Daily Archives: December 13, 2019

In the continuing debate over the proper scope of the criminal law, it has frequently been suggested that certain crimes are in reality "victimless" and that all statutes defining such offenses should be repealed or at least substantially restricted (Schur; Packer; Morris and Hawkins). Although all authors do not use the term in the same way, the following offenses have been included in the victimless crime category: public drunkenness; vagrancy; various sexual acts usually involving consenting adults (fornication, adultery, bigamy, incest, sodomy, homosexuality, and prostitution); obscenity; pornography; drug offenses; abortion; gambling; and juvenile status offenses (offenses that would not be criminal if the actor were an adult).

The arguments for the repeal of laws against victimless crimes fall into two categories. Some proponents of the victimless crime concept argue that, as a matter of principle, society may not legitimately prohibit conduct that harms only the actor or actors (Morris and Hawkins). However, most proponents of the criterion go on to argue that even if it might be legitimate to punish victimless crimes, there are certain practical reasons why it is unwise to do so (Schur and Bedau). The practical arguments against victimless crimes appear to derive from three attributes of these offenses: (1) most involve no complaining parties other than police officers; (2) many involve the exchange of prohibited goods or services that are strongly desired by the participants; and (3) all seek to prevent individual or social harms that are widely believed to be less serious and/or less likely to occur than the harms involved in crimes with victims.

Victimless crimes tend to have no complaining parties other than the police because the immediate participants in these crimes do not see themselves as victims, have no desire to complain to the police, and would fear criminal liability if they did complain. Moreover, since such illegal acts usually take place in private and do not directly victimize any third party, other citizens are unlikely to observe the acts or to have sufficient incentive to complain to the police. As a result, it is argued, victimless crimes are harder to detect and prosecute than crimes with victims, and the police are therefore forced to engage in a number of practices that are subject to serious abuse. These include surveillance and entrapment by undercover agents; the use of unreliable informants from the criminal milieu; various forms of intrusive electronic and physical surveillance (wiretapping, bugging, peering through holes in the ceilings of public washrooms, and the like); and widespread searches of the person, motor vehicles, houses, and other nonpublic places for contraband and evidence. Such techniques tend to bring law enforcement into disrepute, causing lowered public respect for the law and for criminal penalties in general.

The fact that victimless crimes frequently take place without being observed by other citizens also means that certain forms of official misconduct are much more likely to occur: discriminatory enforcement of the law against unpopular groups or individuals; attempts to bribe law enforcement officers; and attempts by law enforcement officers to extort money or other favors from suspects in return for nonenforcement. Such misbehavior further reduces public respect for, and cooperation with, the institutionsof criminal justice, particularly among social groups already alienated from societythe poor, ethnic minorities, and the young (Schur and Bedau).

Many victimless crimes involve goods and services that are in great demand, the most extreme example being the drugs craved by addicts. Criminal penalties thus tend to limit the supply more than the demand, driving up the black-market price and creating monopoly profits for those criminals who remain in business. This "crime tariff" reduces consumption possibilities for legal goods and encourages the growth of sophisticated and well-organized criminal groups. Organized crime in turn tends to diversify into other areas of crime. Large profits provide ample funds for bribery of public officials, as well as capital for diversification. Although higher prices tend to discourage some would-be participants in victimless crimes, the fact that these goods and services are greatly desired (and are not seen as truly immoral) ensures a strong demand that, combined with a restricted supply, maintains both high prices and high crime rates. In extreme cases, such as heroin or cocaine addiction, high prices force participants to commit other crimes, for example, drug sales and theft, to pay for the illegal goods. Finally, because of the strong demand, a large number of otherwise law-abiding citizens are driven into association with the criminal elements who supply these goods and services. There is a danger that such citizens will come to view themselves as criminals, since society has labeled them as such; they will thus cooperate less with law enforcement generally, and are more likely to be drawn into other forms of crime.

Victimless crimes are also seen as being measurably less serious than most offenses with victimsthe prohibited behavior causes individual or social harms that are either less serious, less likely to occur, or the result of prohibition itself (for example, the adverse health effects caused by ingestion of impure or unexpectedly potent drugs). It is argued that the lack of complaining witnesses to some of these crimes (e.g., illegal gambling) is, in part, a reflection of a societal consensus that the behavior is less serious. The high demand for many of these illegal goods and services, noted above, is further evidence of widespread tolerance of the behavior. Under such conditions, prohibition only serves to reduce respect for law on the part of citizens who believe that their prohibited acts are not wrong. Moreover, the prosecution of these less serious offenses is seen as a waste of scarce criminal justice resources and an unjustifiable burden on the criminal justice system. The amount of police effort required to detect these hard-to-enforce laws might be better spent on more serious offenses, which are easier to detect. It is also argued that the courts are so overburdened with trivial offenses that there are insufficient resources to process more serious offenses adequately. In addition, the enforcement of victimless crime puts great stress on overcrowded pretrial detention and correctional facilities, and increases the cost of replacement facilities.

Although often agreeing that specific crimes should be repealed, critics of the victimless crime criterion have pointed out that the concept lacks a clear definition, fails to cover some of the offenses to which it has been applied, and applies equally well to other offenses that have not been proposed for repeal. Thus, critics argue, the term is only a cover for subjective value judgments about the wisdom of specific criminal statutes, and fails to provide an objective criminalization standard that could be easily applied and would be deserving of broad acceptance.

Beginning with the term itself, it has been argued that there is no such thing as a victimless crime, because most so-called victimless crimes have victims, or at least potential victims, such as the taxpayers who must eventually pay the cost of rehabilitating the drug addict and supporting his dependents (Oaks). It has also been argued that prostitution and antifemale pornography harm all women, and that "hate speech" harms all members of the target group, by increasing the risk of future violence, causing fear and anxiety of such harms, and reinforcing entrenched social inequalities (Roach). If it is conceded that the criminal law may properly prohibit conduct that involves a risk of harm to the protected interests of others, one is faced with a continuuma range of behaviors involving varying degrees of actual or potential victimizationwith no clear answers about where to draw the line between criminal and noncriminal behavior (Dripps; Packer).

In response to the problems noted above, it might be argued that victimless crimes should be defined as those that lack direct, identifiable victims. However, there are several problems with this formulation. First, some of the offenses onthe list of victimless crimes do have direct victims, such as citizens offended or harassed by public drunks or disorderly persons; the spouse of the adulterer, bigamist, or prostitution client; or the spouse, parent, or child of a drug addict. Refusal to recognize the latter forms of victimization requires problematic distinction (for instance, between mere mental distress and physical harm) (Wertheimer). Moreover, in many cases it is quite reasonable to argue that one or more of the participants in a victimless crime is, or will in the future become, a victim of serious harm, such as the sporadic heroin user who becomes addicted (Schur and Bedau), or the young person who becomes a prostitute; moreover, the victims of these harms, who are often members of socially disadvantaged groups, may not freely "consent" to either the prohibited acts or the ensuing harms. Finally, a "no direct victim" definition might include many offenses not proposed to be repealedfor example, inchoate offenses such as possession of burglary tools, drunk driving, and counterfeiting.

It has also been argued that victimless crimes "lack victims in the sense of complainants asking for the protection of the criminal law" (Morris and Hawkins, p. 6). Of course, people can be victimized, or at least put at risk of harm, without knowing it, and much of the absence of complainants is due to the secretive nature of these crimes (Wertheimer). Moreover, the "complaintless" criterion excludes some supposedly victimless crimes, such as pornography, and includes many offenses never proposed for repeal. For example, in bribery, receiving stolen property, possession of unregistered weapons, most traffic law violations, and innumerable health, safety, environmental, and regulatory offenses, the complainant is generally a police officer or paid informant, not a crime victim seeking protection. To argue that the latter offenses are significantly different from the victimless (or complaintless) crimes which should be repealed is to admit that the proposed criterion does not, by itself, make the crucial distinction between what should be criminal and what should not.

Victimless crimes have also been defined as those involving "the willing exchange, among adults, of strongly demanded but legally proscribed goods and services" (Schur, p. 169). The consensual nature of such transactions, and the fact that they are strongly desired, create many of the problems of detection and enforcement previously noted (Schur and Bedau). This definition is still inadequate, however, because it clearly does not apply to some victimless crimes, such as public drunkenness, and applies in only the broadest sense to others, such as incest. On the other hand, it does include weapons and stolen property offenses, which are not usually proposed for repeal.

Finally, proponents of the victimless crime criterion argue that even if this concept is not a definitive test of what should be criminal, it is still useful because it identifies a group of statutes most of which should be repealed because "they produce more social harm than good" (Schur and Bedau, p. 112). This sort of cost-benefit approach does provide a useful set of objective criteria for defining the scope of the criminal law. However, such an approach is inevitably very complex, and the victimless crime criterion contributes little to the resolution of these complexities. For example, offenses involving the possession or carrying of weapons are victimless in almost every sense in which drug offenses are, and impose very similar costs of enforcement (Wertheimer; Kessler), yet most proponents of the victimless crime criterion do not apply the criterion to current and proposed gun laws. In addition, the victimless crime concept says very little about the difficult choices between alternatives to current criminal laws: partial decriminalization, regulation by various civil or administrative processes, or total deregulation.

Ultimately, the victimless crime criterionor any other simple formulais mostly rhetoric that obscures, rather than contributes to, analysis. The relative victimlessness of an offense is closely related to several important practical issues in the criminalization decision, but labeling a crime as victimless only begins what is, in most cases, a very difficult process of assessing complex empirical facts and fundamental value choices.

Richard S. Frase

See also Abortion; Alcohol and Crime: The Prohibition Experiment; Civil and Criminal Divide; Criminal Law Reform: Current Issues in the United States; Criminalization and Decriminalization; Drugs and Crime: Legal Aspects; Entrapment; Gambling; Homosexuality and Crime; Juvenile Status Offenders; Obscenity and Pornography: Behavioral Aspects; Police: Policing Complainantless Crimes; Prostitution; Sex Offenses: Consensual; Vagrancy and Disorderly Conduct.

Dripps, Donald A. "The Liberal Critique of the Harm Principle." Criminal Justice Ethics 17 (summer/fall 1998): 318.

Feinberg, Joel. The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law. 4 vols. Vol. 1, Harm to Others (1984); Vol. 2, Offense to Others (1985); Vol. 3, Harm to Self (1986); Vol. 4, Harmless Wrongdoing (1988). New York: Oxford University Press, 19841988.

Kessler, Raymond G. "Enforcement Problems of Gun Control: A Victimless Crimes Analysis." Criminal Law Bulletin 16 (1980): 131149.

Morris, Norval, and Hawkins, Gordon J. The Honest Politician's Guide to Crime Control. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970.

Oaks, Dallin H. "The Popular Myth of the Victimless Crime." University of Chicago Law Alumni Journal (1975): 314.

Packer, Herbert L. The Limits of the Criminal Sanction. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1968.

Roach, Kent. "Four Models of the Criminal Process." Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 89 (1999): 671716.

Schur, Edwin M. Crimes without Victims: Deviant Behavior and Public PolicyAbortion, Homosexuality, Drug Addiction. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1965.

Schur, Edwin M., and Bedau, Hugo Adam. Victimless Crimes: Two Sides of a Controversy. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1974.

Smith, Wendy Serbin. Victimless Crime: A Selected Bibliography. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, 1977.

Wertheimer, Alan. "Victimless Crimes." Ethics 87 (1977): 302318.

Encyclopedia of Crime and JusticeFRASE, RICHARD S.

See original here:

Victimless Crime | Encyclopedia.com

Art crime is woven throughout museums, galleries and private collections alike. From forgeries to the theft of its most valuable painting, the University of Arizona Museum of Art has an art crime history all of its own.

The art museums Curator of Exhibitions Olivia Miller gave a community talk called Crimes Against Art about incidents of the museum at the Murphy-Wilmot Library on Dec. 6.

The Forgeries

According to Miller, the museums curator discovered in the late 1970s that Wassily Kandinskys painting Ruhe was a forgery. The director happened upon a poster reproduction of Ruhe, which did not look like the original and began to inspect museum files to research its provenance.

It turned out that parts of paintings provenance was fictional. The original was still part of a private collection belonging to Nathan Cummings, making the one hanging in the museum a forgery.

After the Kandinsky painting was found to be a forgery, the curator began tracking all the other pieces sold by the same gallery from which it had been bought. Miller said a sculpture called Dancer Posing by Edgar Degas was also discovered to be a fake after being inspected by experts at Harvard.

The conservators called the sculpture a poor copy of a copy, Miller said. It was not even a good forgery.

After the Kandinsky painting was found to be a forgery, the curator began tracking all the other pieces sold by the same gallery from which it had been bought. Miller said that a sculpture called "Dancer Posing" by Edgar Degas was also discovered to be a fake after being inspected by experts at Harvard.

The conservators called the sculpture a poor copy of a copy, Miller said. It was not even a good forgery.

The two falsified artworks were gifts from Edward Gallagher Jr.

According to the art museums website, Gallagher Jr. donated about 200 world-class modern art pieces to the museum in honor of his son who passed away.

Miller said the Kandinsky and Degas artworks were sold to Gallagher Jr. by a gallery that had supplied him many pieces, the majority of which later turned out to be forgeries.

She mentioned that a preparatory sculpture by Henry Moore is currently not on display, as it is from the same untrustworthy gallery and the authenticity is still unknown.

[These forgery discoveries] were quite unfortunate because the gallery owner and Gallagher had been friends since high school, Miller said.

It was found out that the gallery owner established an elaborate scheme. Apparently, he had forged letters from a non-existent corporation owner and created a shell company, all to deceive Gallagher Jr. and knowingly sell him forged artwork, according to Miller.

I guarantee that there are museums right now that have forgeries on view and just dont know it yet, Miller said. In 2016, half of a museum in France happened to be fake.

Karen Barber is an adult services librarian who has taken part in the organization of the art talks since 2012. Apparently, the first talk they ever hosted was about the Gallagher collection. Now, seven years later, the talk is about how Gallagher was duped.

I had no idea that the [UA] had all those forgeries, Barber said after the talk. I think its fascinating that [the museum is] being so open about the forgeries.

The Stolen Painting

The museums talk was brought up during Millers re-telling of the story about Willem de Koonings Woman-Ochre painting that was stolen over 30 years ago.

According to UA Police Chief Brian Seastone, on the morning of Nov. 29, 1985, a man and a woman entered the museum. Police believe that the woman distracted the security guard while the man went up to the second floor.

The security guard was suspicious after they left and immediately went upstairs to check on the artworks, Miller said. He discovered that the painting had been cut from its frame shortly after they left.

It wasnt until 2009 when Lauren Rabb became the curator of art at the UA art museum that Woman-Ochre came back into the spotlight. According to Rabb, she was always interested in art theft.

Art crime fascinates me because while its usually considered a victimless crime, at the same time its a crime against humanity, Rabb said in an email. Humanity is deprived of that work of art of the ability to experience it anymore.

According to Rabb, awareness about the stolen de Kooning painting needed to spread if it were ever to be returned to the art museum. Rabb contacted the FBI to remind them about the robbery and to inquire about the status of their investigations.

It seemed like a good time to reopen the case and make sure there was publicity around the 30-year anniversary of the theft, Rabb said.

Miller said the museum hosted an event titled Out of the Vault Art Crime, prompted by Rabb in 2015. It was about past forgeries, Woman-Ochre and the FBIs progress on the stolen painting case.

This talk renewed interest toward the unsolved disappearance within the community. According to Miller, the event received international press attention and an article was written about the stolen painting a few weeks later by Anne Ryman for the Arizona Republic.

On Aug. 3, 2017, we got a call that changed our lives, Miller said.

David Van Auker, an owner of an antique store in New Mexico, called the art museum to say that he believed he found the stolen de Kooning after he researched the painting he bought and came across Rymans article.

At first, I was cautious about getting excited, Miller said. It wasnt that I didnt believe him, but we wanted more proof, especially after discovering so many other forgeries in the museum.

Finally, it was found that Van Auker was indeed in possession of the long-lost painting. According to Miller, if it werent for the transparency and educational reach of the Out of the Vault Art Crime event, Rymans article wouldnt have been written.

Museums are public institutions, Miller said. The public should be aware of what goes on inside them. Keeping the public informed is what helped us recover Woman-Ochre.

Today, Woman-Ochre is being tested and repaired at the Getty Center in Los Angeles. Miller expects that the art museum will get to welcome the painting back home in Spring of 2021.

Over 30 years after the crime, UA Museum of Art employees and community members alike celebrate the paintings recovery.

Art crime is a real and current issue, Miller said. Just recently, a couple paintings were burglarized in Germany. For [the art museum], its about finding a balance between visitor experience and painting safety.

Follow Sunday Holland on Twitter

Read the original here:

Forgery to thievery, a brief history of art crime at the UA Museum - Arizona Daily Wildcat

John Myatt felt like his life was in free-fall.

It was the mid-1980s and at 41, he was a working painter who never made a splashor a profitin the London gallery scene. His wife left him, and he struggled to provide for his two young children.

So, he began to forge paintings.

Partnering with art dealer John Drewe, the duo sold more than an estimated 200 fraudulent pieces of art for millions of pounds, ensnaring some of the world's most prestigious collectors, galleries, auction houses, and storied institutions, including London's Tate Gallery.

It was one of the greatest art scandals of all time. Myatt spent countless hours making incredibly detailed "new" works in the style of Marc Chagall, Le Corbusier, Alberto Giacometti, Matisse, and Graham Sutherland, among others. He often scoured flea markets for paints, brushes, and canvases from an artist's time period, in addition to obsessively studying their techniques.

He acknowledges his skill as a forger, but says that much of pulling off the con was "about manipulating the publicity machine or just being in the right place at the right time" in making a sale; promoting the fake story of the creation of the image and how it fit into an artist's body of work; and explaining how the piece had changed hands over the years.

Myatt, who served prison time and is now living and working as a painter in the United Kingdom, is among the handful of art forgers who say the very environment in which their past crimes flourished is, in many respects, just as fertile now. As art prices hit stratospheric highs and Trump-era momentum to regulate anything reaches record lows, the art world continues to be an under-explored haven for illicit activity, that often hangs, literally, in plain sight.

"I think it's just as easy today," Myatt said of forgery in a phone interview.

John Myatt in his studio in London | Photo by Wendy Huynh

What is often dismissed as a largely victimless crime befitting of The Thomas Crown Affair (the one starring Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo, not Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway) may carry far higher stakes. Art forgery typically elicits images of the pearl-clasping super-rich with jaws dropped at fake Picassos, but the crime is also often linked to money laundering, tax evasion, and drug trafficking. It is the third highest-grossing criminal trade in the world over the last 40 years, according to the US Department of Justice and UNESCO, just behind drugs and weapons. Thomas Hoving, the former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, once estimated that 40 percent of the artwork in circulation was fake.

Driving criminal interest is the amount of cash that has been injected in the art world in the years since Myatt's forgery heyday. In some respects, it mirrors the giant pools of money sloshing around in Manhattan or London real estatefunds that are relatively concentrated in a few hands spending it in a few places. Critics contend there's low incentive to catch criminals and that, in some cases, alleged victims may benefit from being in on the con. (Others are so desperate to be in the art market, they're taking on massive debt to do so.)

The global art market in 2018 totaled some $67.4 billion, according to a joint report from Art Basel and UBS, an increase from $39.5 billion in recession-era 2009. And as the super wealthy look for more places to park money while diversifying their holdings, wealth managers and art dealers have welcomed new dollars, with some going so far to pitch (fee-heavy) hedge fund-like investment vehicles that pool money to acquire art.

That's reaped fortunes for some, but not necessarily motivation to catch art criminals. Generally, artbe it real or fakeis being used to move money more than ever, former forgers, law enforcement agents, and experts suggest. And ironically, the forgers are among the most vocal.

"It was a mistake I made and it was time to come to do good things," Myatt said. "To just face up to it."

"Im trying to do something good out of something bad."

As Russian billionaire and avid art collector Dmitry Rybolovlev faced divorce from his wife, Elena, in 2008, the works that once proudly graced the walls of auction houses and made their way into his own collection were now a financial liability. So Rybolovlev set up an elaborate scheme to park his lofty art collection in an offshore entity, according to the Panama Papers.

Stowing away the works was no easy feat, as during his 23-year marriage, Rybolovlev, whom Forbes ranked as the 224th richest person in the world, had amassed a world-class collection that included works by Picasso, van Gogh, Monet, da Vinci, and Modigliani, among others. But as the marriage buckled, Rybolovlev moved the art to a shell company reportedly set up by the notorious and since-shuttered firm Mossack Fonseca in the British Virgin Islands. That took it out of Switzerland, part of an attempt to shield it from his wife's name or the divorce court there. (Rybolovlev is involved in further litigation with his art dealer.)

While there's no evidence Rybolovlev was dealing in forged works, it's just one of many recent scandals involving the secretive strategies of the art world, and its role in moving money at a time when oligarchs across the world have come under harsh scrutiny. This past May, longtime titan dealer Mary Boone, who was convicted for tax evasion at her gallery, reported for a 30-month prison sentencea rarity in an industry that often sees large amounts of money shifting hands. Art has a recurring role in the use of offshore shell companies, the Panama Papers showed, including allegations that the true buyers and sellers of major works may often be concealed.

The scene in John Myatt's studio | Photo by Wendy Huynh

The same goes for the ongoing saga of Jeffrey Epstein. As speculation mounted about Epstein's actual net worth in the days leading up to his death, so, too, did questions around his art assets and how they may have fit into his alleged crimes. Among his art collection were "Parsing Bill," a painting of Bill Clinton in a blue dress; a portrait of himself in a photorealistic prison scene; and a painting of a nude woman. It's unclear what their market worth is, but Epstein was "amused to have in his house fake art which looked like real art," longtime friend and art dealer Stuart Pivar told Mother Jones.

One reason fakes proliferate is simple: It's relatively easy to forge a painting. And if it's perceived as accurate, it can be hawked as an asset andin some casesget bought and sold with few or no questions asked.

Especially if the art is moving between hands that are trusted. Of the art authenticity frauds investigated by the FBI in the last three decades, an estimated 87 percent were perpetrated by art world "insiders," a sort of Ponzi scheme via canvas. Among the most notable was the downfall of the Knoedler Gallery, a storied enterprise that closed its doors after 165 years in 2011 amid allegations that it had sold fake works of Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, and others, often with little due diligence.

"It's truly shocking," said Peter R. Stern, an art attorney, of the Knoedler scandal. In his line of work, Stern represents galleries, artists and collectors in an array of matters including handling major transactions, aid with estate planning, and conflicts over art authenticity or ownership. "The behavior was awful, but I also think that buyers did little or no homework."

Photo by Wendy Huynh

Among the obvious tasks, Stern said, is tracing a work's provenance, the paper trail that shows how it has changed hands since creation. Today, the internet has made it easier than ever to find out more about a work's origins, but it has also made it easier for skilled forgers to create fake art or documents to match them.

"The internet has opened up whole new marketplaces," Tim Carpenter, FBI supervisory special agent who program manages the Bureau's Art Crime Team, said in an interview. "Day in and day out, it's not just people buying huge pieces of art. The money is at the mid-level stuff, passing off those fake pieces as real. Back before online marketplaces and social media took over, you had galleries and middlemen doing due diligence. Now, there's no middleman. You have freer access to bad art."

After decades of art crime cases being handled on an ad-hoc basis, Carpenter's group was formalized within the FBI in 2004. In addition to casework, the unit also conducts trainings to aid in handling art and cultural artifacts. Carpenter said the FBI does not publicly release data on the number of cases it pursues, but noted "we stay very busy."

High-end art can be hard to move, but criminals looking to monetize quickly may go for lower-profile deals that draw less attention. As prices increase for top-tier art, values across the board pull up, as well. "We have a lot of concerns about the explosion of value in the art market these last 10 years," Carpenter said. "Theres a lot of risk and threat there for us."

On a July afternoon in Jersey City, convicted art forger Alfredo Martinez could be found recounting his claims that he got away with faking the works of Jean-Michel Basquiat for nearly 20 years.

Sitting at his desk in a black T-shirt and matching sweatpants, his long, curly dark hair askance, Martinez, 52, looked at a large flatscreen, clicking through images of his "Basquiats." He discussed his oil stick technique and said he used tea to create an aging effect on paper. Power tools, paint brushes, and papers lay scattered about him in his high-ceiling studio at MANA Contemporary, a lofty workspace for artists.

Alfredo Martinez in his New Jersey lair | Photo by Tuhsayoh

In recent months, recovery from the amputation of five toes on his right foot after an art-related accident had kept Martinez closer to his computer screen than his easel, he said. But it had not dampened his enthusiasm for curating shows for younger artists ("I like the kids"), discussing his time in prison ("looked like Oz, but it felt like Seinfeld"), or sharing anecdotes of being a self-described "street punk" in New York's art scene during Basquiat's heyday ("I would have known him better if I was a big-chested blonde").

The FBI got a tip when Martinez tried to sell $185,000 worth of "Basquiat" art, complete with forged certificates of authenticity, to two dealers in Manhattan. If they had been real, they might be worth millions today. It landed him a 21-month stint in federal prison and a peculiar flavor of infamy in the art world upon his release in 2006. (Martinez said that he was drawn into forgery because of "money. And I was lazy.")

Martinez, for one, talks of auction houses today as "Kabuki theater" and takes a "sarcastic approach" to the art establishment, even as he continues to participate in it. Then, and now, art dealers are eager to take cash from the wealthy, many of whom may not be performing ample due diligence, he said.

"Duh," Martinez said, adding, "Youre literally printing money."

Photo by Tuhsayoh

So lax is the current state of affairs that 73 percent of wealth managers, 74 percent of art professionals and 64 percent of collectors said that the art market "needed to modernize its business practices to meet the expected standards of a transparent, trustworthy and developed marketplace," according to a 2017 Deloitte and Art Basel report. It also found that 83 percent of wealth managers "see authenticity, provenance, and attribution issues as the greatest risks in the art market" and 65 percent "felt that money laundering is a serious threat to the credibility of the art market."

This year, the House Financial Services Committee introduced money-laundering prevention legislation that proposed including "dealers in art and antiquities" among the institutions that would be monitored. In recent years, the European Union has also moved on similar regulations. Among the regulatory kerfuffles are freeports, or warehouses where art may be stashed for years. They have long existed in locales like Switzerland and enjoyed generous tax benefits, as they're technically storing art that's deemed to be in transit.

"Certain market prices are getting out of hand," said David Drake, founder and chairman of LDJ Capital, a multi-family office that includes an art advisory as part of its offerings. Drake's firm does not conduct provenance research for clients, but rather handles insurance and financing after the fact.

The upper crust of the art world appears to be trying to distance itself from the industrys criminal underbelly while also seeking to bolster buyer confidence. Many artist catalogues, including those of Basquiat and Andy Warhol, have refused to admit any new works, concerned that they could be adding their coveted stamp of approval to a work that is inauthentic (while also enjoying control of the supply and demand of the market). Auction houses have tried to fight back by bolstering their forensic efforts, notably Sotheby's with its acquisition of art forensics firm Orion in 2016. A spokesperson for Sotheby's did not respond to requests for comment.

Only a fraction of art that is sold, however, will undergo such robust due diligence. And many works that are being forged are relatively modern, rendering tasks like dating paints and canvas aging effectively moot.

Some forgers, often as part of plea deal negotiations, may turn into informants. Now retired after two decades at the Bureau, Robert Wittman, the FBI agent who investigated Martinez's case in an undercover operation, runs a private art recovery and consultancy firm based in Philadelphia. He estimated that 75 percent of the illegal art marketthat is, art that is involved in money laundering or otherwise connected to crimeis fake.

Still, people keep buying.

"Fraud has followed the art world because of the rise in value," Wittman said. "Bank robbers go there because thats where the money is. Thats the exact same situation in the art market. The growing art values since 1970, they've been through the ceiling. And with paintings selling for $200 million, criminals follow that and decide to get involved."

Ironically, some in the art world mused that Martinez's arrest brought even more attention to Basquiat's work, as his ability to forge and sell the paintings underscored the demand for the artist, who died at the age of 27 in 1988. (In 2017, "Untitled," a 1982 work by Basquiat, fetched $110.5 million, at the time making it the highest sum paid at auction for an American-produced work of art.)

That's all the more reason that Martinez is cynical about the financial froth in the art world today. He noted that in the end, it wasn't the quality of his fake artworks that landed him in prison, but a disagreement with a gallery owner he said hadn't paid him. That owner, Martinez added, tipped off law enforcement. (The FBI agent who busted Martinez has a different recollection of what led to the tip-off. According to Wittman, the buyer had spotted mistakes in the forged certificates. "Usually people who do fake certificates dont mess them up like that," Wittman said.)

Today, Wittman and Martinez are still in touch, this time as friends.

Alfredo Martinez has a complicated relationship with the works of Basquiat. Left photo courtesy of Alfredo. Right photo: Jean-Michel Basquiats Undiscovered Genius Jean-Michel Basquiat 1983

"When you work undercover, you have to create a relationship with someone, and trust. It's befriending not betraying," Wittman said. "Alfredo calls and I'm happy for him. He got down the wrong path and now it seems like he's doing well."

These days, Martinez sells his own workoriginal creations and labeled replicas of Basquaitslargely through his website and Instagram, mostly foregoing the use of agents and galleries. He said he's starting to see things differently as his own original work gains attention, including one painting of a gun that is now part of MOMA's permanent collection.

Moving carefully on his injured foot, he walked across his studio to a table where a series of drawings were laid out: figures of people, scorpions. He said they were reproductions of what he had done and had lost, either taken by prison authorities or simply because they ended up in the hands of dealers beyond.

"I guess Im forging myself," he said.

Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.

Follow Mary Pilon on Twitter.

See the original post:

Art Forgery Is Easier Than Ever, and It's a Great Way to Launder Money - Broadly