Art forgery is a massive criminal industry that siphons billions from collectors each year, and the audacious forgery schemes behind it often outsmart experts for decades.
Audacious Forgery in the Modern Art Market
10 The Works Of Elmyr De Hory
Elmyr de Hory became a legend in his own time; his Ibiza villa was a hotspot for jet‑setters who unknowingly bought his expertly crafted fakes. He even inspired Orson Welles’s film F for Fake, and today his forged works can fetch impressive sums, with some museums still displaying them under the belief they are by great masters.
Much of de Hory’s early biography is shrouded in mystery. Born in Hungary, he claimed his entire family perished at the hands of the Nazis, a story that adds to his mythic aura.
In 1947 he arrived in New York City, securing art lessons by any means necessary. While his own paintings never achieved commercial success, his meticulous copies of other artists’ works sold rapidly. He always painted on period canvases to bolster the illusion of authenticity.
De Hory and his collaborators evaded detection until a massive 1967 scandal hinted at his involvement. The lingering question was why it took so long for anyone to spot the deception.
His keen eye for detail enabled him to sell thousands of forgeries, including a batch of 100 pieces to former Texas governor John Connally. While living in Ibiza, he entertained celebrities such as Marlene Dietrich, Orson Welles, and Clifford Irving, who penned a biography of de Hory and a fabricated autobiography of Howard Hughes.
After authorities pressed criminal charges, de Hory took his own life in 1976 with an overdose of sleeping pills. Ironically, his forgeries have themselves become collectible fakes—de Hory copies can sell for several thousand dollars, spawning a secondary market for fake de Horys.
9 Ely Sakhai’s Unobserved Fakes
Ely Sakhai’s illicit career shone a harsh light on a troubling corner of the art world: many suspected something was amiss with his “originals,” yet no one dared to blow the whistle.
As long as a painting looked passable and bore the name of a famous artist, it could be sold as a premium piece. This dubious practice enabled Sakhai to amass wealth and a lifestyle far beyond his means. When finally apprehended, authorities discovered a forgery empire worth millions, operating out of a Union Square front.
After emigrating from Iran in the 1960s, Sakhai quickly became a prominent art dealer within the Iranian‑American community and cultivated a client base that included Japanese collectors, who proved easier targets for his schemes.
He generated staggering profits—up to $3.5 million—and gradually moved into more prestigious works. Notably, a French Impressionist Marc Chagall piece he handled sold for over $300,000 at auction in 1990.
Oddly, three years later the same Chagall resurfaced, this time sold to a Japanese businessman for over $500,000. The FBI’s investigation uncovered that Sakhai was fabricating fakes, buying cheaper, lesser‑known works by renowned artists and then producing his own versions for an unsuspecting market.
He even forged certificates of authenticity to legitimize his forgeries. Although he wasn’t an artist himself, the mystery of who actually painted the fakes remains unsolved to this day.
8 The Wacker Case
Vincent van Gogh’s masterpieces regularly command multi‑million‑dollar prices, a testament to his enduring genius. Yet even in the early 20th century, his work was so prized that a German man named Otto Wacker orchestrated a massive scam involving fake van Gogh paintings in 1927.
Wacker claimed to possess 33 van Gogh works, prompting dealers to make swift offers. The catch? Every single piece was a counterfeit.
Dealers Grete Ring and Walter Feilchenfeldt, who were preparing a major exhibition, initially received only 29 of the promised paintings and anxiously awaited the remaining four.
When the final four arrived, the dealers inspected them and realized they were unmistakably not van Gogh originals. They promptly removed the fakes from the exhibition, sparing their reputations from further damage.
Over the next five years, a parade of experts, curators, and dealers scrutinized the paintings. In 1932, Wacker was convicted for his forgeries. His success lay in cutting‑edge chemical techniques that mimicked the aging process, coupled with meticulous attention to detail.
Some of the pieces Wacker sold were genuine van Gogh works, but his forgeries were so convincing that even the most rigorous testing of the era failed to expose them. The scandal forced dealers to upgrade their authentication methods to combat increasingly sophisticated fraud.
7 Shen Qian And The Bergantinos Diaz Brothers
Pei‑Shen Qian arrived in America in 1981, initially surviving as a struggling artist selling paintings on a Manhattan street corner. In his native China, he had once painted portraits of Chairman Mao in art class, never imagining he would become a central figure in a multimillion‑dollar fraud scheme.
The operation began when Jose Carlos Bergantinos Diaz discovered Qian’s work in the late 1980s. Qian’s pieces looked so authentic that the brothers saw a lucrative opportunity.
Working with Jose Carlos’s sibling, Jesus Angel, the trio achieved remarkable success by sourcing old canvases and antique paint from flea markets. To age new canvases, they even placed tea bags on them, giving the works a convincing vintage patina.Despite the scheme’s profitability, Qian received a pittance—only a few hundred dollars per painting throughout the 1990s, and a modest $7,000 by 2008, a drop in the bucket compared to the millions generated.
After acquiring Qian’s paintings, the brothers enlisted art dealer Glafira Rosales to sell them, most of which ended up at the prestigious Knoedler & Company gallery.
The fraud persisted for years until Rosales confessed to the FBI, leading to the conviction of the Bergantinos Diaz brothers alongside Rosales.
Pei‑Shen Qian was the only participant to evade capture, fleeing back to China where extradition is rare. He famously remarked, “The FBI said the paintings were done by the hands of a genius… Well, that’s me. How strange it feels!”
6 The Stay‑At‑Home Fraudster John Myatt
John Myatt was a talented artist who, like many, struggled to sell his own creations. In the 1980s, after his wife left him, he found himself a single parent to two children, prompting him to seek a more lucrative avenue.
He turned to art forgery, a field that could cover his bills while allowing him to stay with his kids. Myatt’s entry into the world of fakes began with a modest advertisement offering “legal forgeries” for £250 each. One of these caught the eye of art dealer John Drewe, who became Myatt’s partner in crime.
Myatt’s first big payday came when he sold an Albert Gleizes “original” for £25,000. He quipped that the £12,500 he split with Drewe meant he could finally afford a reliable car.
For the next seven years, Myatt continued his lucrative charade, selling over 200 paintings, some fetching as much as $150,000 each. Eventually, Drewe’s erratic behavior led Myatt to dissolve the partnership.
When Drewe’s ex‑girlfriend spilled the beans, Drewe was sent to prison, and Myatt followed suit in 1999 after admitting to creating 200 forgeries, of which only 80 have been recovered.
Since his release, Myatt has become a vocal critic of the art market’s pricing excesses, famously calling the $75 million price tag on a van Gogh “disgusting.” He now teaches fraud detection to Scotland Yard, turning his past misdeeds into a new career.
5 The Most Successful Art Forger In History
Wolfgang Beltracchi appeared at first glance to be a carefree hippie who simply knew the art world well. He lived in a $7 million villa near Germany’s Black Forest and, during construction, stayed in the luxurious Colombi Hotel penthouse.
Beltracchi’s early life saw him drifting through places like Amsterdam and Morocco, often dabbling in drugs. Yet his talent for copying emerged early—he once shocked his mother by painting a Picasso in a single day.
Self‑taught, Beltracchi mastered a staggering range of styles, from Old Masters to surrealists and modernists, mimicking virtually any painter in history.
His forgery career began innocently: noticing that 18th‑century winter landscapes sold for lower prices than paintings featuring skaters, he bought the cheaper works, added skaters, and flipped them for profit.
The exact number of his forgeries remains unknown, but the sheer volume is evident: prestigious auction houses like Sotheby’s and Christie’s have sold his works for six‑ and seven‑figure sums.
One of his most famous fakes, a fabricated Max Ernst, sold for $7 million in 2006. Although only 14 of his paintings were cited in his criminal case, those alone netted a staggering $22 million.
4 The eBay Frauds
In 2001, Kenneth Walton, Scott Beach, and Kenneth Fetterman launched a shill‑bidding operation on eBay, creating 40 fake accounts to artificially inflate the prices of over 1,100 art pieces, netting more than $450,000.
Their greed led them to attempt selling a Richard Diebenkorn painting for over $100,000—only to discover it was a fake.
eBay explicitly bans shilling, the practice of bidding on one’s own items to raise the price, yet the trio ignored the rule, using multiple accounts to manipulate the market.
One conspirator, well‑paid attorney Kenneth Watson, claimed boredom drove him to the illegal thrill. He once bought an $8 painting from a junk shop, recognized a style reminiscent of obscure 20th‑century artist Richard Diebenkorn, and signed the canvas “RD52.”
Watson crafted an elaborate backstory, claiming his wife prohibited him from displaying the painting at home, so he stored it in the garage, and he allegedly acquired it in Berkeley, where Diebenkorn worked.
The scheme succeeded until bidding surged to $135,805, prompting eBay and the FBI to intervene. All three men were convicted for their roles.
Even under FBI scrutiny, Watson continued to sell counterfeit art on eBay. This landmark case forced the platform to overhaul its policies to curb the sale of forgeries.
3 The Spanish Forger
The enigmatic “Spanish Forger” was never apprehended, leaving his identity, motives, and even ethnicity shrouded in mystery. This anonymity underscores his brilliance; no one knows how long he operated or how many fakes he produced.
The first clue emerged in 1930 when Count Umberto Gnoli offered to sell a painting titled The Betrothal of St. Ursula to the Metropolitan Museum for £30,000, believing it to be a 1450 work by Maestro Jorge Inglese.
Director Belle de Costa Greene of the Morgan Library examined the piece and concluded it was a fake. Because Ingles was Spanish, the forger earned the moniker “Spanish Forger.” By 1978, associate curator William Voelkle had cataloged 150 fakes attributed to him.
Scholars suspect the forger’s most active period spanned the turn of the 20th century, coinciding with the publication of a five‑volume illustrated series on medieval artwork (1869‑1884), which provided abundant source material.
Rather than directly copying existing works, the Spanish Forger blended elements from multiple paintings to create wholly original forgeries. Minor errors—misinterpretations of chess, Latin, and liturgical details—eventually exposed his deceptions, yet he remained largely undetected.
2 The Fake Portrait Of Mary Todd Lincoln
For decades, a portrait of Mary Todd Lincoln hung proudly in the Illinois governor’s mansion, believed to be an 1864 work by respected portraitist Francis Bicknell Carpenter, a gift intended for her husband, President Abraham Lincoln.
Lincoln’s assassination prevented the portrait’s intended presentation. In 1929, descendants of the President discovered the painting, purchased it for a few thousand dollars, and donated it to the governor’s mansion in 1976.The artwork remained on display for 32 years until a conservator, tasked with cleaning it, uncovered that the piece was a fraud perpetrated against the Lincoln family.
Con artist Lew Bloom had painted an unidentified subject, then altered the features to resemble Mary Todd Lincoln, presenting it as an authentic portrait.
Lincoln historian Harold Holzer noted inconsistencies: the brooch Mary Todd wore featured a 1857 photograph of Abraham Lincoln that she reportedly despised, and she was depicted wearing a crucifix—a Catholic symbol at odds with her Protestant background.
After the deception was revealed, the portrait was removed from the governor’s mansion and now hangs in the Lincoln Library, its true origins openly acknowledged.
1 The Egyptian Mona Lisa
The painting known as Meidum Geese has long been hailed as Egypt’s “Mona Lisa,” allegedly discovered in Pharaoh Nefermaat’s tomb and dated between 2610 BC and 2590 BC.
Since its 1871 discovery by Luigi Vassalli, the work was celebrated as a masterpiece of ancient Egyptian art. Recent high‑resolution analysis, however, suggests the painting is likely a 19th‑century hoax.
Researcher Francesco Tiradritti, director of the Italian archaeological mission in Egypt, examined the painting in person and via photographs, finding overwhelming evidence of forgery.
Tiradritti argues Vassalli himself painted the work in 1871. The first red flag: the depicted geese—red‑breasted and bean geese—are tundra species unlikely to migrate to Egypt for winter.
Additional clues include the use of beige, a color absent from other Egyptian works of the era, and shades of red and orange that do not match those found in Atet’s chapel, where Vassalli claimed to have uncovered the piece.
Vassalli, a learned scholar and skilled painter, may have crafted the forgery. Further evidence lies in another painting from Atet’s chapel depicting a vulture and a basket, which, to an Egyptologist, represent the letters “G” and “A”—the monogram of Vassalli’s second wife, Gigliati Angiola.