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

by Anthony M. Amore

  The O’Briens were excited over the promise that the Eubanks plan held. The giclée-making dealer told John and Martha that they could make six figures with their art, and things were looking up. The money from Eubanks arrived steadily as John continued to send paintings to her print shop. It was an important break in the life of the young artist, his wife, and their two young daughters. With visions of Thomas Kincaid–like success in their minds, the O’Briens were ready for John’s talent to take him to the next level of fame for American artists. “Okay, here’s our ticket into that circle,” Martha said. The deal with Eubanks was sure to “get his name out there big time and get full page ads at Art Business News and attract the collector who would pay $50,000 for one of John’s paintings.”7

  Just as with all innocent victims, the O’Briens found that the Eubanks plan wasn’t all that they had hoped. John soon found that the television auction show wasn’t the only venue through which his works were being sold as authentic signed works. A friend of O’Brien’s informed him that he had seen one of the artist’s signed works on eBay, the online auction site. The O’Briens had already decided that perhaps the site would be a good place for them to sell John’s works to make some additional income. But when they went onto eBay to post some pieces for sale, they were shocked to find that the site had already been flooded with John’s works for auction. Worse yet, many of the artworks were knockoffs—pieces he never actually signed.

  This was O’Brien’s worst fear come true. Indeed, any artist would be dismayed to lose control of their works in such a fashion, for this was a twofold problem: not only were there lesser-quality prints that he would not have—and never had—signed now on the market, but they were in such number as to drive the value of his art down. And soon, even more bad news poured in: the O’Briens learned that his works were being sold on Princess Cruises.8

  Art auctions at sea aboard cruise ships are a big business. The biggest player in the game is Park West Gallery, a Michigan-based company that describes its “Park West at Sea” branch as a group of “onboard art galleries” on more than 70 luxury cruise ships around the world, including ships in the Carnival, Celebrity, Holland America, Norwegian, Regent Seven Seas, and Royal Caribbean lines.9 The business is incredibly lucrative—the New York Times reported that Park West Gallery was bringing in $300 million in revenue annually as of 2008.10 Though Park West was embroiled in a series of civil lawsuits filed against the firm by parties alleging the sale of fakes and forgeries—including suits involving works by, of course, Salvador Dalí—Park West’s chief executive, Albert Scaglione, has stated publicly that “in Park West’s 40-year history, we have never sold a nonauthentic work of art.”11 Indeed, neither Scaglione nor Park West has ever been the subject of criminal charges.

  Princess Cruise Lines, which has never used Park West Gallery,12 has itself been mixed up with fraud allegations. Two retired women—Terrie Kifer and Joyce Sexton, both of Delaware—saw ads for an art auction aboard the Princess cruise ship they had boarded. Taken by the art available at steep discounts, the pair spent $86,000 on art. Princess noticed their purchases and invited them back for another cruise and membership in their Art Connoisseurs Program free of charge, an attractive offer for two women with dreams of opening their own art gallery. The pair was wined and dined by Princess aboard a ten-day cruise in the Mediterranean and even met some of the artists whose works might draw their interest. The sales pitch worked: Kifer and Sexton spent an additional $250,000 on art onboard the ship, purchasing works by Picasso, Chagall, Miró, and Erté. A year later, the women flew to Copenhagen to board another complimentary cruise, again with an art auction onboard. This time they met the Soviet-émigré artist Martiros Manoukian, a Surrealist painter whose painting, Tranquil Remorse, caught the attention of the women. Bidding against another passenger, the pair won the Manoukian for $71,640. On a later cruise, Sexton and Kifer saw Tranquil Remorse again available for sale. Shocked, they approached the artist and the ship’s representative, only to be told that the piece was not exactly the same as the one they purchased. Worse yet, this time Tranquil Remorse sold for $20,000 less than they paid. Though Princess offered to buy their painting back, the pair filed suit against the cruise line and the artist in state court in Florida.13 The parties reached a confidential settlement with Princess admitting no wrongdoing.14

  Kristine Eubanks was a source for Princess Cruises, and not only were John O’Brien’s works being sold onboard their ships, but another artist, Charlene Mitchell, would find that her prints were for sale at sea without her knowledge. Eubanks’s pitch to Mitchell was not unlike the one she made to O’Brien: you provide the paintings, I’ll copy and sell them. Mitchell, who had already achieved some modicum of success with her paintings on her own, was shocked one day when a person contacted her looking to commission a portrait of his fiancée. The caller told Mitchell that he had come to know her work from a piece he bought aboard a Princess cruise. Mitchell was taken aback: to her knowledge, none of her works were being sold in auctions on cruises. Worse yet, the pieces were fakes and, like O’Brien’s, never authorized or signed by Mitchell. It turned out that thousands of Princess passengers had bought unauthorized prints sold in bulk to the cruise line by Kristine Eubanks.15 Indeed, their works had flooded the market, with a deleterious effect on their value.

  To make matters even worse, though the televised auctions were initially profitable (Mitchell says that she made up to $10,000 some weeks16), soon neither Mitchell nor O’Brien was seeing any money from Eubanks, despite the sales on the televised auctions, eBay, and on the cruises. In 2002, the O’Briens didn’t see a penny, but Eubanks did.17 “It was such easy money [for Eubanks]. It was just like counterfeiting money,” Martha O’Brien would say of Eubanks’s giclée business. “I mean you’ve got a printer. You type in 100 and push the button print and you’ve got 100 images.”18 John O’Brien was furious over his loss of control and the nonpayment for his work. And when Charlene Mitchell began questioning the lack of compensation for her work, Eubanks’s personality changed from that of a pleasant marketing professional to that of an adversary.

  Of course, it wasn’t just artists who were victimized by Kristine Eubanks and Fine Art Treasures Gallery. The unauthorized works were sold to unknowing dupes who wanted badly to believe that they had come across a special deal, and Eubanks found plenty of them. By 2007 it was estimated that the operation had brought in more than $20 million from over 10,000 victims across the country.19 The vast majority of them were unaware they had fallen victim to a scam. But one who caught on to Eubanks’s scheme was Myron Temchin.

  As Temchin recalls,20 he and his wife, Mary, were flipping the channels on the television in a hotel in San Rafael, California, one evening in 2005 when they came across the Fine Art Treasures Gallery auction. When Picasso-signed lithographs came on the screen, they were intrigued. The auction show stated that the prints were originals, signed by Picasso himself, and valued at between $50,000 and $58,000. Further, each came with a certificate of authenticity from the Manchester Gallery, David Smith Authentication Service. The deals were too good to pass up, and the Temchins bid on two Picasso lithographs, The Bullfight and Trois Femmes, winning them both for a total of just over $4,000.

  The Temchins were neither art novices nor the typical suckers born every minute. Myron specifically questioned the telephone representative for Fine Art Treasures Gallery and asked if the pieces were original lithographs bearing original signatures. Informed that they were indeed completely original, Myron provided his credit card information and completed the sale. This was no greedy attempt to make a killing on a couple of art pieces. Instead, the Temchins saw the purchases as a gift to their family. “I think we were excited to think that we could have a lithograph from Picasso and then it would be something we could pass down through the family,” Myron said.21 In about a week, the first of their treasures arrived in a carton at the Temchin home via FedEx. Upon opening the
box and examining her new Picasso, Trois Femmes, Mary instantly identified a problem. To her it was clear that this was not a lithograph, but instead was much more similar to a color photocopy and did not bear an original signature by Picasso. She called her husband and told him that the piece was not what it was purported to be. The certificate of authenticity was inauthentic as well; it was a “cheap black and white Xerox copy on colored paper.”22 Not even the signature on that appeared to be real.

  The next day, the second Picasso purchase, The Bullfight, arrived in the same manner. Again, it appeared to the couple to be a photocopy without an original signature. The pair, concerned that they might have been conned, researched the authentication service and found that though there was a famous David Smith who collected art, he had no connection at all to art authentication for Fine Art Treasures Gallery. They then went to the auctioneer’s website at www.finearttreasures.net and found that it advertised “fine art, original paintings, museum quality prints.” At that moment, the Temchins realized that they “had been swindled.”23 What they had were museum-quality prints, not original signed lithographs. After some research, they found that what they had was most likely “some kind of copy of one side of a print in a book.”

  The Temchins were not about to be anyone’s fools. They researched the auction show and made attempts to contact Eubanks, even driving to one of her addresses only to find that it was a mailbox store. It was perhaps a good thing that Myron couldn’t manage to find a way to confront her. Eubanks was earning a reputation for being an extremely feisty and difficult person with whom to deal. According to a federal investigator, some employees found her intimidating and others claimed to be afraid of her. LAPD art cop Don Hrycyk stated that “in one case she grabbed one person and threw them out of the business, and in another instance the man turned around and she kicked him in the rear. All of this sort of fit into what we were hearing, that she was very aggressive.”24

  Temchin decided to turn his investigation over to the professionals. He contacted Special Agent Christopher Calarco of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Calarco was ideally suited to take on the Eubanks scam. He had been with the FBI’s Art Crime Team since its inception in 2004 and served as the team’s coordinator for the Western region. Though he also supervised a violent crime and gang squad in the Los Angeles Division of the FBI, he was not just a door-crashing tough cop—he had also previously served as a prosecutor at the state and federal levels.25 His interest had been piqued by the Fine Art Treasures Gallery case in late 2004 when he received several calls about the program. Despite his experience and training in art crime, this was the first time he had heard of a television program selling art. He also learned that the show potentially reached 25 million households through DirecTV and Dish Network. “When I started getting an idea of the potential scope of the fraud, and how many victims and how much loss there could be, the case took on a sense of urgency,” Calarco recalled.26 He obtained permission from the cooperative Temchin to have the purported Picassos examined to establish whether or not they were authentic. They were not. This, however, was not enough to make an arrest. Investigators still had to prove that Eubanks was knowingly trafficking in illicit art and had to learn with whom she might be working.

  Calarco found that Eubanks was not alone in the business. In 2002, she brought aboard James Mobley, an experienced auctioneer who assisted her in her plot and also served as an on-air auctioneer. And there was her husband, Gerald Sullivan, who worked on the behind-the-scenes operations. But, according to one federal prosecutor, Eubanks “wore the pants in the family. She really controlled the business and she really was the one who was in charge of every aspect of it, and he, Mr. Sullivan, ran the details, ran the accounts, handled the transactions.”27

  As investigators dug deeper into the operation at Fine Art Treasures Gallery, it began to emerge that although the Eubanks trio was raking in the money, their execution of the fraud wasn’t especially tight. For one, she committed some of her crimes right in front of employees who were not in on the scam. Justin Lundberg, a shipping department employee at Fine Art Treasures, said that on several occasions as he was preparing to ship prints, he came across certificates of authenticity that were unsigned. Upon being notified of the omission, Eubanks would come to the shipping department and personally sign multiple copies of the certificates, which attested that the works were authentic and part of a limited edition. In addition, he saw Eubanks sign artists’ signatures, saying she “paid royalties that made it legal.” Another employee, William Woodard, stated that he saw Eubanks sign Picasso’s name in front of him.28 In another instance, Eubanks made a ham-handed effort at disguising her Fine Art Network by listing Thom Keith and his daughter Jennifer as officers and/or directors of her company when, in fact, the pair’s only connection to the corporation was purchasing television media time for Eubanks.29

  Perhaps it was a combination of the scammers’ greed and the sheer volume of prints that Fine Art Treasures Gallery was moving, but they were sloppy in other ways in their crime too. Hrycyk recounted that seemingly minimal effort was put into the creation of the fraudulent certificates of authenticity: “In some cases the person signing [the certificate] didn’t exist. . . . In some situations we saw that there was a certificate where you could see that the certificate paper was created on a certain day that’s actually listed . . . but then the signature and the date that was attesting to the authenticity was a date that was two years prior to when the actual paper was created.” The sloppiness, Hrycyk said, “just showed how reckless a lot of their actions were.”30 Here, investigators found that in many cases, Eubanks and her cohorts were making the certificates themselves, an error that would prove costly. The certificates are key pieces of evidence when investigating an art crime in California. Section 1742(a) of the state’s civil code requires dealers selling or consigning art to furnish a certificate of authenticity at the request of the purchaser or consignee. Falsifying the certificate, therefore, means breaking the law, pure and simple, so reputable dealers would know the importance of providing authentication. Added Hrycyk, “For somebody that’s in the business, obviously it was a joke.”31

  Even the way that many of the auctions were conducted was rigged. For instance, Fine Art Treasures would claim false bids were made to fraudulently inflate retail and purchase prices for their prints, a practice known as shill bidding. They would even employ false ringing telephones to make viewers believe that a bona fide auction was taking place on television. They would broadcast that the art they had for sale was acquired from “estate liquidations all over the world.” In fact, they were knowingly selling fake and forged artwork that was purchased from crooked suppliers. And of course, they were manufacturing some of the art themselves in their print shop.32

  So many complaints were levied against the dealers that the Better Business Bureau ultimately gave them an F rating. For those who were not novice art collectors, the scam was a tremendous embarrassment. Tom and Mary Ann Cogliano bought six pieces—including a Dalí—from the televised auctions, spending more than $50,000. When they later donated the Dalí to a charity fund-raiser, they learned it was a fake. “It made me look foolish,” Tom said, “especially with these folks who are my friends—and here I am with a fake piece of art.”33 And as the complaints flowed in, investigators widened the scope of the case, looking into the finances of Kristine Eubanks. They found in her bank accounts nearly $4 million, and, when they examined her tax return filings closely, also found that false documents had been filed in support of the fraud. It was time for a warrant. As the assistant U.S. attorney assigned to the case, David Willingham, said, “When the personal investment accounts were located and there were significant assets that were directly traceable to the crimes themselves, then it was just a matter of putting that on paper and getting a judge to sign off on the warrant.”34

  In September 2006, investigators led by Agent Calarco raided Fine Art Treasures
and arrested Eubanks. The belligerent Eubanks was immediately put into jail upon her arrest because she was on probation: the consummate con artist had previously pleaded no contest to using the credit cards of a deceased business partner, racking up $144,000 in bills. The judge in that case stipulated that if her record did not remain spotless, she would be put directly into jail. Clearly, it did not.

  When her cohorts Sullivan and Mobley were arrested, they cooperated against their micromanaging taskmaster. All three understood that Calarco had developed an airtight case against them and chose to plead guilty. Eubanks was sentenced to seven years on charges including conspiracy to commit mail fraud, wire fraud, interstate transportation of stolen property, and tax evasion. At sentencing, federal district court judge Gary A. Feess called her fraud scheme “audacious in scope” and “blatantly illegal.” Her husband, Sullivan, was sentenced to four years, and Mobley to five. The government also seized Eubanks’s assets, including the $3.8 million in her bank accounts and much of the artwork that Fine Art Treasures Gallery had in its inventory.35