The Art of the Con: The Most Notorious Fakes, Frauds, and Forgeries in the Art World (21 page)

In around 1990, Hilda and Kathryn approached the chromist Kniebihler again to discuss some financial problems they were experiencing. What they needed, they told Kniebihler, was an inventory of the facility in Island Park to determine the value of the pieces they had on hand. He agreed, telling the Amiels that any fake prints he discovered would be considered worthless and not part of the inventory. Soon, Kniebihler found that the Amiels had sold a set of
Miró reproductions that he had made—portraying them as original, pencil-signed prints—to Flemming Hall, a major customer of theirs. His inventory also showed that all of the prints the Amiels were creating in Secaucus were fake. Kniebihler gave the Amiel women an ultimatum: they could either clean up their act right away or “forget the whole thing.”
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He also told them that Coffaro was a “crook.”
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The women responded by denying Kniebihler further access to the inventory at the Island Park facility.
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The United States Postal Inspection Service (USPIS) dates back to Benjamin Franklin, who created the position of surveyor—a title changed to special agent in 1801—to help him regulate and audit the postal system. Today, postal inspectors work to protect the integrity of the nation’s mail service by investigating those who, among other things, use it to defraud the public. Given the use of the mail to receive and distribute counterfeit fine art prints, the agency was a natural to join into the investigation of the Amiel family operation. USPIS utilized two undercover postal inspectors—Waiman Leung and Raymond Hang—to get to the bottom of the Amiel scheme.

Leung approached the Amiels, posing as an art dealer from Asia interested in purchasing genuine pieces of art, preferably by Dalí, Miró, Chagall, and Picasso—precisely the artists in which the Amiels specialized. After just one meeting, the undercover agent purchased 22 prints attributed by the Amiels to this group of artists and bearing signatures in pencil. When Leung inquired about authenticity, Kathryn Amiel informed him that she had no documentation for some of the artworks nor information about their provenance outside of what was in her father’s documents. Instead, she insisted that the sale was on an “as is” basis.

Postal Inspector Leung and his undercover partner, Raymond Hang, continued pressing Kathryn for some documentation proving
provenance. Kathryn and Sarina finally relented and rewrote, on company letterhead, information from Leon’s documents and mailed it to the undercover investigators. Armed with the forged prints and the phony documentation, the feds executed a search warrant at the Island Park facility in July 1991. Postal inspectors uncovered and seized stacks of prints, the first few signed and the rest unsigned, which was consistent with the practice of the late patriarch. In all, federal agents found and confiscated 50,000 prints supposedly by Dalí; 20,000 Mirós; 2,200 Picassos; and 650 Chagalls. They also took print reproduction equipment and seized over $1.3 million in cash, $1.5 million in properties, and three cars.
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During the search investigators found a copy of a fax that had been sent to the European distributor Flemming Hall by Sarina. On the top, Sarina wrote, “I was rummaging through a drawer and came across this quote! I hope you enjoy it as much as we did!” It matched copies of the same quote that had been posted on the wall of the Island Park facility under the heading “words to live by.” It was the statement that Leon Amiel had made to the
New York Times
years earlier when the Carol Convertine Galleries had been closed: “I don’t know how these people sell to the public, what they claim and how they sell it is something I don’t get involved with.”

The Amiels were arrested for charges related to conspiracy to commit mail fraud, and federal trade officials estimated that customers may have been conned out of more than $11 million.
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The U.S. Justice Department filed the charges against the Amiels while the Federal Trade Commission froze their assets. Criminal charges were also announced in Denmark and Sweden against the Amiels’ European distributor Flemming Hall. The investigation, dubbed Operation Bogart for “bogus art,” led to what the FTC described as an “industry-wide investigation of art dealers,” and included the issuance of
subpoenas for a number of galleries, auctioneers, and distributors in several major cities.
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In January 1993, before the Amiels’ trial could begin, Hilda succumbed to cancer. Before she died, she left a deposition in which she denied any wrongdoing. Her daughter Kathryn’s defense lawyer told the press she didn’t know what Leon’s business practices were. “I’m not denying the stuff is bad,” attorney Adrian DiLuzio said. “I don’t know whether he was getting duped himself or he was doing the duping.” But as for his wife, daughters, and granddaughter, “They were naive in the extreme.”
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However, the witnesses against the Amiel women painted a different picture. The chromist Marc Kniebihler, not a defendant, told his story, as did Philip Coffaro, who had been named as a defendant alongside the Amiels in an FTC civil complaint.

Another art dealer, former New York City police officer Thomas Wallace—who the Amiels alleged was deeply involved in organized crime—testified against the family. Like his father-in-law Coffaro, Wallace had met with the Amiel women to discuss operations in the post-Leon era and had been in the practice of purchasing pieces he knew to be counterfeit from their operation. The Amiels told him they would continue to sell him prints, but according to Joanne, they would not provide certificates of authenticity and would sell only on an “as is” basis. Wallace also assisted the Amiels in an inventory of their facility, and he testified that he saw large quantities of prints, some signed and some not. Again, each stack consisted of just one or two pencil-signed copies at the top with the rest unsigned, just as Leon had preferred. Wallace also purchased 20 pieces from the Amiels. When two were found to be unsigned, he returned them to Sarina, apparently the team’s best forger, who took care of it for him.

Yet another art dealer was called to the stand to testify to the Amiels’ illicit operation. Lawrence Groeger had begun purchasing
prints from Leon in 1988 and knew they were fraudulent based on the number available. During his meeting with the women in early 1989, he informed them that he was having a problem with galleries in California. “[A]lot of the galleries were aware of the fact that there were multiple copies of Miró prints available for sale.” This, he said, “created a lot of suspicion regarding the authenticity of the prints.” Though the Amiels told Groeger that they would protect him in the California market, his largest customer, the Upstairs Gallery, was raided by the Los Angeles Police Department later that year, with many of the prints that were seized having come through him from the Amiels. Groeger met again with the Amiels seeking documentation for the works, and though Joanne promised to help, it never came. Soon thereafter, Groeger himself was raided by police who confiscated 60 pieces of inventory and a set of prints that he had intended to return to the Amiels. All of it was found to be counterfeit.

The evidence presented at trial was overwhelming, and all of the Amiel women were found guilty by the jury. Kathryn, Joanne, and Sarina Amiel were given sentences of 78, 46, and 33 months in prison, respectively. And Operation Bogart continued with gusto, having placed Leon Amiel at the center of the large-scale international scheme that authorities believed resulted in more than $500 million in counterfeit art sales.

Operation Bogart netted another crooked dealer in 1993, putting Chicago art dealer Donald Austin behind the defendant’s table in federal court. At his high point, Austin, a former barber, had opened nearly 30 art galleries in Chicago, Michigan, and California. By the 1980s, his chain was bringing in about $34 million per year in sales of art priced from the hundreds to a few thousand dollars.
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But during a raid of Austin’s headquarters by the FTC in 1988, they found questionable works attributed to Dalí, Picasso, Chagall, and
Miró—the hallmarks of the Amiels’ involvement. Austin had once allegedly said, “One day we’ll all be sitting in jail because of Leon Amiel.”
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And he was correct: he was convicted of fraud charges and sentenced to 102 months in a federal prison.

Austin’s involvement with prints obtained through Amiel was described in court from the witness stand by an art wholesaler from Northbrook, Illinois, named Michael Zabrin. Zabrin’s involvement in art fraud first emerged in 1989, not as a con man, but as a victim, when the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office charged self-described art “emulator” Tony Tetro with 45 felony counts for fabricating and distributing watercolors and lithographs. In addition to Miró and Chagall, Tetro—described at the time as “one of the largest art forgers on the West Coast”—forged 29 watercolors by Hiro Yamagata. Tetro and his accomplice, art dealer Mark Sawicki, defrauded four gallery owners including Zabrin.
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But Zabrin was anything but a victim when it came to peddling counterfeit art. A college graduate from a middle-class background, he turned an affinity for collecting prints into a lucrative career selling and consigning them. Eager to ensure a constant flow of art, he found a reliable source in none other than Philip Coffaro, the Long Island art dealer who had become a pipeline for Leon Amiel’s operation. Short and curly haired with a bushy mustache, Zabrin was eager to meet the legendary publisher, and when he discovered that a close friend was a distant relative of Amiel’s, an audience was granted. Soon, Zabrin had access to the Amiel mother lode of counterfeit art. He was no innocent dupe. He later recounted that when he would choose prints that bore no signature for purchase, Amiel’s daughter “taught me to leave the room.” Upon his return, the prints would all bear the autographs of the artists.
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Postal Inspector Jack Ellis would later recall that Zabrin “seemed like the cog” in the Amiel operation. Together with another postal
inspector, James Tendick, and David Spiegel of the FTC, Ellis formed a plan to squeeze Zabrin for information. Using an art dealer as a cooperating witness and an undercover postal inspector as her assistant, the feds purchased two Miró prints for which Zabrin provided signed certificates of authenticity. The prints were fakes. When the undercover officer later visited Zabrin’s home, she took notice of a large number of Miró, Picasso, and Andy Warhol prints. In October 1990, federal agents raided Zabrin’s business and seized his records. Then came the squeeze: the feds told Zabrin that he could face 20 years in prison for his crimes or he could cooperate with the authorities in hope of being granted some leniency. He quickly opted for the latter.
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Zabrin immediately became a key figure in the successful prosecution of the Amiels. Postal inspectors were able to gather damning evidence against Philip Coffaro thanks to Zabrin’s work and then turned him into a government witness against the Amiel women as well as Groeger, Austin, and Ted Robertson of California, who had been identified as an active member of the counterfeit Dalí ring by Jack Ellis’s predecessor, Postal Inspector Robert DeMuro. Robertson was not only dealing Dalís; he had broadened his counterfeiting horizons to include Erté, Picasso, Miró, and Chagall. To demonstrate his bona fides, Robertson even gave one prospective buyer a copy of a videotape showing him at Erté’s birthday party. Unaware of the raids that had been carried out and of Coffaro’s status as a government cooperator, Robertson approached Coffaro’s business with a number of fake Picasso prints and Erté gouaches. He was ultimately arrested in his apartment in France in March 1992.
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He pleaded guilty to two counts of fraud in federal court in New York.

For his efforts assisting the federal investigation into the enormous counterfeit lithograph ring, prosecutors recommended that the court be lenient toward Zabrin and the judge complied, sentencing
him to just one year and a day in prison, which the con man served at a low-security prison camp just hours from his home in Illinois. Except for the separation from his wife and two young daughters, his time in prison didn’t provide the sort of punishment that was perhaps necessary to scare him straight. Zabrin told
Chicago
magazine, “I had no idea what to expect, but after I got acclimated and realized I could get along with everybody, it actually turned out to be fun. It was like a camp for bad boys.”
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After his release from federal prison, Zabrin returned to what he knew best: selling fine art prints. His time away was brief enough—only ten months at the camp and a short stint at a halfway house—to ensure that some of his connections were still active. Zabrin would soon form a new network, bringing on a business associate who could handle internet sales for him, a venture that would bring him hundreds of thousands of dollars. And though his prior pipeline of counterfeit prints were now serving long prison sentences, Zabrin found new sources to funnel fraudulent fine art to him. These included Jerome Bengis and an Italian national named Elio Bonfiglioli, whose counterfeit prints were considered to be of high quality. There was also James Kennedy, a man described as “a virtual caricature of the dealer con artist” who was fond of partying, alcohol, and drugs.
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There was one other individual who provided prints to Zabrin, and the name was all too familiar: Leon Amiel Jr. Despite his name, he was actually Leon’s grandson, and he had access to a cache of his grandfather’s prints that had not been seized by federal agents years earlier in the raids that resulted in the arrest of his grandmother, mother, aunts, and sister. Leon Jr. was eager to follow in the footsteps of his famous namesake and jumped feetfirst into the world of trafficking in counterfeit prints, using the online auction site eBay and other means to sell his illicit goods.
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Meanwhile, his coconspirator
Kennedy would forge the signatures of artists such as Alexander Calder, Chagall, Miró, and Picasso on the prints he received from Leon Jr. Eventually, however, eBay caught on to the scheme used by Leon Jr., which included a system of placing bids for his own items in order to artificially inflate their prices. The massive auction site suspended Leon Jr.’s account and his activities, as well as those of Zabrin, Kennedy, and others who came to the attention—once again—of federal investigators.