What Art Fraud can Teach Us About Art, Fraud, and Buying Smart
In movies and on TV, the world of art fraud, forgeries, and theft is glamorous and exciting. In real life, it’s much less dramatic and much more complicated. From multi-million-dollar forgery schemes to undercover operations recovering stolen art, these crimes are a global industry. And learning how these crimes operate also has surprising lessons for how the average person can avoid getting ripped off in much smaller transactions.
See Art Heists with Robert Wittman for a complete transcript of the Easy Prey podcast episode.
Robert Wittman is a former FBI special agent and founder of the FBI’s art crimes team. Over his two-decade career, his responsibility was to find stolen art and investigate art fraud and forgery. He went undercover in over twenty countries and recovered more than $300 million in stolen art and other cultural property.
Prioritizing Art Crimes
The FBI didn’t have an art crime team until 2005. That’s because art crime is a property crime, which is very low on the FBI’s priority list. Law enforcement tends to look at the theft of a Monet like the theft of a Chevrolet – they’re both just stolen objects. They care much more about violent crimes and things where people are physically in danger. But the value of art has exceeded what anyone ever thought, and criminals go where the money is. The FBI finally started an art crimes team because there’s money in art and criminals kept doing more to try to get that money.
Why there’s art crime and art forgery and fraud is because that’s where the money is.
Robert Wittman
Robert went into the FBI because of the TV show Miami Vice. He thought it looked glamorous and fun. After he joined, they put him in a property crime squad in Philadelphia. Nobody wanted to work art thefts because they weren’t exciting, so as the new guy, Robert got assigned to investigate two thefts from museums in Philadelphia. He and the agent he was partnered with solved them.
Robert’s parents were in the antiques business. Growing up in that business taught Robert how to make a deal in the art world. And art fraud is all about making a deal. The FBI didn’t know that at the time, but once they saw how instrumental Robert’s antiques knowledge was to solving the cases, they sent him to art school and had him focus even more on these investigations. Eventually, he founded the art crimes team.
When you talk about art theft, art crime, art forgery, any of those types of things, it’s all about making a deal.
Robert Wittman
Investigating Stolen Art
The art business is about $200 billion. About $6 billion of that is art fraud. And about a quarter of that is theft. Investigating art theft is just like any other property crime. You look for forensic evidence, check security footage, and talk to witnesses. Most museum heists in the United States are insider, so the first step is figuring out how they got in and out. If they didn’t break in, you’re probably looking at an insider.
The business is a $200 billion worldwide business every year. … About $6 billion of that is the art crime industry.
Robert Wittman
If somebody breaks into your house and steals your laptop, they’ll take it to a pawn shop. They can’t do that with a $10 million painting. But not every artwork is worth that much. There are plenty that are only worth a few thousand. Those can go to flea markets and small auction houses. Lower-value art usually shows up eventually.
Multi-million-dollar heists, though, can’t go through normal markets. Criminals see art selling for millions and think they can make a lot of money. But nobody’s buying stolen high-profile art – except the FBI. Robert has recovered a lot of stolen artwork by posing as a buyer for these big pieces.
You’ll never get what it’s worth from stolen art. As soon as you try to sell it, law enforcement is going to find out. They’re going to go undercover, seize it, and arrest you. It’s like cheating on your taxes. Would you rather make a few bucks or be able to sleep at night? It just depends on what matters to you.
You’ll never get what it’s worth, because as soon as you try to sell [stolen art] … law enforcement is going to hear about it.
Robert Wittman
It’s Not Rich People Commissioning Thefts
The idea of a rich person hiring a crew of thieves to steal a particular artwork for their own personal enjoyment is just a movie script. In all his years of investigating art fraud and theft, Robert has never once met a rich guy just staring at art in his basement. And that’s because the whole process would be more trouble than it’s worth.
Say you pay a crew of thieves $100,000 to go steal a Rembrandt. You have to hope that the crew doesn’t say anything, they do a good job, they don’t get caught, and they don’t leave any forensic evidence that would lead law enforcement to them. Then you have a stolen Rembrandt. You either have to make sure no one else sees it or hope that nobody who sees it says anything. And even if you manage to successfully keep it hidden, it will come to light when you die and someone inherits it, and then your heirs are in trouble.
It’s going to come to light at some point, and then it’s going to get recovered by law enforcement. If it gets recovered while you’re still alive, you’re going to go to jail. And no matter how much you like that Rembrandt, nobody’s going to pay $100,000 to go to jail.
[Stolen art] is an albatross around their necks. At that point, for the rest of their lives, as long as they hold it, it’s going to be that issue of possibly being caught.
Robert Wittman
Art Fraud with Forgeries and Fakes
Forgeries and fakes are the largest part of the art fraud market. They’re especially common with online sales, eBay, and internet-only auction sales. People can’t inspect the pieces when they’re buying online, so they’re buying off of name alone. And the criminals who sell these things know what they need to say and not say when listing them for sale. With TV shows like Antiques Roadshow out there, everybody wants to find a hidden gem. Robert has seen many people who have done well in business but aren’t educated in the art world getting taken because they don’t have the knowledge and didn’t do their due diligence.
Robert was involved in a case in New York called the Knoedler Gallery Case where a gallery sold over twenty forged paintings worth over $60 million. They were supposedly by well-known abstract expressionist artists like Pollock and Rothko, but they were really created by an artist living in Brooklyn. The gallery believed they were real, presented them as real to clients, and clients bought them. The gallery was well-established and famous, so people assumed they were doing their due diligence. They actually had done a little research and had justification for the sales.
The forgery was discovered when the artist was found out for selling fakes out of her own gallery in Manhattan. Some knowledgeable collectors bought forged works and got suspicious, and the whole fraud unraveled. Her work got traced to Knoedler Gallery. Since the gallery could prove they didn’t know they were fakes, they weren’t charged with a crime. But they did have to pay back the $60 million, and ended up going out of business because of it.
Protect Yourself from Art Fraud when Buying Art
Very few of us are going to be in the market for $60 million worth of fine art. But even if you’re looking at a much smaller scale, there are still things you can do to protect yourself from art fraud. The biggest issue on the small-scale art market is overpricing. Check the prices before you buy. The internet is great for this kind of research. See what things are selling for, and decide in advance how much you want to spend. That will help protect you from overpaying.
Check the prices of things before [you] buy them … you will see what the secondary market is paying for a specific item, and at that point, decide how much you want to spend.
Robert Wittman
If authenticity matters for whatever you’re buying, get that in writing. If you purchase something assuming it was worth some amount because it was authentic, it turns out to be fake and worth much less, and you can prove that the person made an authenticity claim that wasn’t true, that’s fraud. You’ve got a case.
It’s also important to do your due diligence. Just some simple internet searches can go a long way. If you’re looking at buying a print, for example, you can google the print’s name. It will tell you the basic background, how many copies exist, how many were signed by the artist, who sold them when and from what gallery, and more. You can compare that to the information you have and see if it checks out. And don’t forget the classic line about things that are too good to be true. It still holds up – if something seems too good to be true, don’t do it.
The Risks of Memorabilia and Collections
It may not be art, but the world of art fraud gives some insights into the sports memorabilia market, as well. Baseball cards especially can be high-value items. Mickey Mantle’s 1952 rookie card, in good shape but unsigned, recently sold for $12 million. And we know that criminals go where the money is. Sports memorabilia is a huge market for fakes and forgeries.
The sports memorabilia market is one of the biggest markets for fakes.
Robert Wittman
If you’re into sports memorabilia, be very cautious unless you can see it in person or get it from a reputable dealer or the original company. If you look up Operation Bullpen, which investigated fake autographs and memorabilia, you can see how much they’ve recovered – and how much is still out there. Be careful before you pay a lot of money for a fake autograph!
If you’re selling a collection, the risk is that a buyer recognizes that something is valuable and offers you much less than it’s worth. Ultimately, a legitimate sale is whatever the buyer is willing to pay and the seller accepts. But it’s important to do your research ahead of time. Internet research can be difficult because much of it is based on condition. But it will give you an idea of where to start to avoid accepting $100 for something that’s worth $10,000.
A legitimate sale is whatever a buyer is wanting to pay a seller and he’ll accept on any given day.
Robert Wittman
Robert Wittman wrote a memoir about his time investigating art fraud with the FBI. It’s called Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World’s Stolen Treasures, and you can find it wherever books are sold. You can also contact Robert at [email protected] or just google “Robert K Wittman art”.
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