#art fraud

[your-naked-magic-oh-dear-lord]

Someone with the URL unlikelyprincebird is going around scamming artists. They tried to scam me out of $150. Don't let this person "commission" you. I'm only out a couple hours of work. Don't be out hundreds of dollars.

[copperbadge]

Hi! did you hear about the FBI raiding the Orlando Museum of art because of their 24 fake Basquiat art pieces? Interesting story!

You know, I saw it cross my radar somehow, but I didn't chase it down at the time. It's a pretty big deal, and particularly interesting because the art was seized from a museum, which is rare in the case of huge wholesale fraud like this. It looks as though the art's owners, William Force and Lee Mangin, were likely using the exhibition as a way of adding legitimacy to the pieces they were trying to sell. Twenty-five forgeries in one place at one time is very unusual -- normally they'd be laundered through a gallery over the course of years, as with the recent Knoedler Gallery scandal.

It's unclear how the paintings came to be exhibited by OMA, or at least my initial digging didn't turn up much, but it's not likely that Force and Mangin had to pay out or twist many arms, given a 25-piece collection by a highly acclaimed dead artist is a pretty good tentpole for an exhibition. (The exhibition claimed 26 works on display, which makes me wonder, since the FBI definitely claimed 25 forgeries.)

At a guess I'd say that the paintings are likely fakes, Force and Mangin couldn't find buyers or even galleries to source buyers because the Knoedler scandal's getting too much press, and they got impatient and slung all the fakes together into the OMA to try and establish a more respectable provenance while drumming up independent buyers.

But, well, this is what I mean when I say art fraud is not a crime that only victimizes the wealthy. This has damaged the reputation of the OMA, possibly tainted Basquiat scholarship, and wasted public time and taxpayer dollars.

[hydeordie]

Canadian police uncover 'biggest art fraud in world history'

Eight suspects are arrested and more than 1,000 works seized following investigation into forgeries of paintings by the Ojibwe artist Norval

[chrisbattleart]

BUYER BEWARE! Someone's trying to pass a bad tracing of my old Dexter's Lab artwork off as official production art on eBay. (The original is probably somewhere in the Cartoon Network archives)  The worst part is someone’s already bid on it, so that buyer’s definitely going to get scammed.

Feel free to do that buyer a favor & report it to eBay as counterfeit: https://www.ebay.com/itm/194430132853?hash=item2d44f06275:g:~FsAAOSwPmlhY3aN

**UPDATE** The listing is GONE 👍 Thanks to anyone who filed a report!

[redlenai]

Argentinan painter plagiarises anime for $$$

So, a few weeks ago in my country, Argentina. It was discovered on social media that a painter (because calling her an artist feels a bit too humble) called Fatima Pecci Carou had an exhibition on Museo Evita, a public museum in which, her curator, Eva Grinstein won a grant of $50.000 argentinian pesos (around $500 USD) however, the news mostly went about Carou's peculiar choice of topic, not only works related to the icon of the Museum, Eva Perón an activist of the peronist party and first lady of Argentina from June 1946 until her death in July 1952 (But depicted as a feminist despite, the actual Eva Perón wasn't one) and anime.... You've heard right, anime, politics and a museum. But the problem wasn't the fact that a peculiar combination arised and was exhibited and even won a grant. It was not long ago that a digital artist while watching a Podcast talking about the woman noticed that the main work of the exhibition, called "Evita Ninja" was in fact, a plagiarized (also knock-off) version of a skin of Alice from the game SINoAlice. In specific Kimono Alice. The artist mention this to the Youtuber (TipitoEnojado), host of the podcast, and decided to work together to find out more about the works of this woman, maybe believing it was just a single one plagiarized work, a mere coincidence, or something intentional...

Tipito Enojado then, makes a video on June 13th called "Feminist scams a National Museum?" where, he first mentions the relationship of Fatima Pecci Carou's with the Museum, which herself in an interview mentions that: "Last year a girl from the museum Evita, an educator called Marcela, called me because she was interested in one of my works she saw online (Which was an "Evita Montonera", plagiarized from an illustration by SoundlessWind) and talked to me about making an exhibition!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Td1JIhqrbI

So, with that as a starting point. Tipito began to dig even more on the issue, he not only discovered that Fatima was in fact friends with judges, art critiques, and the fact that she collaborated with Eva Grinstein (her curator) for the grant of $50.000 argentinian pesos... but said grant was mentioned to be for Artists and curators that were affected negatively by the pandemic, were struggling to get incomes and did not get support from the State neither worked for the Minister of Culture. (Which, if you investigate a bit, there were several articles before the accusations began, that claimed that Fatima won the grant, not Grinstein... And when people began to talk about the issue, they claimed that Fatima winning the grant was missinformation, but seems that if it was under a positive and supportive lights, nobody cared about the mistake)

The relationship between Fatima's militance and both the Minister of Culture and Museum Evita, originates from the fact that Tristán Bauer was put in the position of Minister in 2019 by the current president Alberto Fernandez, while Aída Ocaranza, the director of Museum Evita, is an ex-deputy. Which, leads that if you're in favour of the current government, and if you make stuff involving both politics and activisim... it makes us believe that knowing someone with good connections its better than polishing your portfolio on your own. After the accusations went viral, 11 works were found, some artists were also contacted... Fatima, on her defense, claimed that she was only taking "references" that "art is all about taking other people's work, it has been done all along art history", "they put my work in comparison to a girl from Japan's, which she in fact is making artwork from My Little Pony (AgavoArt), then, she is also plagiarising"

Her curator, Eva Grinstein and even the art historian, Andrea Guinta, used examples such as Mona Lisa's reinterpretations, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and more... yet, it seems these 3 womans lack the fact that certain movements from Contemporary Art were in fact from a specific era, and specific topics, not to mention, that some of the examples they attempted to use from, were in fact works that common sense would say "This is reference because the general public knows about it" like the Campbell cans, Marilyn Monroe, Lichtenstein, etc. Let's not forget that in some cases some works are of free domain, like Mona Lisa. Or that said artists who based their work on plagiarism where sued, had to pay for the rights to use their reinterpretations, give royalties to the affected artists, or even, some of the affected ones made strips and narrated their situation and how negatively affected they were thanks to these appropriationists.

However, some of the original artists began to complain and show their disgust not only for the plagiarism but the fact that it is unbelievable that a Museum accepted this, that this woman managed to post these knock-off works on Artsy and even sold them, which in a technical level aren't even the great thing. We argentinians know we can't do anything against a woman that takes advantage of her privileges as a militant of both feminism and peronism party (Which, to be honest, there are way greater artists who are part of the movement or are militants), its an employee of the Minister of Health, she even works for the Federal Administration of Public Revenue (where all Fatima's information is public, in case someone asks about the ""doxxing"", not to mention she had her ID documentation and even more in public on her own FB page which is no longer visible, same her instagram) and is friends with people such as the curator, the Museum administratives and such.

Here is a Google Doc providing all the plagiarised works found so far, which are 36... there is also screenshots of her profile on Artsy regarding said stolen works being for sale or sold, which are no longer available on her profile as she immediatly deleted them after being accused. Not to mention some tweets of some of the affected artists like AgavoArt, SoundlessWind and Batusawa. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HOHPqUK36d6720oMvYX0gqsVepIy1KRubopTLJtalEE/edit?usp=sharing The issue is mostly in spanish, which was addressed by the YouTuber TipitoEnojado (little angry guy) in 4 videos. Of course other spanish youtubers addressed the issue as well, and even some art oriented youtubers too. There were people who only came from the anti feminist/peronist party, but, not only they took advantage of the art theft to insult Fatima, but she herself, took advantage of that to victimize herself and claimed that the accusations were made by "facists otaku juveniles", that is only a thing regarding macho men and that they want to move her away because of the message/topic she touches with her "work", and as we know, she even attempted to accuse the original artists because she doesn't know the difference between fanart and plagiarism... and the fact that most of the independent/professional artists she took works from are mostly women, the rest, were works stolen from editorials, animation houses, videogames and such. Tipito Enojado's videos (Only in Spanish): Feminist scams a National Museum? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFr2XbeP7Lc Critique of Feminist Art with a famous artist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcrFgMYRyEI This is not art - Interviewing Avelina Lesper https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2FpH5hdRak All against all - Feminism "defends" Fatiam Pecci Carou https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PbU_86oCsk Then, some english videos came after bilingual anime fans, artists and people in general began to talk about the issue at a greater scale: Japanese artists have a terrible situation going on... by Hero Hei https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldm9AL6LeEE

The Worst Professional Artist Ever Is Selling Stolen Art For $$$ by Mohammed Agbadi https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9J7SSJTUiOE Artist Accused of PLAGIARISING Anime Fan Art and Selling it for THOUSANDS! by ClownFish TV https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ub5SC3cLJ0&list=LL&index=24 As an Argentinian, digital artist and freelancer myself I honestly don't know what to feel despite anger, as I'm also an acquaintance of Batusawa, one of the artists plagiarised by Carou, which I've been translating the issue to her after she was contacted by TipitoEnojado and yes, we cannot believe all the stuff that has been said. These contemporary, militant artists... seems to don't know that we no longer live on the 60's, that we are connected with different people around the globe, that copyright laws are a thing, intellectual property is a thing, you and I are wondering now... Why this woman thought no one was going to notice? The answer must be simpler than we thought: Just as she targetted people, the affected artists and other art connoisseurs of ignorants, she assumed the general public of Argentina were ignorants too and that no one was going to notice her highly-referenced knock-offs... Fun thing, the few people that originally defended Fatima without knowing about the issue, saw her paintings and said "well maybe she doesn't know about anything, based on her works, she must be pretty young" and once they discovered that in fact this woman is 37 years old, damn they went nuts and couldn't believe this. Let's not forget now that there are individuals who claim that the whole issue is nothing but "jealousy" because the original artists couldn't achieve the same as Fatima and that this is nothing but boosting her fame... I hardly doubt it. Archive by HoannSetrid of Fatima’s Website before takedown https://archive.is/84mYQ

https://archive.is/ZM8c8

https://archive.is/GQYJV

https://archive.is/S2qkN

Her profile on Artsy is still there, but all the works were deleted after she was exposed. Some of the plagiarized works were on sale on between $2.000 to $5.000 USD https://www.artsy.net/artist/fatima-pecci-carou/works-for-sale

[agentfascinateur]

A SCOTUS art fraud case with WWI roots, not WW2...

The Rosenbergs were not victims. In 1921, one of the brothers curated the state sale of seized art belonging to German collectors in Paris, of whom Kahnweiler - a Picasso dealer. They sent masterpieces to NYC to their partner Wildenstein. The Wildenstein Institute was found in possession of masterpieces a few years ago, whose provenance they could not substantiate:

https://www.artlyst.com/news/wildenstein-scandal-the-end-of-the-road/#:~:text=The%20Wildenstein%20Institute%20a%20non,carted%20off%20by%20the%20police.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/listen-live-supreme-court-to-decide-whether-nazi-art-case-stays-in-u-s-court

Supreme Court to decide whether Nazi art case stays in U.S. court

Heirs to Jewish art dealers say their ancestors were forced to sell the Guelph Treasure to agents of Herman Goering, Hitler's second-in-comm

[maddcactus-art]

So, it happened... I just got two emails from PayPal, that one of my customers asked for their funds back. After a month since they received files of their commissions. I’ve answered PayPal’s letters, provided all of the information I could have. I tried to talk to the person that commissioned me, but they’ve blocked me on this account, so I messaged them from my other account and they haven’t answered yet. So, I’m waiting... The emails from which I received payment and the one that is asking for a refund - are different. I don’t know if this is someone’s kid used their parents's account, or if it’s a stolen account or is it just simply a customer trying to fraud me. The fact that they blocked me is very suspicious... Right now I’m kind of devastated. I hope that PayPal will solve this issue and in my favor, but if not - I’m 70$ in debt and I have no fucking money... If the person that commissioned me won’t answer - I will be obigated to de-anon them, I will post all of our conversations and the art they’ve received (which they asked not to post, and I didn't post it)... Because I don’t want this to happen to any oher artists. I want them to know, that this person does things like this... Also, it’s my birthday today, so, I guess, happy fucking birthday to me....

[demonicballoffluff]

Tattoo Fraud story

A lot of people don't know this but in November I got a #tattoo from @shnioka and I was super excited about it UNTIL about week later when I found out that it wasn't an #original piece (which I paid an enormous amount for) but a #ripoff that many other people have. Not until recently did I find the original artist @ginakielillustration. Never in the 13 hours of #tattooing this permanently on my arm did he mention that he #stole EVERY #detail of it from another #artist. I've been #lied to and ripped off and even 7 months later I am still #pissed. I've tried to contact him and the studio but I've gotten no response. All I have to say is that if you hire #martynas for a tattoo, be aware that it may be someone else's work. In the above #picture is the #design he showed me the day I got the tattoo, my tattoo and the #original #art.