{"id":598413,"date":"2026-05-22T18:08:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T18:08:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/598413\/"},"modified":"2026-05-22T18:08:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T18:08:13","slug":"sothebys-ancient-statues-fraud-foiled-by-fake-paperwork","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/598413\/","title":{"rendered":"Sotheby&#8217;s &#8216;ancient&#8217; statues fraud foiled by fake paperwork"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Crowley had tried to sell the statues to Sotheby&#8217;s auction house in London between November 2022 and July 2023.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Prosecutors alleged that, if real, the items together would have been worth about \u00a3680,000 based on previous sales.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">However, Judge Nicholas Rimmer said that estimate hinged on multiple hypotheticals and therefore reduced the value to \u00a3340,000.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The court heard the accompanying paperwork had been typed using a typewriter on paper embossed with an antiques dealers&#8217; logo \u2013 and even a nine-pence stamp.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It was a crude attempt because Sotheby&#8217;s spotted these documents as bogus fairly early on,&#8221; Judge Rimmer said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Sotheby&#8217;s experts had also spotted multiple spelling mistakes, it was heard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Crowley had tried to sell the statues to Sotheby&#8217;s auction house in London between November 2022 and July&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":598414,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-598413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=598413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598413\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/598414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=598413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=598413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=598413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}