A Pennsylvania man accused of passing off forgeries as authentic works by well-known artists—together with Francis Bacon, Keith Haring, Jean Cocteau, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Pablo Picasso and Jean-Michel Basquiat, amongst others—has pleaded responsible to at least one rely of wire fraud and one rely of mail fraud.
Carter Reese of Studying, a metropolis northwest of Philadelphia, admitted to deceptive prospects concerning the provenance and authenticity of artwork that he bought or tried to promote between February 2019 and March 2021. Reese, who’s 77, faces as much as 40 years in jail. His sentencing is ready for 12 September, in accordance with the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
Reese, a prolific antiques collector and former next-door neighbor of celebrity musician Taylor Swift, was beforehand an worker of the celebrated Hill Faculty in close by Pottstown, first as a tremendous arts and historical past trainer and later as director of admissions, in accordance with the Philadelphia Inquirer. He and his spouse co-founded and then sold a world firm that helped college students achieve entry to elite boarding faculties and faculties. In courtroom paperwork, Reese described his assortment of toys, furnishings, rugs and mannequin trains as being value $6m.
Reese claimed that the forgeries he bought have been sourced both from the artists themselves or from different artwork collectors, one in every of whom had died in 2013 and one in every of whom was purportedly named Ken James. The truth is, “Ken James” was an alias for Reese’s provider, a Chicago-based man who had been convicted of promoting greater than $1m of counterfeit artwork, typically by shopping for copies on eBay and doctoring them to look real. That provider, recognized solely as “Affiliate 1” within the district legal professional’s case in opposition to Reese, died round November 2021.
Reese lured prospects with false affidavits and signatures to masks the inauthenticity of the works he was providing. His lawyer, Jason Hernandez, informed the Inquirer that his consumer “intends to make a full restitution to the victims”, which may quantity to a forfeiture of greater than $186,000.
Reese has additionally been a supposed sufferer of counterfeit grifting in his time as a collector. In response to the Inquirer, he filed for chapter in 2019 after claiming he had been ripped off as he tried to dump a few of his antiques. He accused the public sale home Pook & Pook of deliberately miserable the worth of his gadgets by way of purposeful mishandling, shabby presentation and highlighting a counterfeit toy Reese had purchased for $20,000, believing it was real.
