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