Al Letson:From The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, this is Reveal. I\u2019m Al Letson. John Howard lives in an impressive home, a Manhattan brownstone, four stories high covered in green vines. \u00a0John Howard:I literally, I walked into this house and I walked over here and I said, \u201cOkay, I\u2019ll do it. I\u2019ll buy it.\u201d I didn\u2019t even go upstairs. \u00a0Al Letson:It\u2019s not the house that we\u2019re here to see so much as what\u2019s in it. John\u2019s an art collector. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:I noticed the art right away. Do you have art in all the rooms in this house? \u00a0John Howard:Pretty much. \u00a0Al Letson:John\u2019s talking to reporter, Gisele Regatao. She\u2019s here to see one painting in particular, one that hasn\u2019t hung in John\u2019s house for years. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:So it\u2019s all wrapped in brown paper. Did you wrap it yourself? \u00a0John Howard:I did not. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:Okay. \u00a0John Howard:And it\u2019s all tied up very neatly with cord, which I\u2019m now going to cut. \u00a0Al Letson:It has a very prestigious signature, Willem de Kooning. He\u2019s a famous Dutch-American painter known for his abstract expressionist work. \u00a0John Howard:So I probably haven\u2019t seen this in, I don\u2019t know, something between five and 10 years. And there it is. \u00a0Al Letson:The painting has vibrant splashes of blue, black, white, and a peculiar yellow that John just loves. \u00a0John Howard:It\u2019s not a chrome yellow. It\u2019s a kind of muted yellow. It has more brown in it. So it\u2019s an ochre color is what I call it. \u00a0Al Letson:When he bought it back in 2007, it was the most he ever spent on a piece of art, $4 million. \u00a0John Howard:There was a poignance to my buying it. \u00a0Al Letson:John\u2019s dad collected art. De Kooning was one of his favorites. \u00a0John Howard:My father could never afford to buy one of his paintings. \u00a0Al Letson:His dad was a Jewish immigrant who escaped from Germany at the beginning of World War II. For John, the De Kooning was kind of a statement, like look at how far we\u2019ve come. It used to hang next to his fireplace. Then a few years after he bought it, he took it to an expert. \u00a0John Howard:And the guy calls me back in a day and says, \u201cIt\u2019s a fake.\u201d And I said, \u201cHow do you know it\u2019s a fake?\u201d He goes, \u201cYou know that yellow on the painting? I go, \u201cYeah, I know that yellow. That\u2019s why I bought the painting. That yellow is so beautiful.\u201d He goes, \u201cWell, the painting was supposed to be painted in 1953. That particular chrome yellow wasn\u2019t invented until 1990.\u201d \u00a0Al Letson:John fell prey to a fake art scheme. One the federal prosecutors say is one of the largest in modern US history. 63 fake masterpieces that sold for more than $80 million. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:It\u2019s a crazy story. \u00a0Al Letson:A crazy story that we first aired back in 2020 and one that Gisele had been tracking for years before that. The story made international news when it broke. At the center were four immigrants, two Spanish brothers, a Mexican-American woman, and a Chinese painter. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:In the garage behind his house in Queens, the Chinese painter turned out fake painting after fake painting. Artworks in the style of people like Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, and Mark Rothko. \u00a0Al Letson:And then they did all sorts of things to make the paintings look old. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:They rubbed tea bags on them to make them brown. They even emptied dust buster bins on the canvases because old paintings have dirt and dust that collect on them. \u00a0Al Letson:But collectors don\u2019t buy Pollocks and Rothkos from strangers working out of a garage. They buy them from trusted galleries. So one of the fraudsters, a woman by the name of Glafira Rosales approached two galleries with a story. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:She told them she was a dealer who was representing an anonymous European collector. He had just died and the family was selling some of his works. \u00a0Al Letson:The galleries bought the paintings and resold them to collectors. This started in the mid-90s and continued for the next 15 years. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:One of these galleries was the Knoedler Gallery. It was one of the oldest and most well-respected art galleries in the country. Of the 63 fake paintings, Knoedler sold 40 of them. Another gallery, Julian Weissman Fine Art, owned by a former Knoedler employee, sold the other 23. \u00a0Al Letson:Collectors like John Howard say they never doubted the authenticity of the paintings because those galleries are supposed to make sure they\u2019re the real thing. \u00a0John Howard:These are the most august, serious people, institutional people in the world, and they\u2019re vetting it. So what more work could I have done? \u00a0Al Letson:Eventually, the FBI got involved and the whole thing came crashing down. Remember, the victims were conned out of more than $80 million, but when the investigation was over, almost no one was punished. Glafira Rosales, the fake art dealer, struck a plea deal and spent just three months behind bars. Her partners all fled the country before they could be arrested. As for the art galleries, they were never charged with any crimes, and that got Gisele\u2019s reporter sense tingling. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:I\u2019ve spent most of my career reporting on arts and culture, and I\u2019m also an immigrant myself. So I\u2019ve been fascinated with how four people who didn\u2019t speak English particularly well and were not well-connected in high-end art circles, how could they have pulled this whole scheme off? And I just kept thinking that the story isn\u2019t just about them. It\u2019s also about those two art galleries that sold the 63 fake paintings. \u00a0Al Letson:Gisele set out on a journey that would take her from that garage in Queens to the back rooms of some of the glitziest galleries in the world. It would open up even bigger questions about the winners and losers in this massive multimillion dollar scam. Gisele takes the story from here. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:The Knoedler Gallery was a legendary place, paintings by Rembrandt and Vermeer made their way through these doors. It used to sit here on East 70th Street in Manhattan\u2019s Upper East Side, and it was in business for 165 years. \u00a0\u00a0When the fake dealer Glafira Rosales would show up here, she often arrived by car, clutching paintings in her bare hands, no big wooden crates, which is how expensive art is generally handled. And Glafira had few details to offer about where the paintings were coming from, just that she was representing a collector who wished to remain anonymous. \u00a0\u00a0The first two paintings that Knoedler Gallery bought from her were by Richard Diebenkorn, a California-based artist who had just died. Soon after his daughter, Gretchen Diebenkorn Grant, says she got a call from Knoedler. It was from someone you\u2019re going to hear about a lot, someone who wouldn\u2019t agree to talk to us for this story, Ann Freedman, the gallery\u2019s president. \u00a0Gretchen Dieben\u2026:She said, some Diebenkorns have come in and I thought you\u2019d be interested in seeing them. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:The two pieces Knoedler invited Gretchen to see were a bit of a mystery. They had almost no provenance. Provenance is pretty important in the art world. It\u2019s the chronology of everyone who\u2019s ever owned a particular piece of art. In a back room at the gallery, Gretchen and her mom looked at the paintings closely studying them. Gretchen thought they had the right proportions, the right colors. \u00a0Gretchen Dieben\u2026:The tonality of it was pretty good. Well, I would say quite good. But there was something wrong somehow to me, and so I kept looking at it and my mother kept looking at it. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:She finally realized what\u2019s missing. \u00a0Gretchen Dieben\u2026:It didn\u2019t have any soul. It had no life. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:But Gretchen didn\u2019t come right out and say what she was thinking. \u00a0Gretchen Dieben\u2026:Because we were advised early on never to say anything was not by my father, the F word as we refer to it. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:F word meaning fake. It\u2019s a big no-no in the art world because if you say an artwork is a fake, you can be sued. Owners can come after you for defamation of property. Even though she didn\u2019t use the F word, Gretchen says she made her uncertainty about the paintings clear to the gallery\u2019s president and Freedman. Then after a few months, she got a letter from the Knoedler Gallery. \u00a0Gretchen Dieben\u2026:Saying that because we had authenticated this work, they had then sold it and they wanted us to know that. And my mother was outraged, as was I, because we most certainly did not say that. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:Gretchen says she was never asked to authenticate the art, only to see it. Court documents show that lots of collectors who bought these fake paintings were under the impression that experts had authenticated them, but many experts testified that it never happened. \u00a0\u00a0So what became of those paintings Gretchen looked at. For that, we had to Manhattan\u2019s Upper West Side to meet Bernard Kruger. \u00a0Bernard Kruger:Molly. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:Bernard\u2019s a doctor. He lives in an apartment with his wife, two kids, their dog, Molly, and a lot of art. Bernard has been a lifelong fan of Richard Diebenkorn. \u00a0Bernard Kruger:I was always attracted to the underpainting, the color fields, the subtleness of it. And the collage. I like collage. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:He saw several Diebenkorn exhibitions at the Knoedler Gallery. He wanted to buy some of his pieces, but it wasn\u2019t easy. \u00a0Bernard Kruger:I would go to Knoedler and you\u2019d have to beg her to buy a Diebenkorn. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:He\u2019s talking about Ann Freedman. She was a tough gatekeeper. \u00a0Bernard Kruger:She was absolutely nasty about it, and if you weren\u2019t somebody that she cared about, she wouldn\u2019t let you buy one. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:Why not? \u00a0Bernard Kruger:Well, because this is how she gave out her favors. And finally she let me buy one. I never got a choice of one. She never would let me buy the best. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:He says it was like this for years, always courting Ann Freedman, begging to buy. Then in 1994, things changed. Suddenly, he gets a call. Ann tells him that Knoedler has two pieces available for him to see. Those same Diebenkorns Gretchen and her mom looked at months earlier. \u00a0Bernard Kruger:Oh, I think I paid 80 for it or 75, and by then I was paying\u2026 \u00a0Gisele Regatao:I checked. He actually paid $95,000 for it, about 30,000 less than the last Diebenkorn he had bought. I asked him, \u201cDidn\u2019t you think it was strange, all of a sudden, a Diebenkorn is coming your way so easily and at such a good price?\u201d \u00a0Bernard Kruger:I thought it was great. Finally, I\u2019m getting a good deal on a Diebenkorn. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:Knoedler was getting a good deal too. Court records show that the gallery made $45,000 on Bernard\u2019s fake Diebenkorn, a profit margin of 90%. That\u2019s way above the industry average, which is more like 20 to 30%. Throughout the years, as Knoedler buys more and more of the fakes. Its profit margin skyrockets. In some cases, the gallery sold paintings for more than 10 times what it paid to the dealer, Glafira Rosales. \u00a0\u00a0I learned that in 2003, the International Foundation for Art Research or IFAR analyzed one of the Pollock\u2019s that came from Glafira. It could not confirm the painting was legitimate. Knoedler knew about this, but continued buying pieces from her anyway. \u00a0\u00a0Court records reveal that between 1994 and 2011, the fakes were the only thing keeping the Knoedler Gallery profitable. The business made about $30 million over that period, but take away the fakes and it would have been more than $3 million in the hole. \u00a0\u00a0The art world is notoriously unregulated. It\u2019s often compared to the markets for drugs and guns, and deals are frequently sealed with handshakes. Still, there are best practices, tried and true methods that galleries use to ensure that the artwork they are selling is legit. To talk about how it\u2019s supposed to work, I turn to one of the most prominent art dealers in the country. Everything smells of wood here. \u00a0Mark Glimcher:That\u2019s me burning incense. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:Meet the metaphysical Mark Glimcher. \u00a0Mark Glimcher:I\u2019m so crystals. Oh my God. I\u2019m way past New Age, okay. This is about enlightenment. Am I right? I mean, what else is the art world about? \u00a0Gisele Regatao:Mark is the president of Pace Gallery. It\u2019s one of the largest galleries in New York City. It was founded by his dad in 1960. Pace represents one of the giants of American art, Mark Rothko. Still, it\u2019s not like the gallery has his paintings sitting on shelves. They are extremely rare. But it seems it\u2019s my lucky day. \u00a0\u00a0So do you have a Rothko available? \u00a0Mark Glimcher:Yes, I do. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:You do? \u00a0Mark Glimcher:Strangely enough. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:Could we see it? \u00a0Mark Glimcher:No. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:Why? \u00a0Mark Glimcher:I\u2019m sorry. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:Why not? \u00a0Mark Glimcher:Because I\u2019m only allowed to offer it to one person and that person\u2019s waiting. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:Oh, but we\u2019re not going to buy it. \u00a0Mark Glimcher:I know. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:We\u2019re just pretending. \u00a0Mark Glimcher:I know. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:Can you describe the painting or tell us what it is? \u00a0Mark Glimcher:Good question. Can I do that? \u00a0Gisele Regatao:Well, he can\u2019t. All Mark can say is it\u2019s owned by someone famous. \u00a0Mark Glimcher:That famous owner does not want anyone to know that this painting is for sale. Okay? So that lends us towards a possibility for fraud because I can turn to you and say, \u201cI can\u2019t tell you anything about this painting.\u201d \u00a0Gisele Regatao:I know. \u00a0Mark Glimcher:\u201cIt\u2019s a secret.\u201d \u00a0Gisele Regatao:Mark says there\u2019s a reason it\u2019s done this way. \u00a0Mark Glimcher:We don\u2019t want Rothkos floating around on the open market and people discussing the prices and is it available? Why is it available? Why does that person need the money, et cetera, et cetera? We\u2019re a business where being the first or only person to be offered that painting is very important to the value of that painting. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:This is part of how art dealers create excitement and control prices. They don\u2019t offer them to just anybody. \u00a0Mark Glimcher:We should be able to offer it to one person and sell it. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:Mark says trusted collectors are the ones who get to buy the best work. No one else. People like me don\u2019t get to just walk in off the streets and buy a Rothko, but that\u2019s exactly what happened at Knoedler. One collector walked into the gallery for the first time and was offered a Rothko and a Pollock. He bought the Rothko. It was fake. Mark\u2019s tight-lipped about his Rothko. But after some prodding, he does tell me the price, more than $100 million. \u00a0\u00a0Even though buyers might not have all the information they would like, Mark says there are basic safeguards to make sure people are getting what they pay for. \u00a0Mark Glimcher:So we say your painting has been included in the catalog resume. We show you that it\u2019s in the catalog resume. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:The catalog resume is like the artist Bible. It has all of his or her works that are believed to be authentic. In the case of the fakes, Knoedler and Julian Weissman were selling works without that. Buyers had no proof that Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, or Robert Motherwell had ever created the paintings they were paying millions for. There\u2019s another way paintings are authenticated. \u00a0\u00a0You can\u2019t tell me who is selling it. \u00a0Mark Glimcher:No. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:Can you give me some documentation of provenance? \u00a0Mark Glimcher:I can definitely give you the documentation of the provenance, but the last entry is going to say private collection, New York. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:Perfect provenance should trace ownership of a painting all the way back to the artist\u2019s studio proving that it\u2019s authentic. But holes in provenance are common. \u00a0\u00a0So it looks like I\u2019m going to this in the dark. \u00a0Mark Glimcher:You\u2019re going to be a little bit in the dark. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:The collectors who bought all those fake paintings were completely in the dark because the works had almost zero provenance and nothing in a catalog resume. Those collectors should have been more skeptical, but so should the galleries. They bought masterpiece after masterpiece that supposedly came from a single anonymous collector. What collector has dozens of masterpieces of unknown origin? I spoke to several experts who say that after years of buying up mysterious works, the gallery should have realized it was too good to be true. \u00a0\u00a0If you had been in that situation, would you have bought those paintings? \u00a0Mark Glimcher:No. Never. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:If people that are in this market commit some kind of wrongdoing in the practice of your profession\u2026 \u00a0Mark Glimcher:Absolutely. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:\u2026 don\u2019t you think they should be punished for it? \u00a0Mark Glimcher:Yes. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:Do you think they were? \u00a0Mark Glimcher:Probably not. We are in a business of trust, and I think that if you break trust and do not assume immediately 100% responsibility, nothing\u2019s worse than that in the art business. There couldn\u2019t be no greater crime. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:I spoke to multiple victims for this story who believed that at some point the two galleries must have suspected that the paintings they were selling were fake, which is why this next detail raises even more questions. John Howard says a few months after he bought that fake de Kooning, he got a call from Knoedler\u2019s president, Ann Freedman. \u00a0John Howard:She said, \u201cWhat other artists are you interested in? What other paintings are you interested in because you never know when we\u2019re going to come across something?\u201d \u00a0Gisele Regatao:John says he told her about one artist he loves, American abstract painter, Robert Motherwell. \u00a0John Howard:There\u2019s a series of paintings that he did called the Spanish Elegy series, which are beautiful paintings and they\u2019re large format ones and small ones. And I said, \u201cI know the small ones are rarer, but I\u2019d really be interested in a small format Spanish Elegy painting. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:Then about six months later, John says Ann calls him again. \u00a0John Howard:And she goes, \u201cJohn Howard, I don\u2019t know\u2026 I remember this expression. \u201cI don\u2019t know what lucky star you live under, but guess what I have in my hands?\u201d And I pause and I think, and I go, \u201cA small format Spanish Elegy painting.\u201d And she goes, \u201cExactly. Can you come on Saturday to see it?\u201d \u00a0Gisele Regatao:But when John sees the painting, he doesn\u2019t like it and decides to pass. That extremely rare Motherwell also turned out to be fake. \u00a0Al Letson:That fake painting came from Glafira Rosales. We don\u2019t know if Ann Freedman asked Glafira for it specifically, but prosecutors did find that on multiple occasions, gallery employees went to Glafira to request specific hard-to-find works. We\u2019ll learn more about that after the break when we sit down with Ann Freedman\u2019s lawyer, Luke Nikas. \u00a0Luke Nikas:The document production that Knoedler made in this case was thousands and thousands and thousands of pages of research and memos and letters\u2026 \u00a0Gisele Regatao:Research on what? \u00a0Luke Nikas:On the story. So\u2026 \u00a0Gisele Regatao:But that was all fake. What kind of research was that? \u00a0Luke Nikas:Sure. \u00a0Al Letson:That\u2019s coming up on Revea.l \u00a0\u00a0From The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, this is Reveal. I\u2019m Al Letson. Today on the show, we\u2019re investigating one of the biggest art frauds in modern US history, 63 fake paintings totaling more than $80 million. Dozens of collectors were caught up in the scheme. The question we\u2019re asking, how did this happen? How did two well-respected New York galleries, Julian Weissman Fine Art and the Knoedler Gallery, resell fake painting after fake painting for 15 straight years. When we left off, collector John Howard had just passed on buying a Spanish Elegy painting from American artist Robert Motherwell. That painting would go on to expose this whole fraud. Reporter Gisele Regatao picks up the story with what happens next. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:Earlier, I described a catalog resume as a Bible of an artist\u2019s work. Everything an artist has ever done should be in there. Putting one together is like a treasure hunt. You have to go around the country, the world, examining each and every work that may have been done by an artist and you try to determine whether pieces are real or fake. That\u2019s what Jack Flam was doing in the early 2000s. He\u2019s the president of the Dedalus Foundation, an organization that promotes modern art. Jack and his team were building the catalog resume for Motherwell\u2019s work, and they got their eyes on a black and white painting with exaggerated drip marks. \u00a0Jack Flam:There was something off about the painting. Among other things, it was severely warped. I\u2019d never seen a Motherwell painting so warped. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:That piece was from the gallery Julian Weissman Fine Art. Later, they see a piece from the Knoedler Gallery. \u00a0Jack Flam:It was out of balance. The contours were too clean. There are whole series of compositional factors that didn\u2019t look right. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:So the committee decides they need to look at these paintings together. They gather images of seven different Motherwells. Four came from Knoedler and three from Julian Weissman. \u00a0Jack Flam:Seeing them together, they didn\u2019t look right. Six of them were dated 1953 on the back, and one is dated 1955. But the curious thing is that they were signed almost exactly the same way. In other words, there was a kind of almost like a template that somebody was following. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:At that point, Jack turns to the group and asks. \u00a0Jack Flam:\u201cSo do you think they\u2019re fake?\u201d And they said, \u201cYes.\u201d And I said, \u201cI think you\u2019re right. I think they are fake.\u201d \u00a0Gisele Regatao:They felt they had to act right away. \u00a0Jack Flam:The very first thing we did was we called Ann Freedman. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:The president of the Knoedler Gallery. \u00a0Jack Flam:Thinking we\u2019re doing her a big favor because if she\u2019s dealing with fake paintings, she should know it. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:But when Ann came to meet them, Jack says it was clear she didn\u2019t see it as a favor. \u00a0Jack Flam:Instead of saying, \u201cWow, thanks so much for letting us know,\u201d she started arguing with us. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:Jack starts suspecting that the problem might be bigger than a few fake Motherwells, so he reached out to art experts who\u2019ve seen other paintings sold to the galleries by Glafira Rosales. She\u2019s the woman who would eventually be convicted for selling all the fake paintings to the galleries. \u00a0Jack Flam:And they all tell me that they had harbored suspicions for a long time about those paintings, paintings by other artists, by Rothko, by de Kooning. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:Why didn\u2019t say anything? \u00a0Jack Flam:They didn\u2019t say anything for the same reason that we didn\u2019t say anything at the beginning publicly, which is they were afraid to get sued for defamation of property. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:In other words, they didn\u2019t want to use the F word either. If they were wrong, they could be sued for defamation. But proving a painting is fake can be hard to do. So Jack\u2019s team hires a private investigator to look into Glafira Rosales. Very quickly, they learned that her boyfriend has been sued in his home country of Spain, including for selling fake art. Jack\u2019s shocked that the two galleries don\u2019t seem to know any of this. \u00a0Jack Flam:If I were buying millions of dollars worth of paintings from someone who had a classic flimsy story, I would\u2019ve at the very least Googled her, hired a private investigator. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:With this new evidence, they decided to hire a forensic expert. People assume this kind of analysis is commonplace in the art world, but it\u2019s not. Million dollar paintings are bought and sold all the time without it because forensic analysis is expensive. So it\u2019s used more as a tool of last resort. \u00a0\u00a0The test on the Motherwell is conclusive. The painting could not have been made back in the 50s because some of the materials didn\u2019t even exist then. But still, Jack says, even at this point, Ann Freedman keeps insisting the painting is real. So in March of 2009, he calls the FBI. \u00a0\u00a0As the investigation gets underway, Knoedler quickly crumbles. All the paintings from Glafira Rosales were placed on a not for sale list. Without them, the gallery couldn\u2019t stay afloat. At the end of 2011, the oldest gallery in New York City, which had been in business for 165 years, closed its stores. Then came a dozen lawsuits. Collectors, including John Howard, sued the owners and presidents of the galleries. All the suits were settled, all for undisclosed amounts. \u00a0\u00a0We mentioned earlier that the only one to be prosecuted in all of this was Glafira Rosales, and until early 2020, the heads of the galleries, like Julian Weissman, were still in business. I got in touch with his lawyer, David Baumm, to set up an interview, but.. \u00a0David Baumm:Julian is not going to\u2026 I mean, I don\u2019t want to say this rudely or anything, but he\u2019s not going to sit down for an interview. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:No? Why not? \u00a0David Baumm:Why? Why would he? \u00a0Gisele Regatao:I explained it that I wanted to give Julian a chance to tell his side of the story. David told me his client was a victim too, who just like the collectors was scammed by Glafira Rosales. \u00a0David Baumm:As far as we\u2019re concerned, this is sort of behind us. It would be nice for this story to go away rather than people continuing to bring it up. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:But there\u2019s a reason I\u2019m bringing it up. \u00a0\u00a0Without the galleries, collectors never would have bought those fakes in the first place. Clients trusted Julian Weissman and the Knoedler Gallery to get this right. So how did they get it so completely wrong? The former owner of Knoedler, Michael Hammer, also wouldn\u2019t talk to me. Gisele Regatao:I mentioned earlier that Ann also wouldn\u2019t agree to be interviewed for this story, but I did manage to sit down with her lawyer, Luke Nikas. I met him at his office on Madison Avenue. 1, 2, 3. The first thing that caught my attention was his art. Tell me, what do you have here? \u00a0Luke Nikas:So there are three paintings. One is a painting in the style of Mark Rothko. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:In the style of. That\u2019s his way of saying that, yeah, he decorated his office with a few of the fake paintings. \u00a0Luke Nikas:The one in the center is a work in the style of Jackson Pollock. In the bottom, it\u2019s signed in the lower right-hand corner. This is the work that got some attention because Pollock is not spelled correctly. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:Even though they\u2019re not real, he says they have value to him, so he asked Ann if he could keep them. \u00a0Luke Nikas:From my perspective, if I\u2019m not going to buy a $15 million Mark Rothko painting, and this is an interesting piece of art history, an interesting piece of legal history, and happens to be an interesting work of art itself, that\u2019s good enough reason for me. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:I asked Luke why Knoedler bought so many paintings with almost zero provenance, just a story from Glafira Rosales about an anonymous European collector. Luke insists the gallery did pressure Glafira to provide more information. \u00a0Luke Nikas:And Rosales reaction is, in essence, he\u2019s an extremely private person. He\u2019s not going to reveal his name. And you have the work of art there. And if you\u2019re comfortable with the work of art, then this is in essence a story that\u2019s behind it. And so\u2026 \u00a0Gisele Regatao:Now, how common is that for Knoedler to be buying art with a story like that? \u00a0Luke Nikas:It is uncommon. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:Remember, Knoedler was making a lot of money on these paintings, sometimes selling the fakes for more than 10 times what it paid for them. But, Luke says, that was for a good reason. \u00a0Luke Nikas:Knoedler got them and did an incredible amount of diligence to vet them. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:Knoedler claims it did two things to vet the paintings. First, it brought in experts. The gallery says every one of them believed the paintings were authentic. And during a civil lawsuit, some testified that they did believe the works were real, but other experts say they only saw the paintings briefly or that they didn\u2019t fully authenticate them. Second, the gallery says it did research on whether Glafira Rosales\u2019 story about the anonymous collector was plausible. Not if the story was true, but if it was plausible. Luke says they concluded it was. \u00a0Luke Nikas:The document production that Knoedler made in this case was thousands and thousands and thousands of pages of research and memos and letters\u2026 \u00a0Gisele Regatao:Research on what? \u00a0Luke Nikas:On the story. So\u2026 \u00a0Gisele Regatao:But that was all fake. What kind of research was that? \u00a0Luke Nikas:Sure. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:You and I would have done better, Luke. \u00a0\u00a0I spent months examining court documents and found a letter that hasn\u2019t been reported on before. It\u2019s from then US attorney Preet Bharara to the judge who was sentencing Glafira Rosales for her role in all this. Glafira has been silent about the fraud and wouldn\u2019t agree to be interviewed for this story. But Bharara\u2019s letter is a window into what she told prosecutors. \u00a0\u00a0Glafira alleges that gallery employees eagerly demanded hard-to-obtain works from famous artists without ever questioning where they came from. Luke says there\u2019s a simple explanation for this, that his client, Ann Freedman, was just trying to understand what paintings the anonymous collector might have. \u00a0Luke Nikas:And when you look over the course of the entire 14 years, Glafira was very careful about what she brought to the gallery. She\u2019d bring one work a year. She\u2019d bring two works a year. She would never say completely what was in the collection beyond that. And the way she did that meant that she didn\u2019t create the kind of red flags that are easy to see when you look at this today backwards. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:Bharara\u2019s letter also says Glafira told investigators that employees at the two galleries helped come up with fake provenance. Luke sees this differently. He says Knoedler was just trying to establish provenance. Employees were doing their due diligence. And he says without meaning to that research ended up making the fake paintings even more attractive to collectors. \u00a0Luke Nikas:But ultimately, this information sold works that were fake. And so did we mean for that to happen? I think they\u2019d say absolutely not. But did that happen? Of course it did. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:I tried reaching out to Preet Bharara about that letter, but I never heard back. However, I did manage to track down the lead federal prosecutor in the art fraud case, Jason Hernandez. \u00a0Jason Hernandez:This was a difficult case. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:Jason spent years investigating the fake art scheme when he worked at the US Attorney\u2019s Office. I asked him why the galleries were never indicted. He says it\u2019s because cases like this are tricky, that it\u2019s hard to prove the galleries were intentionally selling fake art. \u00a0Jason Hernandez:The burden in a criminal case is extremely high. You have to prove that someone set out to defraud another person beyond a reasonable doubt, and you got to convince 12 people of that. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:Jason is careful while he talks to me. He will only reveal so much about the case. One thing he does say is that while one can argue that the galleries acted carelessly, that isn\u2019t enough to charge them with a crime. \u00a0Jason Hernandez:Ultimately, a decision was made not to bring a criminal charge because you have to be able to prove an intent to defraud beyond a reasonable doubt. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:Did you agree with that decision? \u00a0Jason Hernandez:Oh, I\u2019m not going to comment on any of our internal decision-making, and that\u2019s not something that\u2019s public. \u00a0John Lauro:Given the other information in the case, it\u2019s inexplicable why the prosecution did not go forward. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:John Lauro is a former federal prosecutor in New York City and partner at a national law firm. I wanted his opinion on the case. \u00a0John Lauro:I\u2019ve seen cases with much less evidence get convictions, much less. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:John was not involved directly in the case. He says there is a bias that the art world is made up of wealthy people who can take care of themselves. But he says all victims deserve justice. And he thinks this case doesn\u2019t just matter to the people directly involved, but to anyone who caress about art. Because part of what art is about is an original idea, not just the reproduction of an idea. \u00a0John Lauro:If we don\u2019t have confidence in the genuineness of the art, then the art becomes diminished and it becomes almost worthless, so that what\u2019s the difference between a real Rothko and a fake Rothko? \u00a0Gisele Regatao:Do you think there should be more regulation or control of the art market? And if so, wouldn\u2019t the pursuit of cases like that send a message? \u00a0John Lauro:Absolutely. Ultimately, in my mind, the biggest deterrent to art fraud is a federal prosecution. Pure and simple. \u00a0Gisele Regatao:Glafira Rosales remains the only person who\u2019s been arrested for the scheme. In 2013, she spent three months in jail before being released on bail. She could have faced 99 years in prison. \u00a0Al Letson:Glafira was also ordered to pay $81 million to the victims of the scheme. She sold her house and her bank accounts were confiscated. Gisele tried many times to talk with her and was told Glafira rented a room from a friend on Long Island. The last time she went there to try to meet with Glafira, she wasn\u2019t home. She was working her new job, waiting tables at a restaurant 40 minutes away. We should also add that Michael Hammer, the founder of Knoedler Gallery, died in 2022. Thanks to reporter Gisele Regatao for that story. \u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s worth mentioning that since we first aired this story, there\u2019s been another high profile incident \u2013 25 forged paintings \u2013 fakes in the style of Basquiat \u2013 were shown at the Orlando Museum of Art in 2022. That fraud sparked soul searching across the artworld about how to tell the difference between fakes and the real thing.<\/p>\n
Coming up\u2026art looted by the Nazis during World War II turns up half a century later.
You\u2019re listening to Reveal. Stay with us<\/p>\n
\u00a0From The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, this is Reveal. I\u2019m Al Letson. Our next story isn\u2019t about an art forgery, but an art theft, one that\u2019s connected to a massive leak of documents. You\u2019ve probably heard about the Panama Papers. It was a trove of financial documents made public back in 2016 that shed light onto offshore financial systems that companies and the ultra wealthy used to hide their money and avoid taxes. Frederic Zalac from the CBC is one of the journalists who sifted through the Panama Papers. \u00a0Frederic Zalac:We often think about taxes all the time, but we don\u2019t think of the art world of being one where offshore entities are being used. \u00a0Al Letson:Frederick would get pulled into this story to find out what happened to one very rare and very valuable piece of art. It\u2019s a story we first aired back in 2017. Reveal\u2019s Emily Harris takes it from here. \u00a0Emily Harris:We start in Paris. It\u2019s World War II. The Nazis are in charge. \u00a0Speaker 15:In 1940, darkness fell over the city of light. \u00a0Emily Harris:Their orders include seizing and selling off anything of value that Jewish families own. \u00a0Kenneth Wayne:Art was a central aspect of the Holocaust. \u00a0Emily Harris:That\u2019s Kenneth Wayne. He\u2019s an art historian. He specializes in modern art. \u00a0Kenneth Wayne:So they would loot from Jewish families and from museums too. \u00a0Emily Harris:One of the paintings the Nazis looted was from a gallery owned by a Frenchman named Oscar Stettiner. Stettiner\u2019s descendants believe the looted painting was a portrait now called Seated Man with a Cane. \u00a0Kenneth Wayne:It\u2019s a man seated looking very dapper. He\u2019s got a mustache, he has a hat, and he looks like a Parisian gentleman. And it has kind of a caricatural quality to it. \u00a0Emily Harris:That portrait was painted around 1918 by an Italian artist named Amedeo Modigliani. \u00a0Kenneth Wayne:There were all these different movements during the time period he was working, but he really did his own thing. \u00a0Emily Harris:Modigliani died young. He never got rich, but now his work is more popular than ever. \u00a0Speaker 17:So we move to the beautiful Modigliani, lot eight, painted in Paris. \u00a0Emily Harris:In 2015, a different painting by Modigliani sold for $170 million. \u00a0Speaker 17:Sold here. \u00a0Emily Harris:That was one of Modigliani\u2019s famous nudes. That price puts his work into a very exclusive club. \u00a0\u00a0But let\u2019s head back to Paris. It\u2019s now 1944, July 3rd, a Monday. Allied troops have already landed in Europe. Paris will be free soon, but it\u2019s not yet. That Monday Nazi\u2019s order an auction at Oscar Stettiner\u2019s Gallery. After that sale, Seated Man with a Cane completely disappears and nobody sees it publicly for more than 50 years. \u00a0\u00a0So where does it go for half a century? Well, even when it turns up, there\u2019s very little information. It\u2019s now 1996. Seated Man with a Cane appears for sale at the swanky auction house, Christie\u2019s. Christie\u2019s doesn\u2019t mention Nazis or Oscar Stettiner in the information published for the sale. The descendants of Oscar Stettiner have no idea they might be the rightful owners. Enter the art hunter. \u00a0James Palmer:My name is James Palmer and I\u2019m the founder of Mondex Corporation. \u00a0Emily Harris:James is short and serious. He\u2019s a Canadian, but he lives in London, in Hampstead, a leafy neighborhood he loves. Inside James\u2019s apartment art is arranged quite tastefully. Art is his passion. Hunting lost art is his business. \u00a0James Palmer:Our company is in the business of helping clients recover looted assets and in particular art that was looted during the Second World War. \u00a0Emily Harris:Around 2009, James and his team are searching French archives for information about a completely different case. \u00a0James Palmer:And we happened upon a document that referred to the court claim after the war by Oscar Stettiner for The Seated Man by Modigliani. \u00a0Emily Harris:James knows Modigliani\u2019s famous nudes, but he\u2019s never heard of the Seated Man and he\u2019s never heard of Oscar Stettiner. So why the big fuss about these old French court documents? Because they tell him there is a looted painting out there and he is going to find it. The papers show that Oscar Stettiner went to court after the war to get the painting back. \u00a0James Palmer:And actually won that court case and won an order for that painting to be returned. \u00a0Emily Harris:But he never got it back. Meanwhile, James finds Stettiner\u2019s grandson. He tells him about this mystery. And in 2011, he helps Stettiner\u2019s grandson file a lawsuit to claim the painting. \u00a0James Palmer:This painting was stolen. It belonged to Mr. Stettiner, and it needs to be returned. \u00a0Emily Harris:And this is where the fight over the painting goes around and around in circles. Manhattan Civil Court. Fast-forward now to April 2016. The Panama Papers hit headlines all over the world. Here\u2019s Canadian Broadcasting Corporation journalist Frederic Zalac again. \u00a0Frederic Zalac:On this edition of the 50 State Stolen Treasures. \u00a0Emily Harris:Reporters collaborating on the Panama Papers first find emails about the missing painting, then they dig deeper. \u00a0Phillip Landrig\u2026:This case has multiple moving parts. \u00a0Emily Harris:That\u2019s New York lawyer, Philip Landrigan. He\u2019s done commercial law for 35 years. \u00a0Phillip Landrig\u2026:I wouldn\u2019t say that I\u2019m an art lawyer. I prepare cases for trial. \u00a0Emily Harris:His favorite part of the job is appearing in court. He represents Oscar Stettiner\u2019s grandson trying to get the painting. They sued an extremely wealthy, big art dealing family named Nahmad. One Nahmad son owns a gallery that had tried to sell Seated Man with a Cane a couple years before. But the Nahmads fight back in court. The very first paper they file, in fact the very first line written in their defense says to Oscar Stettiner\u2019s grandson, \u201cYou\u2019re suing the wrong people.\u201d This is where the Panama Papers make the difference. The Nahmads argue that a company called the International Art Center or IAC owns and controls the painting. Phillip Landrigan doesn\u2019t buy it. \u00a0Phillip Landrig\u2026:We don\u2019t believe that there\u2019s any distinction between IAC and the Nahmads because the company is not operated under normal corporate formalities. \u00a0Emily Harris:The IAC was actually created by that Panama firm that specializes in shell companies, the firm whose documents were leaked. And deep inside their 11 million records, reporters find evidence that the Nahmads own the IAC. So it appears they own the Modigliani painting, Seated Man. \u00a0Frederic Zalac:In court, there was a big debate about, well, no, it\u2019s not the Nahmads. They don\u2019t own the painting. They have nothing to do with it. And yet in the Panama Papers we could see that the ownership of the shell company was directly the Nahmad family. It was black and white there. \u00a0Emily Harris:So Frederic takes that proof to the Nahmads lawyer, Richard Golub. Here\u2019s that interview from Frederic\u2019s CBC report in 2016. \u00a0Frederic Zalac:So we have obtained internal documents of International Art Center. \u00a0Richard Golub:Have you? Public records? \u00a0Frederic Zalac:No, actually internal documents that show, for example, that the ownership of International Art Center is Mr. Nahmad\u2019s, 100% shareholder. \u00a0Richard Golub:Right. \u00a0Frederic Zalac:So Mr. Nahmad and IAC are one and the same. \u00a0Richard Golub:No, they\u2019re not. That\u2019s your point of view. But that\u2019s irrelevant. Whoever owns IAC is irrelevant. \u00a0Frederic Zalac:The person who owns the company that owns the painting. \u00a0Richard Golub:Well, that\u2019s your point of view. \u00a0Frederic Zalac:Well, it\u2019s not my point of view. It\u2019s the documents saying that here. \u00a0Richard Golub:I don\u2019t know what the document says. And it doesn\u2019t matter what the document says. That document may be superseded. I don\u2019t know what that document means, and I don\u2019t know where you got it. And it doesn\u2019t mean anything. \u00a0Frederic Zalac:The question here\u2026 \u00a0Richard Golub:No, I\u2019d like to know that. \u00a0Frederic Zalac:We don\u2019t go into\u2026 \u00a0Richard Golub:The interview\u2019s over with. \u00a0Frederic Zalac:We don\u2019t do that. \u00a0Richard Golub:The interview\u2026 There\u2019s nothing else to say. I\u2019m not going to\u2026 I told you before, there\u2019s nothing else I\u2019m going to say because who owns IAC is about as relevant to this as who\u2019s living on Pluto. \u00a0Emily Harris:I want to talk with Richard Golub further, but he declines. The lawyer on the other side representing Oscar Stettiner\u2019s grandson says the Panama Papers prove his allegations against the Nahmads. \u00a0Phillip Landrig\u2026:We alleged that they were the alter ego, but we didn\u2019t have the documentary evidence that the Panama Papers provided, specifically the stock certificate showing that David Nahmad was the sole shareholder. \u00a0Emily Harris:Still, CBC reporters want to know more. Producer Ronna Syed finds a connection that blows her away. The man who bought the painting at the Nazi auction kept it all those years. His daughter and grandson sold it through Christie\u2019s to the Nahmads. \u00a0Ronna Syed:It just seemed too much of a coincidence that the surname was the same as the seller of the painting in 1996 to Christie\u2019s. \u00a0Emily Harris:Other reporters are also hot on the trail. A French TV crew manages to film the painting inside the tax-free warehouse in Switzerland where the Nahmads stash it away. And that crew records something no one has ever seen publicly before. \u00a0Frederic Zalac:Before the painting was put back in place, the handlers turned it around. \u00a0Emily Harris:On the back, you can see a label from the Venice Biennale Art Show from 1930. \u00a0Frederic Zalac:There\u2019s a space for owner and it\u2019s scratched out and the address below is scratched out. But when you look at it closely, when the French team had some experts look at it, you could make out from the bits that are still there that the likely name that was there was Stettiner. \u00a0Emily Harris:For the art hunter James Palmer, this seals the deal. \u00a0James Palmer:Lo and behold, there\u2019s Oscar Stettiner\u2019s name and address. That was stunning information. \u00a0Emily Harris:But it\u2019s still not enough to end the hard-fought court case. It does raise new questions. Did Christie\u2019s know the painting\u2019s full history or did it hide information when the Nahmads bought it in 1996? The grandson\u2019s lawyer says this. \u00a0Richard Golub:Their provenance in the 1996 catalog is demonstrably false. \u00a0Emily Harris:Christie\u2019s has said that it reviewed 10,000 documents and could not find any more records of the painting\u2019s history. It\u2019s now been more than 70 years since Seated Man with a Cane was looted by the Nazis. The Nahmad family has fought for years to dismiss the lawsuit, but New York State Appeals Court has ruled it can go forward. And James Palmer, the art detective, says he\u2019s just found new evidence he believes will be important in that trial. He found a photo of the painting in a French archive with this note from the 1950s, \u201cModigliani, stolen. Sought in America.\u201d \u00a0Al Letson:That was Reveal\u2019s former reporter Emily Harris, along with CBC reporter Frederic Zalac. We first aired that story back in 2017. The lawsuit over the Modigliani is still moving forward more than 11 years later. Brett Myers and Susanne Reber edited today\u2019s show. Gisele Regatao and Emily Harris produced the show with help from Janet Babin. Thanks to Mark Scheffler, Miguel Macias, Victoria Burnett, and Deborah Solomon for help with the story about art fraud. It was supported in part by a grant from the Professional Staff Congress and the City University of New York. And thanks to CBC\/Radio-Canada for partnering on the story about looted artwork. Thanks also to Le Monde, NDR, and ICIJ for production assistance with that story. \u00a0\u00a0Missa Perron is Reveal\u2019s membership manager. Victoria Baranetsky is our general counsel. Our production managers are the Wonder Twins, Steven Rascon and Zulema Cobb. Original score and sound design by the dynamic duo, Jay Breezy, Mr. Jim Briggs and Fernando, \u201cMy Man Yo\u201d Arruda. They had helped this week from Brett Simpson, Najib Aminy, Sandra Lopez Monsalve, Claire C-Note Mullen, Katherine Rae Mondo, and Cat Schuknecht. \u00a0\u00a0Our CEO is Robert Rosenthal. Our COO is Maria Feldman. Our interim executive producers are Taki Telonidis and Brett Myers. Our theme music is by Camerado, Lightning. Support for Reveal is provided by the Reva David Logan Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Hellman Foundation. \u00a0\u00a0Reveal is a co-production of The Center For Investigative Reporting and PRX. I\u2019m Al Letson. And remember, there is always more to the story. \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Al Letson:From The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, this is Reveal. I\u2019m Al Letson. 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