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Showing posts with label FBI Art Crime Squad. Show all posts
Showing posts with label FBI Art Crime Squad. Show all posts

March 16, 2012

Friday, March 16, 2012 - ,,,,,, No comments

CNBC's "American Greed" on "Fine Art: Portrait of Fraud -- the story of Kristine Eubanks, Jimmy Mobley and "Fine Art Treasures Gallery" and Certificates of Authentication

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
Episode #1 Maxfield Parrish Art Heist
Two Maxfield Parrish paintings -- worth $4 million -- vanish into the night!
Episode #3 Art Heist: Fine Arts Express
A museum quality art collection worth more than $4 million dollars is stolen!

Season 2
Epsiode #9 Unsolved:  $300 Million Art Heist
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!
Episode #10 The Art of Fraud
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!
Episode #16 Soaking The Rich at Auction
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.

March 11, 2012

Sunday, March 11, 2012 - ,,,,, No comments

FBI Arrests Collector in Wine Fraud After Investigation by the FBI Art Crime Team

LOS ANGELES - Museum Security Network disbursed the headline, "FBI Art (?) Crime Team - Wine collector accused of fraud, trying to sell fake French vintages." According to an article on The Los Angeles Times blog by Andrew Blankenstein, a resident of Arcadia, a suburb in the San Gabriel Valley, was arrested March 8 "by FBI agents assigned to the Los Angeles office after a years-long investigation by the FBI Art Crime Team".

The FBI's National Stolen Art File Search categorizes objects from "Altar" to "Wine Cooler" and includes traditional fine art (paintings, watercolors) and other valuables such as musical instruments, guns, prayer mats, and even ice pails.  The FBI's Top Ten Art Crimes range from Iraqi Looted and Stolen Artifacts to Theft from the E. G. Bührle Collection, Zurich.

In the fourth issue of The Journal of Art Crime (Spring 2011), James Charney reviewed The Billionaire's Vinegar (Three Rivers Press, New York, 2009) which discusses the issue of authenticating fine wines.

In the most recent issue of The Journal of Art Crime (Fall 2011), Noah Charney interviews Stuart George, an expert on fine wines, and the crimes committed in the wine world.
Noah Charney: How frequently do you suspect that fraud takes place in the world of high-priced wines? 
Stuart George: Leaving aside the 1787 Lafite mentioned above in "The Billionaire's Vinegar), I have never knowingly seen a “genuine fake” bottle of fine wine. Nonetheless, merchants’ and auctioneers’ outrage at fake wine is like Claude Rains’ shock at learning that there was gambling at Rick’s place in Casablanca. Anything that is valuable is in danger of being faked. 
More attention is being paid to preventing fraudulent wine than ever before, which suggests that as the Hong Kong/China market has gone supernova, the amount of fakes and forgeries being sold has increased significantly.According to some sources, fake wines flow in and out of Hong Kong like the cheap and illegal Irish reprints of books that allegedly flooded the British market in the eighteenth century. I was told that China’s government officially deplores the country’s inexorable production of fakes but in practice turns a blind eye.

February 25, 2011

Friday, February 25, 2011 - ,,,, No comments

The Journal of Art Crime: John Kleberg reviews "Priceless" and "Stolen Masterpiece Tracker"

In the fourth issue of The Journal of Art Crime, John Kleberg reviews Robert K. Wittman's book, "Priceless" (Crown Publishers, New York, 2006), and Thomas McShane's book, "Stolen Masterpiece Tracker" (Barricade Books, New Jersey, 2006).

Wittman's book is about his cases in art crimes investigations with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). McShane, also a retired FBI agent, reports on various international undercover criminal investigations during his 25-year-career with the FBI. Wittman was with the FBI office in Philadelphia; McShane was with the FBI office in New York. Both men take credit for either inspiring or creating the FBI's Art Crime Team which was established in 2004 and is today coordinated in Washington as the Art Theft Program, according to the reviewer.

John Kleberg is a retired Assistant Vice President at The Ohio State University where he was instrumental in organizing the program described as well as having administrative responsibility for security, police, and other business and finance operations. He also has been a law enforcement administrator, trainer, and educator in Ohio and Illinois. His undergraduate degree is from Michigan State University, graduate degree from the University of Illinois, and he has done post-graduate work at The Ohio State University and Kent State University. He is the author of numerous articles on campus safety and security issues and is a consultant on campus security issues, including campus museums, libraries, and galleries.

To seek out this piece, and many others, consider a subscription to the Journal of Art Crime—the first peer-reviewed academic journal covering art and heritage crime. ARCA publishes two volumes annually in the Spring and Fall. Individual, Institutional, electronic and printed versions are all available, with subscriptions as low as 30 Euros. All proceeds go to ARCA's nonprofit research and education initiatives. Please see the publications page for more information.

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