By Angela Kumar, ARCA Class of 2011
CNBC’s American Greed aired Fine Art: Portrait of Fraud at 10 p.m. on Wednesday night. This episode told the story of
Los Angeles entrepreneur Kristine Eubanks, owner of Finer Image Editions, who
in 1995 used the then-new technology, the glicée printer, to reproduce
artworks and sell them to Princess Cruise Lines. Eubanks later launched “Fine Art Treasures Gallery”, a nationally televised auction of “rare” and
“authentic” artworks advertised as signed by artists such as Rembrandt,
Picasso, Chagall and Dali, all offered at a fraction of their market value.
Eubanks along with her husband and auctioneer, Jimmy Mobley, duped thousands of
viewers and scored millions on fake artworks.
Los Angeles Police Department's Art Theft Detail Detective Don Hrycyk and the
FBI’s Art Crime Team Special Agent Christopher Calarco are interviewed.
A preview of the program, as well as “extras” including
videos of Detective Hrycyk speaking about forged Certificates of Authenticity
and Special Agent Calarco explaining how the Bureau’s Art Crime Team was
created, can be found here.
Additional episodes related to art crime can be found on
CNBC’s website and include the following:
Season 1
Two Maxfield Parrish paintings -- worth $4 million --
vanish into the night!
A museum quality art collection worth more than $4
million dollars is stolen!
Season 2
A dark night. A clever plan. $300 million in art is
stolen from a Boston museum. Paintings by Rembrandt, Vermeer and Manuet
disappear into the night!
Enter the mysterious world of art fraud. An elaborate
sting operation exposes Dr. Vilas Likhite....a doctor stripped of his medical
license who begins a new career as a con man selling fake art treasures!
He's an art collector, the former chairman of Sotheby's
and a convicted felon. Alfred Taubman takes us inside the price-fixing scandal
at Christie's and Sotheby's.
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