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September 16, 2011

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FLORIDA MAN ARRESTED ON CHARGES OF SELLING STOLEN ART AND SELLING FORGED PAINTINGS FOR MILLIONS OF DOLLARS

Mathew Taylor (LAPD Art Theft Detail)
Press Release from the US Attorney's Office for Central District of California

by Thom Mrozek, Public Affairs Officer

LOS ANGELES – A Florida man was arrested this morning pursuant to a federal indictment that alleges he sold paintings stolen from a Los Angeles art gallery, and that he had sold forged artworks to a collector with false claims that they had been painted by esteemed artists.

Matthew Taylor, 43, of Vero Beach, Florida, was arrested without incident this morning by special agents with the FBI. Taylor, who formerly worked as an art dealer, is expected to make his initial court appearance this afternoon in United States District Court in Fort Pierce, Florida.

A federal grand jury in Los Angeles indicted Taylor last week on seven felony charges related to art theft and a long-running fraud that targeted a Los Angeles art collector.

The indictment charges Taylor with defrauding the art collector victim out of millions of dollars by selling him forged art works. Taylor allegedly sold the collector more than 100 paintings – including paintings that he falsely claimed were by artists such as Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko – for a total of more than $2 million. The indictment alleges that Taylor altered paintings from unknown artists to make them appear to be the products of famous artists, and then sold the bogus artwork to the victim at prices exponentially higher than their actual worth.

To conceal the true nature of the paintings, Taylor allegedly put forged on the paintings and painted over or otherwise concealed signatures from the actual artists. The indictment also alleges that Taylor created and put onto the paintings fake labels which falsely represented that the artworks were once part of prestigious art collections at famous museums, including those of the Museum of Modern Art in the New York and the Guggenheim Museum.

Stolen: "Park Scene, Paris"
$20,000 Lucien Frank painting 
Regarding the alleged art heists, the indictment accuses Taylor of stealing a Granville Redmond painting called “Seascape at Twilight” from a gallery in Los Angeles. Taylor later sold that painting to a different gallery for $85,000, falsely claiming that his mother had owned it for several years. The indictment also alleges that Taylor stole a separate artwork – a painting by Lucien Frank titled “Park Scene, Paris” – from the same gallery in Los Angeles. Taylor was seen several years later in possession of the stolen Lucien Frank painting at a gallery in Vero Beach.

The indictment further alleges that Taylor laundered and transferred across state lines some of the proceeds from his fraud on the collector victim – specifically, $105,000 that Taylor had taken from the victim by selling him four forged paintings in September 2006.

An indictment contains allegations that a defendant has committed a crime. Every defendant is presumed to be innocent until proven guilty in court.

The indictment charges Taylor with three counts of wire fraud, two counts of money laundering, one count of interstate transportation of stolen property and one count of possession of stolen property. The mail fraud charges each carry a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison, and the remaining counts each carry a statutory maximum sentence of 10 years. Therefore, if he is convicted of all seven counts in the indictment, Taylor faces a maximum possible sentence of 100 years in federal prison.

Based on evidence collected throughout this case, investigators believe there are additional victims of art fraud related to Taylor’s activities. Individuals who purchased art from Taylor and believe they may have been defrauded should contact the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Los Angeles at (310) 477-6565 or the Los Angeles Police Department’s Art Theft Detail at (213) 486-6940.

The ongoing investigation into Taylor is being conducted by the FBI’s Art Crime Team, the Los Angeles Police Department’s Art Theft Detail, and IRS - Criminal Investigation.

You may read more about this case on the LAPD Art Theft Detail website.

More information about the $20,000 Lucien Frank painting that is still outstanding may be found here.

September 14, 2011

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"Fakes, Forgeries and the Art of Deception": A Lecture at the Smithsonian by Colette Loll Marvin

Independent curator and researcher Colette Loll Marvin is lecturing on "Fakes, Forgeries and the Art of Deception" at the Smithsonian on Wednesday, September 21.

Ms. Marvin was a student in the first 2009 class of ARCA's Postgraduate Program in International Art Crime and Cultural Protection Studies.

Colette Loll Marvin, Paris
You may find out more information about this program at this link, including how to order tickets.

ARCA program attendees or alumni may contact Colette Marvin at marvins4madrid@gmail.com for courtesy tickets.


September 12, 2011

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Art Theft Detectives Virginia Curry and Dick Ellis Will Discuss Some of the World's Most Intriguing Cases at Stonehill College on September 20

Art detectives Virginia Curry and Dick Ellis will discuss some of the world's most intriguing cases at Martin Auditorium at Stonehill College on September 20.

Virginia Curry, a retired FBI Special Agent and charter member of the FBI Art Crimes Task Force, has been involved in many high profile art theft investigations throughout her career.

Dick Ellis, an art crime investigator for over 20 years, began the Art and Antiques Squad at New Scotland. He has many notable recoveries such as "The Scream", looted Chinese and Egyptian antiquities, as well as valuable items from private British Collections.

There will be a reception from 5.30 to 6.30 p.m. followed by a presentation from 7:00 p.m. Stonehill College is located near Boston in Easton, Massachusetts.

Mr. Ellis has taught for the past three years at ARCA's Postgraduate Program in International Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection Studies. Ms. Curry has written for The Journal of Art Crime and presented at ARCA's International Art Crime Conference in 2009.

September 9, 2011

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The Journal of Art Crime, Spring 2011: Danelle Augustin Writes "A Different View of Art Crime: An Interview with Sculptor Nicolas Lobo"

Nicolas Lobo's Cough Syrup Play-Doh Diorama, 2007
In the Spring 2011 issue of The Journal of Art Crime, art historian Danelle Augustin interviews a Miami artist about the influence of illegality in his works in the interview "A Different view of Art Crime."

Augustin, a professor and attorney who lives and works in Miami, Florida, discussed the artist's works titled "Dummy Crack Doppelganger", "Cough Syrup Play-doh Diorama", and "Canario".

You may obtain a copy of this issue through ARCA's website or Amazon.com.

September 7, 2011

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The Journal of Art Crime, Spring 2011: David Gill's Context Matters looks at "The Unresolved Case of the Minneapolis Krater"

In the Spring 2011 issue of The Journal of Art Crime, David Gill writes about "The Unresolved Case of the Minneapolis Krater" in his regular column Context Matters.

Gill, head of the Division of Humanities and Professor of Archaeological Heritage at University Campus Suffolk, at Ipswich, Suffolk, England (from October 2011) and author of Sifting the soil of Greece: the early years of the British School at Athens (1886-1919), answers the question of why the dispute over the krater needs to be resolved. The Athenian pot, decorated with a Dionysiac scene, was acquired in 1983 from the London-based dealer Robin Symes by the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Although the collecting history for the krater claims that it had been private owned by collectors in Switzerland and Great Britain for 15 years prior to the purchase, the pot has been identified from the photographic archive seized in a warehouse facility held by Robert Hecht and Giacomo Medici, convicted in 2004 for dealing in stolen ancient artifacts.

To read more about this five-year-old dispute, you may obtain a copy of this issue by subscription through the ARCA website or through Amazon.com.

September 5, 2011

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The Journal of Art Crime, Spring 2011: Noah Charney writes on "Mona Lisa Myths: Dispelling the Valfierno Con" in "Lessons from the History of Art Crime"

In the Spring 2011 issue of The Journal of Art Crime, editor-in-chief Noah Charney writes about "Mona Lisa Myths: Dispelling the Valfierno Con" in his regular column "Lessons from the History of Art Crime."

"The story in question regards a mythical character called Eduardo de Valfierno, an Argentine criminal alleged to have commissioned the theft of the Mona Lisa by Vincenzo Peruggia in 1911 in order to sell six forgeries of it to unsuspecting nouveau-riche criminal collectors," Mr. Charney writes. "The idea was that each of these 'collectors would believe that they had the stolen original, and they would be unable to advertise their acquisition of the Mona Lisa for the very fact it was stolen.

You may read more about this plan and its myth in the Spring 2011 issue of The Journal of Art Crime by subscribing through the ARCA website or by purchasing this issue at Amazon.com.

September 3, 2011

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Lynda Albertson Hired as New CEO of ARCA

Lynda Albertson
by Noah Charney, Founder and President of ARCA

We at ARCA are pleased to announce the hiring of a new CEO.

ARCA is an international non-profit research group on the study of art crime and cultural heritage protection. With seats in the United States and Italy, ARCA acts as a bridge between world art police, museums, security professionals, art lawyers, archaeologists, and scholars studying this field, with the collective goal of promoting art crime as a distinctive field of study. Featured in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, and other publications, ARCA is a small 501c3 which runs academic, research, and publication-based projects.

ARCA publishes a twice-yearly academic journal, The Journal of Art Crime, the first and only interdisciplinary journal in this field.

ARCA runs an annual Postgraduate Certificate Program in Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Studies, held in Umbria every summer. This program is the first and only in the world to offer students a chance to study art crime from both a theoretical and practical standpoint, with visiting professors teaching alongside world-renowned art police and security directors.

ARCA run lectures, workshops, and engages in media outreach to better inform the public and professionals alike about art crime. It also publishes books, including the edited volume, Art & Crime: Exploring the Dark Side of the Art World (Praeger 2009) and the recent The Thefts of the Mona Lisa: On Stealing the World's Most Famous Painting (ARCA Publications 2011).

For more information on ARCA, please visit www.artcrime.info.

The Trustees of ARCA are pleased to announce the appointment of a new CEO, Lynda Albertson.

Ms. Albertson has a particularly well-suited suite of qualifications that set her apart. She comes to us from the post of Director of Programming at the American Institute for Roman Culture, which is, like ARCA, a US-registered 501c3 non-profit that functions in Italy which hosts students living and studying abroad and which runs conferences, lectures, and publications. This combination of direct experience in running an American 501c3 organization in Italy, and also experience dealing with students living abroad in Italy, combined with her location in Rome, her excellent contacts in Italy, her comfort functioning in an Italian context, and her Italian language abilities, make her an ideal candidate.

We at ARCA look forward to a long and fruitful period with Ms. Albertson at the helm. Ms. Albertson may be contacted at director "at" artcrime.info

August 31, 2011

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The Journal of Art Crime, Spring 2011: Donn Zaretsky's Art Law and Policy looks at the First Amendment Rights of Photographers

In his regular column for The Journal of Art Crime, art law specialist Donn Zaretsky looks at the First Amendment rights of photographers in the Spring 2011 issue.

Mr. Zaretsky, an attorney with the firm John Silberman Associates and publisher of the Art Law Blog, asks the question "Can a state declare an entire subject matter off limits to photographers?" He questions the constitutionality of a proposed law recently introduced in Florida that would restrict digital or video recording of images taken by photographers without the written consent of the owner. "Clearly, what the legislature wants to do here is the one thing they cannot do: criminalize the PETA-style undercover farm videos," Zaretsky writes. "They can strengthen their trespassing laws, if they wish. But they cannot restrict speech "because of its messages, its ideas, its subject matter, or its content."

The Journal of Art Crime, edited by ARCA founder and president Noah Charney, is the first peer-reviewed academic journal on the interdisciplinary study of art crime. You may subscription to the Journal through ARCA's website (where you can also read guidelines for submissions) or   purchase individual subscriptions through Amazon.com.

August 28, 2011

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The Journal of Art Crime, Spring 2011: "The Skylight Caper: The Unsolved 1972 Theft of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts"

Catherine Schofield Sezgin's article "The Skylight Caper: The Unsolved 1972 Theft of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts" has been published in the fifth issue of The Journal of Art Crime (Spring 2011).

Rembrandt Stolen from MMFA in 1972
This article examines previously published articles on Canada's largest art theft, the 1972 unsolved theft of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and compares the information with two principals involved with the museum and the investigation. It explores the ideas proposed in the last four decades as to who may have committed the theft and the alleged whereabouts of 39 pieces of jewelry and silver and the 17 missing paintings, including art by Rembrandt, Corot, Rubens and Courbet. This article describes the history of museum thefts in Canada, how the crime was committed, and some characteristics that may have made this museum and those paintings a target for theft.

Catherine Schofield Sezgin, a graduate from ARCA's Postgraduate Program in International Art Crime Studies in 2009, worked closely with Bill Bantey, retired journalist and director of public relations for the museum at the time of the theft, and Alain Lacoursière, retired Montreal police officer specializing in art crime.

You may read updates about the case on her blog, The Unsolved 1972 Theft of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

The Journal of Art Crime is available via subscription through ARCA's website and from Amazon.com.

August 26, 2011

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The Journal of Art Crime, Spring 2011: Ludo Block on "European Police Cooperation on Art Crime: A Comparative Overview

Retired Dutch police officer Ludo Block writes on "European Police Cooperation on Art Crime: A Comparative Overview" in the fifth issue of The Journal of Art Crime (Spring 2011). This is Mr. Block's abstract:
The academic literature in the field of cross-border policing tends to concentrate exclusively on the high-level crimes -- drug trafficking, terrorism, and human trafficking -- that are so often the focus of transnational police cooperation in criminal investigations. There are, however, many other types of transnational crime, including the often neglected art crime, which may represent the third most profitable criminal enterprise in the world, outranked only by drug and arms trafficking. Drawing on existing literature and interviews with practitioners, this study provides a comparative overview of the policing efforts on art crime in a number of European Union (EU) member states and examines the relevant policy initiatives of the Council of the EU, Europol, and the European Police College. It also addresses existing practices of and obstacles to police cooperation in the field of art crime in the EU. The study reveals that EU police cooperation in this field occurs among a relatively small group of specialists and that -- particularly given the general lack of political and public attention -- the personal dedication of these specialists is an indispensable driver in this cooperation.
Ludo Block is a senior investigator at Grant Thornton Forensic & Investigation Services in Rotterdam (The Netherlands). Previously he served over 17 years with the Netherlands' police and held senior positions in the Amsterdam police. Between 1999 and 2004 he was stationed in Moscow as the Netherlands' police liaison officer for the Russian Federation and surrounding countries. Ludo holds a Masters in Social Sciences from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam where he currently is finalizing his PhD (Public Administration) on European Police Cooperation.

You may purchase this issue through subscription through ARCA's website or through Amazon.com.

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