A Pennsylvania man pled responsible on Could 29 to promoting works falsely attributed to Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, and different notable artists.
Based on the U.S. Lawyer’s Workplace, the person, 77-year-old Carter Reese, of Studying, was charged with one rely of wire fraud and one rely of mail fraud for an alleged art forgery scheme energetic between February 2019 and March 2021. He was accused of misrepresenting artworks as real creations from a number of the most adorned names in fashionable and up to date artwork, together with Jean-Michel Basquiat, Roy Lichtenstein, Keith Haring, Fernand Léger, and Francis Bacon—all of whom have eight- or nine-figure public sale information.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the Harvard-educated Reese labored at Pottstown’s Hill Faculty as a wonderful arts and historical past instructor and later as director of admissions. (The article added that Reese and his spouse have been previous neighbored with Taylor Swift in Wyomissing earlier than she moved to Nashville.) He was an avid antiques collector, with a group that held some 17,000 toys, Oriental rugs, and furnishings, amongst different objects. In court docket paperwork, he claimed the gathering had a complete worth of greater than $6 million.
The forgery scheme was found by a joint investigation by members of the FBI’s Artwork Crime Staff working in Philadelphia and Miami, and is being prosecuted Assistant United States Attorneys Ruth Mandelbaum and Jason Grenell. Reese is about to be sentenced on September 12 and faces a possible 40-year jail time period.
