Art Dealer Robert Cook Charged With $4 Million Art Fraud
Art dealer Robert Cook faces up to 20 years in prison after being accused today of perpetrating a $4 million art fraud scheme against a single collector. The state alleges that Mr. Cook sold 16 paintings that he was holding for the collector, and never paid out a dollar. The work at issue include pieces...
Forgery And Fraud In The Art Market, As Usual
At the end of October, ArtInfo reported that “One of the world’s largest art forgery scandals” had ended in a Cologne courtroom when Wolfgant Beltracchi, leader of a forgery ring, was sentenced to six years in prison. But putting Beltracchi behind bars has not put forgery in the art world to rest. On December 1,...
Duped In Fraud, Man Then Forged Appraisals
A part-time art dealer who unwittingly bought bogus Damien Hirst prints from a California fraudster created his own legal problems by doctoring appraisals as he resold them, authorities and his lawyer said. Richard Silver, a real estate broker who moonlights in photography and art dealing, pleaded guilty Thursday to misdemeanor forgery and false-filing charges, admitting...
Madison Avenue Dealer Faces Fraud Charges
A Madison Avenue art dealer, Robert Scott Cook, has been charged with defrauding a client of 16 artworks by Picasso, Manet, Matisse, Renoir and others worth more than $4.2 million, the United States Attorney’s Office in Manhattan announced on Thursday. Over a period of six years Mr. Cook, the principal of Cook Fine Art, secretly...
Brooklyn Artist In Legal Tussle With Smithsonian
A Brooklyn artist is suing the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery for sending her painting to a collector who won’t give it back.”The Smithsonian is an arm of the government and surely, I thought, they wouldn’t want to betray a painter,” artist Margaret Bowland, of Park Slope, said. Bowland’s oil painting, entitled “Kenyetta and Brianna,” was...
Gagosian Sued for Selling Lichtenstein Painting Without Owner’s Consent
A prominent art collector has sued the dealer Larry Gagosian, claiming that he sold a 1964 Roy Lichtenstein painting from her collection without her consent. The suit, filed Wednesday in state court in Manhattan, is part of a tangle of art deals that led to two earlier lawsuits against the dealer in federal court, one...
Italian Trial of American Antiquities Dealer Comes to an End
The trial of the American antiquities dealer Robert Hecht ended this week in Rome when a three-judge panel ruled that the statute of limitations on his alleged crimes – receiving artifacts illegally looted from Italy and conspiring to deal in them – had expired.The ruling draws the final curtain on a closely watched six-year-long legal...
Multiple Thefts By NJ Man
A man with a larcenous bent and modest means, eyeing some trifle in a shop, might just walk in, grab it and walk out. But if this thief has very refined, very expensive tastes, coveting something like, say, a Picasso, how does he manage to steal that? Apparently, according to the authorities, he just walks...
Robert Motherwell Forgery
A forged Robert Motherwell painting was branded with the equivalent of a scarlet letter on Tuesday in a legal settlement involving three art galleries and the Dedalus Foundation, which owns the copyrights to Motherwell’s works. “Spanish Elegy,” the painting at the center of the dispute, was sold to a European gallery, Killala Fine Art, for...
Lower East Side Gallery Offers Reward For Stolen Artwork
A Manhattan art gallery needs help finding the person caught on camera apparently stealing part of an outdoor display. Surveillance footage shows the alleged thief removing a piece of art outside the Woodward Gallery on the Lower East Side on Tuesday. “Absolute Addict” is by a Brooklyn street artist. It’s worth between $5,000 and $6,000....
Art Thief Thomas Doyle Sentenced to Six Years in Prison for Fraudulent Sale of Corot Painting
Thomas Doyle, who pleaded guilty in July of wire fraud in the $880,000 sale of a Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot painting, was sentenced to six years in prison according to a spokesperson for Preet Bharara, the...
KAWS Stolen From Mark Ecko
At about 6 p.m., on Thursday, Aug. 4, a young man in a beige baseball hat, a green hoodie, blue jeans and running shoes entered an elevator in a Chelsea office building and stared directly at the security camera inside. He had a poster tube in his hand, and a thin mustache across his upper...