The Art Newspaper

Fraudsters try to sell posthumous Warhol works

By The Art Newspaper. From In The Frame
Published online: 24 November 2009

Sometimes we’re astounded at the sheer audacity of art forgers. Take for example the news coming out of Salt Lake City, where a couple has been charged with trying to sell fake works by Pop icon Andy Warhol. First, the conniving con artists tried selling a man what they claimed was a Warhol portrait of “Matthew Baldwin”—supposed sibling of famous brothers Alec, Daniel, William and Stephen—signed and dated 1996. After giving them a $25,000 down payment, the unsuspecting collector took the work to be appraised and was surprised to discover that there is no Matthew in the Baldwin clan, and that the signature was also false, considering that Andy died in 1987. The couple then tried to repay the man with another work, a lithograph of a pink cat they also said was by Warhol, but which turned out to be a piece of old newspaper. Fool me once...