” It can be had for just $4,299,999.5 Or perhaps the Dutch Masters are your passion, in which case The Evangelist Matthew, an oil painting “attributed to Rembrandt van Rijn,” is for sale for $1.5 million. The painting’s eBay page provides its provenance (“from the collection of the late Yvonne Schotte, daughter of the Belgian magnate Hippolyte Schotte from castle Aalst”) and even includes an opinion on the authorship from the renowned Rembrandt scholar Gary Schwartz (“The painting does not seem to have the quality that would convince art historians and collectors that it was made by Rembrandt. . . . I would, therefore, be inclined to call the painting a copy after a lost work by Rembrandt”).6 It’s hard to argue with Schwartz, whose reputation is beyond reproach, not only because of his extensive expertise in all things Rembrandt, but also because of the quality of the image that is posted on the page. But an important question is, Did the Gary Schwartz really lend his opinion on this painting? It’s likely he did—there’s no evidence that he did not, and he debunks the painting’s authenticity—but that’s just it: any seller can describe the item they have posted for sale just about any way they want.
In order to take a closer look at the painting, eBay’s technology allows for the prospective buyer to magnify all 11 images of it for a better view, and using the tool makes it seem obvious that though the painting is certainly well done, it is not of the caliber of Rembrandt’s work. The zoom tool is esse
ntial to the buyer’s inspection, but it exposes one of the key limitations the art buyer faces on eBay: one shops in a two-dimensional world. Even with the magnification, one is not able to tell if the brush strokes are real or, for that matter, if the painting is really available. It can’t be looked at in different light at different angles, can’t have its craquelure inspected, can’t be taken in with all of the key three-dimensional visuals necessary to evaluate a work. And of course, the buyer can’t take full measure of the seller in this online marketplace, other than to look at his ratings from previous buyers. Such is part of the challenge of shopping for art on eBay.
The quality of the works for sale on the site—judging by the images—range from apparent masterworks to paintings by unknown artists who have set astronomical prices for their works based on an attempt to give themselves instant credibility, a dream to get rich quick, or a seriously mistaken view of their own talent. Yet despite the risks, a great amount of art is listed for sale on eBay. A search for the word “painting” in the category “art” on the site yielded nearly 460,000 results.7 There’s seemingly something for every art lover’s taste, from Photorealism to Abstract Expressionism, on eBay. And any time art, money, and a large number of wide-eyed novice shoppers are combined, con men aren’t too far away.
In 2014, the London-based newspaper the Telegraph conducted an investigation into two men, Geoffrey Spilman and David Henty, both amateur artists and each separately selling fake paintings on eBay. The men shared a favorite subject of their frauds: the painter L. S. Lowry. Lowry was perhaps an obvious choice—both of the forgers are middle-class British men, as was Lowry, whose works were inspired by everyday life in his hometown and surrounding area, as well as the “down and outs” who inhabited it. Moreover, and perhaps more pragmatically, Lowry’s materials were not highly complex, which enabled the forgers the ability to create very reasonable facsimiles of his work. Lowry wrote, “I am a simple man, and I use simple materials: ivory, black, vermilion (red), Prussian blue, yellow ochre, flake white and no medium (e.g., linseed oil). That’s all I’ve ever used in my paintings.”8 Of course, these same simple materials were easily accessible to Spilman and Henty.
Spilman, the middle-aged son of a vicar, lives in a flat in Warwickshire. His scheme involved the use of the well-worn provenance claim that the paintings he was selling belonged to a deceased relative—in his case, his father—and were found while he was rummaging through his home. He’d also sometimes resort to the “I found them at an art fair” story and claim that because he lacked paperwork on the painting, he could not guarantee provenance. Though it’s not certain that he created all of the paintings he sold by himself, what is clear is that when he did, he would forge the signatures of the artists on the finished works. In addition to Lowrys, Spilman sold works by 25 other artists on eBay, including fellow Briton Ashley Jackson, a watercolorist whose daughter was tipped off by a client that paintings alleged to be by her father were listed on eBay. Because he had described some of the fraudulently signed works as “genuine and original,” Spilman was arrested and issued a warning by police. eBay acted quickly and shut his seller account down, but Spilman, who employed multiple eBay accounts to sell and artificially inflate bids, established new eBay shops through which he sold his paintings.9
Rather than discontinue his scam, Spilman sought ways around the police. He contacted David Henty, a failed artist living in Brighton who was also producing counterfeit paintings attributed to Lowry and others. Henty, who was previously convicted for his role in a passport forging scam, was also identified by the Telegraph as a forger selling art he himself had created via multiple eBay shops. Like many other forgers, Henty would shop for older, worn canvases to give his works an air of legitimacy. Confronted by the newspaper about his scheme, he at first denied it, but then took a sense of pride in his work, deriding the counterfeits produced by the likes of Spilman. “If you know Lowrys they [other forgers] use the wrong colours,” he said. “He only used five colours his whole life. I have to have an interest in an artist to copy him. I would call myself a copyist not a forger.”10
Henty is entitled to call himself whatever he wishes, but it doesn’t change the damage that he and others like him do when they flood the market with knockoffs of other artists’ works. In addition to putting the value of the paintings at risk—Spilman and Henty sold their works for as little as a few hundred pounds, while Jackson’s watercolors typically fetch six figures, and Lowry’s much more—the fakes damage the artists’ overall reputations. As long as there are Spilmans out there bearing counterfeit signatures of the true artist, the fakes are likely to be grouped with the authentic works. Said Jackson, “It is unjust that someone can play on my credibility by creating poor imitations in my name. To be honest, some of the fakes they were offering were really awful and it was embarrassing to think they were purportedly done in my name. . . . They are like my children and I like to see them grow and develop.”11
Paintings are not the only objets d’art to be posted and sold on eBay by a con man with a bold scheme. In the summer of 2011, James Coombes was a man on a very specific philanthropic mission: he had decided that he wanted to acquire and then donate a piece of art by the renowned glass sculptor Dale Chihuly to Gonzaga University’s Jundt Art Museum.12 Coombes spent months searching for the right piece before he settled on a Chihuly glass bowl he found on eBay, described as “Dale Chihuly Studio Seaform art glass signed early original bowl/vase.”13 On New Year’s Day 2012, the auction for the piece ended with Coombes as the highest bidder at a sale price of $1,591. Though he received the piece with no provenance, Coombes was pleased with what he had won, noting the Chihuly signature on the bowl, and maintained contact with the seller, Michael Little. He soon learned that Little had more Chihulys for sale and the pair agreed to meet.
Chihuly’s works are highly sought after and quite valuable. They are not usually sold out of an old SUV, but Coombes was not deterred when Little showed up with the Chihuly glassworks in his older model Ford Explorer. In fact, Coombes bought ten more pieces from Little—this time including drawings—for $6,500. So impressed was Coombes with the works he was buying from Little that on the very next day, he bought another 22 Chihulys for an additional $4,500. Clearly, the low prices and rather unconventional sales venue were not enough to make Coombes think that maybe he was being had.
Instead, after a couple of months had passed, Coombes decided he wanted the rest of Little’s “Venetian Series” collection. So he traveled to Little’s home in Renton, Washington (also Chihuly’s home state), put down $10,000 cash with a promise to pay an additional $10,000, and bought the remaining pieces from the whole lot. When Coombes later received from Little 17 certificates of purchase signed by Chihuly, they indicated that the pieces had been sold through a Seattle gallery.
Though apparently very trusting of Little, Coombes wanted to be sure the art donation he was making to Gonzaga’s museum was legitimate. So he sought out a specialist to authenticate his buys, Katherine Elliott of Elliott Arts West. Given the unique nature of Chihuly’s work, there are very few people qualified to authenticate his artwork. Elliott is one such person: in addition to being an art dealer and appraiser specializing in Chihuly and other glass sculptures, Elliott actually had worked with the artist in his studio and had a hand in some of his early works. Little contacted Elliott via e-mail, and in their communications Little stated that many of the pieces presented for authentication came directly from Chihuly and his collaborator Parks Anderson, as “lots of surplus or overstock or unwanted/mistake/mishap pieces which was either given or sold to Belltown Art.”14
It didn’t take Elliott long to determine that the work sold to Coombes by Little was a forgery. Elliott pointed to the pieces’ proportions, the “indelicate and clunky” flowers, the “too large” spots of gold, and “sloppy” red jimmies as being problematic. As for the signature on the piece, that too was forged. She wrote, “It’
s done with the wrong tool, it’s in the wrong place, and the date would not be correct if it was Chihuly’s work.”15 For a second opinion, Elliott turned to another Chihuly collaborator, glassblower and artist Martin Blank. Blank concurred with her findings, saying he could “guarantee” that the pieces in question were not authentic. Finally, Elliott offered her opinion as to the origin of the piece. “I do not believe the seller of this piece can also be the maker,” she stated. “I would guess [it] was made somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, probably as a knock-off.” Then, perhaps casting criminal suspicion on Little himself, Elliott wrote, “The real culprit is the person who signed and dated it as if it was Chihuly’s work, which it is not.” One other thing was certain: Coombes’s donation to Gonzaga, at least this time, was not to be.
Unfortunately, Coombes was not Little’s only victim. Elliott was approached by additional customers of Little’s who had bought forgeries. And as the scam continued and he conned additional victims, word made its way to James Vana, a trademark attorney representing Dale Chihuly. Vana, understanding that his client was a victim of a forger, contacted the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington to report the counterfeits. Soon, Special Agent Michael Larson of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) branch was on the case.
Larson uncovered the breadth of Little’s scheme, finding that the con man had used at least two different provenance stories. In one, he claimed that he had the art because a relative bought it with winnings from the lottery; in another, he stated that it was from a friend who was dying of cancer and was connected to the artist himself. When all was said and done, the HSI agent found that Little had victimized at least two dozen people before finally being arrested. When the scam was first discovered by Chihuly’s studio and eBay was notified, the company immediately pulled Little’s postings. Amazingly, Little went on with his frauds for an additional 18 months after being outed by Chihuly and eBay. As one of his victims would later say, “Michael Little is a masterful liar, cheat, and thief. I am so ashamed that I am not sure I can tell everyone what has happened.”16