Fake Art Floods Market

Spanish police and the FBI have dismantled a multi-million dollar international art forgery ring which duped hundreds of customers into buying counterfeit art prints of works purporting to be by artists including Picasso, Warhol and Dalí. Two Italians, one Spaniard and four Americans were charged in connection with two overlapping conspiracies believed to have netted about t£2.5m. With the help of US art gallery owners, fraudsters based in Catalonia and Italy used eBay to sell the fakes to victims in the US, Canada, Australia, Europe and Japan, US and Spanish law enforcement officials said. The bogus works were sold for between €1,500 and €20,000 to more than 1,000 clients. Announcing the arrests at a press conference in Chicago, US attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said: "Literally thousands of people in different countries and on different continents may come to learn that when they thought they bought an original art work signed by Picasso or Dalí or Chagall, they in fact bought a fake." Police were called in after complaints from American customers who realised the "masterpieces" they had been sold were cheap imitations. Antoni Permanyer, head of criminal investigations for the Mossos d'Esquadra, said many art gallery owners took advantage of the gullibility of buyers to sell on the fakes. Police carried out eight raids on addresses in Barcelona, one on a art gallery near Barcelona and a house again near Barcelona, where officers found a thousand fakes. The versions of works of Miró, Picasso, Dalí and Tàpies are being examined by experts and a number of professional artists in a number of museums in Spain. Tàpies, the experimental painter, is Spain's biggest selling living artist. The Art Loss Register said the thieves' favourite artist was Picasso, followed by Miró, Chagall and then Dalí. (For full source and full article click the Headline). Irish Art