Man agrees to plead guilty in Basquiat artwork fraud scheme

The Orlando Museum of Art in Orlando, Florida, photographed in April 2011. A former auctioneer from Los Angeles agreed to plead guilty to faking works by Jean-Michel Basquiat that were shown at the Florida museum. The paintings were subsequently seized in a federal raid in 2022. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, photo credit Ebyabe. Shared under several Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike licenses, most recently the 3.0 Unported version.
The Orlando Museum of Art in Orlando, Florida, photographed in April 2011. A former auctioneer from Los Angeles agreed to plead guilty to faking works by Jean-Michel Basquiat that were shown at the Florida museum. The paintings were subsequently seized in a federal raid in 2022. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, photo credit Ebyabe. Shared under several Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike licenses, most recently the 3.0 Unported version.
The Orlando Museum of Art in Orlando, Florida, photographed in April 2011. A former auctioneer from Los Angeles agreed to plead guilty to faking works by Jean-Michel Basquiat that were shown at the Florida museum. The paintings were subsequently seized in a federal raid in 2022. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, photo credit Ebyabe. Shared under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

LOS ANGELES (AP) – A former Los Angeles auctioneer has agreed to plead guilty in a cross-country art fraud scheme in which he created fake artwork and falsely attributed the paintings to artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, federal prosecutors said April 11. The paintings ultimately wound up at the Orlando Museum of Art in Florida before they were seized by federal agents last year in a scandal that roiled the museum and led to its CEO’s departure after he threatened an art expert and told her to “shut up.”

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