The Sotheby’s letter, dated May 10, 2005, was one of four letters Cugini produced from the fine art auctioneers with offers to consign his Sargents. There was also Conversation (Emily Sargent and Friend), which they would consign for a sale price of $300,000 and which Cugini offered to Wilson for $140,000; Emily Sargent and Eliza Wedgewood in Majorca, painted by Sargent in 1908, which Sotheby’s would offer to the public for $275,000 but could be had by Wilson for $170,000; and finally, Judith Guatier aka A Gust of Wind, which Sotheby’s would sell on consignment for $350,000 but could be Wilson’s for only $250,000. All of the Sotheby’s letters addressed the issue of provenance, stating that the artworks once had been owned by Joseph Coletti. Excited by what Cugini had showed him, Wilson took detailed photographs of the four masterpieces. While snapping pictures, he noticed a number of other pieces that Cugini had stored in cardboard boxes, one of which showed that it had been shipped via UPS from a store in Waltham, Massachusetts: an unusually unsafe way to package and transport such highly valuable art. This caused Wilson to take pause, but Cugini was the art pro. He must have known what he was doing.
Eager to do business, Wilson called the art dealer later that same day. He informed him that he had written up a sales contract and already mailed it to Cugini. The contract was for the purchase of three of the offered Sargent works: A Venetian Woman, Conversation (Emily Sargent and Friend), and Judith Guatier at the agreed-upon price of $565,000—a savings of nearly $400,000 off the prices that Sotheby’s prescribed for the works. The contract also spelled out the wire transfer method of payment that Cugini desired. Within days, Cugini received the contract in the mail and contacted Wilson to inform him that he had a deal. Cugini told him he would ship the items directly to Wilson and mail back the signed contract.
As promised, Cugini’s signed contract arrived in David Wilson’s post office box on July 17, 2010. In addition, Cugini included a detailed pamphlet about the art of John Singer Sargent, which displayed a number of the works in the possession of Cugini that were available for purchase. The pamphlet included a biography of Sargent, and incredibly, though Cugini had just earned over a half-million dollars, he failed to add sufficient postage to his mailing. Wilson’s business partner Jason Richards put up the extra 25 cents for the envelope upon receipt.
With the signed contract in hand, but no money yet transferred, Wilson cautiously went to work seeking experts who could speak to the authenticity of the three paintings Cugini agreed to sell to him. Wilson and Richards brought the photos Wilson had taken of the art when he last visited Cugini’s Pompano Beach home to the Adelson Galleries in New York. There, they met with Elizabeth Oustinoff, the galleries’ director and a renowned expert on John Singer Sargent, in order to get an objective third-party opinion on Cugini’s paintings. A half-million dollars was a big price tag for a first-time foray into fine arts. But Wilson and Richards had good reason to feel some sense of surety, for the photographs of Cugini’s proffered paintings were not the only things with which they were armed when they traveled to New York City for their meeting with Oustinoff. They were also carrying their standard-issue Glock semi-automatic handguns and their Federal Bureau of Investigation badges and credentials, both bearing the title “Special Agent.”
It is no surprise that Luigi Cugini was on the FBI’s radar, especially as someone who might be dealing in fraudulent art. Cugini, by trade a licensed barber, had a long history of complaints against him for misrepresenting artwork as originals by some of the world’s most esteemed artists. Twenty-five years earlier, in 1985, Cugini was a defendant in a counterfeit art case in New York in which he and a codefendant, Dr. Vilas Likhite, attempted to sell art that they allegedly represented as the works of such luminaries as Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, and Hans Hoffman—artists whose paintings fetch many millions of dollars. Though that case was ultimately dismissed, by 2004 Cugini and Likhite were in hot water again, and the latter was arrested in California for selling art alleged to be counterfeit—a painting falsely attributed to the great Mary Cassatt—for $800,000 to undercover Los Angeles police officers.10 It is believed that Cugini may have had a hand in acquiring the phony Cassatt.
Together, Cugini and Likhite formed a sort of dream team of art scammers. Likhite had moved to California after being convicted of selling fake art in Massachusetts in 1989, and in that same year he saw his medical license revoked for injecting experimental drugs into two patients.11 According to the Los Angeles Police Department’s Art Theft Detail, headed by legendary art theft detective Don Hrycyk, Likhite—a former Harvard professor—had claimed to be in possession of 700 pieces of art valued at $1 billion. Though Likhite claimed that the works came from the estate of the late artist William Horace Littlefield in Massachusetts, the story proved to be “a fabrication.”12
Littlefield was a Massachusetts-born, Harvard-educated artist with an eclectic style that favored Abstract Expressionism. However, he painted subjects ranging from pugilists in the boxing ring to classical murals. Of particular note, Littlefield at one time studied under the great Hans Hoffman (whose works Likhite claimed to own). A veteran of World War II, he tried unsuccessfully to join the American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in Europe, commonly known as the Monuments Men. He returned home to Massachusetts after the war, and in 1946 converted an old barn on Cape Cod into a studio where he worked for most of the rest of his life. After his death in 1969, a Connecticut antiques dealer bought Littlefield’s estate and sold off more than 3,000 of Littlefield’s works, with none of them apparently fetching head-turning prices. A decade later, a large number of Littlefields were auctioned off by the estate of his friend Thomas G. Ratcliffe Jr., and yet another auction of his works was held in 1983 in Cambridge. Littlefield’s paintings brought much less than the estimated values from the sparse crowd of buyers.13 Sources believe that Cugini obtained a number of works from Littlefield’s auctioned paintings and signed the names of famous artists on them. When Likhite was arrested, a number of the works seized from him and falsely attributed by the scammer to famous artists were thought to actually be works by Littlefield.14
Likhite’s further claim that he also inherited some of the art from his father, who himself had allegedly obtained it from a maharajah in India, also proved to be false. Likhite, the LAPD reported, “used brokers to sell art to private parties and to invest money in his art collection. He avoided major auction houses and art dealers and preyed on people less knowledgeable about fine art. His art was accompanied by official looking paperwork that gave the appearance that the art was professionally authenticated and appraised.”15 The scheme used by Likhite—developing elaborate stories of art obtained through late local artists and the presentation of official-looking documents to accompany the works—was neither unprecedented nor the product of particular ingenuity. But it did take nerve, and lots of it. And Likhite’s level of audacity was so high as to eventually lead the CNBC television series American Greed to devote an entire segment of a February 2008 episode of the show to his bold exploits.16
In 2005, Luigi Cugini found himself in legal difficulty yet again, this time involving a Picasso drawing. The black-and-white sketch, titled Personage Endormi et Femme Accroupie (Sleeping Person and Squatting Woman), was sold by Cugini through Charles Locke, a Duluth, Georgia, art dealer who first learned of the purported Picasso via an e-mail from San Francisco art broker Henry Hernandez. A payment of $145,000, though, was intended to be held in escrow until a client of the buyer, Manhattan art dealer Chantal Park, accepted the work. That’s where the deal fell apart. The client rejected the drawing based on its condition. Undeterred, Park decided to seek another buyer, but first sought authentication of the drawing by soliciting the opinion of no less than Picasso’s own daughter by Marie-Therese Walter, Maya. Maya’s appraisal allowed for no gray area. “You can be sure,” she wrote, “that this l’oeuvre is not from my father’s hand.”17
Based on Maya’s definitive thumbs-down, Park sought the return of her $145,000 from Locke and Cugini, but neither was willing to reimburse her (this despite the fact that prior to Maya’s de-attribution, Cugini had offered to return $65,000 of his $110,000 share when the issue was merely the drawing’s condition). Apparently, Cugini was willing to admit that the Picasso was in less-than-perfect condition but not that it wasn’t authentic, even in the face of Maya Picasso’s assessment. As a result, Park filed a $5 million lawsuit in New York State Supreme Court against Cugini and the Duluth dealer, Locke. Park sought punitive damages beyond the original sale price because, as her attorney Malcom S. Taub stated, “it appears as if this is not an accident. When people engage in conduct that is wanton, the court can impose punitive damages to dissuade other parties as well as the particular defendants from engaging in that type of conduct.” Taub added that the matter had been “referred to the FBI” as well.18 In May 2009, the New York State Supreme Court found in favor of Park and against Cugini (and Locke) to the tune of $175,498.84.
Apparently unfazed by this experience and the complications of dealing in questionable Picassos, Cugini in 2010 entered into a trade with another individual later described by the FBI as a “confidential human source”—or CHS—who would obtain from Cugini a painting by the Dutch Master Peter Paul Rubens, Susanna and the Elders, plus $35,000 in cash in exchange for a watercolor purportedly by Picasso titled Femme Et Arlequin au Bassin de Nenuphards. Unbeknownst to Cugini, the services of Maya Picasso were again sought, and again, she declared Cugini’s Picasso unauthentic.
The CHS then served as a broker for a buyer in Europe who was seeking to purchase a number of paintings from Cugini, including particularly valuable works by the French impressionist Henri Matisse. The total sale price: $28 million, $23 million of which Cugini wanted wired to a bank account in Italy. The broker obtained images of the Matisse works and sought the opinion of Wanda de Guebriant, who once served as an assistant to Matisse’s daughter, Marguerite Duthuit, before becoming the Matisse family’s official archivist. Small wonder she was described by Forbes magazine as being “designated the expert [on Matisse] by the person who, for years, was indisputably the expert.”19 The expert examined the works and informed the FBI that they were forgeries. Worse yet, they were accompanied by paperwork forged to report that the paintings were authenticated by none other than Wanda de Guebriant herself! Just as incredibly, the very same works had been submitted for review to de Guebriant twice before: once by art collector Damien Roten after he had visited the United States specifically to view Cugini’s purported Matisses, and once prior to that by a Gino Cugini (an alias used by Luigi) of Maynard, Massachusetts. Interestingly, “Gino” did not make reference to his grandfather Joseph Coletti when disclosing the known provenance of the works to the Archives Matisse.
When Special Agent Richards met with Oustinoff in New York, he clearly had good reason to be deeply suspicious of Cugini’s claims about his collection of valuable Sargent paintings. And as they did by working with Wanda de Guebriant, the FBI made a wise decision in choosing Oustinoff and the Adelson Galleries. Oustinoff is a member of the John Singer Sargent Committee, and the galleries she directs sponsor the John Singer Sargent Catalogue Raisonné, the comprehensive annotated compilation of all of Sargent’s works. Agent Richards presented Oustinoff with photographs taken by Agent David Wilson of the Sargents Cugini was trying to sell to him. Using the catalogue raisonné, Oustinoff quickly identified the status of the actual, authentic paintings by Sargent that Cugini displayed to Agent Wilson. Judith Guatier was found to be number 77 in the catalogue raisonné. The painting depicts a dark-haired woman holding her large hat against the breeze as she walks against a blue sky and was listed as being held in a private collection and not in the possession of Cugini. Another work, Under the Willows, was not in the printed catalogue raisonné of Sargent’s works . . . yet. Instead, the watercolor and pencil work was scheduled to be included in the next publication of the catalogue. And it wasn’t in Cugini’s possession. In fact, it was bequeathed by Raymond J. and Margaret Horowitz to the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas, where it was hanging at that very moment.
As if these discrepancies weren’t enough, the final blow to Cugini’s claims about his Sargents was as definitive as the bureau could hope. A Venetian Woman, listed in the catalog under number 635 and the title Head of a Young Woman (with alternate titles including Head of a Lady, A Spanish Gypsy, Marie-Genevieve Duhem, and Head of a Venetian Woman), did include an inscription from Sargent. However, it was not “Dedicated to my friend Joseph Coletti.” Instead, it read “a mon ami M. Van Haanen/John S. Sargent.” To add a nail to the coffin, Oustinoff pointed out that the paintings listed in the Sargent catalogue raisonné had different dimensions than those shown by Cugini.
Richards showed Oustinoff the pamphlet that had been sent by Cugini to Wilson in the mail along with the signed contract, and she found striking similarities between it and an exhibition catalog prepared by the Tate Gallery in London. Richards then found that the chronology that Cugini prepared was practically identical to that of the book John Singer Sargent by Elaine Kilmurray and Richard Ormond, that is, except for a typo on Cugini’s pamphlet that spelled “Gust” as “Gustl.”20
Cugini’s story was clearly bogus, and Richards sought to make an airtight case against him. He contacted Sotheby’s and shared with them the May 10, 2005, letters that Cugini presented as Sotheby’s offers to consign the Sargent paintings. Their American Paintings Department easily determined that the letters did not originate with their organization; in fact, the particular letterhead presented had been discontinued four years before the letters were allegedly written.
With all of the facts pointing to fraud on the part of Luigi Cugini regarding his claims about the Sargent paintings, the inevitable question arose: Was he truly the grandson of sculptor Joseph Coletti? To answer this question, Richards sought out Coletti’s only two children: Donatta Coletti Mechem and Miriam Dow. Mechem and Dow informed the FBI agent that Luigi Cugini was neither a grandson nor an heir to the late sculptor. And not only didn’t Coletti have any Sargent paintings, he didn’t collect paintings at all.
On August 19, 2010, Luigi Cugini was arrested by the FBI at his home in Pompano Beach without incident. Cugini waived his Miranda rights and provided federal investigators with a complete confession. “He stated that the paintings were reproductions and that he knew that they were not original Sargent artworks,” Agent Richards reported. Along with the arrest, the FBI seized more than 65 pieces of fraudulent art, including 47 fake Picassos, 18 phony Sargents, and single counterfeits falsely attributed to Renaissance master Raphael, Francis Bacon, Robert Henri, and Boldini. And finally, the FBI seized the legitimate Susanna and the Elders by Rubens that was obtained by Cugini in the trade for his fake Picasso.
Cugini appeared before a federal judge in West Palm Beach on August 23 and was charged with a single count of mail fraud. That single charge carried a maximum term of up to 20 years in prison. But despite a staggering history of involvement with scams and swindles exactly like the one the FBI sting operation exposed, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida agreed to recommend that Cugini receive a sentence reflecting a two-level reduction from the federal sentencing guidelines that matched his offense, provided that he accept “personal responsibility” for the crime to which he had pleaded guilty. Cugini’s full confession at the time of his arrest had made this a sure thing. So, on January 27, 2011, Federal District Court judge Kenneth L. Ryskamp ordered him committed to the custody of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons for a term of 27 months. Further, in order to allow Cugini to stay in his local area instead of being sent to a distant federal institution, Judge Ryskamp recommended that the Prison Bureau place Cugini in a facility in South Florida, preferably under “maximum home confinement” or in a halfway house—hardly a serious statement by the federal government that Cugini’s pattern of
behavior was intolerable.
Cugini, perhaps heartened by the leniency shown to him by the court, tested the goodwill of the federal government once again. On September 21, 2012, he filed a pro se motion for the government for the return of the art seized from his home at the time of his arrest. “The government,” he complained, “returned only some of the property that was seized from me whereas, I want the remaining items returned as well. Below is the list of the items the government has failed to return to me.”21 In an attachment to his motion, Cugini clarified that “only” 60 paintings had been returned to him. He signed his filing, “God Bless You, Luigi Cugini.”22 His list of paintings that he wanted returned was voluminous, and even included a few photographs of works by Henri, Bacon, and Boldini that included Cugini’s handwritten notation “Important Artist.” The court would hear none of it, with Judge Ryskamp ruling less than a month later that the “motion for return of seized property is denied as moot. The government has returned the property that the defendant is entitled to receive.”23 Judge Ryskamp agreed with the prosecution’s assertion that the rest of the art had been used as instrumentalities of Cugini’s criminal activity.
The Art of the Con: The Most Notorious Fakes, Frauds, and Forgeries in the Art World Page 11
