EBay Art Fraud
2007-12-02
eBay may be a great tool for modern day painters to profit from their work online as their paintings usually sell for hundreds or perhaps a few thousand dollars at most. So investors are able to afford to take a risk on the art.
But when paintings start selling for very large amounts of money, art collectors seem skeptical to gamble online. One highly notorious case of art fraud that didn't help the cause was back in 2000 when a Californian lawyer who went by the name of Kenneth Walton sold a fake Richard Diebenkorn painting for $135,805.
Very simply, he played dumb and pretended that he stumbled across the piece at a garage sale, additionally he also helped the eBay auction along by recruiting his accomplice or business partner to repetively keep bidding on the work. It was eventually found to be a forgery signed by Walton, which later got him plenty of media coverage and the attention from the watchful eye of the FBI.
http://www.dryfuse.com
Well anyway, he has recently written a book "Fake: Forgery, Lies, & eBay" based on the previously mentioned crime. Obviously he seems to be exploiting this incedent and cashing in on the eBay art auction scam. It's disheartening to know that a fraud/conartist can profit from his crime by writing a book on it, but thats just the way the cookie crumbles.
Here's some of Kenneth Walton quotes from an interview with the Wired magazine..
"My description of the Diebenkorn painting was just a complete fable to make me look like a hapless everyman rube who found this painting in his garage, didn't know it's by Diebenkorn and puts it up and there's these letters in the corner but he doesn't know to mention and they just happen to appear in the corner of one of the photographs.
I was forced to quit selling on eBay and eBay banned me for life and I had to give up my law license, so I really didn't know what to do for my career."
"I don't know if I could necessarily call it redemptive. It was very cathartic, and it was a way for me personally to come to terms with what had happened. Even if no one buys it, it was great for me to go through the process of writing."
He also seems to be doing quite well according to his website over at kennethwalton dot com.
http://www.dryfuse.com
http://www.dryfuse.com
