By Allan Lengel
ticklethewire.com
If only this were our biggest crime problem in America.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that the FBI seized “a well-traveled forgery of a 1939 Andrew Wyeth watercolor, the fourth such counterfeit painting to surface since the artist’s death in January.” Art fraud is a multi-billion dollar industry.
The paper reported that U.S. Attorney David C. Weiss of Wilmington said the same painting — “Wreck on Doughnut Point” — has been offered for sale several times since 1998 even after Wyeth had said it was a forgery.
Authorities announced that a California man who was trying to sell the painting won’t be charged because he too thought it was real. The real painting is worth about $100,000.
Wyeth’s paintings have gotten attention from the FBI in the past including in 2001 when it recovered a painting that had been stolen from a Chicago art gallery in 1967.
