March 9, 2022 • 47 mins
Art Fraud is investigative journey through one of the biggest cases of art fraud in US history done by The Knoedler Gallery written by VANITY REPORTER Michael Shnayerson and hosted by Alec Baldwin. On this episode The Knoedler Gallery and its alleged co-conspirators stand trial. Listen to Art Fraud on the iHeartRadio App or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Calling mystifying.
(01:10):
I think I would get me to a nunnery. I
mean I would go and do penance, you know, go
work for some nonprofit in the art world for the
rest of my career and try to atone for whatever
had happened in the grim aftermath of the closing of
(01:36):
the Knotler Gallery. Ten lawsuits were filed by cheated customers,
most notably Domenico and Eleanor de Sole. There saga began
with a shriek in a Miami hotel room after reading
the story of the fake Lagrange Pollock in The New
York Times. Most former customers of the now shuttered gallery
(02:03):
just wanted to recoup their losses. Investigators concluded that no
fewer than sixty fake paintings had been created at the
direction of Glypheara Rosales. At trial, an accounting expert would
testify that Freedman and dealer Julian Weissman had sold their
clients seventy million dollars in fakes, yielding a net income
(02:27):
of thirty three point seven million dollars for Knoedler and
generating more than ten million dollars in commissions for Anne.
This was in addition to her salary, estimated to be
four hundred thousand dollars annually. Michael Hammer took his own
four hundred thousand dollars salary plus twenty percent of both galleries,
(02:48):
a near limitless fund, spewing cash to eight thirty one,
his private holding company. As for Rosales, no taxes had
been paid from her sales to note or so profit
estimates varied. The New York Times would later declare that
Rosalez had taken in about twenty six million dollars from
her sale of paintings to the two dealers. That was
(03:11):
all money that would have to be disgorged, along with
some twelve point five million dollars due to the i
R s. Surprisingly, one of the first to settle was
Pierre Lagrange himself in October two thousand twelve. Shouting from
the rooftops had earned Lagrange some admiration, but also his
(03:34):
share of ridicule among collectors for buying a painting without
doing due diligence. He had vowed to get his seventeen
million dollars back, but Artsy, the online art magazine, published
a rumor he's settled for six point four million dollars.
Being first in line for a refund had its advantages.
(03:54):
There was likely more money in the galleries till to
be had. The Desoles, by contrast, felt bound by a
sense of mission. Their lawsuit was aimed at making the
truth public in a civil trial. Having a judge and
jury declare FIRA's forgery ring to be nothing less than
a racketeering conspiracy was the real prize for them. Assistant
(04:20):
District Attorney Jason Hernandez was taking a very different approach.
He was trying to make a criminal case of the
notetor's dealings. Surprisingly, it was far from a slam dunk.
What we were doing previously is sort of your art
fraud one oh one playbook. You've got to prove that
the paintings are fake, and you've got to prove that
someone who sold them knew that they were fake. But
(04:43):
it was very clear that this was going to be
especially difficult following our usual kind of playbook in this case,
because well, there were an unusually large number of prominent
people who seemingly we're going to stand by the paintings
and say that they were real. That is uncommon, and
(05:04):
I could see right away, well, you know, how do
you get over that? Because if the person selling them
is showing them to all of these esteemed people and
they're saying, yep, looks right to me, looks good to me,
that's not a criminal case anymore. You're not going to
be able to prove fraud that someone intended to deceive,
because they'll say, well, you know this museum director said
(05:26):
it was good, and I mean, you know, an freeman
bought one of the paintings. It was well thought out.
The truth is all of the experts declined to authenticate
the paintings in any official capacity. They've seen them in
passing on the notors walls at cocktail parties, but none
(05:46):
of the experts had any interest and testifying. You've got
to remember it's it's a criminal case, so you have
to prove your case to twelve people beyond a reasonable doubt.
We weren't really getting anywhere with the conventional investigative methods,
and the provenance was very difficult to disprove. Glafira ros Alves.
(06:07):
We know very virtually nothing about She told no Learn
and Freedom that she was a brokera representing a family
that she wouldn't disclose, and I can't get hurt to
disclose it. So I can't issue her a grand jury
subpoena and say tell me the name. She would just
assert her fitrom them and right and refuse to tell me.
My thought was, I can kind of through the back
(06:28):
door figure out whether or not Glafira was alas represents
a family that owns these paintings, because if she's lying
about that, that is going to be a crime that
I can charge, okay, because that's in a very important
part of the provenance. Imagine if she's lying about this
actually being a European family that bought these and stored
them over all these decades, well, that is something I
(06:49):
can charge her with. So she says she's a brokera
she says the paintings are not hers. I could see
that all the money would go from the no Oler
Gallery once they would purchase them, to a couple of
bank accounts, I think two or three in Spain. So
my thought was, I'm gonna ask Spain with a we
have a treaty with Spain to for their bank records.
And then if she is a broker, I'm going to
(07:11):
see or or whatever percentage go to the family in Europe,
and it's going to go to a bank account in
some other country probably, and then I lost that country
to give me the bank records, and you might prevail there.
You might actually get foreign banks to cooperate and give
you records that would prove that she had been engaged
(07:32):
in financial Shenanigans. That's right, let's see where the money flows.
So I took that kind of old approach. Okay, you know,
follow the money to the sexier world of art fraud,
where you follow the pigments and those sorts of things.
And what it showed was that she was lying about
who owned the paintings. She owned them, someone else owned them,
(07:53):
but she's keeping all the money. So that gave me
a fraud charge against her. Okay, you are false representing
to the Nobler gallery that these paintings belong to, you know,
and then fill in the long story what she told
all that that yarn she spun about who it belonged to.
I now have leverage against CFIA. I have a criminal charge.
(08:14):
It's a lot of money, you know, many millions of
dollars of paintings, so it's a significant fraud. And then
on top of that, she is not reporting any of
this money as income, so there is a tax charge there.
Nor is she reporting the fact that she has formed
bank accounts in excess of ten thousand dollars, which is
another federal crime. So now the deck is stacked way
(08:36):
high against the Fera rosolves. She's kind of got nowhere
to run. I have very simple, provable, direct, strong criminal
charges against her, and now I can kind of use
that as pressure um to get her to talk unless
she's willing to spend, you know, a lot of time
in prison. One night, early in the summer of two
(09:02):
thousand thirteen, some eighteen years after his first faithful meeting
with Anne at a Soho art gallery, law enforcement agents
came crashing through the front doors of Carlos Andrs. Multimillion
dollar home. It's very traumatic. They came actually to wake
(09:24):
me up. It was very early in the morning, at
six in the morning around the time. And then there
was the squad. I was sleeping, My daughter was upstairs sleeping.
She was supposed to go to Spain the next day
or that day day evening. And they knocked at the
(09:44):
door and they told me that they were the police
and opened the door. And I saw them, you know,
with their weapons, and and I said, can I put
something on it? And they said open it, open it
or else. Of course I opened the door. I saw
(10:05):
them drawning all over my house. Uh when they were
with the weapons pointing everywhere. Oh, and then they took
me and I wanted to give a hat to my daughter.
So they didn't let me. Oh, so it was horrible.
(10:34):
We'll be back in a minute. I'm Emilia on this podcast.
I'm taking you on a search, a search for love.
Hard working Latina six cool, down to earth guy, Swipe
swipe slide. It's hard out there for a girl to
find Mr Right. I have to meet a lot of
(10:55):
Mr Wrongs. He'd invite me over to have dinner with
his Emily. I knew he didn't tell them that it
was transgender. Dating as a trans woman can be complicated,
but there were other reasons. I felt like I couldn't
always beat myself. And he's asking me things about my family,
like my mom's in prison, my grandmother was arrested for
working with the Mexican drug cartel. This is Crumbs, my
(11:20):
love story. It's a show about the things we set
up for and the bits of ourselves that make us
who we are. Listen to Crumbs as part of the
Michael Duda podcast Network, available on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sir, we
got your test results back and give it to me
(11:40):
straight doc. You have to listen to the Ridiculous News
podcast Ridiculous News. The podcast Ridiculous News. It's a podcast
hosted by Bill Whorley and Mark Kendall. Ridiculous News. Those
two comedians who's worked with Adult Swim in Comedy Central. Yeah.
I knew you were my favorite patient for a reason. Well,
you're the best doctor I've ever had. And they're hilarious.
I love the videos. Bills actually my cousin. They talked
(12:02):
about the news, but not like in a depressing way,
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When does it drop March fourteenth? Get it? Wherever you
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a podcast is. Yeah, it's like a kind of tire. No, No,
(12:25):
it's it's something that you listen to podcasts. Yeah, so
listen to the Ridiculous News podcast on the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Produce sile Absolutely not m Hi, I'm Elizabeth Dutton and
I'm Elizabeth Dutton. Wait, sorry, Zaron, do you want to
(12:47):
say your name? No? I'm good, good, go ahead. We're
the hosts of Ridiculous Crime. People love true crime, right,
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(13:10):
the Max Headrooms signal hijacking. Oh so you mean ridiculous
stories like the UK cat Shaver and Pablo Escobar's cocaine hippos. Yeah,
stories like the dudes who stole Buzzy, the animatronic whatever
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and surprised him at her own funeral. Yeah, that does
sound good. You can find this new podcast, Ridiculous Crime
(13:31):
all over the place, the I Heart Radio app, the
Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I don't
know how you live. Ridiculous Crime. Brian Scarlatto's fear as
attorney and family friend took the call while out of
town on a work tut I recalled because I was
in Las Vegas for work, and my wife called to
(13:52):
say that had been arrested and that there was a
story in the newspaper, which you know, I looked up
on the internet and um, and you know, at this
point had been a friend of ours for a while,
so I felt like I should look into it, since
you know, it is kind of my area of the law.
Glafira had just been arrested and so um, we had
to go into jail to speak to her. But what
(14:14):
we found out is is that she had really been
arrested for tax evasion, sort of like al capolm and
the government couldn't get them, you know, for organized crime.
They just followed the money, and in Gulfira's case, the
government was able to follow the money. By now, after
living in Sand's Point for years, had you come to
suspect lap and Carlos might be art thieves? I did
not suspect anything. They did seem to be very successful.
(14:37):
But it was extremely shocking, and you know, and it's
shocking whenever you hear about anybody being arrested, but certainly
a very nice woman in her you know, later fifties.
Like Fra Brian visited Glafira in prison soon after her arrest.
It was a sobering moment for the family attorney who
had come to know Carlos and Fia. Well, you go
(14:58):
in and it's very different goal to get in, and
Glafira had just been arrested, and in fact, she didn't
have enough money for shoes because they take your shoes
away and you need a commissary account then to buy shoes,
and so she was wearing paper slippers and it was very,
very distraught, you know, just didn't know what was going
to go on Carlo's head, you know, fled and so
her daughter, her young daughter, is on the outside with
(15:19):
no parents. I mean solely was maybe twenty years old,
maybe nineteen years old at this time. It's hard to
overstate just how lucky Glafira was to have such a
family friend who was an experienced attorney at this moment
in her life. After she was arrested, I offered to help,
largely on a pro bono basis, because all of her
(15:41):
assets had been seized at that point. Basically, what we
were able to do is explain to Glafira how this
was going to play out that the government had, you know,
a strong case on the tax evasion charges and that
carried very significant penalties. Once behind bars, the first order
of business was for a judge to determine whether ba
(16:03):
Rosalas was a flight risk. We put together, I thought
a very persuasive case that CFA you know, had dual citizenship,
a boyfriend with a home into the Dominican Republic, ties
I believe to spain, foreign bank accounts, a lot of liquidity,
a lot of assets, you know. At the time, and
I'll say it was by no means certain that she
(16:25):
would be detained because on the other side of the coin,
I mean, she's never had a criminal case before. She was,
you know, maybe fifty something, your old woman with a
daughter here in the United States. And so the defense
made an argument, a strong argument that hey, you know,
she's not going to go anywhere. Why would she go anywhere?
She's got all these ties. But thankfully for us, the
(16:46):
judge detained her. And although I can't say for certain,
I would think that being detained would weigh on someone
and make them more likely to want to cooperate and
tell us what really happened. The judge said, no, I'm
going to keep you detained because I think you you
are a flight risk, and so you know, that was it.
She she went back into the m c C or
(17:07):
the m d C, one of the two facilities that
are used. Yeah, you don't want to be there, trust me.
She was not in the most difficult spot where like
the terrorists and burning made off go. But no, you don't.
You know, you don't want to spend any time there.
If you can, if you can help it. A few
(17:29):
months in prison was all Gafa needed. The con was
over and there was no one worth protecting. At the
cost of sacrificing her freedom, Gafara decided to cooperate, and
she provided information about Carlos and about Patia, and after
it was clear that Gla was telling the truth, the
(17:49):
government agreed to release her on bail. Rosales spilled the
entire story to investigators. In September two thirteen, she pled
guilty to nine counts, including one count of money laundering,
one count of wire fraud, and three counts of falsifying
income tax returns. She had pocketed twenty six million dollars
(18:13):
and paid no Texas. Despite her testimony, Fia was facing
as much as nine years in prison. But this was
only the bail hearing. The sentencing would come much later,
you know, as we later learned, because of her cooperation,
really only because of her cooperation, we've got the two
(18:33):
Burgantino's brothers and Paisian you know, involved, and that really
broke down the door, okay, to a wealth of information
that only came from her. But as you know most
people know, Pai Sian. As soon as you heard that
we were on his tail, took off to China, a
country that does not extradite its own nationals. I'm personally
(18:58):
much more upset with the Spanish court's decision to non
extradite the Brigantinos brothers. Amazingly, from a criminal standpoint, things
were looking good for Ann Friedman. If we thought that
we could prove beyond a reasonable doubt twelve people that
other people knew the aspects of the scheme, the critical
(19:21):
aspects of the scheme, then we would have brought a case.
But you know, you've got to have proof. You've got
to have proof that's admissible in court that you know
someone who was selling the paintings, whether it's fa as
the consigner or and you also have to prove that
she knows that they are fake. So you know, here
you're dealing with a situation where a freedman's first point
(19:44):
of contact, Lafia is lying to her about the provenance.
And again the provenance has elements of it that have
elements of truth. You know, Sorryo is a real person.
Herbert was a real person. It is actually the case
that a lot of art is found, you know from
time to time. What we did in this case was
we took it as far as we thought the evidence
(20:04):
that we had would take it. FA had done her
part and broken the case wide open for investigators. The
bergen Tino's brothers fled the United States for Spain, a
country beyond the reach of US extradition. The artist patient
(20:26):
Quan hurriedly returned home to China, another country out of
reach from U S authorities. That left only Michael Hammer
and Ann Friedman. Neither would be prosecuted on criminal charges
or simply wasn't enough proof, but both were still subject
to civil suits, where a jury only needed to conclude
(20:48):
that a defendant was more than likely to have committed
a crime. Monetary settlements from civil suits could inflict their
own kind of severe punishment. The fear of such verdicts
had led the Knobler to settle with Pierre Legrange. As
for the Souls, their showdown with Ann Friedman and the
(21:09):
Kndler was about to begin. Some three dozen journalists, including
our own Michael Schneyerson, who were bent over their notepads
that day in the classically high ceiling, oak paneled courtroom.
The trial began on a Monday in January two thousand sixteen.
The list of names who weren't present in court that
(21:31):
day was almost as interesting as who was. Lafara Rosalee
wasn't there. Having served three months in jail before admitting
her guilt, she was now agonizing over what further sentence
she would have to serve, and wondering how she would
come up with eighty million dollars in compensation for her victims.
(21:55):
The Bergen Tino's brothers were still in Spain, Quan was
in China. Even Mike Hammer was absent in court. Hammer
had not appeared once from behind the Knodler doors since
the gallery closed, nor granted any interviews. But after eighteen
years or so of the forgery ring, Michael Hammer looked
(22:15):
more and more like a key player, no less so
than Ann Friedman, as much was told in a lawsuit
filed by one of the victims, casino owner Frank for Tita,
the third, who in two thousand eight bought a fake
Rothco for seven point two million dollars. Hammer, the complaint detailed,
knew that Knodler bought the paintings from Rosale's for shock
(22:37):
and the low prices and quickly resold them for enormous
markups for Tita alleged quote in all, Knodler resold the
Rosalves paintings for a total of sixty three point eight
million dollars, realizing gross profits of approximately forty eight point
seven million dollars. Hammer, acting on behalf of Nodler and
(22:59):
his foundation, saw two of the tens of millions of
dollars in profit be distributed largely to himself and Ann Friedman.
Through Friedman and Hammer had a meeting in the early
(23:19):
days of the scandal, and a handwritten memo survived their
talk to surface later in Fatita's complaint. It was unclear
whether the notes were taken by Freedman or Hammer, but
the sentiments were in technicolor discrete sources are my stock
in trade. When one of the comments don't kill the
(23:40):
goose that's laying the golden egg, went another. And I
am not going to change my way of doing business.
If you were not comfortable, step away. And Friedman was
in the courtroom the day that The Soul's Child began.
She sat quietly beside her lawyers, wreathed in her soft
(24:03):
white curls, dressed in black, beige and gray, saying nothing.
As the witnesses began to come forward, she too would
be forced to testify if the trial went as planned.
Luke Nichoas and Freedman's lawyer had a novel defense, as
it turned out. He argued that the Doss were responsible
for checking their paintings authenticity themselves. They were, after all,
(24:28):
sophisticated art buyers. By that logic, Nikos suggested, the jury
shouldn't blame Noldler for selling the Doss their fake art.
The customers were the ones to blame for buying it.
As for Anne, she was a salesperson, not an expert,
they declared. She was just doing her job, selling paintings
(24:49):
and earning profits for the gallery. Here's Luke Nichos with Anne.
I certainly wanted to believe, but and I looked at
the evidence and where the evidence and what the evidence
showed to me separate and apart from what Anne was
telling me was emails from a guy like David an
Fam or the most significant experts and abstract expressionism. What
(25:12):
did David an Fem say about these works? He wrote
an email in May of two thousand and eight to
Jack Flamm from the Dadalist Foundation, and that email said,
I can't think of any reason to deem this newman
from the Resolves collection. This newman inauthentic. He went on
to say in the same email, I've seen the Krasners,
(25:33):
I've seen the Pollux, the roth Codes, the Clients and Stills,
and I believe in these works. Now he acknowledged that
the story was murky, acknowledged that the ownership was unknown.
But the reality is I saw an email like that
from David and Fam, and I thought, if David and
Fem saying that, who am I the lawyer without this expertise?
Let me dig further. I think it's important to understand
(25:57):
what I concluded about whether there are authentic or not?
Wasn't the point. My point is I had no expertise
whether they were authentic or not. The core question always
always always was what did Ann Friedman believe and what
did she have reason to believe based in the facts.
(26:18):
Early in the trial, attorneys for the plaintiffs presented a
fascinating exhibit to the court, the doss eight point three
million dollar fake Rothco. Thing I remember about it being
physically in the courtroom the most is that the defendants
immediately wanted a sidebar with the judge because they felt
that the painting smelled new. This is the Dissillis attorneys again.
(26:43):
I think the issue was, like all artwork that's transported responsibly,
it was in a wooden crate, so that would was
just secured with screws, and the crate got unscrewed and
it creates that kind of would smell in the air,
which made the paint smell like fresh wood. And so
(27:03):
they felt it was prejudicial that the painting would smell
so obviously like fresh and the judge had to go
over the and smell the painting to assess, and he was,
like he said on the record, he was like, I
can't believe I'm going over to smell the painting. Trudge over.
He smelled it, and I think they did move it. Yeah, yeah,
(27:26):
but they left it out, but I thought, I remember
it was very dramatic. We carried the painting over someplace
and you know, there was like a hush in the room.
Were like a gas because people in the art world
are so used to such delicate handling and white glove
handling of works like this, and you know it was
(27:47):
a fake, so that we just picked it up with
our bare hands. We were not professional. There was the
other moment, the funny moment with the painting, when Pulkari
said on the stand, like I think it's supposed to
be the other way, you know, like this upside. Steven
was one of the two quote unquote experts who Noler
had hired and paid to look at some of these works,
(28:09):
and when he testified about the Rothco, he testified that
it did it couldn't usually tell with Rothco's which weighs up.
A day or two into the trial, the dess took
the stand to tell the story of their fake Rothco.
Eleanor was emotional, Domenico fierce. Both were heartfelt, taking breaks
(28:33):
to chat up the press, but they would find themselves
subject to the occasional bit of snarkiness for bringing rich
people's problems into the courtroom with the doles done. On
cross examination, the trial turned to Ann Friedman's list of
eleven experts whose names she had used to authenticate her paintings.
(28:54):
None of the eleven had wished to be on that list.
What immer urged was what we showed that trial with
the witness testimony, that there were no experts who authenticated
these paintings. For another, it just didn't happen. You know,
the story that the defendants were selling that they believed
(29:15):
the works were real and the experts authenticated, that was
just absolutely rebutted, totally debunked. With respect to David Ampham,
he never was shown a Rothco despite being the world's
leading expert in Rothko, I don't think it's a coincidence
that he was never shown any of the Rothkos, not one.
(29:37):
Not only had I not seen the Dissoli painting, I've
never even been in the same moon with it. What
I got was a package with a transparencive of painting,
a note for Man dated July, and I'm pretty certainly
this was two thousand and five. I picked it up,
(29:58):
looks of the transparen so if we're about twenty seconds
and put it in the file filed it away and
did not look at it again until then. That's the
time of the trial. It sounds as if Anne was
doing her best to circulate your name and your approval
of this painting. Is that true? Yes, it's true. I
(30:20):
didn't know of the time. I have to say that
from the perspective of the present, I felt I was
being manipulated and I don't take comfy to that. And
when I saw the letter, which had a list of
people who had seen the dissle a paintings article Christopher
off Go, followed by myself, I was absolutely shocked. I
(30:43):
couldn't believe that my name had been put in a
letter without my knowing, it, without my approval, and effectively
so any buyer. It could be constituted as a kind
of authentication by Foxing. As the trial entered its second
(31:04):
week on February two thousand sixteen, a sense of excitement
permeated the courtroom. After all this warm up, an Friedman
was due to testify at last. Oddly, however, the judge's
chair remained empty as the ten am hour came and went.
(31:26):
At last, the judge reappeared and announced in open court
that a settlement had been reached from the Soles grins
their gambit had paid off. As for Ann Friedman's lawyers,
they looked relieved. Whatever they had agreed to pay, it
was probably less than the million dollar RICO payment that
(31:49):
the Soles were demanding. The trial, however, would continue because
Michael Hammer and his eight thirty one foundation were not
yet off the hook. Hammer's chief financial officer testified that Hammer,
her boss, had awarded himself some twenty luxury cars, including
a four hundred eighty two dollar Rose Royce and a
(32:13):
five dollar Mercedes. That was all in addition to a
four hundred thousand dollar salary he paid himself from his
Knodler piggy bank. Anne was scheduled to testify that Wednesday
against her former boss about how much the two of
them had profited from selling forty plus fake paintings that
had come through the Knodler. Once again, the judge and
(32:36):
counselor has disappeared behind closed doors and emerged appearing satisfied
a private settlement had been reached between the Desoles and
A thirty one. The trial was finally over some weeks later,
and agreed to speak to the press. From the start,
(32:59):
Friedman said she had regarded the David Herbert collection as
a quote puzzle to be solved. She had tried to
extract more information from glyph Era every time Rosalee arrived
with another painting. Only with Rosalee's confession had Anne realized
how thoroughly and classically duped she'd been. Or so she said,
(33:21):
when you ask a con artist a question, they say, ah, ha,
I see what you mean. Let me check it out,
and miraculously they have the answers and recalled. She called
herself a perfect mark and added I have never deliberately
done something wrong, which is to say knowingly. But then
she added a jarring remark, I am terribly sorry for
(33:45):
anybody hurt or damaged. But let me be clear, this
is about works of art. I didn't slay anybody's firstborn.
We have to have some perspective on suffering. Or as
a sympathetic history Orient apparently told her, we all need
to get over it more. Aren't fraud in a minute.
(34:14):
In any sport, there are leaders and journeymen. Oh what
a finish by jess McDonald. But on this season of
Long Shot, there's no story quite like Jessica McDonald's Ran
Away from Home when I was seventeen years old. My
recollections are mostly trying to find her. I wasn't just scared,
I was scared for my life. On Payback, The Charlotte Observer,
(34:34):
Raleigh News and Observer, McClatchy Studios, and I Heart Radio
share for the first time her story. She's had some
very difficult moments in her life, but there's something inside
the great athletes that is why they're great. Thank God
for sports. That was my escape. And then I find
out I'm pregnant with my son. An incredible journey to
a pinnacle of sports. That's it. I need to show
(34:58):
an example for my son. That to what inspires me
day in and day out. Payback coming March fifteen. UM
I hurt Radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get
your podcasts. He's sending a message anyone anywhere in the world,
I can get you and it will hurt. It was
(35:20):
a plot straight out of James Bond. An assassination carried
out with the world's most toxic chemical weapon. The victim
was Kim Jong Nam. He was the firstborn son of
North Korea's supreme leader. He should have been the successor. Instead,
he'd be murdered in one of the most brazen and
bizarre political plots of all time. Join us as we
(35:43):
investigate the potential motives. Kim Dragon actually had several reasons
for wanting to assassinate his older brother, the family backstabbing.
There's a lot of clothing and dagger stuff about Jim
John and the petty paranoid in North Korea. When somebody
challenges you, that challenger must be eliminated. Behind the most
(36:07):
audacious assassination of the twenty one century. Listen to Big
Brother on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast or
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They see the wrinkled face of a wizard with arms
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see a windy path that could lead to adventure, and
they see you. They're fearless. Guide. Is this fascinating world?
Find a forest near you and start exploring it. Discover
the forest dot Org brought to you by the United
States Forest Service and the ad Council. The de Selos
(36:48):
lawyers felt pleased they've gotten their clients the outcome they wanted,
but the settlement allowed Freedman to crow and declared she
would have gladly had the trial go on and was
sure that jury would have found her innocent only on
a technicality. The Dissolas lawyers roll their eyes at that
things got resolved before the journy got to reach its verdict.
(37:08):
But you know, we did speak to the jurors afterwards.
They were completely convinced that she knew exactly what she
was doing. Despite the fact that a jury never actually
ruled on the case in court, the Disos and their
lawyers saw the outcome as an overwhelming victory. I think
(37:28):
that you're looking, maybe you're suggesting that you need a
verdict through your story. I don't think so. I think
you need to tell the story and put it out
there to show what happened. And they did a hundred
of that. And it's not a coincidence that the five
cases that were pending, you know at the time we settled,
also all settled and no one went to trial. You know,
(37:52):
I had to say, you know, nod and Freedman, and
Freedman didn't step up to defend themselves and go to trial.
On any of those five cases followed. The rulings made
it crystal clear that you know, collectors have the right
to reasonably rely on reputable galleries, and that's the reputable
galleries obligation to come forward with what they know and
(38:13):
what they don't know about works that they're selling. As
attorney Luke Nikos felt the settlement only confirmed the case
that he'd argued. Not only was she not prosecuted, but
when the superseding indictment came out, in which Glafira Resolis
had told her story to the federal government, it was
(38:33):
clear from that indictment that Anne was not implicated at
all in the underlying crime. Fear had every reason to
throw in under the bus. Her boyfriend had every reason
to throw in under the bus. The painter did, everyone did,
and at least from that superseding indictment, it was clear
(38:54):
they didn't. And when you look at all of the information,
not just pieces of it, and you put it to
other and you ask, did Anne believe these works were
fake at the time, I just don't think you can
get there. You can say she made mistakes, but the
prosecutor needs to prove beyond that, and I don't think
they could. It had now been three years since was arrested,
(39:21):
three birthdays, three Christmas, is out on bail, nervously awaiting
her sentence on nine federal charges. During that time, Rosalez
had broken no laws and had helped prosecutors to the
extent that she could to track down the Bergantino's brothers.
They remained at large due to Spain's changing extradition rules.
(39:44):
In weighing her sentence, judge Faiala had listened to as
story of physical and emotional abuse at the hands of
Carlos and found it credible. As Jason Hernandez suggested, the
judge had seen a culprit left old in the bag
while the rest of the ring went free. Enough was enough.
(40:05):
In January two thousand seventeen, the judge sentenced her to
time already served eighty two days. Lafra was a free woman.
She was also broke. Their lives are very difficult because
everything that they had could be traceable to you know,
(40:26):
their art business, which was fraudulent or infected with frauds.
So everything was seized. Their home was seized, all of
their money was seized, all of the art was seized,
and so far in her late fifties, had to build
herself back up. So she now works part time as
a hostess in a restaurant in her sixties and as
(40:47):
a waitress from time to time, and solely is involved
in the art business and is building her own business
and knows how to do it right, and is supporting
her mother. And so you have of the story of
a daughter supporting her mother and their father is still
very much, very antagonistic. Carlos is very antagonistic, but he's
(41:07):
he's off in Spain. The government, as you probably tried
to extradite him and was unsuccessful in doing so. The
fall of the Knodler Gallery would have rippling effects throughout
the art world. Gretchen Deep and Corn described the seismic
(41:27):
shift and trust between client and gallery. I think it's
terrible for the art market. For example, right after the
first revelations and the New York Times story, the dealer,
our current dealer, began getting phone calls about, oh, dear,
it is the work that I bought? Is it real?
(41:48):
And it wasn't only our dealer, it was others. And
then all of the dealers are under suspicion now because
it's never been a yield that has seemed entirely squeaky
clean anyway, because things happen, you know, people get better.
(42:09):
One person gets a good deal, the next person doesn't.
In they're they're mad, and so I mean, nobody trusts
anybody in this kind of world anyway, in some way,
but this made it a hundred times worse. David and
fam didn't hold back in his blistering opinion of the
(42:29):
Knodler scandal. In hindsight, I think the whole Knodler story
will go down as one of the worst scandals of
its kind, indeed probably the most shameful for largo in
the annals of modern art. What could prove even more
interesting is a verdict of history upon whoever the guards
(42:51):
as being of the epicenter of the sordid saga from
first to last. Having followed the fall of the Knodler
Gallery from the first revelations of forgery, through the trial
and the half dozen settlements, I'd come to realize that
(43:13):
this case was far from a once in a lifetime phenomenon.
As we've heard from countless artists, dealers, and collectors, the
art market has been and remains a target rich environment
for con artists willing to risk prison time for a
big score. There's the fascinating case of Intego Philbrick, a
(43:35):
young and charming London based dealer who oversold fractional shares
of works by hot new artists in a made off
like Ponzi scheme. There's also the case of aging artist
Robert Indiana, creator of the iconic Love Works, whose Coterie
of Assistance on an island off the coast of Maine,
(43:56):
would be accused of squeezing windfall profits from him, going
so far as to employ an automatic signature signing machine. Finally,
there was my own brush with art fraud, in which
a painting I purchased from an artist I adored through
his longtime dealer, Mary Boone would end up pitting us
against each other in a bitter legal battle I never
(44:19):
could have anticipated. We'll talk about all of those cases
in our final episode of Art Fraud. Art Fraud is
(44:55):
brought to you by I Heart Radio and Cavalry Audio.
Our executive producers are Matt del Piano, Keegan Rosenberger, Andy Turner, myself,
and Michael Shnayerson. We're produced by Brandon Morgan and Zach McNeice.
Zach also edited and mixed this episode. Lindsay Hoffman is
our managing producer. Our writer is Michael Schneyerson. Hi everyone,
(45:37):
it's Katie Curic and I'm back with a new season
of my podcast Next Question. I'm bringing you some really
meaty conversations about important topics like how to support working
moms who are at their breaking point, what's being done
to help long COVID sufferers, and where can women turn
when they fear they might have a drinking problem. I
(45:57):
might even dive into the metaverse, whatever that is. Subscribe
and listen to Next Question with Katie correct on the
I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get
your podcasts. If you love true crime podcasts, you need
to check out True Crime Obsessed. Each week, hosts Patrick
(46:20):
and Jillian recap a true crime documentary everyone is talking about,
and they do it with humor, heart and just the
right amount of sass. When you go camping, you either
find the skull or you become the spy. That's the role.
Patrick and Jillian have covered everything from the Ted Bundy
tapes to Lula Rich, with plenty of art heists in between.
(46:41):
With over one million downloads and thirty thousand five star
reviews on Apple Podcasts. True Crime Obsessed is one of
the most popular true crime podcasts in the world. Find
True Crime Obsessed wherever you listen. I'm Emilia on this podcast.
I'm taking you on a search, a search for love,
(47:05):
hard working Latina, but there were other reasons I felt
like I couldn't always beat myself. My mom's in prison.
This is Crumbs, my love story. It's a show about
the things we set up for and the bits of
ourselves that make us who we are. Listen to Crumbs
on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
(47:25):
you get your podcasts.
The more we learn about COVID nineteen, the more questions
and worries we have. Cal Hope can help with free
COVID nineteen emotional support. Call eight three three three one
seven four six seven three or live chat at cal
Hope dot org. Today look for your children's eyes and
you will discover the true magic of a forest. Find
(00:23):
a forest near you and start exploring it. Discover the
Forest dot Org wrought to you by the United States
Forest Service and the AD Council. The Laundronauts a potentially
untrue tale based on actual events. A young boy is
shoved into a washing machine and vanishes. His friends try
to rescue him, only to discover a magical world beyond
(00:45):
the machine. Season one stars Ed Asner and Me John Cameron,
Mitchell Fine j D. Belzel and bring him back home safely.
Listen to The Laundronauts on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Calling mystifying.
(01:10):
I think I would get me to a nunnery. I
mean I would go and do penance, you know, go
work for some nonprofit in the art world for the
rest of my career and try to atone for whatever
had happened in the grim aftermath of the closing of
(01:36):
the Knotler Gallery. Ten lawsuits were filed by cheated customers,
most notably Domenico and Eleanor de Sole. There saga began
with a shriek in a Miami hotel room after reading
the story of the fake Lagrange Pollock in The New
York Times. Most former customers of the now shuttered gallery
(02:03):
just wanted to recoup their losses. Investigators concluded that no
fewer than sixty fake paintings had been created at the
direction of Glypheara Rosales. At trial, an accounting expert would
testify that Freedman and dealer Julian Weissman had sold their
clients seventy million dollars in fakes, yielding a net income
(02:27):
of thirty three point seven million dollars for Knoedler and
generating more than ten million dollars in commissions for Anne.
This was in addition to her salary, estimated to be
four hundred thousand dollars annually. Michael Hammer took his own
four hundred thousand dollars salary plus twenty percent of both galleries,
(02:48):
a near limitless fund, spewing cash to eight thirty one,
his private holding company. As for Rosales, no taxes had
been paid from her sales to note or so profit
estimates varied. The New York Times would later declare that
Rosalez had taken in about twenty six million dollars from
her sale of paintings to the two dealers. That was
(03:11):
all money that would have to be disgorged, along with
some twelve point five million dollars due to the i
R s. Surprisingly, one of the first to settle was
Pierre Lagrange himself in October two thousand twelve. Shouting from
the rooftops had earned Lagrange some admiration, but also his
(03:34):
share of ridicule among collectors for buying a painting without
doing due diligence. He had vowed to get his seventeen
million dollars back, but Artsy, the online art magazine, published
a rumor he's settled for six point four million dollars.
Being first in line for a refund had its advantages.
(03:54):
There was likely more money in the galleries till to
be had. The Desoles, by contrast, felt bound by a
sense of mission. Their lawsuit was aimed at making the
truth public in a civil trial. Having a judge and
jury declare FIRA's forgery ring to be nothing less than
a racketeering conspiracy was the real prize for them. Assistant
(04:20):
District Attorney Jason Hernandez was taking a very different approach.
He was trying to make a criminal case of the
notetor's dealings. Surprisingly, it was far from a slam dunk.
What we were doing previously is sort of your art
fraud one oh one playbook. You've got to prove that
the paintings are fake, and you've got to prove that
someone who sold them knew that they were fake. But
(04:43):
it was very clear that this was going to be
especially difficult following our usual kind of playbook in this case,
because well, there were an unusually large number of prominent
people who seemingly we're going to stand by the paintings
and say that they were real. That is uncommon, and
(05:04):
I could see right away, well, you know, how do
you get over that? Because if the person selling them
is showing them to all of these esteemed people and
they're saying, yep, looks right to me, looks good to me,
that's not a criminal case anymore. You're not going to
be able to prove fraud that someone intended to deceive,
because they'll say, well, you know this museum director said
(05:26):
it was good, and I mean, you know, an freeman
bought one of the paintings. It was well thought out.
The truth is all of the experts declined to authenticate
the paintings in any official capacity. They've seen them in
passing on the notors walls at cocktail parties, but none
(05:46):
of the experts had any interest and testifying. You've got
to remember it's it's a criminal case, so you have
to prove your case to twelve people beyond a reasonable doubt.
We weren't really getting anywhere with the conventional investigative methods,
and the provenance was very difficult to disprove. Glafira ros Alves.
(06:07):
We know very virtually nothing about She told no Learn
and Freedom that she was a brokera representing a family
that she wouldn't disclose, and I can't get hurt to
disclose it. So I can't issue her a grand jury
subpoena and say tell me the name. She would just
assert her fitrom them and right and refuse to tell me.
My thought was, I can kind of through the back
(06:28):
door figure out whether or not Glafira was alas represents
a family that owns these paintings, because if she's lying
about that, that is going to be a crime that
I can charge, okay, because that's in a very important
part of the provenance. Imagine if she's lying about this
actually being a European family that bought these and stored
them over all these decades, well, that is something I
(06:49):
can charge her with. So she says she's a brokera
she says the paintings are not hers. I could see
that all the money would go from the no Oler
Gallery once they would purchase them, to a couple of
bank accounts, I think two or three in Spain. So
my thought was, I'm gonna ask Spain with a we
have a treaty with Spain to for their bank records.
And then if she is a broker, I'm going to
(07:11):
see or or whatever percentage go to the family in Europe,
and it's going to go to a bank account in
some other country probably, and then I lost that country
to give me the bank records, and you might prevail there.
You might actually get foreign banks to cooperate and give
you records that would prove that she had been engaged
(07:32):
in financial Shenanigans. That's right, let's see where the money flows.
So I took that kind of old approach. Okay, you know,
follow the money to the sexier world of art fraud,
where you follow the pigments and those sorts of things.
And what it showed was that she was lying about
who owned the paintings. She owned them, someone else owned them,
(07:53):
but she's keeping all the money. So that gave me
a fraud charge against her. Okay, you are false representing
to the Nobler gallery that these paintings belong to, you know,
and then fill in the long story what she told
all that that yarn she spun about who it belonged to.
I now have leverage against CFIA. I have a criminal charge.
(08:14):
It's a lot of money, you know, many millions of
dollars of paintings, so it's a significant fraud. And then
on top of that, she is not reporting any of
this money as income, so there is a tax charge there.
Nor is she reporting the fact that she has formed
bank accounts in excess of ten thousand dollars, which is
another federal crime. So now the deck is stacked way
(08:36):
high against the Fera rosolves. She's kind of got nowhere
to run. I have very simple, provable, direct, strong criminal
charges against her, and now I can kind of use
that as pressure um to get her to talk unless
she's willing to spend, you know, a lot of time
in prison. One night, early in the summer of two
(09:02):
thousand thirteen, some eighteen years after his first faithful meeting
with Anne at a Soho art gallery, law enforcement agents
came crashing through the front doors of Carlos Andrs. Multimillion
dollar home. It's very traumatic. They came actually to wake
(09:24):
me up. It was very early in the morning, at
six in the morning around the time. And then there
was the squad. I was sleeping, My daughter was upstairs sleeping.
She was supposed to go to Spain the next day
or that day day evening. And they knocked at the
(09:44):
door and they told me that they were the police
and opened the door. And I saw them, you know,
with their weapons, and and I said, can I put
something on it? And they said open it, open it
or else. Of course I opened the door. I saw
(10:05):
them drawning all over my house. Uh when they were
with the weapons pointing everywhere. Oh, and then they took
me and I wanted to give a hat to my daughter.
So they didn't let me. Oh, so it was horrible.
(10:34):
We'll be back in a minute. I'm Emilia on this podcast.
I'm taking you on a search, a search for love.
Hard working Latina six cool, down to earth guy, Swipe
swipe slide. It's hard out there for a girl to
find Mr Right. I have to meet a lot of
(10:55):
Mr Wrongs. He'd invite me over to have dinner with
his Emily. I knew he didn't tell them that it
was transgender. Dating as a trans woman can be complicated,
but there were other reasons. I felt like I couldn't
always beat myself. And he's asking me things about my family,
like my mom's in prison, my grandmother was arrested for
working with the Mexican drug cartel. This is Crumbs, my
(11:20):
love story. It's a show about the things we set
up for and the bits of ourselves that make us
who we are. Listen to Crumbs as part of the
Michael Duda podcast Network, available on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sir, we
got your test results back and give it to me
(11:40):
straight doc. You have to listen to the Ridiculous News
podcast Ridiculous News. The podcast Ridiculous News. It's a podcast
hosted by Bill Whorley and Mark Kendall. Ridiculous News. Those
two comedians who's worked with Adult Swim in Comedy Central. Yeah.
I knew you were my favorite patient for a reason. Well,
you're the best doctor I've ever had. And they're hilarious.
I love the videos. Bills actually my cousin. They talked
(12:02):
about the news, but not like in a depressing way,
you know what I mean. They did an episode on
April fools. Great, well, I need to listen to it.
When does it drop March fourteenth? Get it? Wherever you
find podcasts, like in a cereal box. Well, no, that's
not where you find a podcast. Oh so like in
the middle of a tree. No, do you know what
a podcast is. Yeah, it's like a kind of tire. No, No,
(12:25):
it's it's something that you listen to podcasts. Yeah, so
listen to the Ridiculous News podcast on the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Produce sile Absolutely not m Hi, I'm Elizabeth Dutton and
I'm Elizabeth Dutton. Wait, sorry, Zaron, do you want to
(12:47):
say your name? No? I'm good, good, go ahead. We're
the hosts of Ridiculous Crime. People love true crime, right,
the mystery, the intrigue, the human frailty. But what a
lot of us don't like is the blood and the
guts and the mayhem where any way, wait, some of
us do like the mayhem. Okay, but let's be real,
there's nothing funny about murder. Okay. That's our show gives
you stories like the kidnapping of Frank Sinatra Jr. And
(13:10):
the Max Headrooms signal hijacking. Oh so you mean ridiculous
stories like the UK cat Shaver and Pablo Escobar's cocaine hippos. Yeah,
stories like the dudes who stole Buzzy, the animatronic whatever
he was from Disney World, and the woman whose husband
tried to kill her but came back from the dead
and surprised him at her own funeral. Yeah, that does
sound good. You can find this new podcast, Ridiculous Crime
(13:31):
all over the place, the I Heart Radio app, the
Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I don't
know how you live. Ridiculous Crime. Brian Scarlatto's fear as
attorney and family friend took the call while out of
town on a work tut I recalled because I was
in Las Vegas for work, and my wife called to
(13:52):
say that had been arrested and that there was a
story in the newspaper, which you know, I looked up
on the internet and um, and you know, at this
point had been a friend of ours for a while,
so I felt like I should look into it, since
you know, it is kind of my area of the law.
Glafira had just been arrested and so um, we had
to go into jail to speak to her. But what
(14:14):
we found out is is that she had really been
arrested for tax evasion, sort of like al capolm and
the government couldn't get them, you know, for organized crime.
They just followed the money, and in Gulfira's case, the
government was able to follow the money. By now, after
living in Sand's Point for years, had you come to
suspect lap and Carlos might be art thieves? I did
not suspect anything. They did seem to be very successful.
(14:37):
But it was extremely shocking, and you know, and it's
shocking whenever you hear about anybody being arrested, but certainly
a very nice woman in her you know, later fifties.
Like Fra Brian visited Glafira in prison soon after her arrest.
It was a sobering moment for the family attorney who
had come to know Carlos and Fia. Well, you go
(14:58):
in and it's very different goal to get in, and
Glafira had just been arrested, and in fact, she didn't
have enough money for shoes because they take your shoes
away and you need a commissary account then to buy shoes,
and so she was wearing paper slippers and it was very,
very distraught, you know, just didn't know what was going
to go on Carlo's head, you know, fled and so
her daughter, her young daughter, is on the outside with
(15:19):
no parents. I mean solely was maybe twenty years old,
maybe nineteen years old at this time. It's hard to
overstate just how lucky Glafira was to have such a
family friend who was an experienced attorney at this moment
in her life. After she was arrested, I offered to help,
largely on a pro bono basis, because all of her
(15:41):
assets had been seized at that point. Basically, what we
were able to do is explain to Glafira how this
was going to play out that the government had, you know,
a strong case on the tax evasion charges and that
carried very significant penalties. Once behind bars, the first order
of business was for a judge to determine whether ba
(16:03):
Rosalas was a flight risk. We put together, I thought
a very persuasive case that CFA you know, had dual citizenship,
a boyfriend with a home into the Dominican Republic, ties
I believe to spain, foreign bank accounts, a lot of liquidity,
a lot of assets, you know. At the time, and
I'll say it was by no means certain that she
(16:25):
would be detained because on the other side of the coin,
I mean, she's never had a criminal case before. She was,
you know, maybe fifty something, your old woman with a
daughter here in the United States. And so the defense
made an argument, a strong argument that hey, you know,
she's not going to go anywhere. Why would she go anywhere?
She's got all these ties. But thankfully for us, the
(16:46):
judge detained her. And although I can't say for certain,
I would think that being detained would weigh on someone
and make them more likely to want to cooperate and
tell us what really happened. The judge said, no, I'm
going to keep you detained because I think you you
are a flight risk, and so you know, that was it.
She she went back into the m c C or
(17:07):
the m d C, one of the two facilities that
are used. Yeah, you don't want to be there, trust me.
She was not in the most difficult spot where like
the terrorists and burning made off go. But no, you don't.
You know, you don't want to spend any time there.
If you can, if you can help it. A few
(17:29):
months in prison was all Gafa needed. The con was
over and there was no one worth protecting. At the
cost of sacrificing her freedom, Gafara decided to cooperate, and
she provided information about Carlos and about Patia, and after
it was clear that Gla was telling the truth, the
(17:49):
government agreed to release her on bail. Rosales spilled the
entire story to investigators. In September two thirteen, she pled
guilty to nine counts, including one count of money laundering,
one count of wire fraud, and three counts of falsifying
income tax returns. She had pocketed twenty six million dollars
(18:13):
and paid no Texas. Despite her testimony, Fia was facing
as much as nine years in prison. But this was
only the bail hearing. The sentencing would come much later,
you know, as we later learned, because of her cooperation,
really only because of her cooperation, we've got the two
(18:33):
Burgantino's brothers and Paisian you know, involved, and that really
broke down the door, okay, to a wealth of information
that only came from her. But as you know most
people know, Pai Sian. As soon as you heard that
we were on his tail, took off to China, a
country that does not extradite its own nationals. I'm personally
(18:58):
much more upset with the Spanish court's decision to non
extradite the Brigantinos brothers. Amazingly, from a criminal standpoint, things
were looking good for Ann Friedman. If we thought that
we could prove beyond a reasonable doubt twelve people that
other people knew the aspects of the scheme, the critical
(19:21):
aspects of the scheme, then we would have brought a case.
But you know, you've got to have proof. You've got
to have proof that's admissible in court that you know
someone who was selling the paintings, whether it's fa as
the consigner or and you also have to prove that
she knows that they are fake. So you know, here
you're dealing with a situation where a freedman's first point
(19:44):
of contact, Lafia is lying to her about the provenance.
And again the provenance has elements of it that have
elements of truth. You know, Sorryo is a real person.
Herbert was a real person. It is actually the case
that a lot of art is found, you know from
time to time. What we did in this case was
we took it as far as we thought the evidence
(20:04):
that we had would take it. FA had done her
part and broken the case wide open for investigators. The
bergen Tino's brothers fled the United States for Spain, a
country beyond the reach of US extradition. The artist patient
(20:26):
Quan hurriedly returned home to China, another country out of
reach from U S authorities. That left only Michael Hammer
and Ann Friedman. Neither would be prosecuted on criminal charges
or simply wasn't enough proof, but both were still subject
to civil suits, where a jury only needed to conclude
(20:48):
that a defendant was more than likely to have committed
a crime. Monetary settlements from civil suits could inflict their
own kind of severe punishment. The fear of such verdicts
had led the Knobler to settle with Pierre Legrange. As
for the Souls, their showdown with Ann Friedman and the
(21:09):
Kndler was about to begin. Some three dozen journalists, including
our own Michael Schneyerson, who were bent over their notepads
that day in the classically high ceiling, oak paneled courtroom.
The trial began on a Monday in January two thousand sixteen.
The list of names who weren't present in court that
(21:31):
day was almost as interesting as who was. Lafara Rosalee
wasn't there. Having served three months in jail before admitting
her guilt, she was now agonizing over what further sentence
she would have to serve, and wondering how she would
come up with eighty million dollars in compensation for her victims.
(21:55):
The Bergen Tino's brothers were still in Spain, Quan was
in China. Even Mike Hammer was absent in court. Hammer
had not appeared once from behind the Knodler doors since
the gallery closed, nor granted any interviews. But after eighteen
years or so of the forgery ring, Michael Hammer looked
(22:15):
more and more like a key player, no less so
than Ann Friedman, as much was told in a lawsuit
filed by one of the victims, casino owner Frank for Tita,
the third, who in two thousand eight bought a fake
Rothco for seven point two million dollars. Hammer, the complaint detailed,
knew that Knodler bought the paintings from Rosale's for shock
(22:37):
and the low prices and quickly resold them for enormous
markups for Tita alleged quote in all, Knodler resold the
Rosalves paintings for a total of sixty three point eight
million dollars, realizing gross profits of approximately forty eight point
seven million dollars. Hammer, acting on behalf of Nodler and
(22:59):
his foundation, saw two of the tens of millions of
dollars in profit be distributed largely to himself and Ann Friedman.
Through Friedman and Hammer had a meeting in the early
(23:19):
days of the scandal, and a handwritten memo survived their
talk to surface later in Fatita's complaint. It was unclear
whether the notes were taken by Freedman or Hammer, but
the sentiments were in technicolor discrete sources are my stock
in trade. When one of the comments don't kill the
(23:40):
goose that's laying the golden egg, went another. And I
am not going to change my way of doing business.
If you were not comfortable, step away. And Friedman was
in the courtroom the day that The Soul's Child began.
She sat quietly beside her lawyers, wreathed in her soft
(24:03):
white curls, dressed in black, beige and gray, saying nothing.
As the witnesses began to come forward, she too would
be forced to testify if the trial went as planned.
Luke Nichoas and Freedman's lawyer had a novel defense, as
it turned out. He argued that the Doss were responsible
for checking their paintings authenticity themselves. They were, after all,
(24:28):
sophisticated art buyers. By that logic, Nikos suggested, the jury
shouldn't blame Noldler for selling the Doss their fake art.
The customers were the ones to blame for buying it.
As for Anne, she was a salesperson, not an expert,
they declared. She was just doing her job, selling paintings
(24:49):
and earning profits for the gallery. Here's Luke Nichos with Anne.
I certainly wanted to believe, but and I looked at
the evidence and where the evidence and what the evidence
showed to me separate and apart from what Anne was
telling me was emails from a guy like David an
Fam or the most significant experts and abstract expressionism. What
(25:12):
did David an Fem say about these works? He wrote
an email in May of two thousand and eight to
Jack Flamm from the Dadalist Foundation, and that email said,
I can't think of any reason to deem this newman
from the Resolves collection. This newman inauthentic. He went on
to say in the same email, I've seen the Krasners,
(25:33):
I've seen the Pollux, the roth Codes, the Clients and Stills,
and I believe in these works. Now he acknowledged that
the story was murky, acknowledged that the ownership was unknown.
But the reality is I saw an email like that
from David and Fam, and I thought, if David and
Fem saying that, who am I the lawyer without this expertise?
Let me dig further. I think it's important to understand
(25:57):
what I concluded about whether there are authentic or not?
Wasn't the point. My point is I had no expertise
whether they were authentic or not. The core question always
always always was what did Ann Friedman believe and what
did she have reason to believe based in the facts.
(26:18):
Early in the trial, attorneys for the plaintiffs presented a
fascinating exhibit to the court, the doss eight point three
million dollar fake Rothco. Thing I remember about it being
physically in the courtroom the most is that the defendants
immediately wanted a sidebar with the judge because they felt
that the painting smelled new. This is the Dissillis attorneys again.
(26:43):
I think the issue was, like all artwork that's transported responsibly,
it was in a wooden crate, so that would was
just secured with screws, and the crate got unscrewed and
it creates that kind of would smell in the air,
which made the paint smell like fresh wood. And so
(27:03):
they felt it was prejudicial that the painting would smell
so obviously like fresh and the judge had to go
over the and smell the painting to assess, and he was,
like he said on the record, he was like, I
can't believe I'm going over to smell the painting. Trudge over.
He smelled it, and I think they did move it. Yeah, yeah,
(27:26):
but they left it out, but I thought, I remember
it was very dramatic. We carried the painting over someplace
and you know, there was like a hush in the room.
Were like a gas because people in the art world
are so used to such delicate handling and white glove
handling of works like this, and you know it was
(27:47):
a fake, so that we just picked it up with
our bare hands. We were not professional. There was the
other moment, the funny moment with the painting, when Pulkari
said on the stand, like I think it's supposed to
be the other way, you know, like this upside. Steven
was one of the two quote unquote experts who Noler
had hired and paid to look at some of these works,
(28:09):
and when he testified about the Rothco, he testified that
it did it couldn't usually tell with Rothco's which weighs up.
A day or two into the trial, the dess took
the stand to tell the story of their fake Rothco.
Eleanor was emotional, Domenico fierce. Both were heartfelt, taking breaks
(28:33):
to chat up the press, but they would find themselves
subject to the occasional bit of snarkiness for bringing rich
people's problems into the courtroom with the doles done. On
cross examination, the trial turned to Ann Friedman's list of
eleven experts whose names she had used to authenticate her paintings.
(28:54):
None of the eleven had wished to be on that list.
What immer urged was what we showed that trial with
the witness testimony, that there were no experts who authenticated
these paintings. For another, it just didn't happen. You know,
the story that the defendants were selling that they believed
(29:15):
the works were real and the experts authenticated, that was
just absolutely rebutted, totally debunked. With respect to David Ampham,
he never was shown a Rothco despite being the world's
leading expert in Rothko, I don't think it's a coincidence
that he was never shown any of the Rothkos, not one.
(29:37):
Not only had I not seen the Dissoli painting, I've
never even been in the same moon with it. What
I got was a package with a transparencive of painting,
a note for Man dated July, and I'm pretty certainly
this was two thousand and five. I picked it up,
(29:58):
looks of the transparen so if we're about twenty seconds
and put it in the file filed it away and
did not look at it again until then. That's the
time of the trial. It sounds as if Anne was
doing her best to circulate your name and your approval
of this painting. Is that true? Yes, it's true. I
(30:20):
didn't know of the time. I have to say that
from the perspective of the present, I felt I was
being manipulated and I don't take comfy to that. And
when I saw the letter, which had a list of
people who had seen the dissle a paintings article Christopher
off Go, followed by myself, I was absolutely shocked. I
(30:43):
couldn't believe that my name had been put in a
letter without my knowing, it, without my approval, and effectively
so any buyer. It could be constituted as a kind
of authentication by Foxing. As the trial entered its second
(31:04):
week on February two thousand sixteen, a sense of excitement
permeated the courtroom. After all this warm up, an Friedman
was due to testify at last. Oddly, however, the judge's
chair remained empty as the ten am hour came and went.
(31:26):
At last, the judge reappeared and announced in open court
that a settlement had been reached from the Soles grins
their gambit had paid off. As for Ann Friedman's lawyers,
they looked relieved. Whatever they had agreed to pay, it
was probably less than the million dollar RICO payment that
(31:49):
the Soles were demanding. The trial, however, would continue because
Michael Hammer and his eight thirty one foundation were not
yet off the hook. Hammer's chief financial officer testified that Hammer,
her boss, had awarded himself some twenty luxury cars, including
a four hundred eighty two dollar Rose Royce and a
(32:13):
five dollar Mercedes. That was all in addition to a
four hundred thousand dollar salary he paid himself from his
Knodler piggy bank. Anne was scheduled to testify that Wednesday
against her former boss about how much the two of
them had profited from selling forty plus fake paintings that
had come through the Knodler. Once again, the judge and
(32:36):
counselor has disappeared behind closed doors and emerged appearing satisfied
a private settlement had been reached between the Desoles and
A thirty one. The trial was finally over some weeks later,
and agreed to speak to the press. From the start,
(32:59):
Friedman said she had regarded the David Herbert collection as
a quote puzzle to be solved. She had tried to
extract more information from glyph Era every time Rosalee arrived
with another painting. Only with Rosalee's confession had Anne realized
how thoroughly and classically duped she'd been. Or so she said,
(33:21):
when you ask a con artist a question, they say, ah, ha,
I see what you mean. Let me check it out,
and miraculously they have the answers and recalled. She called
herself a perfect mark and added I have never deliberately
done something wrong, which is to say knowingly. But then
she added a jarring remark, I am terribly sorry for
(33:45):
anybody hurt or damaged. But let me be clear, this
is about works of art. I didn't slay anybody's firstborn.
We have to have some perspective on suffering. Or as
a sympathetic history Orient apparently told her, we all need
to get over it more. Aren't fraud in a minute.
(34:14):
In any sport, there are leaders and journeymen. Oh what
a finish by jess McDonald. But on this season of
Long Shot, there's no story quite like Jessica McDonald's Ran
Away from Home when I was seventeen years old. My
recollections are mostly trying to find her. I wasn't just scared,
I was scared for my life. On Payback, The Charlotte Observer,
(34:34):
Raleigh News and Observer, McClatchy Studios, and I Heart Radio
share for the first time her story. She's had some
very difficult moments in her life, but there's something inside
the great athletes that is why they're great. Thank God
for sports. That was my escape. And then I find
out I'm pregnant with my son. An incredible journey to
a pinnacle of sports. That's it. I need to show
(34:58):
an example for my son. That to what inspires me
day in and day out. Payback coming March fifteen. UM
I hurt Radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get
your podcasts. He's sending a message anyone anywhere in the world,
I can get you and it will hurt. It was
(35:20):
a plot straight out of James Bond. An assassination carried
out with the world's most toxic chemical weapon. The victim
was Kim Jong Nam. He was the firstborn son of
North Korea's supreme leader. He should have been the successor. Instead,
he'd be murdered in one of the most brazen and
bizarre political plots of all time. Join us as we
(35:43):
investigate the potential motives. Kim Dragon actually had several reasons
for wanting to assassinate his older brother, the family backstabbing.
There's a lot of clothing and dagger stuff about Jim
John and the petty paranoid in North Korea. When somebody
challenges you, that challenger must be eliminated. Behind the most
(36:07):
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(36:48):
lawyers felt pleased they've gotten their clients the outcome they wanted,
but the settlement allowed Freedman to crow and declared she
would have gladly had the trial go on and was
sure that jury would have found her innocent only on
a technicality. The Dissolas lawyers roll their eyes at that
things got resolved before the journy got to reach its verdict.
(37:08):
But you know, we did speak to the jurors afterwards.
They were completely convinced that she knew exactly what she
was doing. Despite the fact that a jury never actually
ruled on the case in court, the Disos and their
lawyers saw the outcome as an overwhelming victory. I think
(37:28):
that you're looking, maybe you're suggesting that you need a
verdict through your story. I don't think so. I think
you need to tell the story and put it out
there to show what happened. And they did a hundred
of that. And it's not a coincidence that the five
cases that were pending, you know at the time we settled,
also all settled and no one went to trial. You know,
(37:52):
I had to say, you know, nod and Freedman, and
Freedman didn't step up to defend themselves and go to trial.
On any of those five cases followed. The rulings made
it crystal clear that you know, collectors have the right
to reasonably rely on reputable galleries, and that's the reputable
galleries obligation to come forward with what they know and
(38:13):
what they don't know about works that they're selling. As
attorney Luke Nikos felt the settlement only confirmed the case
that he'd argued. Not only was she not prosecuted, but
when the superseding indictment came out, in which Glafira Resolis
had told her story to the federal government, it was
(38:33):
clear from that indictment that Anne was not implicated at
all in the underlying crime. Fear had every reason to
throw in under the bus. Her boyfriend had every reason
to throw in under the bus. The painter did, everyone did,
and at least from that superseding indictment, it was clear
(38:54):
they didn't. And when you look at all of the information,
not just pieces of it, and you put it to
other and you ask, did Anne believe these works were
fake at the time, I just don't think you can
get there. You can say she made mistakes, but the
prosecutor needs to prove beyond that, and I don't think
they could. It had now been three years since was arrested,
(39:21):
three birthdays, three Christmas, is out on bail, nervously awaiting
her sentence on nine federal charges. During that time, Rosalez
had broken no laws and had helped prosecutors to the
extent that she could to track down the Bergantino's brothers.
They remained at large due to Spain's changing extradition rules.
(39:44):
In weighing her sentence, judge Faiala had listened to as
story of physical and emotional abuse at the hands of
Carlos and found it credible. As Jason Hernandez suggested, the
judge had seen a culprit left old in the bag
while the rest of the ring went free. Enough was enough.
(40:05):
In January two thousand seventeen, the judge sentenced her to
time already served eighty two days. Lafra was a free woman.
She was also broke. Their lives are very difficult because
everything that they had could be traceable to you know,
(40:26):
their art business, which was fraudulent or infected with frauds.
So everything was seized. Their home was seized, all of
their money was seized, all of the art was seized,
and so far in her late fifties, had to build
herself back up. So she now works part time as
a hostess in a restaurant in her sixties and as
(40:47):
a waitress from time to time, and solely is involved
in the art business and is building her own business
and knows how to do it right, and is supporting
her mother. And so you have of the story of
a daughter supporting her mother and their father is still
very much, very antagonistic. Carlos is very antagonistic, but he's
(41:07):
he's off in Spain. The government, as you probably tried
to extradite him and was unsuccessful in doing so. The
fall of the Knodler Gallery would have rippling effects throughout
the art world. Gretchen Deep and Corn described the seismic
(41:27):
shift and trust between client and gallery. I think it's
terrible for the art market. For example, right after the
first revelations and the New York Times story, the dealer,
our current dealer, began getting phone calls about, oh, dear,
it is the work that I bought? Is it real?
(41:48):
And it wasn't only our dealer, it was others. And
then all of the dealers are under suspicion now because
it's never been a yield that has seemed entirely squeaky
clean anyway, because things happen, you know, people get better.
(42:09):
One person gets a good deal, the next person doesn't.
In they're they're mad, and so I mean, nobody trusts
anybody in this kind of world anyway, in some way,
but this made it a hundred times worse. David and
fam didn't hold back in his blistering opinion of the
(42:29):
Knodler scandal. In hindsight, I think the whole Knodler story
will go down as one of the worst scandals of
its kind, indeed probably the most shameful for largo in
the annals of modern art. What could prove even more
interesting is a verdict of history upon whoever the guards
(42:51):
as being of the epicenter of the sordid saga from
first to last. Having followed the fall of the Knodler
Gallery from the first revelations of forgery, through the trial
and the half dozen settlements, I'd come to realize that
(43:13):
this case was far from a once in a lifetime phenomenon.
As we've heard from countless artists, dealers, and collectors, the
art market has been and remains a target rich environment
for con artists willing to risk prison time for a
big score. There's the fascinating case of Intego Philbrick, a
(43:35):
young and charming London based dealer who oversold fractional shares
of works by hot new artists in a made off
like Ponzi scheme. There's also the case of aging artist
Robert Indiana, creator of the iconic Love Works, whose Coterie
of Assistance on an island off the coast of Maine,
(43:56):
would be accused of squeezing windfall profits from him, going
so far as to employ an automatic signature signing machine. Finally,
there was my own brush with art fraud, in which
a painting I purchased from an artist I adored through
his longtime dealer, Mary Boone would end up pitting us
against each other in a bitter legal battle I never
(44:19):
could have anticipated. We'll talk about all of those cases
in our final episode of Art Fraud. Art Fraud is
(44:55):
brought to you by I Heart Radio and Cavalry Audio.
Our executive producers are Matt del Piano, Keegan Rosenberger, Andy Turner, myself,
and Michael Shnayerson. We're produced by Brandon Morgan and Zach McNeice.
Zach also edited and mixed this episode. Lindsay Hoffman is
our managing producer. Our writer is Michael Schneyerson. Hi everyone,
(45:37):
it's Katie Curic and I'm back with a new season
of my podcast Next Question. I'm bringing you some really
meaty conversations about important topics like how to support working
moms who are at their breaking point, what's being done
to help long COVID sufferers, and where can women turn
when they fear they might have a drinking problem. I
(45:57):
might even dive into the metaverse, whatever that is. Subscribe
and listen to Next Question with Katie correct on the
I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get
your podcasts. If you love true crime podcasts, you need
to check out True Crime Obsessed. Each week, hosts Patrick
(46:20):
and Jillian recap a true crime documentary everyone is talking about,
and they do it with humor, heart and just the
right amount of sass. When you go camping, you either
find the skull or you become the spy. That's the role.
Patrick and Jillian have covered everything from the Ted Bundy
tapes to Lula Rich, with plenty of art heists in between.
(46:41):
With over one million downloads and thirty thousand five star
reviews on Apple Podcasts. True Crime Obsessed is one of
the most popular true crime podcasts in the world. Find
True Crime Obsessed wherever you listen. I'm Emilia on this podcast.
I'm taking you on a search, a search for love,
(47:05):
hard working Latina, but there were other reasons I felt
like I couldn't always beat myself. My mom's in prison.
This is Crumbs, my love story. It's a show about
the things we set up for and the bits of
ourselves that make us who we are. Listen to Crumbs
on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
(47:25):
you get your podcasts.
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