Leigh Morse has been ordered again by a New York judge to continue paying off the $1.6 million in restitution she owes to victims.  Morse had drawn criticism for barely paying any of the legally mandated repayment, while refusing to sell her uptown apartment or her Pennsylvania weekend home.  “She doesn’t want to change her lifestyle. She won’t even do what people do all over New York — rent!” says prosecutor Kenn Kern.
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The trial over the alleged art fraud committed by San Francisco real estate developer Luke Brugnara took a strange turn this week, as Brugnara was sentenced to 21 days in jail for contempt of court and bullying witnesses.  Brugnara reportedly screamed for a mistrial during court proceedings, and accused dealer Rose Long, who testified that Brugnara took over $11 million in art and refused to pay for it, of being a “liar.”  “I think she’s probably got post-traumatic stress disorder now,” said presiding judge William Alsup. “I’m afraid it’s done mental damage, the way she’s been treated.” (more…)

The New York Post details the intrigue and deception surrounding dealer Yves Bouvier’s arrest this past month in Monaco.  Bouvier recently sold an Amedeo Modigliani, Nude on a Blue Cushion, for hedge fund billionaire Steven A. Cohen to Dmitry Rybolovlev, allegedly charging the Russian $118 million when Cohen had only received $93.5 million from the sale, sparking an investigation that ultimately led to his arrest.   (more…)

Prominent German dealer Helge Achenbach has been sentenced to 6 years behind bars for his role in 20 counts of art fraud, allegedly overcharging clients on a number of sales.  The dealer also currently owes over €20 million to the Albrecht family in damages, but is unlikely to pay after his companies insolvency. (more…)

A pair of brothers have been arrested in Spain following the sale of a fake Goya painting.  The brothers’ attempts at selling the fraudulent painting was rewarded with more trickery by their customer, reportedly a sheikh who  paid them 1.7 million in fake, photocopied Swiss Francs (€1.5 million).  The brothers were arrested after the smuggled counterfeits were discovered in Avignon. (more…)

Leigh Morse, the former gallery director who was convicted of selling over 70 works from the estates of artists like Robert De Niro Sr. and never notifying the beneficiaries, is in the news this week, after failing to pay the $1.7 million in restitution ordered by the court. “Her restitution tab to date is over a million dollars. She has paid, to date, $22,000, in cash, 2.2 percent,” says Prosecutor Kenn Kern. “What’s so unbelievably upsetting and appalling is that every time you give very clear directions somehow we end up back here.” (more…)

Artist Luc Tuymans has been convicted of copyright infringement in Belgium for his 2011 work A Belgian Politician, featuring a cropped image of politician Jean-Marie Dedecker.  Tuymans plans to appeal the case.  “Like many contemporary artists, the work of Luc Tuymans is based on existing images,” says Tuymans’s lawyer, Michaël De Vroey.  “How can an artist challenge the world with his works if he cannot use images of this world?” (more…)

David Crespo of the Connecticut-based Brandon Gallery is awaiting sentencing today over his conviction in the sale of imitation Marc Chagall lithographs, which the dealer reproduced and forged the signature on.  Crespo was apprehended after selling a fake print to an undercover FBI agent.   (more…)

Noted German dealer Helge Achenbach has been accused of falsifying accounts on artworks and classic cars he purchased on behalf of the Albrecht family, the heirs to the Aldi Grocery Store fortune, including paintings by Picasso and Roy Lichtenstein.  In court documents, Achenbach is accused of claiming a higher price on works purchsed to achieve a higher commission, although he claims he offered a buyback deal on all sales, and that his client’s failure to return any work indicates his innocence.  “Where there has been no damage, there can be no fraud,” he said in a statement through his lawyer. (more…)

James Meyer, a former studio assistant to Jasper Johns, has plead to selling a series of the unfinished works by the artist, and fraudulently covering his sales with false inventory.  Meyer ultimately made over $3 million off the sales.  “Meyer will now have to pay for that decision,” says US Attorney Preet Bharara. (more…)

A Long Island art seller is being sued by a pair of galleries after allegedly losing a $3 million Degas sculpture.  Rose Ramsey Long accompanied a set of works earlier this year to San Francisco, where real estate mogul Luke Brugnara was supposed to purchase them.  However, Long left the works in an empty house as Brugnara directed, and when Brugnara was arrested for fraud in the sale, the Degas sculpture had disappeared.   (more…)

Newly released documents in a civil court case against Ann Freedman have shown that one of the forged Jackson Pollock paintings purchased by the former Knoedler Gallery director herself had misspelled that name of the artist as “Pollok.”  “Freedman, Knoedler and their so-called ‘experts’ claim not to have seen forgeries even when it was literally (mis)spelled out for them,” lawyer John Cahill quipped in an email to the New York Times. (more…)

San Francisco real estate mogul Luke Brugnara has been charged with mail fraud following the aborted purchase of $11 million in works by Willem de Kooning, Edgar Degas, Joan Miró, and Pablo Picasso.  Brugnara reportedly purchased the works from a New York dealer with the intent of opening a museum, but never paid for the artworks, claiming he had received them as a gift.  When the dealer accompanied the works to California for delivery, she was astonished to find that the address he had given was not inhabited.  “Brugnara instructed the delivery personnel to leave the crates in his garage. The art dealer had never before seen anyone request art of such value to be placed in a garage,” writes FBI special agent Jeremy Desor. (more…)

Kevin Sutherland, the Florida Pastor convicted of trying to sell fraudulent Damien Hirst paintings has been sentenced to six months in jail and five months of probation, the New York Times reports.  “Here he had a choice, and he made the wrong choice,” said Justice Bonnie G. Winter of State Supreme Court. “He could easily have rectified it in the right way.” (more…)

Jose Carlos Bergantinos Diaz, the suspected accomplice in the fraudulent art sales made through Knoedler Gallery, has been apprehended in Southern Spain, the Wall Street Journal reports.  Bergantino is expected to appear before a judge this week, who will decide on a potential extradition to the U.S. (more…)

Sentencing for the convicted Knoedler Gallery defrauder Glafira Rosales has been postponed until September, following the March 14th filing of a secret court document with Manhattan federal court.  Analysts speculate that Rosales, who has already agreed to forfeit $33.2 million, which includes her Sands Point home and $81m in restitution, is negotiating with federal officials in building a larger criminal case for her co-conspirators. (more…)

Laure Prouvost, For Forgetting (Installation View), via Art Observed

Laure Prouvost has a lot to say.  Creating multifaceted, occasionally dizzying multimedia installations using wood, paint, video and various props, the 2013 Turner Prize Winner’s work is hyper-loaded in its signifiers and subjects, moving rapidly from the divine to the profane and back, all expressed with a masterful storytelling bent.  It’s just this line, in fact, that the artist makes express use of in her first U.S. installation, occupying the lobby of the New Museum, telling a lightning-fast narrative of identity theft and financial scamming in the post-digital economy.

Laure Prouvost, For Forgetting, 2014 (still). Installation and video. Copyright the artist. Courtesy the artist and MOTINTERNATIONAL, London and Brussels (more…)

A New York judge has ruled that the lawsuit filed by collector Ron Perelman against dealer Larry Gagosian can proceed, following Gagosian’s request that the suit be thrown out.  While rejecting several of the claims regarding breach of contract and other complaints, the court ruled that Perelman’s fraud lawsuit will be able to move forward. (more…)

Collector and dealer Asher Edelman has filed a lawsuit claiming he has been victimized in a fraudulent deal for the sale of more than 100 works claimed to be by Picasso, Matisse, and more.  The lawsuit states that Swiss company Artmentum convinced Edelman’s company that a Japanese museum was seeking to sell $400 million in art, a statement that Edelman claims was wholly false.  “Each defendant, acting individually and in concert with each other, participated in an elaborate, fraudulent scheme in the guise of an international art transaction designed to deprive ArtAssure of hundreds of millions of dollars,” the lawsuit says. (more…)

The proceedings over the alleged forgery of Jasper Johns‘ 1960 work Flag has ended with a guilty plea by Brian Ramnarine, the Queens foundry owner who admitted to copying the artist’s work and attempting to sell it for $11 million.  Ramnarine’s admission of guilt means he will not challenge any sentence of 10 years or less in prison, but could spend an additional 20 years for admitting to additional sculpture frauds after his arrest. (more…)

As the investigation surrounding the Knoedler Gallery continues, The Art Newspaper traces a number of fake works that are still out in the market.  Two fraudulent pieces are currently held in the storage of The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, Missouri, and others have continued to circulate through various resales.  “I unloaded my victimhood,” says Bernard Kruger, a doctor who purchased a fake Richard Diebenkorn from the gallery, and who later resold it. (more…)

A New York Times article analyzes the work of artist Pei-Shen Qian, the painter behind the multi-million dollar counterfeiting ring that included the Knoedler Gallery.  Mr. Pei-Shen is well-regarded as a painter in China, but moved to New York in the early 1980’s.  Analyzing the artist’s early work in comparison with his more recent fakes, the article goes on to examine the interplay of supply and demand in the contemporary market as a potential cause of the artist’s shift to fraudulent works. (more…)

The fraud lawsuit filed by the estate of Alexander Calder against the late artist’s longtime friend and dealer Klaus Perls has been rejected by New York State Supreme Court.  The ruling, announced this week, cited many of the claims in the case as “an incoherent stew of irrelevance and innuendo,” and Justice Shirley Kornreich went so far as to state that: “these allegations are so patently inadequate that the court can only conclude that they were brought solely for the purpose of harassment or embarrassment.”  (more…)

Another lawsuit has been filed against the now-closed Knoedler Gallery, this time alleging that its dealers willfully sold a Malibu couple a pair of paintings attributed to Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning.  The federal suit is filed against the Knoedler Gallery, president Ann Freedman, chairman Michael Hammer and worker Jaime Andrade, along with dealer Glafira Rosales, who has just recently agreed to a plea deal in her criminal case.  “Defendants showed virtually no interest in the authenticity or origin of the works,” the lawsuit says. (more…)