GUILTY: Rosales Pleads Guilty to Fake Painting Sales

Appearing in federal court in Manhattan today, Glafira Rosales pled guilty to all nine counts, including wire fraud, filing false tax returns and money laundering, that she faced in connection with the ongoing investigation of the sale of forged works of art by the now-closed Knoedler gallery.
Ms. Rosales spoke to the court in a shaky voice, saying that she had knowingly ”agreed with others to sell works of art” said to be by Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock that were in fact forgeries. She is believed to have passed off more than 60 fake works as authentic pieces.
Judge Katherine Polk Failla accepted the guilty plea, and ran down a list of penalties that Ms. Rosales will face, including a maximum of 99 years in prison and restitution to victims of the fraud that is not to exceed $81 million. She will forfeit various property, artworks and bank accounts now in her possession.

Full U.S. Attorney press release follows.
Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced that art dealer GLAFIRA ROSALES pled guilty today in Manhattan federal court to participating in a scheme to sell more than 60 fake works of modern art to two New York art galleries. Her victims paid more than $80 million for the fake works. ROSALES also pled guilty to conspiracy to sell the fake works, conspiracy to commit money laundering, money laundering, and several tax crimes related to the fake art scheme. ROSALES pled guilty before U.S. District Court Judge Katherine P. Failla.
Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said: “With her guilty plea today, Glafira Rosales acknowledges her role in a sprawling fraud that involved the commission of phony artworks she represented as real, and her efforts to hide the proceeds of this massive scam in foreign bank accounts. Rosales’s plea shows that no matter how wide-ranging the deception, this Office will continue to bring the perpetrators of fraud to justice.”
According to the allegations contained in the Complaint, Indictment, superseding Indictment, and statements made in court:
ROSALES was an art dealer who, starting in 1994 and continuing through 2009, sold more than 60 never-before-exhibited and previously unknown works of art (the “Works”) that she claimed were by the hand of some of the most famous artists of the twentieth century, such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Robert Motherwell. She sold the Works to two prominent Manhattan art galleries for approximately $33.2 million. The galleries, in turn, sold the Works to victims of ROSALES’s crime for more than $80 million.
The Works were fakes created by a painter (the “Painter”) who resided in Queens, New York. ROSALES conspired with her long-time companion, identified as a co-conspirator (“CC-1”) in the superseding Indictment, to procure and sell the Works and to launder the proceeds of the fraud. CC-1 first met and befriended the Painter in Manhattan in the 1980s while the Painter was painting on the street. The Painter, who received formal art training at an art school in New York, created the Works for ROSALES and CC-1 at the Painter’s home in Queens. In some instances, the Painter signed the purported artist’s name to the Works, such as Jackson Pollock, but in other cases, CC-1 applied the false signatures. After ROSALES and CC-1 retrieved the Works from the Painter, CC-1 gave the Works the false patina of age by subjecting the Works to a number of different treatments.
The provenance that ROSALES supplied for the Works was also false. In selling some of the Works, she purported to represent a particular client who was associated with Switzerland, had inherited the paintings and wanted to sell them, but also wished to remain anonymous (the “Purported Swiss Client”). For the remainder of the paintings, ROSALES purported to represent a Spanish collector (the “Purported Spanish Collector”). She further claimed that a portion of the price paid by the Manhattan galleries would be a commission to her for selling the paintings and that the remainder would be passed along to her clients. In truth and fact, the Purported Swiss Client never existed and the Purported Spanish Collector never actually owned any of the Works.
ROSALES also filed tax returns that falsely and fraudulently tended to show that she had not kept all or substantially all of the proceeds from the sale of the Works, when, in fact, ROSALES kept several million dollars of the proceeds.
ROSALES received most of the proceeds from the sale of the Works in a foreign bank account that she hid from, and failed to report to, the IRS. United States taxpayers are required to report to the IRS the existence of any foreign bank account that holds more than $10,000 at any time during a given year by the filing of a Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts, Form TD F 90-22.1.
* * *
ROSALES, 57, of Sands Point, New York, pled guilty to nine counts, including: one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, one count of wire fraud, one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, and one count of money laundering, each of which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison; three counts of filing false federal income tax returns, each of which carries a maximum sentence of three years in prison; and two counts of willful failure to file Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts, Form TD F 90-22.1, each of which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison. ROSALES’s total maximum term of imprisonment is 99 years. She also agreed to forfeit $33,200,000, including her home in Sands Point, New York, and to pay restitution in an amount not to exceed $81 million. Rosales will be sentenced by Judge Failla on March 18, 2014 at 2:30 p.m.
Mr. Bharara praised the outstanding efforts of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation in the investigation, which he noted is ongoing.

GLAM! THE PERFORMANCE OF STYLE

BBI IS ENTERING THE INTERZONE UNTIL THE FALL


 

Museum für Gegenwartskunst Basel

AI WEIWEI DUMBASS VIDEO

LYON BIENNALE SEPTEMBER 2013

Photo: Roe Ethridge. Design: An Art Service.

INFLATABLE SCULPTURE IN HONG KONG

Extreme Weather Pops McCarthy's Inflatable Poop: Paul McCarthy's 50-foot-tall inflatable sculpture portraying a pile of excrement, "Complex Pile," has caused a bit of a mess. The scatalogical work was on view as part of an exhibition of inflatable art organized by M+ in Hong Kong's West Kowloon Cultural District, but things went wrong when a spate of extreme weather caused it to burst. "A small hole was discovered on the surface of the piece. We are doing our best to fix it and hopefully we can inflate the artwork as soon as possible," a spokesperson for the cultural district said. Other works in the show by Jeremy Deller, Tomas Saraceno, Tam Wai-ping, and Cao Fei emerged unscathed, though a piece by Korean artist Choi Jeong-hwa sustained major damage. [South China Morning Post]

EXHIBITION: SCHOOL OF DEATH AT FAMILY BUSINESS

7 May – 18 May 2013
Location: Family Business, 520 West 21st Street, New York Organized by Cabinet and Simon Critchley

Cabinet is pleased to present, in collaboration with philosopher Simon Critchley, the first incarnation of the School of Death, an educational institution dedicated to exploring the relationship between death and the examined life. As the institution's motto declares, "If the examined life is not worth living, then is death not worth examining?" A new lesson—taking the form of a drawing, a chart, a story, a parable, an anecdote—will be written each day on a chalkboard installed at Family Business. In addition, there will be a number of evening talks and programs at the exhibition space.
ABOUT SIMON CRITCHLEY
Simon Critchley, who is not dead yet, teaches philosophy for a living at the New School for Social Research. He writes for the New York Times and his new book Stay, Illusion!: The Hamlet Doctrine, co-written with Jamieson Webster, will be published by Pantheon in June. 
ABOUT FAMILY BUSINESS
Family Business is an exhibition space initiated by Maurizio Cattelan and Massimiliano Gioni. It is a free time-share: a space made available to people who have something interesting to say; a way to get to know new families and friends. Family Business is powered by the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College. A guest + a host = a ghost. Nadja Argyropoulou is the Family Business guest (or ghost) curator for 2013.
 

SWISS INSTITUTE: SCREENING: A ROAD NOT TAKEN

SWISS INSTITUTE

Screening | A Road not Taken

Thursday | May  2 | 7PM
18 Wooster Street

On the occasion of IDEAS CITY, Swiss Institute is pleased to screen A Road not Taken, a documentary film by Swiss artists Christina Hemauer and Roman Keller. In 1979, Jimmy Carter, in a visionary move, installed solar panels on the roof of the White House. This functional and symbolic installation was dismantled in 1986 during the Reagan presidency. Unity College, an environmentally-minded centre of learning in Maine, acquired the panels in 1991 and later installed them on the roof of the campus cafeteria. In A Road not Taken, filmmakers Hemauer and Keller travel back in time, following the panels' route from the White House to Unity College. The film includes interviews with decision-makers who guided the panels on this journey, as well as with figures from the 1970s energy crisis. It provides a unique look at how this initial installation has presaged our own era.