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[light music]

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[Ann Freedman] No one wants to be fooled.

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People are fooled by art

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much more than we know.

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The Director at the Metropolitan Museum

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was once asked,

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"How many fakes do you think

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could possibly be on the walls?"

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To which he responded, "I have no idea."

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It's embarrassing.

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Worse than that,

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I think, is that they don't want to own up

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to admitting

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that they were fooled.

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I think it's, you know, very easy to see

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how I was

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so caught up

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in the excitement over the art.

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They say they are sure

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she was a part of the criminal enterprise.

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They say they're positive.

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Either she was complicit in it,

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or she was one of the stupidest people

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to have ever worked at an art gallery.

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I did not knowingly sell fakes.

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I was convinced that they were right.

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And real, and believable.

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I was convinced.

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[dramatic instrumental music]

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♪ You've got a cold Cold heart ♪

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♪ Do you feel at all? ♪

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♪ You build a house of cards ♪

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♪ But it's gonna fall ♪

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♪ I know all your secrets ♪

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♪ I know all your lies ♪

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♪ Oh oh, oh oooh Oh oh, oh oooh ♪

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♪ I know where you keep 'em ♪

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♪ Buried deep inside ♪

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♪ Oh oh, oh oooh Oh oh, oh oooh ♪

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♪ No you can't hide ♪

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♪ Your secrets and lies ♪

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[M.H. Miller] It was very abrupt at first.

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I mean, it started with the news of Knoedler closing.

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And that was shocking because Knoedler was

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very old-guard institution in the art world.

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And nobody really knew the details of that until...

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you know, news started leaking out about this forgery scandal.

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$80 million dollar scandal

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that has the art world up in arms tonight,

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and collectors checking their most prized possessions.

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This is probably the largest art fraud

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that has ever been discovered

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in the history of, of the United States.

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[male reporter] In this case, the accused forger created

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lookalikes of some of America's most prominent artists.

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A con that went on for, you know,

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nearly 20 years.

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This was someone who had the gall to say,

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Jackson Pollock, Motherwell,

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let's take some of the biggest names of 20th Century art.

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You've got collectors who bought something

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that is worth millions and millions of dollars...

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I have the opportunity to buy a Rothko?

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[Luke Nikas] ...and in fact, it's worth zero.

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[Blake Gopnik] People thought they were sublime masterworks.

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Before they knew they were fakes,

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people thought these are great works of art

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and they put them up in fancy museums.

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And one of the most important galleries

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this country's ever seen was at the center of it.

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[M. Shnayerson] The Knoedler Gallery was

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New York's most venerable,

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in part because of its sheer longevity.

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[M.H. Miller] They had survived the Civil War,

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two World Wars, the entire 20th Century.

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[Dr. Flam] They started as an Old Master dealer,

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and they sold to people like

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J.P. Morgan, Henry Clay Frick.

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They sold to the MET. They sold to the Louvre.

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In the early part of the 1970s,

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Armand Hammer, one of the great industrialists

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and philanthropists of the American 20th Century,

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acquired an interest in the Knoedler Gallery.

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His grandson, Michael Hammer,

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acquired an ownership interest around 2001.

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[Dr. Taylor] Michael Hammer essentially assumed

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control of the gallery and put Ann Freedman in charge.

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[Ann Freedman] I was at Knoedler for...

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it was just a touch shy of 32 years.

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[Dr. Flam] Ann Freedman had a reputation for being someone

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who could really sell art,

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who had a good relationship with collectors.

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[Ann Freedman] It was the roof that was over me.

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I worked for Knoedler.

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Knoedler was it. It was the institution.

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[M. Shnayerson] And it was a gallery that kept up

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with the times and trends.

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Ironically, the only era that they kinda missed

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was Abstract Expressionism in the early '50s,

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which would turn out of course to be the era

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that they were brought down by.

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[male reporter] At the center of this scam, authorities say,

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is this New York woman.

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Glafira Rosales.

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A self-described art dealer.

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[Emily Reisbaum] I mean, Glafira Rosales comes into Knoedler

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off the street with, you know,

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supposed masterpieces in the trunk of her car.

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Like yeah, you have a huge, you know,

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multi-million dollar trove of, of previously unknown paintings.

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You know?

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And all of them from this same,

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mysterious, Glafira Rosales.

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[Perry Amsellem] It was a perfect storm,

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and it was highly unusual for this amount of forged works

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to be going through Knoedler and fooling so many people.

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[clap]

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[Ann Freedman] It was...

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my recollection, 1995,

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Jimmy Andrade,

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he was kind of your guy Friday.

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You know, he just did a lot of things that came up.

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Trusted. Terribly trusted.

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He told me that he had a friend,

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a very special friend, who wanted to show me a Rothko.

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One day, Glafira Rosales came in.

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I don't think I knew her name at that point,

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but it didn't matter, I'd never heard of her.

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She was polite.

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Well-dressed.

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Very soft spoken.

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[M.H. Miller] There was no reason to trust Glafira Rosales.

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Nobody knew who this person was.

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She didn't have a great pedigree.

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She was just some lady from Long Island

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who came to the gallery one day.

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Rosales was the perfect part for this.

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Said the right amount of information,

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not too much, not too little.

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Just enough to make Ann interested,

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and to keep the relationship going.

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She had the Rothko work on paper,

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wrapped in some...

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between cardboards, I think.

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And I asked her, you know, could we unwrap it?

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Jimmy unwrapped it. Nothing unusual there.

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And I thought it was absolutely beautiful.

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Absolutely beautiful.

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If one can fall in love with something material,

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I do fall in love with art.

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I know it's not human so, you know,

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there's a, there's a limit, but I got genuinely excited

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about these works of art.

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Signature on the back.

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Dated. It looked very good.

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Oh, I, it would be normal for me, and it was that way then,

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to ask some questions,

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"Can you tell me anything about where it comes from,

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and the owner?" And she made it very clear

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that she had a confidentiality,

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the owner's name was not to be revealed.

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Little by little, other details

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came out of a sort of backstory.

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"Mr. X," so went the first story,

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uh, it got modified later, but...

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story one centered on this "Mr. X."

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[Ann Freedman] Very well-to-do family.

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They came over from Europe.

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They went to Mexico, not unusual after the war time.

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[M. Shnayerson] He and his wife had come to New York.

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They had bought paintings through

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a guy named Alfonso Ossorio.

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[Luke Nikas] Alfonso Ossorio lived in Long Island.

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He was... maybe a patron, if you will, of Jackson Pollock.

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He supposedly connected

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the anonymous collector and the artists.

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[Ann Freedman] They acquired a number of works,

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this isn't the only one, there are others.

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The Mexican guy, even though he doesn't like

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abstract art, takes all these paintings back to Mexico.

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How does he do this, on a wagon train?

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I mean, takes all these paintings back to Mexico

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and puts them, hermetically sealed, in the basement.

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He had given those works to his son,

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"Mr. X Junior."

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And his son now wants to sell them

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at cheap prices because the son doesn't care about money.

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As if rich people don't care about money?

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My experience is that rich people care about money

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even more than poor people.

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It's one of these stories

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where a couple of details are true,

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or tantalizingly plausible, I should say,

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and someone who is gullible just then ate the whole thing.

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Isn't that always the case with a con,

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that, you know, there is just enough to be believable in it?

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I thought, my God, this is a discovery.

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[auctioneer] Start the bidding at $33, 34, 35 million dollars.

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$36 million dollars the bid.

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36, to Stefan?

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36.

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48, with Charlie now at 48?

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[Charles Schmerler] Ab-Ex art, in about the year 2000,

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1998, went nuts.

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[auctioneer] At $57 million dollars?

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And Elizabeth will now bid 57.

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58.

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[Charles Schmerler] What was a decent market became

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a ridiculous hot market, and so things were selling

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for ten times whatever they had been sold for before.

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[Carter Ratcliff] The Abstract Expressionists were really

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the first group of American artists

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who developed an international reputation.

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The group included Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko,

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Barnett Newman, Lee Krasner, Robert Motherwell

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and Willem de Kooning, of course.

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They didn't really ever expect

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to find an audience, find collectors.

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At $65 million dollars then?

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Thank you! [audience applauds]

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Because of the prices right now

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of a lot of the Abstract Expressionist painters,

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it's more tempting perhaps

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to forge their works.

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[Ann Freedman] I knew from the story

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that the paintings were purchased

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late '50s, early '60s, for very little money,

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and it was believable.

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The artists were starving.

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They weren't just wanting to sell, they were really needy.

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Pollock had to, you know, exchange his paintings

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with the local grocery store or the liquor store.

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So the idea that at that point in time, someone could acquire

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the works very cheaply is nothing of a surprise.

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And don't forget, when this unidentified

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"Mr. X" was supposed to have been buying these,

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these works were not expensive.

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They were five, ten, ten thousand dollars.

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These paintings have never been exhibited,

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they have no known provenance,

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they have no real paperwork.

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Provenance is the key to it here.

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You know, you need to know

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where that painting came from.

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[Dr. Sharon Flescher] Provenance.

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Well, the simple definition

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of provenance is the history of ownership.

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It is, ideally, where you can trace the work

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from the current owner

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all the way back to the artist's studio.

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[M. Shnayerson] At the very least, there needed to be

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some paperwork showing

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when this work had been created, and who it had gone to.

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The sister might have some of the paperwork,

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but it's probably been destroyed.

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I mean, she was prepared with a story.

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There's no question.

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It's completely opaque.

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00:13:29,434 --> 00:13:33,688
And they should never have accepted this as provenance.

262
00:13:34,147 --> 00:13:36,566
I mean, you would've thought that at least

263
00:13:36,691 --> 00:13:40,570
one of those pictures might have appeared as a background shot,

264
00:13:40,695 --> 00:13:43,615
showing one of the artists in his studio.

265
00:13:43,740 --> 00:13:45,824
Often you can find some records

266
00:13:45,950 --> 00:13:48,286
of a work's existence, but it's never perfect.

267
00:13:48,411 --> 00:13:50,204
And records can be fabricated.

268
00:13:51,498 --> 00:13:55,376
[Ann Freedman] You had great collectors from Walter Chrysler,

269
00:13:55,502 --> 00:13:58,879
to Roy Neuberger, to Joe Hirshhorn, they all did that.

270
00:13:59,005 --> 00:14:00,340
They went into artists' studios,

271
00:14:00,465 --> 00:14:02,425
and they bought cheaper by the dozen,

272
00:14:03,343 --> 00:14:04,678
and they paid in cash.

273
00:14:06,053 --> 00:14:08,222
It was credible to me.

274
00:14:09,182 --> 00:14:10,767
I believed what I was told.

275
00:14:12,310 --> 00:14:16,105
There was mystery, but there's often mystery in provenance.

276
00:14:17,315 --> 00:14:20,985
But I hoped to solve that mystery as time went on.

277
00:14:28,368 --> 00:14:31,663
None of the works Rosales brought to the gallery

278
00:14:31,788 --> 00:14:34,791
were in the catalogue raisonnés of the artists.

279
00:14:34,915 --> 00:14:39,879
Catalogue raisonné is a comprehensive catalogue

280
00:14:40,004 --> 00:14:44,300
of the authentic works by a particular artist.

281
00:14:44,425 --> 00:14:45,844
[Dr. Sharon Flescher] Everyone accepts the fact

282
00:14:45,968 --> 00:14:48,054
that there might be some legitimate works

283
00:14:48,179 --> 00:14:50,682
that didn't make it into the catalogue raisonné,

284
00:14:50,807 --> 00:14:52,851
they weren't known to the authors at the time,

285
00:14:52,975 --> 00:14:56,145
but nonetheless, it is sort of a bible.

286
00:14:56,270 --> 00:14:57,731
What do you do?

287
00:14:57,856 --> 00:15:01,609
You go to the people who created the catalogue raisonnés,

288
00:15:01,735 --> 00:15:03,236
and you ask them, will you look at this,

289
00:15:03,361 --> 00:15:04,987
and give me your opinion?

290
00:15:05,112 --> 00:15:07,866
I first saw this painting, if memory serves...

291
00:15:07,990 --> 00:15:10,493
[Ann Freedman] And it happened that the expert,

292
00:15:10,618 --> 00:15:13,872
David Anfam, was in town from London,

293
00:15:13,996 --> 00:15:15,498
and I showed it to him.

294
00:15:15,623 --> 00:15:19,335
He had an immediate take, which I knew he would have,

295
00:15:19,460 --> 00:15:21,379
which is, it's beautiful.

296
00:15:21,504 --> 00:15:22,714
It's a Rothko.

297
00:15:25,842 --> 00:15:28,135
He had the expert eye for Rothko.

298
00:15:28,261 --> 00:15:31,097
He was noted as a Rothko scholar.

299
00:15:31,222 --> 00:15:33,933
Noted as an Abstract Expressionist scholar.

300
00:15:34,058 --> 00:15:37,311
Hired by the National Gallery and the Rothko family

301
00:15:37,437 --> 00:15:39,814
to do the catalogue raisonné,

302
00:15:39,980 --> 00:15:42,149
the bible, of Rothkos.

303
00:15:44,569 --> 00:15:46,613
Oh, it meant a great deal and it was right.

304
00:15:48,948 --> 00:15:49,824
[clap]

305
00:15:51,451 --> 00:15:54,704
[Maria Konnikova] A master con artist gives you what you want.

306
00:15:57,832 --> 00:16:01,085
Good con artists are very good psychologists.

307
00:16:01,210 --> 00:16:03,880
They're someone who understand human need,

308
00:16:04,004 --> 00:16:05,423
who understand human desire.

309
00:16:05,548 --> 00:16:07,634
Who understand how belief and how hope work.

310
00:16:08,885 --> 00:16:11,429
[Luke Nikas] Rosales was on the scene to demonstrate

311
00:16:11,554 --> 00:16:13,389
she was someone who could be trusted.

312
00:16:13,514 --> 00:16:15,975
Someone who had a role in this art world.

313
00:16:16,100 --> 00:16:18,227
[Ann Freedman] She went to auctions, to openings,

314
00:16:18,352 --> 00:16:20,563
and she bought art from me.

315
00:16:21,481 --> 00:16:24,818
To come to openings, you're coming to a public gathering,

316
00:16:24,943 --> 00:16:26,152
so you're not hiding.

317
00:16:26,277 --> 00:16:27,987
[M. Shnayerson] It was a fascinating game

318
00:16:28,112 --> 00:16:30,030
of cat and mouse, because

319
00:16:30,156 --> 00:16:33,576
with each additional painting that Glafira brought in,

320
00:16:33,701 --> 00:16:35,870
Ann would try to get information about

321
00:16:35,995 --> 00:16:38,122
"Mr. X" from her,

322
00:16:38,247 --> 00:16:41,417
and Glafira would say, "Well, I'll tell you this,

323
00:16:41,542 --> 00:16:43,670
he's very happy with how you're doing."

324
00:16:43,795 --> 00:16:45,129
[Ronald Spencer] Don't forget this was only

325
00:16:45,254 --> 00:16:47,966
one or two fakes sold by Knoedler a year.

326
00:16:48,090 --> 00:16:51,678
People look back at the total number and say, oh my goodness!

327
00:16:51,803 --> 00:16:54,889
They weren't brought up to Knoedler in a wheelbarrow.

328
00:16:55,014 --> 00:16:57,558
It was kind of a trickle over time,

329
00:16:57,684 --> 00:17:01,270
so, slow and steady was the plan here.

330
00:17:02,647 --> 00:17:05,191
You know, Glafira is a small,

331
00:17:05,316 --> 00:17:07,276
pretty quiet person.

332
00:17:07,401 --> 00:17:09,403
She doesn't fit the profile of what you might think

333
00:17:09,529 --> 00:17:12,615
would be a international art criminal.

334
00:17:13,867 --> 00:17:17,077
But we know that her boyfriend has an art background.

335
00:17:19,121 --> 00:17:20,623
[director] Just so I have it, so I know,

336
00:17:20,748 --> 00:17:22,583
If you could tell me your name.

337
00:17:22,709 --> 00:17:27,463
My name is José Carlos Bergañtinos Díaz.

338
00:17:31,091 --> 00:17:32,886
[Perry Amsellem] Who is Bergañtinos?

339
00:17:33,011 --> 00:17:35,054
Who is Glafira Rosales?

340
00:17:35,179 --> 00:17:40,059
These people have a gallery, supposedly, in New York City.

341
00:17:40,184 --> 00:17:42,854
They supposedly have a gallery in Sands Point.

342
00:17:42,979 --> 00:17:44,731
They've been accused of trafficking

343
00:17:44,856 --> 00:17:46,816
forgeries in Spain.

344
00:17:46,941 --> 00:17:50,194
Bergañtinos was accused in a lawsuit in 2006

345
00:17:50,319 --> 00:17:52,906
of having forged various documents.

346
00:17:53,031 --> 00:17:55,449
[Jason Hernandez] There are red flags surrounding him.

347
00:17:55,575 --> 00:17:58,536
There's indications that if there's a scheme here,

348
00:17:58,661 --> 00:18:01,497
and there clearly is, that he is in on it.

349
00:18:01,622 --> 00:18:04,876
[director] Ann Freedman ran the gallery.

350
00:18:05,001 --> 00:18:07,127
Did you ever meet her?

351
00:18:07,253 --> 00:18:11,424
[in Spanish] I never met her, never.

352
00:18:12,926 --> 00:18:18,014
I didn't know the assistant either, I didn't know anyone.

353
00:18:18,138 --> 00:18:19,640
Whether it was Bergañtinos

354
00:18:19,766 --> 00:18:21,851
or whether it was Glafira, they did their research.

355
00:18:21,976 --> 00:18:25,396
When you pick someone like Ann, you're picking someone

356
00:18:25,521 --> 00:18:28,357
at a very vulnerable moment in their career

357
00:18:28,482 --> 00:18:29,901
when they need something like this.

358
00:18:30,026 --> 00:18:31,527
And that's one of the things that

359
00:18:31,652 --> 00:18:33,613
someone like Glafira and Bergañtinos

360
00:18:33,738 --> 00:18:35,197
are banking on.

361
00:18:35,322 --> 00:18:37,658
A con artist isn't a good speaker.

362
00:18:37,784 --> 00:18:39,953
A con artist is a good listener.

363
00:18:40,661 --> 00:18:43,998
And Glafira did that so incredibly well.

364
00:18:48,544 --> 00:18:50,129
[Luke Nikas] The works came in,

365
00:18:50,254 --> 00:18:52,423
and the first thing Ann did was bring them to experts.

366
00:18:52,548 --> 00:18:54,592
That's what dealers do.

367
00:18:54,717 --> 00:18:57,887
Whether there's provenance, or no provenance.

368
00:18:58,012 --> 00:18:59,889
[Luke Nikas] The National Gallery of Art

369
00:19:00,014 --> 00:19:02,182
was publishing a catalogue raisonné

370
00:19:02,308 --> 00:19:04,226
of Mark Rothko works on paper.

371
00:19:04,351 --> 00:19:08,606
They wrote to Ann about two of the Rothkos

372
00:19:08,731 --> 00:19:12,860
and said, "We've evaluated the works.

373
00:19:12,986 --> 00:19:16,238
We intend to include these works in the catalogue."

374
00:19:16,363 --> 00:19:18,825
She went to the leading conservator,

375
00:19:18,950 --> 00:19:20,743
the conservator for the Mark Rothko estate,

376
00:19:20,868 --> 00:19:22,662
and she got condition reports back

377
00:19:22,787 --> 00:19:26,582
that made positive comments about the works, like,

378
00:19:26,707 --> 00:19:29,209
this is a classic example of Rothko's style.

379
00:19:29,335 --> 00:19:32,797
This is someone who conserved hundreds and hundreds

380
00:19:32,922 --> 00:19:35,716
of paintings, and saw nothing out of line

381
00:19:35,842 --> 00:19:38,719
when she looked at the physical construction

382
00:19:38,845 --> 00:19:39,971
of these paintings.

383
00:19:41,097 --> 00:19:43,599
Next came a Pollock,

384
00:19:43,724 --> 00:19:47,728
and eventually seven Richard Diebenkorns.

385
00:19:48,437 --> 00:19:50,982
[Ann Freedman] It was like discovering raw land

386
00:19:51,107 --> 00:19:52,399
to develop it.

387
00:19:52,525 --> 00:19:56,278
I did hire, after all, an expert, E.A. Carmean,

388
00:19:56,403 --> 00:19:59,699
to be in charge of the research for this.

389
00:20:01,408 --> 00:20:03,536
I trusted his eye completely.

390
00:20:04,620 --> 00:20:06,539
He absolutely felt they were right,

391
00:20:06,664 --> 00:20:08,290
and put it in writing.

392
00:20:09,750 --> 00:20:11,251
[M.H. Miller] They wanted so badly to believe

393
00:20:11,377 --> 00:20:13,087
that these things were real,

394
00:20:13,212 --> 00:20:15,673
because it was better for everybody if they were real.

395
00:20:15,798 --> 00:20:17,550
Here, we have this great discovery,

396
00:20:17,675 --> 00:20:20,386
this trove of previously unknown paintings

397
00:20:20,511 --> 00:20:23,973
by some of the most celebrated artists of the 20th Century.

398
00:20:24,098 --> 00:20:26,767
And I think that if you really wanted something to be true,

399
00:20:26,893 --> 00:20:31,939
you would do your best to ignore any kind of red flags.

400
00:20:32,065 --> 00:20:33,691
But you know, there were a lot of them.

401
00:20:35,068 --> 00:20:38,487
[Luke Nikas] The experts that she went to approved these works

402
00:20:38,612 --> 00:20:40,156
in some form or another.

403
00:20:40,698 --> 00:20:43,117
And when she had the experts around her

404
00:20:43,242 --> 00:20:45,494
affirming what she believed,

405
00:20:45,619 --> 00:20:47,747
she dove right in, head first.

406
00:20:48,206 --> 00:20:49,165
[clap]

407
00:20:50,750 --> 00:20:53,211
[Dr. Flam] Art, it's a kind of high-end commodity

408
00:20:53,335 --> 00:20:56,338
that has a very small audience.

409
00:20:56,463 --> 00:20:57,882
[Jason Hernandez] It's exclusivity. I mean,

410
00:20:58,007 --> 00:20:59,759
we're talking about the world's greatest artists.

411
00:20:59,884 --> 00:21:02,095
They don't have a whole lot of works.

412
00:21:02,220 --> 00:21:04,430
And we're also talking about people with a lot of money,

413
00:21:04,555 --> 00:21:07,058
so they might want to collect something that's ultra-rare,

414
00:21:07,183 --> 00:21:09,102
that no one else, literally, can have.

415
00:21:09,227 --> 00:21:12,230
And when you have those combinations of those facts

416
00:21:12,354 --> 00:21:15,108
together and someone comes up with a new discovery,

417
00:21:15,233 --> 00:21:16,442
it's really enticing.

418
00:21:18,069 --> 00:21:21,781
[Luke Nikas] The De Soles are very smart people.

419
00:21:21,906 --> 00:21:25,034
Domenico is a graduate of Harvard Law School.

420
00:21:25,159 --> 00:21:26,744
He's a very sophisticated man.

421
00:21:26,869 --> 00:21:30,330
And they have an impressive collection of art.

422
00:21:31,082 --> 00:21:33,084
[Domenico De Sole] We visited an old friend and he said to me,

423
00:21:33,209 --> 00:21:34,627
the next time you go to New York,

424
00:21:34,752 --> 00:21:36,963
you really must see this very close friend of mine,

425
00:21:37,088 --> 00:21:41,175
she's probably the best in the United States. Ann Freedman.

426
00:21:45,638 --> 00:21:47,056
I didn't know who she was.

427
00:21:47,181 --> 00:21:49,016
I didn't know anything about Knoedler at the time.

428
00:21:49,142 --> 00:21:51,852
We talked about a Scully that we really liked.

429
00:21:51,978 --> 00:21:53,687
Why don't we call Ann Freedman

430
00:21:53,813 --> 00:21:56,023
to see if they had the Scully available.

431
00:21:56,149 --> 00:21:58,317
I didn't have one at that point in time,

432
00:21:58,442 --> 00:22:00,444
but I wanted to meet them.

433
00:22:00,569 --> 00:22:02,155
[Eleanore De Sole] It was a very nice location.

434
00:22:02,280 --> 00:22:04,115
You went up the stairs.

435
00:22:04,240 --> 00:22:07,451
There was an office where we were seated.

436
00:22:07,576 --> 00:22:10,871
Couple of works of art on easels that were covered.

437
00:22:10,997 --> 00:22:12,539
And they said, "What's that over there

438
00:22:12,665 --> 00:22:14,416
with the white cover on it?"

439
00:22:14,541 --> 00:22:16,627
And I said, "Well actually, it's a Rothko."

440
00:22:16,752 --> 00:22:18,838
"Oh, we love Rothko!

441
00:22:18,963 --> 00:22:20,714
Let's have a look."

442
00:22:20,840 --> 00:22:22,925
[Eleanore De Sole] These two works of art were unveiled,

443
00:22:23,050 --> 00:22:26,428
and one appeared to be a Rothko,

444
00:22:26,553 --> 00:22:28,848
and one appeared to be a Jackson Pollock.

445
00:22:28,973 --> 00:22:31,934
We were like, wow, look at those.

446
00:22:32,059 --> 00:22:34,520
Well, it takes your breath away.

447
00:22:37,564 --> 00:22:39,859
Which, you know, is not something

448
00:22:39,984 --> 00:22:42,444
that comes to you every single day.

449
00:22:42,569 --> 00:22:45,405
Of course, we inquired about them.

450
00:22:45,531 --> 00:22:47,700
They were hoodwinked in a sense,

451
00:22:48,242 --> 00:22:50,661
but they were all sophisticated people.

452
00:22:51,120 --> 00:22:53,998
Sophisticated in business, sophisticated in their,

453
00:22:54,123 --> 00:22:56,042
in their professional lives, and yet

454
00:22:56,167 --> 00:22:59,128
they all succumbed

455
00:22:59,253 --> 00:23:01,797
to the charm of this art.

456
00:23:02,673 --> 00:23:05,259
I think the mindset that led De Soles

457
00:23:05,383 --> 00:23:07,970
to sort of be in love with this,

458
00:23:08,095 --> 00:23:10,014
what he believed to be a Rothko,

459
00:23:10,139 --> 00:23:14,727
is a frequent mindset of the collector

460
00:23:14,852 --> 00:23:16,937
who has bought a forgery.

461
00:23:18,480 --> 00:23:21,650
Falling in love really describes this process

462
00:23:21,775 --> 00:23:26,197
of ignoring and forgiving flaws as somebody

463
00:23:26,322 --> 00:23:28,282
who is smitten with their new love

464
00:23:28,406 --> 00:23:30,076
is going to ignore their flaws.

465
00:23:30,201 --> 00:23:31,577
This is something that's

466
00:23:31,702 --> 00:23:33,079
an ego boost for you.

467
00:23:33,204 --> 00:23:34,496
This is something where,

468
00:23:34,621 --> 00:23:36,456
when you have people come to your house,

469
00:23:36,582 --> 00:23:38,709
you want them to see it.

470
00:23:38,834 --> 00:23:41,545
Well, if suddenly the exact kind of Rothko

471
00:23:41,670 --> 00:23:43,421
that you want comes on the market,

472
00:23:43,547 --> 00:23:45,132
are you gonna ask too many questions,

473
00:23:45,258 --> 00:23:47,134
or are you gonna buy it?

474
00:23:47,260 --> 00:23:48,594
I just want to make clear,

475
00:23:48,719 --> 00:23:50,930
I don't have a trained eye. I'm not an expert.

476
00:23:51,055 --> 00:23:53,891
The paintings did look very good, and in fact,

477
00:23:54,016 --> 00:23:55,976
the person that we used as our advisor,

478
00:23:56,102 --> 00:23:57,353
he's very sophisticated,

479
00:23:57,477 --> 00:23:59,939
he thought the paint looked very, very good.

480
00:24:00,064 --> 00:24:02,024
The price of eight million dollars

481
00:24:02,149 --> 00:24:04,693
sounds like a lot, but that said,

482
00:24:04,818 --> 00:24:07,947
that's kind of low for a Rothko.

483
00:24:08,072 --> 00:24:10,699
Good Rothkos of the period,

484
00:24:10,824 --> 00:24:13,369
actually go for much more than that.

485
00:24:14,954 --> 00:24:17,664
They didn't seem to have many questions.

486
00:24:17,790 --> 00:24:21,210
They were just totally enthralled with the painting.

487
00:24:21,335 --> 00:24:23,712
Domenico was insistent,

488
00:24:23,837 --> 00:24:26,548
besides an invoice with the price,

489
00:24:26,673 --> 00:24:30,468
he wanted a warranty of authenticity,

490
00:24:30,594 --> 00:24:34,932
and Freedman supplied a multi-page document

491
00:24:35,057 --> 00:24:38,852
listing every "expert"

492
00:24:38,978 --> 00:24:43,983
who had seen the painting, authenticated the painting.

493
00:24:44,108 --> 00:24:46,610
I was listed as an expert on De Sole's painting,

494
00:24:46,735 --> 00:24:48,154
which is how I, it's one of the reasons

495
00:24:48,279 --> 00:24:49,571
I got sucked into this.

496
00:24:49,696 --> 00:24:51,615
I am not an expert on Rothko.

497
00:24:51,740 --> 00:24:54,410
I have no memory of having seen that painting.

498
00:24:56,329 --> 00:24:59,623
[Ronald Spencer] De Sole knew that there was no provenance.

499
00:24:59,748 --> 00:25:04,544
De Sole knew that it was an unidentified owner, seller.

500
00:25:05,212 --> 00:25:07,298
In fact, they all knew that.

501
00:25:09,133 --> 00:25:11,051
[Ann Freedman] The De Sole piece went to the Beyeler,

502
00:25:11,177 --> 00:25:16,140
so it was unbelievably exhibited

503
00:25:16,265 --> 00:25:18,267
in a context of what was called,

504
00:25:18,392 --> 00:25:20,602
"The Rothko Rooms." I love to talk about it.

505
00:25:20,727 --> 00:25:23,147
Ernst Beyeler was one of the most important

506
00:25:23,272 --> 00:25:26,566
art dealers who devoted an entire exhibition

507
00:25:26,692 --> 00:25:28,235
to the works of Mark Rothko.

508
00:25:28,361 --> 00:25:30,946
The De Sole Rothko was on its own wall.

509
00:25:31,071 --> 00:25:33,199
So you walked into the Beyeler,

510
00:25:33,573 --> 00:25:34,658
and there it was.

511
00:25:35,909 --> 00:25:37,786
Ernst Beyeler was alive then,

512
00:25:37,911 --> 00:25:39,872
he didn't question it,

513
00:25:41,040 --> 00:25:42,708
you know, he accepted it.

514
00:25:42,833 --> 00:25:44,710
That's all more reason for us to think

515
00:25:44,835 --> 00:25:46,712
we really had this jewel.

516
00:25:46,837 --> 00:25:48,464
You should be asking yourself,

517
00:25:48,588 --> 00:25:49,715
why am I getting this?

518
00:25:49,840 --> 00:25:52,301
Why have I gotten such a good deal?

519
00:25:52,426 --> 00:25:53,760
[clap]

520
00:25:55,179 --> 00:25:57,348
[Charles Schmerler] What many of the experts did agree on

521
00:25:57,473 --> 00:26:00,434
at the outset was that it was highly unlikely,

522
00:26:00,558 --> 00:26:04,480
if not impossible, that one person would be able to master

523
00:26:04,604 --> 00:26:06,940
the styles of so many artists.

524
00:26:07,066 --> 00:26:08,566
It was extraordinary,

525
00:26:08,692 --> 00:26:11,320
and it was entirely unexpected by anyone

526
00:26:11,445 --> 00:26:13,447
who reviewed those works.

527
00:26:13,571 --> 00:26:15,366
Time now for our favorite person of the day,

528
00:26:15,491 --> 00:26:17,659
when we pick one person who grabbed our attention,

529
00:26:17,784 --> 00:26:19,786
and not for the right reasons.

530
00:26:19,912 --> 00:26:22,331
Today, it is a 75-year-old artist

531
00:26:22,456 --> 00:26:24,417
who went from selling his paintings

532
00:26:24,542 --> 00:26:25,834
for a couple hundred dollars,

533
00:26:25,959 --> 00:26:27,336
to selling them for millions.

534
00:26:29,171 --> 00:26:31,298
[Luke Nikas] What we know about Pei-Shen is that

535
00:26:31,424 --> 00:26:34,260
when he lived in China, he was an accomplished painter.

536
00:26:34,385 --> 00:26:35,928
And then he came to the States, and he couldn't make it

537
00:26:36,053 --> 00:26:38,138
in the art world in the way he did in China.

538
00:26:38,264 --> 00:26:40,640
He was really, really frustrated

539
00:26:40,766 --> 00:26:45,603
because they come here with big name created in China.

540
00:26:45,729 --> 00:26:48,023
Here, nobody knows... "Who are you?"

541
00:26:48,148 --> 00:26:50,608
So he was trained at the Art Student League.

542
00:26:50,734 --> 00:26:54,238
The Art Student League is a school in Manhattan

543
00:26:54,363 --> 00:26:59,201
where greats like Alexander Calder, and Pollock

544
00:26:59,326 --> 00:27:01,036
received some of their training.

545
00:27:04,415 --> 00:27:06,166
The fellow was, quite clearly,

546
00:27:06,292 --> 00:27:08,043
A, a genius,

547
00:27:08,168 --> 00:27:11,380
B, had studied these techniques of

548
00:27:11,505 --> 00:27:15,175
seven, eight different Ab-Ex painters.

549
00:27:15,301 --> 00:27:18,053
And he'd studied them really hard.

550
00:27:18,178 --> 00:27:20,013
The Chinese have had a tradition

551
00:27:20,139 --> 00:27:22,849
for a thousand years or more of

552
00:27:22,975 --> 00:27:24,393
correctly copying,

553
00:27:24,518 --> 00:27:28,063
being dead accurate copying,

554
00:27:28,188 --> 00:27:31,317
being the greatest tribute you could pay

555
00:27:31,442 --> 00:27:35,862
to a previous artist, and to be a test of your own skill.

556
00:27:35,988 --> 00:27:37,197
[Carter Ratcliffe] And this goes back centuries,

557
00:27:37,323 --> 00:27:38,407
millennia really.

558
00:27:38,532 --> 00:27:40,493
Originality was not a virtue.

559
00:27:40,618 --> 00:27:42,286
Nothing from your heart.

560
00:27:42,411 --> 00:27:45,247
It's only copy others' technique.

561
00:27:45,372 --> 00:27:47,583
They not only copy art, they copy iPhone,

562
00:27:47,707 --> 00:27:51,086
they copy so many high tech.

563
00:27:51,211 --> 00:27:53,088
You have to wonder if you're, if you're

564
00:27:53,213 --> 00:27:55,966
that Chinese artist, turning out these pieces

565
00:27:56,091 --> 00:27:57,843
that almost no one could tell apart

566
00:27:57,968 --> 00:28:00,471
from true masterpieces.

567
00:28:00,596 --> 00:28:02,222
He's good. He has some talent.

568
00:28:02,348 --> 00:28:05,934
But not really like Picasso, Matisse kind of talent.

569
00:28:06,059 --> 00:28:08,437
His Mark Rothko is a very bad copy.

570
00:28:08,562 --> 00:28:09,355
Brilliant.

571
00:28:09,480 --> 00:28:10,648
Brilliant fakes.

572
00:28:13,025 --> 00:28:15,902
[Jason Hernandez] Glafira and Bergañtinos, they interviewed,

573
00:28:16,028 --> 00:28:17,946
or you know, looked for a bunch of people to do this,

574
00:28:18,071 --> 00:28:19,573
and settled on Pei-Shen

575
00:28:19,697 --> 00:28:21,950
because he was the best they found,

576
00:28:22,075 --> 00:28:24,995
and he was able to do multiple artists.

577
00:28:25,120 --> 00:28:26,830
When Pei-Shen created the paintings

578
00:28:26,955 --> 00:28:27,873
they're fresh, they're new, I mean,

579
00:28:27,998 --> 00:28:29,208
they're brand-new, they're not

580
00:28:29,333 --> 00:28:31,210
from the '50s and '60s, as they should be.

581
00:28:31,335 --> 00:28:35,797
So Pei-Shen makes the painting, and then it goes to Bergañtinos,

582
00:28:35,922 --> 00:28:36,965
and he does things to the painting

583
00:28:37,090 --> 00:28:39,259
to make it look credibly old.

584
00:28:39,385 --> 00:28:40,678
The surface might have cracking.

585
00:28:40,802 --> 00:28:41,928
There's gonna be dust.

586
00:28:42,054 --> 00:28:43,972
The frame has to be the right age.

587
00:28:44,097 --> 00:28:46,392
Even the canvas has to be the right age.

588
00:28:46,517 --> 00:28:49,895
So, Bergañtinos would get some materials, raw supplies,

589
00:28:50,020 --> 00:28:52,898
an old canvas, the right kind of frame.

590
00:28:53,023 --> 00:28:55,484
So, they worked hand in glove.

591
00:28:55,609 --> 00:28:59,572
They needed Pei-Shen's artistry, but then Bergañtinos had to put

592
00:28:59,697 --> 00:29:02,575
the finishing touches on it to give it the appearance

593
00:29:02,700 --> 00:29:04,451
of age and credibility.

594
00:29:04,577 --> 00:29:06,495
If you look at my bank account,

595
00:29:06,620 --> 00:29:08,581
you'll see there was no income.

596
00:29:08,706 --> 00:29:10,165
I'm still a poor artist.

597
00:29:10,290 --> 00:29:11,791
You think I could be involved with this?

598
00:29:11,917 --> 00:29:14,169
[Luke Nikas] He was paid very little at the beginning.

599
00:29:14,294 --> 00:29:17,381
As time went on, he was at the

600
00:29:17,506 --> 00:29:20,259
67th Street Armory Art Fair,

601
00:29:20,384 --> 00:29:27,140
and saw one of his works in the Knoedler Gallery booth.

602
00:29:27,266 --> 00:29:31,562
That's the point where he went back to Rosales and said,

603
00:29:31,687 --> 00:29:33,855
"I need to be paid more money."

604
00:29:33,980 --> 00:29:39,194
[director] Carlos, how did you meet Pei-Shen Qian?

605
00:29:39,319 --> 00:29:44,283
[in Spanish] So, I bought art from him and

606
00:29:44,408 --> 00:29:51,415
when he was on the street painting things,

607
00:29:52,583 --> 00:29:56,462
sometimes I needed money,

608
00:29:56,587 --> 00:30:01,508
and I bought them and I sold, like everyone else.

609
00:30:01,634 --> 00:30:06,722
[Luke Nikas] And Rosales was the one, I'm sure, with some help

610
00:30:06,846 --> 00:30:11,059
from the boyfriend, creating the story surrounding the works.

611
00:30:11,184 --> 00:30:13,395
It was really well executed.

612
00:30:14,480 --> 00:30:16,774
[Dr. Flam] You also have to remember that Glafira Rosales

613
00:30:16,940 --> 00:30:19,652
had tried to sell those paintings herself.

614
00:30:19,777 --> 00:30:23,196
Even if she had access to the collectors or galleries

615
00:30:23,322 --> 00:30:25,324
that Ann Freedman sold to,

616
00:30:25,449 --> 00:30:27,576
they would have laughed at her.

617
00:30:27,701 --> 00:30:29,202
We all see something into context.

618
00:30:29,328 --> 00:30:32,164
You go to the Museum of Modern Art, you go to the MET,

619
00:30:32,289 --> 00:30:34,374
and you see a painting up there,

620
00:30:34,500 --> 00:30:37,670
even an expert is not going to think,

621
00:30:37,795 --> 00:30:40,380
"Well there's something not right with that painting."

622
00:30:40,506 --> 00:30:44,926
You rely on the museum and the whole, kind of, infrastructure

623
00:30:45,051 --> 00:30:47,053
that would have vetted that painting.

624
00:30:47,179 --> 00:30:49,765
I mean, Knoedler had such a prominent reputation,

625
00:30:49,889 --> 00:30:53,393
and I think people just never suspected.

626
00:30:53,519 --> 00:30:55,688
Increasingly, more and more people

627
00:30:55,813 --> 00:30:56,814
liked the work.

628
00:30:56,938 --> 00:30:59,733
When I say, liked it, wanted it.

629
00:31:00,275 --> 00:31:04,530
In front of it you could see eyes light up.

630
00:31:06,948 --> 00:31:10,076
There was depth to the desire for these paintings.

631
00:31:10,202 --> 00:31:16,916
[light classical music]

632
00:31:33,600 --> 00:31:34,685
[Dr. Taylor] Anyone who works in

633
00:31:34,810 --> 00:31:36,228
what we call the secondary art market

634
00:31:36,353 --> 00:31:39,022
where you're buying up a work from one party

635
00:31:39,147 --> 00:31:43,068
and reselling it to another, those deals,

636
00:31:43,193 --> 00:31:46,697
if you make a hundred percent markup, is generally normal.

637
00:31:46,822 --> 00:31:49,449
But those profit margins were more like anywhere

638
00:31:49,575 --> 00:31:52,494
from 200, to like, 800 percent.

639
00:31:52,619 --> 00:31:55,372
That happens about once every ten years.

640
00:31:55,497 --> 00:31:58,751
And any secondary market dealer would know that

641
00:31:58,876 --> 00:32:02,170
if they're repeatedly getting profit margins of that scale,

642
00:32:02,713 --> 00:32:05,340
there's some cause for concern here.

643
00:32:08,093 --> 00:32:12,138
[Ann Freedman] I wasn't alone in believing in these works of art.

644
00:32:13,014 --> 00:32:15,975
It wasn't Ann Freedman against the world.

645
00:32:17,269 --> 00:32:18,687
Everyone was willing.

646
00:32:19,979 --> 00:32:21,774
The art world was willing.

647
00:32:23,442 --> 00:32:25,026
They weren't hidden.

648
00:32:25,569 --> 00:32:27,195
They weren't downplayed.

649
00:32:27,320 --> 00:32:31,074
They were totally exposed around the world,

650
00:32:31,199 --> 00:32:32,826
and published.

651
00:32:36,079 --> 00:32:38,707
[M. Shnayerson] She wanted, so wanted,

652
00:32:38,832 --> 00:32:40,793
these works of art to be real

653
00:32:40,918 --> 00:32:46,005
because if they were, she would be a leading figure

654
00:32:46,131 --> 00:32:47,800
in the world of art dealers.

655
00:32:47,925 --> 00:32:51,094
She would be atop them all.

656
00:32:51,219 --> 00:32:54,139
And she let that lead her over the cliff.

657
00:32:56,099 --> 00:32:56,975
[clap]

658
00:33:00,896 --> 00:33:03,106
[Luke Nikas] Jack Levy went to the gallery,

659
00:33:03,231 --> 00:33:05,609
and was interested in buying a Jackson Pollock.

660
00:33:06,443 --> 00:33:09,154
What he said was, "I'll buy this work.

661
00:33:09,279 --> 00:33:11,406
But I want you to subject it

662
00:33:11,531 --> 00:33:14,284
to an evaluation by IFAR."

663
00:33:17,830 --> 00:33:19,247
[Dr. Sharon Flescher] The International Foundation

664
00:33:19,372 --> 00:33:21,708
of Art Research was founded to deal

665
00:33:21,834 --> 00:33:23,042
with the complicated issues

666
00:33:23,168 --> 00:33:25,587
of attribution and authenticity.

667
00:33:26,505 --> 00:33:27,547
We're one of the only places

668
00:33:27,673 --> 00:33:30,175
that even does such a thing.

669
00:33:31,301 --> 00:33:37,891
Mr. Levy negotiated that if we didn't accept it as a Pollock,

670
00:33:38,016 --> 00:33:39,935
he could get his money back.

671
00:33:40,560 --> 00:33:43,313
The whole issue of authenticity

672
00:33:43,438 --> 00:33:45,941
is very, very troubled now in the art world.

673
00:33:46,065 --> 00:33:47,526
[Jason Hernandez] One thing that really works

674
00:33:47,651 --> 00:33:49,903
for the forgers' favor is that

675
00:33:50,028 --> 00:33:51,697
if you have a negative opinion,

676
00:33:51,822 --> 00:33:55,325
if you're not sure, you tend to keep it to yourself.

677
00:33:55,450 --> 00:33:58,453
There have been experts that have been critical of paintings,

678
00:33:58,578 --> 00:34:00,246
and they got sued.

679
00:34:01,498 --> 00:34:03,124
[Dr. Flescher] Authentication research

680
00:34:03,249 --> 00:34:05,418
is usually three-pronged.

681
00:34:05,544 --> 00:34:11,132
It's scholarly research, which includes provenance,

682
00:34:11,257 --> 00:34:13,552
and then it's also bringing specialists together

683
00:34:13,677 --> 00:34:15,762
to look at the work.

684
00:34:15,888 --> 00:34:18,515
Specialists who are really knowledgeable about the artist,

685
00:34:18,640 --> 00:34:21,560
to see whether it's consistent with the artist's style.

686
00:34:22,101 --> 00:34:25,981
And then it's also what we call the material properties.

687
00:34:26,105 --> 00:34:29,943
Despite some positive comments about the work

688
00:34:30,068 --> 00:34:32,571
that looked superficially good,

689
00:34:32,696 --> 00:34:35,156
we had too many negative comments.

690
00:34:36,366 --> 00:34:38,952
Materially, one of the things we noticed,

691
00:34:39,077 --> 00:34:41,997
there was new paint on old canvas.

692
00:34:42,121 --> 00:34:45,709
We compared it physically to an actual Pollock painting

693
00:34:45,834 --> 00:34:48,461
of the same year, and the masonite

694
00:34:48,587 --> 00:34:50,797
had aged completely differently.

695
00:34:50,923 --> 00:34:53,550
This was very suspicious to us.

696
00:34:53,675 --> 00:34:56,344
Stylistically, there were many concerns

697
00:34:56,469 --> 00:34:58,931
about the way the paint was applied,

698
00:34:59,056 --> 00:35:02,267
about that greenish-brown wash.

699
00:35:02,392 --> 00:35:05,062
No one had ever seen, even the people who liked the work

700
00:35:05,186 --> 00:35:07,272
questioned that.

701
00:35:07,397 --> 00:35:11,651
And then the provenance, we attached 16 pages of documents

702
00:35:11,777 --> 00:35:16,031
showing why that provenance was inconceivable.

703
00:35:16,155 --> 00:35:19,325
Pollock is a very well-documented artist.

704
00:35:19,451 --> 00:35:22,037
He was famous in his lifetime, for heaven's sakes!

705
00:35:22,161 --> 00:35:26,165
The lack of documentation for a painting

706
00:35:26,291 --> 00:35:29,920
at the height of Pollock's career,

707
00:35:30,045 --> 00:35:32,714
this was when Life Magazine was asking whether

708
00:35:32,839 --> 00:35:35,008
he was the most famous artist in America,

709
00:35:35,133 --> 00:35:38,344
that was particularly astonishing.

710
00:35:39,888 --> 00:35:42,181
That combination of information

711
00:35:42,307 --> 00:35:45,351
made us write in the report

712
00:35:45,477 --> 00:35:48,354
that we could not accept the work

713
00:35:48,480 --> 00:35:50,065
as a work by Jackson Pollock.

714
00:35:52,484 --> 00:35:54,069
It was inconclusive.

715
00:35:54,193 --> 00:35:55,821
Which, in the art community,

716
00:35:55,946 --> 00:36:00,117
is generally understood as it is a fake,

717
00:36:00,241 --> 00:36:02,535
but we just stepped short of saying that,

718
00:36:02,661 --> 00:36:04,287
and we said it multiple times.

719
00:36:05,872 --> 00:36:09,375
The fact is they hid the report, they never mentioned the report,

720
00:36:09,501 --> 00:36:12,004
and bad-mouthed us over the years.

721
00:36:14,923 --> 00:36:17,258
The gallery later tried to say

722
00:36:17,383 --> 00:36:19,803
that we didn't come up with an opinion.

723
00:36:19,928 --> 00:36:22,639
I certainly felt that she was not wanting

724
00:36:22,764 --> 00:36:25,684
to listen to everything I wanted to tell her.

725
00:36:25,809 --> 00:36:28,020
It was an opinion to say,

726
00:36:28,145 --> 00:36:31,189
"We cannot accept it as a work by Pollock."

727
00:36:32,649 --> 00:36:34,151
[M. Shnayerson] At that point, Jack Levy

728
00:36:34,275 --> 00:36:37,612
went back to Ann Freedman and Knoedler and said,

729
00:36:37,737 --> 00:36:39,238
"I want my money back.

730
00:36:39,364 --> 00:36:40,657
That was our deal.

731
00:36:40,782 --> 00:36:42,200
You owe me, you know, two million dollars."

732
00:36:42,325 --> 00:36:43,743
I recall saying to him,

733
00:36:43,869 --> 00:36:45,495
"Jack, if there's a problem,

734
00:36:46,705 --> 00:36:47,956
we'll undo it."

735
00:36:48,081 --> 00:36:49,958
And I would've said that to anybody.

736
00:36:50,500 --> 00:36:52,335
And Knoedler refunded one hundred percent

737
00:36:52,460 --> 00:36:53,795
of his purchase price.

738
00:36:54,379 --> 00:36:58,800
[Perry Amsellem] You would think that Ann Freedman and Knoedler

739
00:36:58,925 --> 00:37:00,343
would go ahead and make sure

740
00:37:00,468 --> 00:37:02,637
to do serious investigation at that point.

741
00:37:02,762 --> 00:37:05,640
And in fact, that work went back on sale

742
00:37:05,765 --> 00:37:07,142
at the Knoedler Gallery.

743
00:37:07,934 --> 00:37:10,311
The price went from two million dollars

744
00:37:10,436 --> 00:37:12,898
to I think, 11 million.

745
00:37:14,024 --> 00:37:17,694
I certainly felt as time went on,

746
00:37:17,819 --> 00:37:19,154
and it's a fact,

747
00:37:19,278 --> 00:37:21,156
Pollock's market went up,

748
00:37:21,280 --> 00:37:24,076
so one could ask more for it, sure.

749
00:37:24,201 --> 00:37:25,368
[director] Did it ever sell?

750
00:37:26,536 --> 00:37:27,412
No.

751
00:37:32,375 --> 00:37:35,879
I went right to Glafira to let her know

752
00:37:36,004 --> 00:37:40,341
that there was a suspicion about the works,

753
00:37:40,466 --> 00:37:43,553
and I got a little more information.

754
00:37:44,930 --> 00:37:47,807
I found out that within three weeks,

755
00:37:47,933 --> 00:37:51,394
miraculously, the work had a new provenance.

756
00:37:53,479 --> 00:37:55,899
[M. Shnayerson] Story number two changed.

757
00:37:56,024 --> 00:37:58,610
Now "Mr. X" was gay,

758
00:37:58,735 --> 00:38:01,529
and he had come to New York,

759
00:38:01,654 --> 00:38:05,200
and begun buying works through a guy

760
00:38:05,324 --> 00:38:07,911
named David Herbert, who was gay.

761
00:38:08,036 --> 00:38:09,287
[Luke Nikas] David Herbert was a real art dealer.

762
00:38:09,412 --> 00:38:10,705
Worked in the 1950s.

763
00:38:10,830 --> 00:38:13,250
He was employed at the Sidney Janis Gallery,

764
00:38:13,374 --> 00:38:16,669
who represented a lot of the Abstract Expressionist artists,

765
00:38:16,795 --> 00:38:18,463
by the Betty Parsons Gallery,

766
00:38:18,588 --> 00:38:19,923
also represented a number of

767
00:38:20,048 --> 00:38:21,549
Abstract Expressionist artists.

768
00:38:21,674 --> 00:38:23,551
So, he was a real dealer with positions

769
00:38:23,676 --> 00:38:25,137
at prominent galleries.

770
00:38:25,262 --> 00:38:26,763
"Mr. X" had been drawn

771
00:38:26,888 --> 00:38:30,349
into this whole demi-monde of gay art lovers,

772
00:38:30,475 --> 00:38:31,977
and dealers, and collectors.

773
00:38:32,102 --> 00:38:34,312
However, he had a wife and children

774
00:38:34,437 --> 00:38:36,231
back in Switzerland,

775
00:38:36,355 --> 00:38:38,984
so he couldn't take these works back with him.

776
00:38:39,109 --> 00:38:42,487
It would've been opening up his gay life to his family.

777
00:38:42,612 --> 00:38:44,363
[Dr. Flescher] Which was just as concocted,

778
00:38:44,489 --> 00:38:46,908
and just as refutable with research.

779
00:38:47,033 --> 00:38:48,701
[Dr. Flam] I mean, the story kept morphing.

780
00:38:48,827 --> 00:38:51,871
Alfonso Ossorio is involved. Then he's not involved.

781
00:38:51,997 --> 00:38:53,748
They pivoted to you know, conveniently,

782
00:38:53,873 --> 00:38:54,916
to David Herbert,

783
00:38:55,041 --> 00:38:56,793
who also, conveniently, was dead.

784
00:38:56,918 --> 00:38:58,711
And as pieces fell out,

785
00:38:58,837 --> 00:39:00,338
or there are holes in the stories,

786
00:39:00,463 --> 00:39:02,882
suddenly they were plugged by some other information.

787
00:39:03,008 --> 00:39:07,720
But you can see how a somewhat gullible

788
00:39:07,846 --> 00:39:10,807
and ambitious dealer like Ann Freedman

789
00:39:10,932 --> 00:39:12,684
might take a morsel like that.

790
00:39:12,809 --> 00:39:15,478
You know, David Herbert did exist, there he was,

791
00:39:15,603 --> 00:39:19,858
and swallow all that Glafira was telling her along with it.

792
00:39:21,276 --> 00:39:23,028
[Ann Freedman] Well, she came out with more.

793
00:39:23,153 --> 00:39:24,946
It wasn't-- she didn't change her story,

794
00:39:25,071 --> 00:39:27,199
it wasn't something that she retracted.

795
00:39:28,158 --> 00:39:30,618
Her story was evolving.

796
00:39:32,120 --> 00:39:35,123
I don't recall any time in which

797
00:39:36,499 --> 00:39:39,377
I thought she was not telling me the truth.

798
00:39:39,502 --> 00:39:40,712
And it would've alarmed me

799
00:39:40,837 --> 00:39:43,215
if she had said one thing one day,

800
00:39:43,340 --> 00:39:45,717
and then changed it another day.

801
00:39:45,842 --> 00:39:47,844
That did not happen.

802
00:39:47,969 --> 00:39:49,346
Ugh.

803
00:39:54,475 --> 00:39:55,894
[Dr. Flam] The Dedalus Foundation was founded

804
00:39:56,019 --> 00:39:59,064
by Robert Motherwell in 1981.

805
00:40:03,818 --> 00:40:05,444
[Dr. Flam] Motherwell was one of the leading

806
00:40:05,570 --> 00:40:07,364
Abstract Expressionist artists

807
00:40:07,488 --> 00:40:11,450
and in many ways the spokesman for the movement.

808
00:40:19,918 --> 00:40:22,921
In early 2007, Julian Weissman,

809
00:40:23,046 --> 00:40:25,215
a private dealer whom I knew,

810
00:40:25,340 --> 00:40:26,883
told us he had

811
00:40:27,008 --> 00:40:28,093
a Motherwell painting

812
00:40:28,218 --> 00:40:31,012
that had been recently discovered.

813
00:40:35,975 --> 00:40:37,643
In my gut it looked kind of weird.

814
00:40:37,769 --> 00:40:38,895
It was warped.

815
00:40:39,020 --> 00:40:40,772
There was too much oil in the paint,

816
00:40:40,897 --> 00:40:42,523
or too many drip marks,

817
00:40:42,648 --> 00:40:44,943
but it looked just like the stuff that was in the database.

818
00:40:45,068 --> 00:40:47,820
So, we figured okay, well, it's a discovery,

819
00:40:47,946 --> 00:40:49,155
we're discovering new things,

820
00:40:49,281 --> 00:40:50,698
and it turns out that Motherwell

821
00:40:50,823 --> 00:40:54,702
made more paintings in 1953 than we thought.

822
00:40:54,827 --> 00:40:57,872
He asked us for a letter of authentication,

823
00:40:59,040 --> 00:41:01,918
and he used the letter to sell the painting.

824
00:41:02,043 --> 00:41:05,880
It's my fault. It was a mistake. Live and learn.

825
00:41:06,881 --> 00:41:09,675
Later that year, Ann Freedman told us

826
00:41:09,801 --> 00:41:12,178
that she had yet another Elegy,

827
00:41:12,304 --> 00:41:14,306
and it really looked wrong.

828
00:41:15,556 --> 00:41:17,475
I had affirmation on the Motherwell

829
00:41:17,600 --> 00:41:19,518
that I personally owned.

830
00:41:19,644 --> 00:41:23,273
Helen Frankenthaler, Motherwell's wife for 13 years,

831
00:41:23,398 --> 00:41:26,276
she looked at that "Elegy" and she pointed her finger,

832
00:41:26,401 --> 00:41:28,361
yup, that's Bob.

833
00:41:28,486 --> 00:41:31,656
I could not have asked for more affirmation.

834
00:41:33,950 --> 00:41:36,702
[Dr. Flam] The signature looked kind of okay if you saw it once

835
00:41:36,828 --> 00:41:38,746
because everybody's signature varies a little bit,

836
00:41:38,871 --> 00:41:41,166
but this signature looked like it came from a template.

837
00:41:42,125 --> 00:41:44,627
[Perry Amsalem] Something was off with these paintings.

838
00:41:44,752 --> 00:41:48,256
They went back to Knoedler and Freedman, confronting them.

839
00:41:50,633 --> 00:41:52,844
[Dr. Flam] We thought we were doing her an enormous favor.

840
00:41:52,969 --> 00:41:54,679
We thought she was gonna say, oh my God,

841
00:41:54,804 --> 00:41:56,764
thank goodness you've told me about this,

842
00:41:56,889 --> 00:41:58,933
because I've been dealing with these people

843
00:41:59,058 --> 00:42:00,601
thinking these paintings were real.

844
00:42:00,726 --> 00:42:03,104
And she had told us that there were not only Motherwells

845
00:42:03,229 --> 00:42:06,149
in this collection, but there were Rothkos and Pollocks,

846
00:42:06,274 --> 00:42:07,692
and de Koonings.

847
00:42:07,817 --> 00:42:10,487
The level of resistance that,

848
00:42:10,611 --> 00:42:12,322
that Knoedler was pushing back on

849
00:42:12,447 --> 00:42:13,990
didn't make any sense.

850
00:42:14,115 --> 00:42:16,201
Her reaction, started arguing with us.

851
00:42:16,326 --> 00:42:18,328
She brings up the David Herbert story,

852
00:42:18,453 --> 00:42:21,289
and how David Herbert was close to Motherwell.

853
00:42:21,414 --> 00:42:23,416
We, by the way, did some research right after

854
00:42:23,541 --> 00:42:24,792
she said that, and we found that

855
00:42:24,917 --> 00:42:27,586
he didn't exist on Motherwell's radar,

856
00:42:27,712 --> 00:42:30,673
except perhaps as some shadowy figure somewhere.

857
00:42:30,798 --> 00:42:33,176
And Ann was making it seem as if they were close,

858
00:42:33,301 --> 00:42:34,677
these paintings were real,

859
00:42:34,802 --> 00:42:36,262
and she said to us,

860
00:42:36,388 --> 00:42:38,890
experts on the other artists have said

861
00:42:39,015 --> 00:42:40,058
these paintings are real.

862
00:42:41,726 --> 00:42:43,228
So, I was stunned.

863
00:42:44,187 --> 00:42:46,439
He forgot to mention that he initially

864
00:42:46,564 --> 00:42:48,274
thought the works were right.

865
00:42:49,025 --> 00:42:51,361
Also, I should say that in 2006,

866
00:42:51,486 --> 00:42:53,363
I'd actually seen one of these "Elegies."

867
00:42:53,488 --> 00:42:55,532
It was on the floor in her office.

868
00:42:55,656 --> 00:42:57,950
I think he made it up

869
00:42:58,076 --> 00:43:01,829
that he quickly looked at this,

870
00:43:01,954 --> 00:43:03,915
quote, unquote "Motherwell on the floor."

871
00:43:04,040 --> 00:43:06,625
It looked kind of like, I mean, it looked like an Elegy.

872
00:43:06,751 --> 00:43:08,753
I didn't show paintings on the floor,

873
00:43:08,878 --> 00:43:09,921
I put them on an easel.

874
00:43:10,046 --> 00:43:11,089
That was my way.

875
00:43:11,214 --> 00:43:12,715
So it looked enough like a--

876
00:43:12,840 --> 00:43:15,427
a Motherwell that you see on the floor casually.

877
00:43:15,552 --> 00:43:17,178
You're not asked to give an opinion.

878
00:43:17,303 --> 00:43:18,930
I've never known Jack

879
00:43:19,055 --> 00:43:20,639
to look at something quickly.

880
00:43:20,765 --> 00:43:24,977
He feels that his opinion and his judgment matters,

881
00:43:25,103 --> 00:43:28,440
and he would look at a work in a way

882
00:43:28,565 --> 00:43:30,733
of considering how good it is.

883
00:43:31,650 --> 00:43:33,861
I didn't even say, "Sure, it looked fine."

884
00:43:33,986 --> 00:43:36,697
I just-- didn't say, "Wow, that looks like a fake."

885
00:43:38,616 --> 00:43:40,118
All I asked,

886
00:43:42,161 --> 00:43:44,539
please let me prove these work right.

887
00:43:44,663 --> 00:43:47,917
I believe them. I believe E.A. Carmean,

888
00:43:48,042 --> 00:43:50,378
who knew Motherwell better than Jack Flam.

889
00:43:52,130 --> 00:43:55,341
Nobody knew Motherwell like E.A. Carmean.

890
00:43:57,427 --> 00:44:00,346
That doesn't mean that I couldn't accept

891
00:44:00,472 --> 00:44:02,348
I might be wrong,

892
00:44:02,474 --> 00:44:04,476
but how do you go about

893
00:44:06,644 --> 00:44:08,480
figuring that out?

894
00:44:08,605 --> 00:44:10,022
I then said, "Okay,

895
00:44:10,148 --> 00:44:12,442
I'd like you to have those two paintings

896
00:44:12,567 --> 00:44:15,694
in your control forensically tested."

897
00:44:16,237 --> 00:44:19,991
The best person for that period in the United States,

898
00:44:20,116 --> 00:44:24,078
probably in the world, is Jamie Martin at Orion Analytical.

899
00:44:24,203 --> 00:44:28,458
[Ann Freedman] I didn't trust his methods.

900
00:44:28,583 --> 00:44:31,043
It was a huge question for me

901
00:44:31,169 --> 00:44:33,171
that Jamie Martin was one of one.

902
00:44:33,296 --> 00:44:36,674
He had no associates, no assistants, no lab technicians,

903
00:44:36,799 --> 00:44:38,301
nothing, just him.

904
00:44:38,426 --> 00:44:41,137
Knoedler and Ann Freedman sat on that report.

905
00:44:41,262 --> 00:44:44,098
Didn't turn it over to us until January of 2009,

906
00:44:44,223 --> 00:44:45,558
and when she turned it over,

907
00:44:46,309 --> 00:44:48,936
they omitted the last four pages,

908
00:44:49,061 --> 00:44:50,522
which were the most important pages.

909
00:44:50,647 --> 00:44:51,730
They eliminated a lot of

910
00:44:51,856 --> 00:44:53,983
so-called confidential information.

911
00:44:54,108 --> 00:44:59,155
[Ann Freedman] It was full of questions and errors,

912
00:44:59,280 --> 00:45:01,240
and it was difficult to believe

913
00:45:01,366 --> 00:45:02,867
that they were fair-minded.

914
00:45:02,992 --> 00:45:04,701
It was clear from the report

915
00:45:05,537 --> 00:45:06,871
that the paintings were fakes.

916
00:45:06,996 --> 00:45:08,998
There were all sorts of anomalies.

917
00:45:09,123 --> 00:45:14,045
The ground was an acrylic- polymer emulsion ground.

918
00:45:14,170 --> 00:45:17,714
Motherwell did not start using acrylic-polymer emulsion paints

919
00:45:17,840 --> 00:45:20,009
until 1961 or 62.

920
00:45:20,134 --> 00:45:22,178
There had been a painting under the paintings

921
00:45:22,303 --> 00:45:25,223
that had been sanded down with an electric sander,

922
00:45:25,348 --> 00:45:27,266
which is absolutely contrary

923
00:45:27,392 --> 00:45:29,018
to Motherwell's practice.

924
00:45:30,687 --> 00:45:34,857
Ann argued E.A. Carmean said a couple of things

925
00:45:34,982 --> 00:45:36,568
that I thought were rather fatuous.

926
00:45:36,693 --> 00:45:40,196
For example, there were pigments on the Motherwell paintings

927
00:45:40,321 --> 00:45:43,241
that had not been invented until much later.

928
00:45:43,366 --> 00:45:45,702
Carmean said, "Well maybe they were brushed against them

929
00:45:45,826 --> 00:45:47,119
in the collector's home."

930
00:45:47,245 --> 00:45:48,954
The collector wasn't a painter.

931
00:45:49,414 --> 00:45:54,252
So at that point, I thought about what our options were,

932
00:45:54,377 --> 00:45:56,337
and I realized there was a massive fraud

933
00:45:57,338 --> 00:45:58,923
being carried on,

934
00:45:59,048 --> 00:46:01,342
and I decided to go to the FBI.

935
00:46:05,555 --> 00:46:06,598
[Ann Freedman] It was

936
00:46:08,099 --> 00:46:10,935
so war-like,

937
00:46:11,352 --> 00:46:12,769
behind my back,

938
00:46:12,895 --> 00:46:15,732
to take me to the FBI.

939
00:46:15,856 --> 00:46:20,236
It seemed to me so clear that she knew,

940
00:46:20,361 --> 00:46:22,779
or should've known that these paintings were fakes,

941
00:46:22,905 --> 00:46:24,365
that by my saying I'm gonna go to the FBI,

942
00:46:24,490 --> 00:46:26,117
what good was it gonna do?

943
00:46:26,242 --> 00:46:29,412
Jack could have had a sit-down with me

944
00:46:29,537 --> 00:46:32,248
to talk about his concerns about the art.

945
00:46:34,584 --> 00:46:35,627
[director] Did he not?

946
00:46:35,752 --> 00:46:36,835
Not really.

947
00:46:36,961 --> 00:46:39,130
He confronted me in front of others.

948
00:46:39,255 --> 00:46:42,425
That's not sitting down and talking about his concern.

949
00:46:42,550 --> 00:46:44,969
And concern for me.

950
00:46:45,094 --> 00:46:47,305
Ann, this is trouble.

951
00:46:47,430 --> 00:46:49,432
I don't want to see you in trouble.

952
00:46:49,557 --> 00:46:52,602
My God, I thought these were right, initially.

953
00:46:52,727 --> 00:46:54,228
I think I was wrong.

954
00:46:54,729 --> 00:46:56,522
I think you're wrong.

955
00:46:56,648 --> 00:47:00,067
And you mean well, I know that, because I know you.

956
00:47:00,192 --> 00:47:01,986
Because I've known you for years.

957
00:47:02,111 --> 00:47:05,323
I mean, there is a way this could have been

958
00:47:05,448 --> 00:47:07,700
humanly discussed.

959
00:47:07,824 --> 00:47:10,286
But that didn't happen.

960
00:47:10,411 --> 00:47:12,371
This was an attack.

961
00:47:12,747 --> 00:47:14,915
They did

962
00:47:16,833 --> 00:47:19,295
get to the correct... [clears throat]

963
00:47:19,420 --> 00:47:21,422
excuse me... answer.

964
00:47:21,547 --> 00:47:22,839
But how they did it,

965
00:47:24,342 --> 00:47:26,469
and how they tried to destroy

966
00:47:29,263 --> 00:47:30,556
my reputation,

967
00:47:33,309 --> 00:47:34,560
that's another matter.

968
00:47:42,026 --> 00:47:44,821
[light piano music]

969
00:47:44,945 --> 00:47:46,989
[Jason Hernandez] I knew this was gonna be big because

970
00:47:47,114 --> 00:47:49,950
either the paintings are all real, or they're all fake,

971
00:47:50,075 --> 00:47:51,828
so we're either talking here about

972
00:47:51,952 --> 00:47:54,455
$80.7 million dollars worth of fake paintings,

973
00:47:54,580 --> 00:47:56,290
which is gonna be one of the largest art frauds

974
00:47:56,415 --> 00:47:58,793
in U.S. history, if not the biggest,

975
00:47:58,917 --> 00:48:01,629
or we're dealing with an amazing collection

976
00:48:01,754 --> 00:48:02,921
that the world should see,

977
00:48:03,047 --> 00:48:04,716
and they should be displayed.

978
00:48:04,841 --> 00:48:08,135
Once I figured out conclusively that the paintings were fake,

979
00:48:08,260 --> 00:48:10,722
I knew that we were sitting on an enormous case.

980
00:48:12,973 --> 00:48:15,852
[Ann Freedman] She said they've made a mistake.

981
00:48:15,976 --> 00:48:18,771
They-- they're mistaken, that it's not right.

982
00:48:19,856 --> 00:48:22,983
So, I pushed to let her know

983
00:48:23,108 --> 00:48:25,361
that we needed to do everything possible

984
00:48:25,486 --> 00:48:28,447
to prove that they were right.

985
00:48:28,573 --> 00:48:31,075
If you are the victim of a con

986
00:48:31,200 --> 00:48:32,702
that you've truly believed in,

987
00:48:32,827 --> 00:48:34,829
as evidence comes in against you,

988
00:48:34,953 --> 00:48:36,997
you are much more likely to double-down.

989
00:48:37,122 --> 00:48:38,457
This is actually the moment

990
00:48:38,583 --> 00:48:39,916
where instead of doubting and saying,

991
00:48:40,042 --> 00:48:41,126
wow, I was wrong,

992
00:48:41,252 --> 00:48:43,546
you say, no, I'm so right.

993
00:48:43,671 --> 00:48:45,339
It's a psychological process

994
00:48:45,464 --> 00:48:47,216
that's born out of cognitive dissonance,

995
00:48:47,341 --> 00:48:49,176
which means that your perception of the world

996
00:48:49,301 --> 00:48:51,596
and the evidence are no longer matching.

997
00:48:51,721 --> 00:48:55,349
My feeling was

998
00:48:55,474 --> 00:48:57,643
to not do any more business,

999
00:48:57,769 --> 00:48:59,978
because of the accusation,

1000
00:49:00,104 --> 00:49:02,398
but it didn't mean that I thought

1001
00:49:02,523 --> 00:49:04,734
that the accusation was correct.

1002
00:49:04,859 --> 00:49:06,485
She was confident in the art

1003
00:49:06,611 --> 00:49:08,738
until she couldn't be any longer.

1004
00:49:08,863 --> 00:49:11,824
I mean, she held out as long as she could.

1005
00:49:13,743 --> 00:49:15,870
[Jason Hernandez] The target is gonna be Glafira Rosales.

1006
00:49:15,994 --> 00:49:17,413
And you're always trying to find out

1007
00:49:17,538 --> 00:49:19,498
who else is criminally responsible,

1008
00:49:19,624 --> 00:49:21,292
but she's the person bringing

1009
00:49:21,417 --> 00:49:23,252
the paintings into the gallery.

1010
00:49:23,377 --> 00:49:26,130
Now, you don't know whether she herself has been duped,

1011
00:49:26,255 --> 00:49:28,382
but until you can clear her,

1012
00:49:28,507 --> 00:49:30,593
she's gonna be your first suspect.

1013
00:49:31,844 --> 00:49:33,429
[Dr. Flam] When Ann Freedman gave me the name

1014
00:49:33,554 --> 00:49:35,222
of Glafira Rosales,

1015
00:49:35,347 --> 00:49:37,182
one of the first things we did was we hired

1016
00:49:37,308 --> 00:49:39,477
a private investigating firm

1017
00:49:39,602 --> 00:49:40,603
to investigate her,

1018
00:49:40,728 --> 00:49:42,814
and within a week or two,

1019
00:49:42,939 --> 00:49:44,816
they found that she lived with

1020
00:49:44,941 --> 00:49:47,652
José Carlos Bergañtinos Díaz.

1021
00:49:47,777 --> 00:49:50,028
And he had been accused of

1022
00:49:50,154 --> 00:49:52,156
trafficking in stolen paintings

1023
00:49:52,281 --> 00:49:53,324
in 1999.

1024
00:50:03,751 --> 00:50:07,379
[Perry Amsellem] You would think that if a not-for-profit

1025
00:50:07,505 --> 00:50:10,132
could retain a private investigator

1026
00:50:10,257 --> 00:50:13,886
and find this out, that Ann Freedman and Knoedler,

1027
00:50:14,010 --> 00:50:15,888
they would've done something similar.

1028
00:50:22,603 --> 00:50:24,605
[Jason Hernandez] Well, the gallery's important because,

1029
00:50:24,730 --> 00:50:26,941
you know, they help facilitate the transaction.

1030
00:50:27,107 --> 00:50:31,403
The part that I'm not sure about is, well, are they in on this,

1031
00:50:31,529 --> 00:50:33,739
or were they duped themselves?

1032
00:50:33,865 --> 00:50:35,825
Was Glafira lying to them?

1033
00:50:35,950 --> 00:50:38,327
Or, you know, is it somewhere in between?

1034
00:50:38,452 --> 00:50:42,247
There was nothing on the public radar

1035
00:50:42,373 --> 00:50:45,877
about the Knoedler Gallery case,

1036
00:50:46,002 --> 00:50:50,214
about any disputes regarding authenticity

1037
00:50:50,339 --> 00:50:51,799
of works Knoedler had sold.

1038
00:50:51,924 --> 00:50:55,051
The sole story that you could look up and read about,

1039
00:50:55,177 --> 00:50:56,428
and that I did see,

1040
00:50:56,554 --> 00:50:58,347
was that Knoedler Gallery and Ann Freedman

1041
00:50:58,472 --> 00:50:59,849
had parted ways.

1042
00:51:02,309 --> 00:51:05,396
Obviously, there had been questions about these paintings.

1043
00:51:05,521 --> 00:51:08,024
At that point there had been a grand jury subpoena,

1044
00:51:08,148 --> 00:51:09,734
so it was clear from the beginning

1045
00:51:09,859 --> 00:51:14,070
that the FBI, the U.S. Attorney, was investigating.

1046
00:51:14,196 --> 00:51:18,158
It was clear that they wanted to know what Ann had, had done.

1047
00:51:20,452 --> 00:51:21,871
[Ann Freedman] I was asked to leave.

1048
00:51:23,039 --> 00:51:24,582
I didn't want to leave.

1049
00:51:24,707 --> 00:51:27,835
And I begged to stay even if they took away my title

1050
00:51:27,960 --> 00:51:29,879
as Director, my title as President,

1051
00:51:30,004 --> 00:51:31,881
even if they took away my salary.

1052
00:51:34,341 --> 00:51:37,219
I was, by surprise, called up to a meeting,

1053
00:51:38,637 --> 00:51:40,556
and I was told I was going to be given,

1054
00:51:41,432 --> 00:51:43,726
immediately, a leave of absence.

1055
00:51:43,851 --> 00:51:45,352
Not being fired,

1056
00:51:45,477 --> 00:51:47,479
'cause there would've been consequences there,

1057
00:51:48,397 --> 00:51:50,232
a leave of absence.

1058
00:51:50,357 --> 00:51:51,817
[director] Did he give you a reason?

1059
00:51:52,944 --> 00:51:54,445
Things were difficult.

1060
00:51:54,904 --> 00:51:56,530
Thought it would be best.

1061
00:51:56,655 --> 00:51:59,283
And I'll never forget Michael saying,

1062
00:51:59,408 --> 00:52:00,701
"And maybe you'll come back,

1063
00:52:00,826 --> 00:52:03,203
and that'll be fine, and maybe you won't."

1064
00:52:05,915 --> 00:52:08,500
I responded, "Michael,

1065
00:52:08,626 --> 00:52:10,461
how is this going to be explained?

1066
00:52:10,586 --> 00:52:12,296
What-- what should I say?"

1067
00:52:12,421 --> 00:52:13,839
And he said, "Well,

1068
00:52:13,965 --> 00:52:16,508
just say you've had a recurrence of lung cancer."

1069
00:52:16,926 --> 00:52:19,386
I said, excuse me?

1070
00:52:19,511 --> 00:52:22,098
Yeah, you know, that-- that's come back,

1071
00:52:22,222 --> 00:52:23,307
and you need time off.

1072
00:52:24,809 --> 00:52:28,228
I just, I mean, I didn't cry,

1073
00:52:28,353 --> 00:52:29,772
I didn't lose my temper or anything,

1074
00:52:29,897 --> 00:52:32,817
I just said, "Okay."

1075
00:52:35,069 --> 00:52:36,737
I was walked down the stairs,

1076
00:52:36,862 --> 00:52:40,532
and they said you can take your pocketbook,

1077
00:52:40,658 --> 00:52:41,575
and I think it's going to rain,

1078
00:52:41,700 --> 00:52:43,243
so you can take this umbrella.

1079
00:52:45,121 --> 00:52:46,330
I said goodbye.

1080
00:52:46,455 --> 00:52:50,668
And I found myself saying... thank you.

1081
00:52:50,793 --> 00:52:53,754
[laughs] I was just like, the manners kicked in.

1082
00:52:58,801 --> 00:52:59,969
That was the day.

1083
00:53:01,470 --> 00:53:03,055
A couple of other things happened that day

1084
00:53:03,179 --> 00:53:05,641
that were unusual but, um...

1085
00:53:07,476 --> 00:53:08,686
and it didn't rain.

1086
00:53:13,816 --> 00:53:15,776
After Ann Freedman made a decision

1087
00:53:15,901 --> 00:53:18,403
to leave the gallery,

1088
00:53:18,529 --> 00:53:20,823
obviously it created a void

1089
00:53:20,948 --> 00:53:23,868
because Ann had been extraordinarily successful in--

1090
00:53:23,993 --> 00:53:26,411
in what she had done, and was quite a known

1091
00:53:26,537 --> 00:53:28,413
and respected figure in the art world,

1092
00:53:28,539 --> 00:53:30,875
certainly in the community of collectors.

1093
00:53:33,377 --> 00:53:36,005
[Ann Freedman] Didn't know what exactly had happened

1094
00:53:36,130 --> 00:53:40,176
to make Michael Hammer go against me,

1095
00:53:40,300 --> 00:53:43,637
but it was clear that that was happening.

1096
00:53:43,762 --> 00:53:48,059
He was fed from the powers of Hammer Gallery,

1097
00:53:48,184 --> 00:53:51,979
that maybe Ann was going to have some problems with this.

1098
00:53:53,147 --> 00:53:57,484
And so, steer away, and let her take the fall.

1099
00:54:06,410 --> 00:54:08,412
[Ann Freedman] Pierre Lagrange.

1100
00:54:08,537 --> 00:54:09,705
"The Silver Pollock."

1101
00:54:11,790 --> 00:54:13,584
That was the first lawsuit.

1102
00:54:16,545 --> 00:54:19,090
Pierre Lagrange was getting a divorce,

1103
00:54:19,215 --> 00:54:22,258
and a very, very dramatic one.

1104
00:54:22,384 --> 00:54:25,054
Couples who are getting divorced, they seem to be able

1105
00:54:25,179 --> 00:54:27,890
to split up the homes and the kids, and the yachts.

1106
00:54:28,015 --> 00:54:29,808
[laughs] Not the art.

1107
00:54:29,934 --> 00:54:32,561
Lagrange had tried to sell the painting at auction.

1108
00:54:32,686 --> 00:54:35,231
Sotheby's would not resell those paintings,

1109
00:54:35,355 --> 00:54:38,234
because questions had come up about the provenance.

1110
00:54:38,400 --> 00:54:41,070
[M. Shnayerson] And so, Pierre Lagrange had gotten a

1111
00:54:41,195 --> 00:54:44,907
distinguished art expert to analyze the pigment

1112
00:54:45,032 --> 00:54:46,282
of his painting,

1113
00:54:46,408 --> 00:54:49,036
and he found that a yellow paint hadn't been

1114
00:54:49,161 --> 00:54:52,372
available commercially until 1970.

1115
00:54:52,497 --> 00:54:54,290
Well, the people in the art world know

1116
00:54:54,416 --> 00:54:58,045
Jackson Pollock died in a car crash in 1956.

1117
00:54:58,170 --> 00:55:00,047
That was it. Game over.

1118
00:55:00,714 --> 00:55:02,424
[Ann Freedman] What happened was, Pierre Lagrange

1119
00:55:02,549 --> 00:55:06,178
marches into Knoedler, and they put up a wall.

1120
00:55:06,302 --> 00:55:08,304
We don't have to talk to you.

1121
00:55:08,430 --> 00:55:09,848
Statute of limitations.

1122
00:55:09,974 --> 00:55:11,976
Nothing to do with it. Go away.

1123
00:55:12,101 --> 00:55:15,187
If ever you want to get sued, that's what you do.

1124
00:55:15,311 --> 00:55:17,355
[laughs] You tell people, go away.

1125
00:55:17,481 --> 00:55:22,278
He insisted on meeting with Ann at the Carlyle.

1126
00:55:24,071 --> 00:55:26,157
Oh, my goodness.

1127
00:55:26,282 --> 00:55:27,199
[laughs]

1128
00:55:29,160 --> 00:55:30,911
I was there early, of course.

1129
00:55:31,036 --> 00:55:33,747
It was 5:00-- 5:30.

1130
00:55:33,872 --> 00:55:37,751
Then I knew what Pierre looked like from photographs, I guess.

1131
00:55:37,876 --> 00:55:42,756
So I stood up and I went over to shake his hand, and I said,

1132
00:55:42,881 --> 00:55:45,176
"Pierre Lagrange, I'm Ann Freedman,

1133
00:55:45,301 --> 00:55:47,261
and I am happy to meet you."

1134
00:55:47,385 --> 00:55:51,807
And with his accent, "Don't be so sure!"

1135
00:55:51,932 --> 00:55:55,019
[laughs] He was really fired up.

1136
00:55:55,144 --> 00:55:57,395
Ann, uh, tried to sort of

1137
00:55:57,521 --> 00:55:58,897
keep everything nice and bright.

1138
00:55:59,023 --> 00:56:01,025
And then he started screaming

1139
00:56:01,150 --> 00:56:05,361
at the top of his lungs, "I am going to set you on fire!

1140
00:56:05,487 --> 00:56:07,531
Do you understand that?

1141
00:56:07,656 --> 00:56:11,493
I'm going to set you on fire, and you will have no life.

1142
00:56:11,618 --> 00:56:13,369
It will be over.

1143
00:56:13,495 --> 00:56:14,872
And it will hit the press.

1144
00:56:14,997 --> 00:56:18,167
And you will be done."

1145
00:56:18,667 --> 00:56:20,211
And Ann Freedman's reaction,

1146
00:56:20,336 --> 00:56:22,921
according to Lagrange, was to say, well,

1147
00:56:23,047 --> 00:56:25,174
listen don't, don't get upset Pierre,

1148
00:56:25,299 --> 00:56:28,468
let's see if I can find another buyer for that painting.

1149
00:56:28,593 --> 00:56:30,595
[director] Is it myth or true that you said,

1150
00:56:30,721 --> 00:56:32,348
"I'll find another buyer?"

1151
00:56:36,935 --> 00:56:40,022
I don't think I said that sentence.

1152
00:56:40,564 --> 00:56:43,525
To which Lagrange said, "Wait a minute,

1153
00:56:43,650 --> 00:56:46,028
so I get off the hook, and get the money back

1154
00:56:46,153 --> 00:56:49,823
in order for some other collector to be duped?"

1155
00:56:50,282 --> 00:56:52,617
I very well could've said,

1156
00:56:52,743 --> 00:56:53,952
I believe in the painting,

1157
00:56:54,078 --> 00:56:56,454
and I know you want me to sell it,

1158
00:56:56,580 --> 00:56:58,498
and let me see what I can do.

1159
00:56:58,623 --> 00:57:00,918
It's important to remember that Ann Freedman

1160
00:57:01,043 --> 00:57:03,212
was still saying that the paintings were real.

1161
00:57:03,337 --> 00:57:07,758
My opinion is that she knew that they were fakes,

1162
00:57:07,883 --> 00:57:10,552
or surely should've known,

1163
00:57:10,677 --> 00:57:12,512
and this, among other things,

1164
00:57:12,637 --> 00:57:15,182
would've been a strategy to cover that up.

1165
00:57:17,226 --> 00:57:21,313
[Luke Nikas] She believed that we needed our own expert

1166
00:57:21,438 --> 00:57:24,149
to do an assessment of the pigments.

1167
00:57:24,275 --> 00:57:27,361
And she certainly wasn't gonna draw the conclusion

1168
00:57:27,485 --> 00:57:29,947
that Lagrange had correctly identified this

1169
00:57:30,072 --> 00:57:33,700
as a forgery based on a single scientific analysis.

1170
00:57:34,285 --> 00:57:38,747
In response to Lagrange threatening Knoedler Gallery

1171
00:57:38,872 --> 00:57:42,709
with a lawsuit, Knoedler Gallery closes its doors.

1172
00:57:45,754 --> 00:57:47,464
[Ann Freedman] So, it obviously looked like,

1173
00:57:47,589 --> 00:57:49,174
lawsuit, close the gallery.

1174
00:57:51,135 --> 00:57:53,262
[Dr. Jeffrey Taylor] Michael Hammer, we can believe,

1175
00:57:53,387 --> 00:57:56,514
had a lot of money, and so it's reasonable to believe

1176
00:57:56,640 --> 00:58:01,019
that he knew he carried a lot of

1177
00:58:01,145 --> 00:58:03,981
the legal and financial peril,

1178
00:58:04,106 --> 00:58:08,444
and began to move assets, and protect assets.

1179
00:58:08,568 --> 00:58:11,405
And he understood what potentially lay here.

1180
00:58:12,614 --> 00:58:14,783
[Charles Schmerler] It was not a decision that was made at all

1181
00:58:14,908 --> 00:58:18,078
in reaction to the Glafira Rosales scheme.

1182
00:58:18,203 --> 00:58:20,289
It was a business decision based on

1183
00:58:20,414 --> 00:58:22,374
how the revenues of the gallery had been going,

1184
00:58:22,499 --> 00:58:25,543
and it had been under consideration for over a year.

1185
00:58:33,718 --> 00:58:35,137
[Dr. Flescher] December 1st, 2:11,

1186
00:58:35,262 --> 00:58:36,388
I remember the day exactly,

1187
00:58:36,513 --> 00:58:37,973
I opened the New York Times.

1188
00:58:38,098 --> 00:58:41,185
That morning I went to exercise,

1189
00:58:41,310 --> 00:58:42,978
and I go into our bedroom,

1190
00:58:43,103 --> 00:58:45,189
and I saw Eleanore,

1191
00:58:45,314 --> 00:58:46,523
I think you were crying

1192
00:58:46,648 --> 00:58:47,983
-and really shaken... -I was shaking.

1193
00:58:50,277 --> 00:58:51,736
[Domenico De Sole] We pretty quickly understood

1194
00:58:51,862 --> 00:58:55,073
that this was really, really bad news.

1195
00:58:55,199 --> 00:58:57,701
[Patricia Cohen] I had gotten a tip

1196
00:58:57,826 --> 00:58:59,744
that there was an investigation,

1197
00:58:59,870 --> 00:59:01,705
an FBI investigation going on.

1198
00:59:01,830 --> 00:59:03,832
Well, that's a shock.

1199
00:59:03,957 --> 00:59:05,417
I was shocked by it.

1200
00:59:05,542 --> 00:59:06,710
I was not shocked.

1201
00:59:06,835 --> 00:59:08,879
Oh my God, how many years

1202
00:59:09,004 --> 00:59:10,088
was this going on for?

1203
00:59:10,214 --> 00:59:11,756
I think people couldn't

1204
00:59:11,882 --> 00:59:13,258
look away from it.

1205
00:59:13,384 --> 00:59:15,844
I-- you know, it was a real kind of horror show.

1206
00:59:15,969 --> 00:59:18,596
At that moment, I knew we had a fake.

1207
00:59:18,722 --> 00:59:20,349
There was no question about it.

1208
00:59:21,183 --> 00:59:24,269
[Ann Freedman] I didn't go under the covers, so to speak.

1209
00:59:24,395 --> 00:59:27,564
It was sort of a blur of just speaking to people

1210
00:59:27,689 --> 00:59:30,108
who had questions.

1211
00:59:30,234 --> 00:59:32,403
I answered as best I could.

1212
00:59:32,528 --> 00:59:33,653
I didn't know it was coming.

1213
00:59:34,446 --> 00:59:39,493
[light violin music]

1214
00:59:44,915 --> 00:59:46,917
[Domenico De Sole] She continues to lie.

1215
00:59:47,042 --> 00:59:50,879
And she said that absolutely the painting was the right painting.

1216
00:59:51,004 --> 00:59:53,924
Give me a few days, and I will disclose the name

1217
00:59:54,049 --> 00:59:57,428
of the Swiss... seller.

1218
00:59:57,553 --> 01:00:00,264
And I say, okay, just-- you better call me right away.

1219
01:00:00,389 --> 01:00:02,433
And she never called me back.

1220
01:00:02,558 --> 01:00:04,642
I wanted to do everything I could,

1221
01:00:04,768 --> 01:00:06,228
no stone unturned,

1222
01:00:06,353 --> 01:00:10,941
to have the paintings investigated the right way.

1223
01:00:11,066 --> 01:00:15,612
And so, I told my lawyers that I wanted to pursue that.

1224
01:00:23,954 --> 01:00:24,871
[clap]

1225
01:00:27,416 --> 01:00:29,167
[Jason Hernandez] The only person who was reliably

1226
01:00:29,293 --> 01:00:31,169
in the U.S. was Glafira Rosales.

1227
01:00:32,087 --> 01:00:33,338
We made the arrest.

1228
01:00:33,464 --> 01:00:34,881
She was arrested in her home in Long Island,

1229
01:00:35,006 --> 01:00:36,508
and we said she was a flight risk,

1230
01:00:36,633 --> 01:00:38,843
and the judge agreed, and denied her bail.

1231
01:00:39,511 --> 01:00:41,638
In conducting the investigation,

1232
01:00:41,763 --> 01:00:44,558
I was pursuing this as a head-on art fraud case.

1233
01:00:44,682 --> 01:00:47,603
And really, I'm coming up with some decent evidence,

1234
01:00:47,727 --> 01:00:50,564
but not the kind of evidence that I would need to convict

1235
01:00:50,688 --> 01:00:52,690
if this was put in front of a jury.

1236
01:00:52,816 --> 01:00:55,777
So, I looked at it in a slightly different way.

1237
01:00:57,904 --> 01:01:00,073
The money goes from the galleries in New York

1238
01:01:00,198 --> 01:01:02,326
to bank accounts in Spain.

1239
01:01:02,451 --> 01:01:05,745
It should then go 90% to the family

1240
01:01:05,870 --> 01:01:08,415
that she says owns the paintings,

1241
01:01:08,540 --> 01:01:10,750
and she should be keeping 10% as the broker.

1242
01:01:10,875 --> 01:01:13,170
Very quickly, I was able to figure out

1243
01:01:13,295 --> 01:01:15,130
that she's keeping all of the money.

1244
01:01:15,255 --> 01:01:16,381
That tells me two things.

1245
01:01:16,507 --> 01:01:18,592
Number one, there is no family.

1246
01:01:18,716 --> 01:01:21,512
And secondly, that's also income to her.

1247
01:01:21,637 --> 01:01:24,473
Millions and millions of dollars of income, so we investigated

1248
01:01:24,598 --> 01:01:26,642
whether she reported her foreign bank account,

1249
01:01:26,766 --> 01:01:29,353
we investigated whether she reported it as income,

1250
01:01:29,478 --> 01:01:31,104
and she didn't.

1251
01:01:31,229 --> 01:01:33,064
So we were able to file federal tax charges,

1252
01:01:33,190 --> 01:01:35,484
and those tax charges gave us great leverage,

1253
01:01:35,609 --> 01:01:38,278
'cause not only did she commit a tax crime,

1254
01:01:38,403 --> 01:01:40,364
the fact that she's keeping all of the money,

1255
01:01:40,489 --> 01:01:42,991
that's evidence that she knows

1256
01:01:43,116 --> 01:01:44,742
there's something wrong with the paintings.

1257
01:01:45,577 --> 01:01:48,539
She's been in custody for months.

1258
01:01:48,664 --> 01:01:51,791
She's facing potentially years in prison on tax charges.

1259
01:01:51,916 --> 01:01:54,044
I think she just reached her breaking point.

1260
01:01:54,169 --> 01:01:57,422
She knew that she wasn't going to hold the bag for everybody,

1261
01:01:57,548 --> 01:02:00,634
and that she could be very helpful to our investigation by,

1262
01:02:00,758 --> 01:02:02,219
you know, among other things, telling us

1263
01:02:02,344 --> 01:02:03,887
who created the paintings.

1264
01:02:04,012 --> 01:02:05,180
And that's what she did.

1265
01:02:06,264 --> 01:02:07,891
[male reporter] His name is Pei-Shen Qian.

1266
01:02:08,016 --> 01:02:10,185
He disappeared from his home in Queens, New York,

1267
01:02:10,310 --> 01:02:12,270
when news reports first surfaced

1268
01:02:12,396 --> 01:02:14,356
about the massive forgery scheme.

1269
01:02:14,481 --> 01:02:15,815
It surprised me that the paintings

1270
01:02:15,940 --> 01:02:18,652
were being made in Queens by a math professor.

1271
01:02:19,736 --> 01:02:21,988
We were able to find lots and lots of evidence.

1272
01:02:22,113 --> 01:02:26,368
I mean, we found an envelope marked, "Mark Rothko nails."

1273
01:02:26,493 --> 01:02:28,828
We found books on all the different subjects.

1274
01:02:28,953 --> 01:02:31,248
We found paints, and all the different things

1275
01:02:31,373 --> 01:02:34,167
that matched exactly the fakes

1276
01:02:34,292 --> 01:02:36,712
that he was producing for Glafira.

1277
01:02:36,836 --> 01:02:39,172
If you didn't know any better, you'd just say, wow,

1278
01:02:39,297 --> 01:02:41,007
this is someone who's really passionate about painting.

1279
01:02:41,132 --> 01:02:43,343
And he was very passionate about painting.

1280
01:02:43,468 --> 01:02:45,721
[reporter] Qian has admitted he forged the signatures

1281
01:02:45,845 --> 01:02:48,098
of the painters he copied, yet he insisted

1282
01:02:48,223 --> 01:02:50,975
he was stunned that so many people in the art world

1283
01:02:51,101 --> 01:02:54,521
would be fooled by his fake Rothkos and Pollocks.

1284
01:02:55,230 --> 01:02:57,815
Qian was indicted a few months after this interview

1285
01:02:57,941 --> 01:03:00,444
for forging the signatures of the artists he copied,

1286
01:03:00,569 --> 01:03:02,028
and lying to federal agents.

1287
01:03:02,153 --> 01:03:04,364
Whether he got word that we were coming,

1288
01:03:04,489 --> 01:03:06,658
or not, 'cause remember he, he would've known

1289
01:03:06,783 --> 01:03:09,160
that Glafira was arrested. That was very public.

1290
01:03:09,286 --> 01:03:12,414
So my guess is that he probably didn't stick around too long,

1291
01:03:12,539 --> 01:03:15,041
and once he's in China, there's really nothing we can do,

1292
01:03:15,166 --> 01:03:16,376
'cause China's not gonna extradite

1293
01:03:16,501 --> 01:03:18,044
a Chinese national to the U.S.

1294
01:03:19,963 --> 01:03:24,342
I got a phone call... it was lunch time,

1295
01:03:24,468 --> 01:03:27,596
to say Glafira just confessed

1296
01:03:28,513 --> 01:03:30,265
to the fact

1297
01:03:30,932 --> 01:03:35,479
that the paintings were-- are all fake.

1298
01:03:38,356 --> 01:03:41,067
[Luke Nikas] She'd devoted almost 20 years of her career

1299
01:03:41,192 --> 01:03:43,194
researching, thinking about,

1300
01:03:43,320 --> 01:03:46,948
exhibiting, selling these works,

1301
01:03:47,073 --> 01:03:49,493
and in a moment, in an instant,

1302
01:03:49,618 --> 01:03:52,120
the rug came out from underneath her.

1303
01:03:52,245 --> 01:03:54,872
Imagine devoting that much of your career,

1304
01:03:54,998 --> 01:03:56,500
that much of your time to something

1305
01:03:56,625 --> 01:03:59,127
that turned out to be a massive fraud.

1306
01:04:02,130 --> 01:04:03,256
[deep sigh]

1307
01:04:06,760 --> 01:04:07,761
Awful.

1308
01:04:10,388 --> 01:04:13,600
All those years of build-up, of believing.

1309
01:04:15,977 --> 01:04:17,937
[Maria Konnikova] To me, that would be kind of the moment

1310
01:04:18,062 --> 01:04:20,524
where my life up to this point crumbles.

1311
01:04:22,734 --> 01:04:24,444
Everything that I've been saying,

1312
01:04:24,569 --> 01:04:27,322
and my entire world is just being shattered.

1313
01:04:27,447 --> 01:04:29,282
I think she had a lot of days,

1314
01:04:29,407 --> 01:04:31,117
but that could've been one of the worst.

1315
01:04:33,077 --> 01:04:34,788
But I had to catch my breath.

1316
01:04:34,912 --> 01:04:36,206
And, what to do legally.

1317
01:04:36,331 --> 01:04:41,378
[low dramatic music]

1318
01:05:06,611 --> 01:05:08,029
I'm 75 years old,

1319
01:05:08,154 --> 01:05:09,906
I'd dealt with a lot of people all over the world

1320
01:05:10,031 --> 01:05:12,200
in a very tough business situation.

1321
01:05:12,325 --> 01:05:14,786
These are the worst people I ever dealt with in my life.

1322
01:05:14,911 --> 01:05:17,038
The De Soles wanted their money back.

1323
01:05:17,163 --> 01:05:18,331
They did not get an offer

1324
01:05:18,456 --> 01:05:20,584
of their money back before the trial.

1325
01:05:20,709 --> 01:05:22,627
What they were offering was absurd,

1326
01:05:22,753 --> 01:05:24,379
simply absurd.

1327
01:05:24,504 --> 01:05:26,214
I said, fine, we'll fight it out.

1328
01:05:26,840 --> 01:05:27,841
[clap]

1329
01:05:29,509 --> 01:05:32,763
[M. Shnayerson] Domenico De Sole sued the gallery,

1330
01:05:32,888 --> 01:05:34,264
defunct as it was now,

1331
01:05:34,389 --> 01:05:36,850
and Michael Hammer, who owned the gallery still,

1332
01:05:36,974 --> 01:05:38,643
and Ann Freedman herself.

1333
01:05:38,769 --> 01:05:40,186
[M.H. Miller] The De Soles,

1334
01:05:40,311 --> 01:05:42,105
more than just getting their money back,

1335
01:05:42,230 --> 01:05:46,234
really wanted the story out there because they were pissed,

1336
01:05:46,359 --> 01:05:47,444
and they believed that

1337
01:05:47,569 --> 01:05:49,195
Ann Freedman was not an innocent victim,

1338
01:05:49,320 --> 01:05:51,823
that she was actively defrauding them.

1339
01:05:52,490 --> 01:05:54,284
[Dr. Taylor] Of course it had a lot to do with

1340
01:05:54,409 --> 01:05:57,495
Mr. De Soles' role with Sotheby's and like,

1341
01:05:57,621 --> 01:06:00,248
who are you to be messing with me?

1342
01:06:00,373 --> 01:06:04,628
You got a sense this was vindictive justice.

1343
01:06:05,378 --> 01:06:10,508
He didn't want anything but to go to war.

1344
01:06:10,634 --> 01:06:16,139
[dramatic violin music]

1345
01:06:16,264 --> 01:06:18,934
[Luke Nikas] The courtroom was the ceremonial courtroom

1346
01:06:19,058 --> 01:06:20,977
in the Southern District, so a very big courtroom.

1347
01:06:21,102 --> 01:06:23,730
It was a packed house.

1348
01:06:24,355 --> 01:06:27,776
[M.H. Miller] Domenico was viscerally angry.

1349
01:06:27,901 --> 01:06:29,527
When he would sit with his lawyers,

1350
01:06:29,653 --> 01:06:32,656
he would constantly gesture back to the audience like,

1351
01:06:32,781 --> 01:06:34,616
you know, can you believe this shit?

1352
01:06:34,741 --> 01:06:37,661
And I looked at Ann Freedman the whole time

1353
01:06:37,786 --> 01:06:39,454
with daggers in my eyes.

1354
01:06:40,079 --> 01:06:43,708
[M.H. Miller] Eleanore got very emotional on the stand,

1355
01:06:43,834 --> 01:06:46,127
talking about the sense of betrayal

1356
01:06:46,252 --> 01:06:47,545
that they felt from somebody

1357
01:06:47,671 --> 01:06:49,380
that they thought they could trust.

1358
01:06:49,506 --> 01:06:54,594
She testified that she was angry, heartbroken, sad.

1359
01:06:54,719 --> 01:06:56,888
I'm a very emotional person.

1360
01:06:57,013 --> 01:07:00,391
I cry in happy situations, and sad situations.

1361
01:07:00,517 --> 01:07:04,020
But this was opening the wounds,

1362
01:07:04,521 --> 01:07:09,150
and hopefully the jury recognized that I was sincere.

1363
01:07:09,275 --> 01:07:10,527
I think it was an act,

1364
01:07:10,652 --> 01:07:12,028
but it was a good act.

1365
01:07:12,153 --> 01:07:14,656
It's not like Ann Freedman was this close friend.

1366
01:07:14,781 --> 01:07:16,700
They went to Knoedler one time.

1367
01:07:18,743 --> 01:07:20,411
I had raw emotions,

1368
01:07:20,537 --> 01:07:24,207
and I was gonna expose them because they were real.

1369
01:07:26,376 --> 01:07:28,085
[Dr. Taylor] There were even some really funny moments,

1370
01:07:28,211 --> 01:07:33,424
like the one "not Rothko" was in the courtroom the whole time,

1371
01:07:33,550 --> 01:07:35,719
and people were debating whether the smaller block

1372
01:07:35,844 --> 01:07:37,094
should be on the bottom

1373
01:07:37,220 --> 01:07:38,805
or the larger block should be on the bottom,

1374
01:07:38,930 --> 01:07:41,057
because that's how Rothko did it.

1375
01:07:41,182 --> 01:07:42,475
And of course, the absurdity of the fact

1376
01:07:42,600 --> 01:07:45,061
that we all knew Rothko didn't do this painting,

1377
01:07:45,186 --> 01:07:48,565
but we're debating whether it's right side up or upside down.

1378
01:07:48,690 --> 01:07:52,986
It was one of those really funny modern art moments,

1379
01:07:53,110 --> 01:07:55,154
where, is this painting upside down?

1380
01:07:55,279 --> 01:07:57,073
Is this fake painting upside down?

1381
01:07:58,449 --> 01:08:01,494
[Ronald Spencer] The overwhelming fact was

1382
01:08:01,619 --> 01:08:04,163
that fakes were sold,

1383
01:08:04,288 --> 01:08:06,958
and they were sold not by some little old lady on the street,

1384
01:08:07,083 --> 01:08:09,210
but by a sophisticated gallery.

1385
01:08:09,335 --> 01:08:11,838
When you start there,

1386
01:08:11,963 --> 01:08:13,631
you're already underwater.

1387
01:08:13,757 --> 01:08:17,468
I did multiple focus groups to understand,

1388
01:08:17,594 --> 01:08:19,220
how do people think about this?

1389
01:08:19,345 --> 01:08:22,098
They spent a fortune on their defense.

1390
01:08:22,223 --> 01:08:25,018
I'm-- not the first time I hear that they did all sorts of,

1391
01:08:25,142 --> 01:08:26,686
you know, mock juries testing, testing, testing.

1392
01:08:26,811 --> 01:08:27,979
I think they had somebody playing me.

1393
01:08:28,104 --> 01:08:29,773
We did none of that.

1394
01:08:29,898 --> 01:08:33,317
[Luke Nikas] The focus groups tell us this is a horse race.

1395
01:08:33,443 --> 01:08:36,404
When we listen to one side, it's incredibly damaging,

1396
01:08:36,529 --> 01:08:38,031
we're gonna go that way.

1397
01:08:38,155 --> 01:08:40,825
And they listen to my side, and they say,

1398
01:08:40,951 --> 01:08:42,994
there's another side to this story.

1399
01:08:43,119 --> 01:08:45,580
We thought the odds were significantly better.

1400
01:08:45,705 --> 01:08:49,459
We knew that the facts, and the law, were on our side.

1401
01:08:49,584 --> 01:08:55,924
According to what my lawyer said and clearly felt,

1402
01:08:56,049 --> 01:08:57,634
we could win this.

1403
01:08:58,718 --> 01:09:00,595
[Eleanore De Sole] Reaching for straws.

1404
01:09:00,720 --> 01:09:04,891
I mean, they truly did not have a case at all.

1405
01:09:05,016 --> 01:09:08,853
And the lawyers would try to get Domenico on the fact

1406
01:09:08,979 --> 01:09:12,523
that he was a lawyer at one time.

1407
01:09:12,649 --> 01:09:15,610
And they'd say, well, Mr. De Sole, you should have known,

1408
01:09:15,735 --> 01:09:17,403
I mean, you're a lawyer.

1409
01:09:17,528 --> 01:09:20,364
And he turns to them and he goes, I'm not a lawyer,

1410
01:09:20,490 --> 01:09:22,283
I sell handbags.

1411
01:09:22,408 --> 01:09:24,327
You know, the experts who paraded

1412
01:09:24,452 --> 01:09:26,245
into the witness box

1413
01:09:26,370 --> 01:09:28,832
were in a very embarrassing position.

1414
01:09:28,957 --> 01:09:31,126
[Ronald Spencer] Christopher Rothko was asked to come up

1415
01:09:31,250 --> 01:09:33,920
to Knoedler and look at a piece supposedly by his father.

1416
01:09:34,045 --> 01:09:36,840
He spent a half hour looking at it, back and front,

1417
01:09:36,965 --> 01:09:38,591
and then pronounced it beautiful.

1418
01:09:38,716 --> 01:09:41,011
It's hard to imagine somebody thinking a

1419
01:09:41,136 --> 01:09:43,847
painting is a fake, and saying it's beautiful at the same time.

1420
01:09:46,265 --> 01:09:48,143
[Ronald Spencer] He knew Knoedler was in the business

1421
01:09:48,267 --> 01:09:50,520
of selling art, so what does he think he was there for?

1422
01:09:50,645 --> 01:09:52,396
It was beautiful, right.

1423
01:09:52,522 --> 01:09:54,107
That doesn't mean it was authentic.

1424
01:09:54,231 --> 01:09:57,401
They-- the paintings were good, they fooled a lot of people.

1425
01:09:57,527 --> 01:10:00,071
And Ann Freedman knows this, a remark that a painting

1426
01:10:00,196 --> 01:10:01,865
is beautiful is not an authentication.

1427
01:10:04,159 --> 01:10:06,285
[Ronald Spencer] Another expert said, "Well,

1428
01:10:06,410 --> 01:10:09,164
I didn't say this piece was authentic,"

1429
01:10:09,288 --> 01:10:12,667
but it came out in the trial that he'd asked for the piece

1430
01:10:12,792 --> 01:10:15,795
to show it in an exhibition he was putting on.

1431
01:10:15,920 --> 01:10:19,799
So that we'll hear in court, "Well, do you usually ask

1432
01:10:19,924 --> 01:10:22,969
for things you think are fakes?" And he said, "Of course not."

1433
01:10:23,094 --> 01:10:25,555
They were just backtracking.

1434
01:10:25,680 --> 01:10:27,724
You could practically hear the beep, beep, beep

1435
01:10:27,849 --> 01:10:29,893
of the trucks backing up.

1436
01:10:30,018 --> 01:10:32,687
Some denied saying things that they wrote

1437
01:10:32,812 --> 01:10:36,315
in emails, and when shown the email, would deny

1438
01:10:36,440 --> 01:10:38,651
that the email said what the email said.

1439
01:10:38,776 --> 01:10:40,737
It was very difficult to sit there

1440
01:10:40,862 --> 01:10:44,824
and listen to bold lying.

1441
01:10:46,701 --> 01:10:49,996
[Luke Nikas] So Ann looks at the stack of documents

1442
01:10:50,121 --> 01:10:52,749
that she relied on saying,

1443
01:10:52,874 --> 01:10:55,710
I have no reason to doubt the authenticity of this work,

1444
01:10:55,835 --> 01:10:59,589
or that work, and she asks herself,

1445
01:10:59,714 --> 01:11:03,426
where are you when I need you?

1446
01:11:03,551 --> 01:11:06,221
And I am, I am surprised though that,

1447
01:11:06,345 --> 01:11:08,932
that nobody

1448
01:11:09,682 --> 01:11:13,103
has acknowledged that they, they made an error,

1449
01:11:13,228 --> 01:11:15,730
aside from, from Ann.

1450
01:11:16,522 --> 01:11:19,067
[Domenico De Sole] So obviously, the email was the wow moment

1451
01:11:19,192 --> 01:11:23,446
when Mr. Anfam under oath said that

1452
01:11:23,571 --> 01:11:26,157
he had never seen the painting. [laughs]

1453
01:11:26,282 --> 01:11:28,201
Which was really extraordinary.

1454
01:11:28,325 --> 01:11:30,161
He'd never physically seen the painting,

1455
01:11:30,286 --> 01:11:32,789
he was sent a picture by Ann Freedman.

1456
01:11:34,582 --> 01:11:36,459
[M.H. Miller] The last person who had testified

1457
01:11:36,584 --> 01:11:39,129
was the gallery's accountant.

1458
01:11:39,254 --> 01:11:42,799
She basically walked the court through the books.

1459
01:11:42,924 --> 01:11:45,301
And of course, what those books revealed is that

1460
01:11:45,426 --> 01:11:49,346
if it hadn't been for selling these, you know,

1461
01:11:49,472 --> 01:11:52,016
$80 million worth of fake paintings,

1462
01:11:52,142 --> 01:11:55,478
Knoedler would've been millions of dollars in debt.

1463
01:11:55,603 --> 01:11:58,022
[Emily Reisbaum] So for the last decades,

1464
01:11:58,148 --> 01:12:00,357
their business really was selling fakes.

1465
01:12:00,483 --> 01:12:02,819
That was where a question

1466
01:12:02,944 --> 01:12:04,821
of criminal culpability emerged.

1467
01:12:04,946 --> 01:12:07,490
Ann Freedman and Michael Hammer

1468
01:12:07,615 --> 01:12:10,160
had personally profited off of the sale

1469
01:12:10,285 --> 01:12:11,911
of these fake paintings.

1470
01:12:13,537 --> 01:12:16,166
[Ann Freedman] I wasn't in charge of the overhead.

1471
01:12:16,291 --> 01:12:19,919
I did not spend much time up in what,

1472
01:12:20,044 --> 01:12:22,046
what we call the accounting floor.

1473
01:12:25,883 --> 01:12:28,594
[Domenico De Sole] But yes, I thought that was very damaging.

1474
01:12:29,887 --> 01:12:32,098
It was clearly came out that

1475
01:12:32,223 --> 01:12:33,724
Hammer was using the gallery

1476
01:12:33,850 --> 01:12:36,311
as his own, you know, pocket.

1477
01:12:37,770 --> 01:12:40,481
[M.H. Miller] He was using a company credit card

1478
01:12:40,606 --> 01:12:43,734
to take his wife on trips to Paris,

1479
01:12:43,860 --> 01:12:48,364
to purchase a $500,000 Mercedes,

1480
01:12:48,489 --> 01:12:50,992
which I don't think many people knew that

1481
01:12:51,117 --> 01:12:53,786
there was a $500,000 Mercedes that you could buy.

1482
01:12:53,911 --> 01:12:56,789
Michael was always

1483
01:12:56,914 --> 01:13:00,626
very enthusiastic and excited about

1484
01:13:00,751 --> 01:13:03,296
my discovery of, you know, these works.

1485
01:13:05,131 --> 01:13:07,175
[M.H. Miller] It would just be astonishing to think

1486
01:13:07,300 --> 01:13:10,053
that these people at Knoedler were operating

1487
01:13:10,178 --> 01:13:11,595
without any knowledge of this.

1488
01:13:13,139 --> 01:13:14,765
Our view is that it was,

1489
01:13:14,891 --> 01:13:16,059
you know, from the top.

1490
01:13:17,476 --> 01:13:19,896
That is categorically false.

1491
01:13:20,021 --> 01:13:21,981
And to suggest otherwise

1492
01:13:23,107 --> 01:13:24,942
is utterly unreasonable

1493
01:13:25,068 --> 01:13:26,194
and untrue.

1494
01:13:26,319 --> 01:13:27,904
And is in fact,

1495
01:13:28,029 --> 01:13:29,906
an insult to the legacy of the family,

1496
01:13:30,031 --> 01:13:31,615
and the work that they have done.

1497
01:13:32,700 --> 01:13:34,702
[Eleanore De Sole] We've had all these witnesses

1498
01:13:34,827 --> 01:13:37,372
and now it was both Ann Freedman,

1499
01:13:37,496 --> 01:13:41,209
and Michael Hammer's opportunity to testify.

1500
01:13:41,334 --> 01:13:44,503
Ann is there as her usual self,

1501
01:13:44,628 --> 01:13:47,006
dressed in gray with her head down.

1502
01:13:47,131 --> 01:13:49,175
Michael Hammer walks into the courtroom,

1503
01:13:49,300 --> 01:13:53,263
he's got on a velvet

1504
01:13:53,388 --> 01:13:56,140
royal blue jacket,

1505
01:13:56,266 --> 01:13:58,226
tan pants,

1506
01:13:58,351 --> 01:14:00,477
a dark, dark tan

1507
01:14:00,603 --> 01:14:04,065
and flowing whitish-gold hair.

1508
01:14:04,190 --> 01:14:08,236
And this is February in New York City.

1509
01:14:08,361 --> 01:14:09,737
The courtroom was packed,

1510
01:14:09,862 --> 01:14:11,739
you couldn't get a seat.

1511
01:14:11,864 --> 01:14:14,117
We knew that that day, that this thing

1512
01:14:14,242 --> 01:14:18,704
was coming to a head, and it was gonna be particularly ugly.

1513
01:14:19,914 --> 01:14:23,459
I don't think that there was really any hope

1514
01:14:23,584 --> 01:14:26,296
of Ann Freedman and Knoedler ever winning.

1515
01:14:26,421 --> 01:14:29,757
And I think Ann Freedman did not want this to go to trial,

1516
01:14:29,882 --> 01:14:32,635
and she certainly didn't want to testify because,

1517
01:14:32,760 --> 01:14:34,845
the trial was settled just about

1518
01:14:34,971 --> 01:14:38,015
an hour before Michael Hammer

1519
01:14:38,141 --> 01:14:40,101
was supposed to take the stand.

1520
01:14:40,226 --> 01:14:42,895
The court reporter, or somebody comes in,

1521
01:14:43,020 --> 01:14:46,357
and announces that the trial is over.

1522
01:14:46,857 --> 01:14:48,151
Period.

1523
01:14:48,651 --> 01:14:50,486
Ann Freedman and Michael Hammer knew

1524
01:14:50,611 --> 01:14:53,030
that they could make the situation even worse.

1525
01:14:53,156 --> 01:14:57,034
They could face criminal peril,

1526
01:14:57,160 --> 01:14:59,912
legal peril, if they testified,

1527
01:15:00,037 --> 01:15:03,540
and so they decided to cut their losses.

1528
01:15:03,666 --> 01:15:05,418
I think I made my case

1529
01:15:05,542 --> 01:15:06,585
very loud and clear,

1530
01:15:06,710 --> 01:15:07,878
so I'd done my duty.

1531
01:15:08,004 --> 01:15:12,258
And I exposed the fraud and,

1532
01:15:12,383 --> 01:15:15,011
and I think at that point it made sense for us to settle.

1533
01:15:15,511 --> 01:15:18,431
It seemed to me

1534
01:15:18,555 --> 01:15:22,059
that on the day I'm supposed to take the stand,

1535
01:15:22,518 --> 01:15:25,021
that that day they settle?

1536
01:15:25,646 --> 01:15:28,024
They didn't want the defense to go.

1537
01:15:29,775 --> 01:15:32,445
I'm not even going to say they didn't want Ann Freedman

1538
01:15:32,569 --> 01:15:35,072
to take the stand, but I-- I think that is

1539
01:15:35,198 --> 01:15:37,158
what people were waiting for.

1540
01:15:37,283 --> 01:15:40,077
I feel very strongly I would've loved to

1541
01:15:40,203 --> 01:15:42,955
have heard the word guilty.

1542
01:15:43,080 --> 01:15:45,249
I'm, I'm emotional about it.

1543
01:15:45,375 --> 01:15:50,046
And you know, perhaps there would've been more repercussions

1544
01:15:50,171 --> 01:15:54,550
for Ann Freedman and Michael Hammer, and the galleries,

1545
01:15:54,675 --> 01:15:59,096
if a guilty verdict had been reached.

1546
01:15:59,222 --> 01:16:01,640
They had their, their mind set

1547
01:16:01,765 --> 01:16:04,727
on what they thought was a fair deal,

1548
01:16:04,852 --> 01:16:10,191
and once they got what they thought was a fair deal,

1549
01:16:10,316 --> 01:16:11,650
they settled the case.

1550
01:16:12,776 --> 01:16:14,278
[news reporter] How's your client holding up?

1551
01:16:14,778 --> 01:16:16,113
[Rosales' lawyer] Excuse me, please.

1552
01:16:16,239 --> 01:16:17,281
[Luke Nikas] Rosales was the only one

1553
01:16:17,407 --> 01:16:21,160
who faced a criminal sentence.

1554
01:16:21,285 --> 01:16:25,248
And she was ultimately sentenced to time served,

1555
01:16:25,373 --> 01:16:26,457
which was a few months.

1556
01:16:29,001 --> 01:16:30,420
[Jason Hernandez] There were some people that were

1557
01:16:30,545 --> 01:16:31,837
disappointed with Glafira's sentence,

1558
01:16:31,962 --> 01:16:33,589
but you got to think about the context

1559
01:16:33,714 --> 01:16:35,632
of what we were able to accomplish in the case.

1560
01:16:35,758 --> 01:16:38,261
And I think this is what, you know, the judge's logic

1561
01:16:38,386 --> 01:16:40,971
ultimately was, we're not gonna make this one person,

1562
01:16:41,097 --> 01:16:42,806
who really just because of,

1563
01:16:42,932 --> 01:16:44,767
the luck of the draw so to speak,

1564
01:16:44,892 --> 01:16:48,312
is the only one who's gonna face justice, and the only person

1565
01:16:48,438 --> 01:16:50,231
who has confessed and cooperated.

1566
01:16:50,356 --> 01:16:52,024
It says something about Glafira as well

1567
01:16:52,149 --> 01:16:53,943
that she didn't implicate Ann.

1568
01:16:54,068 --> 01:16:55,736
When you're trying to deflect blame,

1569
01:16:55,861 --> 01:16:57,572
when you're trying to get an easier sentence,

1570
01:16:57,696 --> 01:16:59,823
the more people you can bring down with you,

1571
01:16:59,949 --> 01:17:01,075
the better it is for you.

1572
01:17:01,200 --> 01:17:03,119
The pressure on somebody like that

1573
01:17:03,244 --> 01:17:04,703
to give up others,

1574
01:17:04,828 --> 01:17:08,082
and in order to give them up, invent or embellish,

1575
01:17:08,207 --> 01:17:09,542
is tremendous.

1576
01:17:10,626 --> 01:17:12,587
Did she get off easily?

1577
01:17:12,711 --> 01:17:15,339
I don't know. She doesn't have any money left.

1578
01:17:15,465 --> 01:17:17,341
She was in prison.

1579
01:17:17,467 --> 01:17:20,136
I actually was in court the day that she appeared

1580
01:17:20,261 --> 01:17:22,846
with chains on her feet.

1581
01:17:22,972 --> 01:17:26,267
In a way, she was at the center of it,

1582
01:17:26,392 --> 01:17:29,812
but she also was a sort of a pawn in this whole thing.

1583
01:17:29,937 --> 01:17:32,315
[male reporter] New York art dealer, Glafira Rosales

1584
01:17:32,440 --> 01:17:35,568
was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla

1585
01:17:35,734 --> 01:17:37,487
to nine months of home detention.

1586
01:17:37,612 --> 01:17:40,739
Failla cited defense arguments that Rosales' behaviour stemmed

1587
01:17:40,864 --> 01:17:42,783
from abuse she suffered from her boyfriend,

1588
01:17:42,908 --> 01:17:45,411
the mastermind behind the scheme.

1589
01:17:45,536 --> 01:17:48,164
[in Spanish] I sometimes raised my hand to her.

1590
01:17:48,289 --> 01:17:51,542
We had arguments, but...

1591
01:17:51,667 --> 01:17:53,628
I understand her and forgive her,

1592
01:17:53,752 --> 01:17:59,467
knowing she would use that testimony to defend herself.

1593
01:18:00,717 --> 01:18:03,346
[Luke Nikas] She's now, as I understand it, in Long Island.

1594
01:18:03,471 --> 01:18:06,098
She's had to forfeit her assets under a restitution order.

1595
01:18:06,223 --> 01:18:08,809
And as far as I know, not in the art business.

1596
01:18:16,526 --> 01:18:18,110
What I really wanted to know was,

1597
01:18:18,235 --> 01:18:20,404
could I prove to 12 people,

1598
01:18:20,530 --> 01:18:22,323
beyond a reasonable doubt,

1599
01:18:22,448 --> 01:18:24,534
that the gallery, whoever was running it,

1600
01:18:24,659 --> 01:18:27,870
whoever was selling them, knew that the paintings were fake.

1601
01:18:27,995 --> 01:18:30,831
She did not know she was selling fakes.

1602
01:18:30,956 --> 01:18:33,792
I'm firmly convinced of that.

1603
01:18:33,917 --> 01:18:36,295
I sat in an office with her,

1604
01:18:36,420 --> 01:18:39,423
I dealt with her, and she lied to us.

1605
01:18:39,549 --> 01:18:41,509
She's the guilty party.

1606
01:18:41,634 --> 01:18:44,345
Ann Freedman is not a victim. She's a dealer.

1607
01:18:45,971 --> 01:18:48,224
[Marjorie Cohn] Well, she's guilty of the standard

1608
01:18:48,349 --> 01:18:52,520
biblical sins of, of pride and avarice, I suppose.

1609
01:18:52,645 --> 01:18:53,896
Either she was in on it

1610
01:18:54,021 --> 01:18:55,105
with Glafira Rosales,

1611
01:18:55,231 --> 01:18:57,441
or she was just so stupid.

1612
01:18:57,567 --> 01:19:02,905
Put yourself in her shoes one step at a time.

1613
01:19:03,030 --> 01:19:06,617
It's easier to look back and say, let me show you

1614
01:19:06,742 --> 01:19:10,413
the red flags that popped up across the 14 years.

1615
01:19:10,538 --> 01:19:12,081
How could you have

1616
01:19:12,206 --> 01:19:15,042
a fake Jackson Pollock hanging in your house

1617
01:19:15,167 --> 01:19:18,087
with the name spelled wrong for ten years,

1618
01:19:18,212 --> 01:19:21,382
or however long Ann Freedman had it hanging in her house?

1619
01:19:21,507 --> 01:19:23,133
The question in Ann's case was,

1620
01:19:23,259 --> 01:19:26,011
what did she know at the time?

1621
01:19:26,136 --> 01:19:29,098
All of this stuff that came out afterwards

1622
01:19:29,223 --> 01:19:31,100
has no bearing on that.

1623
01:19:31,225 --> 01:19:32,768
The decision was made that,

1624
01:19:32,893 --> 01:19:36,230
that we couldn't prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt.

1625
01:19:36,355 --> 01:19:39,191
They were fair, and they looked at the bottom line,

1626
01:19:39,316 --> 01:19:40,568
and they didn't indict her.

1627
01:19:40,693 --> 01:19:42,819
The fact that they did not prosecute this

1628
01:19:42,945 --> 01:19:44,321
for me is really shocking.

1629
01:19:44,447 --> 01:19:46,949
I, I don't know. I, I...

1630
01:19:47,074 --> 01:19:49,702
I'm surprised that, that, I'm surprised

1631
01:19:49,826 --> 01:19:53,664
by the whole, the... I am very surprised.

1632
01:19:53,789 --> 01:19:54,915
It's a-- it's a mystery,

1633
01:19:55,040 --> 01:19:56,875
and it's extremely frustrating.

1634
01:19:58,085 --> 01:20:01,255
[playful music]

1635
01:20:01,380 --> 01:20:03,048
[male reporter] José Bergañtinos Díaz

1636
01:20:03,173 --> 01:20:06,051
was arrested in Spain on the U.S. charges, and freed

1637
01:20:06,176 --> 01:20:08,845
while he awaits extradition to the United States.

1638
01:20:08,971 --> 01:20:11,848
He has denied any wrongdoing, and told local reporters

1639
01:20:11,974 --> 01:20:14,017
he's not worried about the case.

1640
01:20:14,143 --> 01:20:15,936
They, yeah, they're untouchable,

1641
01:20:16,061 --> 01:20:17,896
because they're Spanish nationals,

1642
01:20:18,021 --> 01:20:20,483
and we have to go through an extradition process in Spain,

1643
01:20:20,608 --> 01:20:23,360
and Spain has decided that they would not be extradited,

1644
01:20:23,486 --> 01:20:24,779
which is disappointing.

1645
01:20:25,862 --> 01:20:29,700
[instrumental music]

1646
01:20:43,673 --> 01:20:48,302
[director] Carlos, your decision to, to go back to Spain?

1647
01:20:48,427 --> 01:20:51,888
[in Spanish] Well, I always had

1648
01:20:52,014 --> 01:20:55,934
my home in Spain and...

1649
01:20:56,059 --> 01:20:59,980
my roots were always in Spain.

1650
01:21:00,481 --> 01:21:02,149
[director] Nothing to do with what happened?

1651
01:21:02,274 --> 01:21:03,233
No.

1652
01:21:05,861 --> 01:21:08,864
[Charles Schmerler] Efforts have been made to have Bergañtinos

1653
01:21:08,989 --> 01:21:11,826
brought back to the United States and stand trial.

1654
01:21:11,950 --> 01:21:15,329
So far, those efforts have been unsuccessful.

1655
01:21:15,454 --> 01:21:18,374
[in Spanish] Eh, Mr. Bergañtinos is innocent

1656
01:21:18,499 --> 01:21:21,001
until proven otherwise.

1657
01:21:21,126 --> 01:21:23,587
He doesn't need a trial to prove his innocence.

1658
01:21:24,505 --> 01:21:26,423
[director] Just so I'm clear legally over here,

1659
01:21:26,549 --> 01:21:29,593
your position is everything that happened

1660
01:21:29,719 --> 01:21:31,928
with the Knoedler Gallery,

1661
01:21:32,054 --> 01:21:35,098
everything that happened is Glafira?

1662
01:21:35,224 --> 01:21:38,977
[in Spanish] Well, let me say this...

1663
01:21:39,102 --> 01:21:40,937
[lawyer] No, no, no.

1664
01:21:41,063 --> 01:21:43,232
[director] Okay, he doesn't like that question, alright.

1665
01:21:46,902 --> 01:21:49,905
[Díaz in Spanish] I was never very ambitious,

1666
01:21:50,030 --> 01:21:52,324
Glafira was more ambitious than I was.

1667
01:21:55,035 --> 01:21:58,288
I forgive her and she is the mother of my daughter

1668
01:21:58,414 --> 01:22:00,082
and I wish her the best.

1669
01:22:00,207 --> 01:22:02,376
I know she is doing better than I am.

1670
01:22:09,341 --> 01:22:11,844
Pay me what you can, it's real.

1671
01:22:11,968 --> 01:22:12,969
[director] Of course!

1672
01:22:15,138 --> 01:22:16,223
Eh?

1673
01:22:16,348 --> 01:22:17,516
[in English] This is off the record.

1674
01:22:44,585 --> 01:22:46,837
[interpreter in Chinese] Hello, anyone home?

1675
01:22:47,963 --> 01:22:49,632
[interviewer] Hi, hello. Hello.

1676
01:22:49,757 --> 01:22:51,967
[interpreter in Chinese] Hi, we're shooting a documentary.

1677
01:22:52,092 --> 01:22:57,180
Do you know an old man who lives here named Qian Pei-Shen?

1678
01:23:00,517 --> 01:23:05,815
[in Chinese] You can go upstairs and check.

1679
01:23:05,940 --> 01:23:06,982
[interviewer] Okay.

1680
01:23:08,358 --> 01:23:11,612
[in Chinese] Hello, ma'am.

1681
01:23:11,737 --> 01:23:16,742
We'd like to know whether you know an old man

1682
01:23:16,867 --> 01:23:18,577
named Qian Pei-Shen?

1683
01:23:18,702 --> 01:23:22,706
[in Chinese] Qian Pei-Shen? I am Qian Pei-Shen.

1684
01:23:22,832 --> 01:23:25,835
[interpreter] What? You are Qian Pei-Shen?

1685
01:23:28,378 --> 01:23:30,673
Hello. We're shooting a documentary

1686
01:23:30,798 --> 01:23:33,049
about a Shanghainese artist.

1687
01:23:33,175 --> 01:23:38,764
May we ask you some questions?

1688
01:23:39,640 --> 01:23:41,224
[in Chinese] Shanghainese artist...

1689
01:23:41,350 --> 01:23:44,770
Have you contacted anyone? Do you have an appointment?

1690
01:23:44,895 --> 01:23:47,314
[interpreter] We'd like to talk to Mr. Qian.

1691
01:23:47,439 --> 01:23:51,986
Who told you about this address?

1692
01:23:52,110 --> 01:23:54,446
He's old now.

1693
01:23:54,571 --> 01:23:56,615
He doesn't want to be interviewed.

1694
01:23:56,740 --> 01:24:02,245
He is painting for himself

1695
01:24:02,371 --> 01:24:09,252
and not selling his art anymore.

1696
01:24:09,378 --> 01:24:12,130
[Pei Shen Qian] My intent wasn't for my fake paintings

1697
01:24:12,255 --> 01:24:14,383
to be sold as the real thing.

1698
01:24:14,508 --> 01:24:17,636
They were just copies to be put up in your home if you like it.

1699
01:24:17,761 --> 01:24:21,264
[Jason Hernandez] Pei-Shen knew where his paintings were going.

1700
01:24:21,390 --> 01:24:24,100
First of all, he's signing them in the names of the artists.

1701
01:24:24,226 --> 01:24:26,311
In our field, that's the legal

1702
01:24:26,436 --> 01:24:28,355
definition of intention to deceive,

1703
01:24:28,480 --> 01:24:30,106
when you put a signature on a painting.

1704
01:24:30,232 --> 01:24:32,275
[Perry Amsellem] I'm surprised that, frankly,

1705
01:24:32,401 --> 01:24:35,445
that that the Chinese painter was able to leave the country.

1706
01:24:35,571 --> 01:24:37,447
That immigration hadn't been alerted.

1707
01:24:37,573 --> 01:24:39,282
Um, they knew who he was, et cetera.

1708
01:24:39,408 --> 01:24:41,493
[light violin music]

1709
01:24:41,618 --> 01:24:43,579
[Jason Hernandez] Pei-Shen is probably

1710
01:24:43,704 --> 01:24:45,581
never gonna come back to the United States.

1711
01:24:45,706 --> 01:24:47,249
He'd be foolish to do so.

1712
01:24:48,500 --> 01:24:51,253
It's a-- a real shame, because now Pei-Shen has the fame

1713
01:24:51,378 --> 01:24:53,547
from having done this, but none of the consequences.

1714
01:25:08,228 --> 01:25:10,480
[Patricia Cohen] You know, it's very hard to put yourself

1715
01:25:10,606 --> 01:25:12,900
in someone's mind.

1716
01:25:13,025 --> 01:25:15,444
You know, nobody but Ann Freedman herself knows

1717
01:25:15,569 --> 01:25:17,529
what she believed, or didn't believe.

1718
01:25:19,031 --> 01:25:21,283
[M.H. Miller] Not only was Ann Freedman not charged,

1719
01:25:21,408 --> 01:25:23,159
she's still in business.

1720
01:25:23,285 --> 01:25:26,580
She's still running a gallery.

1721
01:25:26,705 --> 01:25:28,206
[Dr. Taylor] I'm just thinking, really?

1722
01:25:28,331 --> 01:25:30,626
You wouldn't want to take up a new career after this?

1723
01:25:30,751 --> 01:25:32,086
I mean, it's remarkable to me

1724
01:25:32,210 --> 01:25:35,213
that she's out there selling and has a gallery,

1725
01:25:35,338 --> 01:25:37,007
and that people are actually, you know,

1726
01:25:37,132 --> 01:25:39,217
still willing to, to deal with her.

1727
01:25:39,342 --> 01:25:40,594
[director] Would you buy a painting from her?

1728
01:25:40,719 --> 01:25:42,304
No.

1729
01:25:42,429 --> 01:25:43,597
[director] So you don't see yourself buying a piece of art

1730
01:25:43,722 --> 01:25:45,432
from Ann Freedman in the near future?

1731
01:25:45,557 --> 01:25:46,809
No.

1732
01:25:47,434 --> 01:25:51,229
[Eleanore De Sole] The only time I relive the moment

1733
01:25:51,354 --> 01:25:54,274
and get upset is when I walk down Madison Avenue

1734
01:25:54,399 --> 01:25:58,445
and see Ann Freedman sitting at a table in a coffee shop.

1735
01:26:02,324 --> 01:26:03,659
[Patricia Cohen] On the one hand,

1736
01:26:03,784 --> 01:26:06,286
it's an extraordinary case,

1737
01:26:06,411 --> 01:26:08,789
and you say, this is just so unlike anything.

1738
01:26:08,914 --> 01:26:10,540
But on the other hand, it also makes you wonder,

1739
01:26:10,666 --> 01:26:12,751
well, how extraordinary is this?

1740
01:26:12,876 --> 01:26:14,044
How many other things are out there

1741
01:26:14,169 --> 01:26:15,337
that we just don't know about?

1742
01:26:15,462 --> 01:26:18,590
[soft piano music]

1743
01:26:18,715 --> 01:26:21,426
[Dr. Flam] I think the Knoedler episode has cast a shadow.

1744
01:26:21,551 --> 01:26:23,887
How long the shadow will last? I don't know.

1745
01:26:25,973 --> 01:26:27,683
[Jason Hernandez] As long as people are selling art

1746
01:26:27,808 --> 01:26:29,059
for a lot of money,

1747
01:26:29,184 --> 01:26:30,853
we're gonna see really large-scale frauds.

1748
01:26:32,604 --> 01:26:35,231
As prices rise, and there are new artists,

1749
01:26:35,357 --> 01:26:37,526
and new excitement, and new treasures

1750
01:26:37,651 --> 01:26:39,862
that are found, there's gonna be new cases like it.

1751
01:26:44,825 --> 01:26:47,077
[Stanley Brand] I think it's opened up the art world

1752
01:26:47,202 --> 01:26:49,788
to a new perception and new scrutiny

1753
01:26:49,913 --> 01:26:51,331
about well-- how does one

1754
01:26:51,456 --> 01:26:54,751
actually authenticate any of these artworks?

1755
01:26:54,877 --> 01:26:58,130
And is the art world really doing

1756
01:26:58,254 --> 01:27:00,423
what it should do to find that out?

1757
01:27:03,677 --> 01:27:06,180
[Luke Nikas] It's a story about art history.

1758
01:27:06,304 --> 01:27:09,474
It's a story about how we should think about art.

1759
01:27:10,934 --> 01:27:13,645
Ten years ago, that painting behind me

1760
01:27:13,770 --> 01:27:16,148
would be worth five million dollars.

1761
01:27:16,606 --> 01:27:20,402
It was coveted by some of the most important collectors

1762
01:27:20,527 --> 01:27:23,906
in the world, and right now it's sitting in my office.

1763
01:27:24,406 --> 01:27:26,783
I can touch it, it's worth nothing.

1764
01:27:26,909 --> 01:27:30,704
And you think about whether the experience of the art,

1765
01:27:30,829 --> 01:27:34,124
whether any of that changes based on the knowledge

1766
01:27:34,249 --> 01:27:36,919
it's not what it purports to be.

1767
01:27:38,670 --> 01:27:40,839
[Maria Konnikova] I think the only vindication would be

1768
01:27:40,964 --> 01:27:44,218
if the whole world believes she was completely innocent.

1769
01:27:44,342 --> 01:27:46,595
And I think that's now her life's goal.

1770
01:27:48,555 --> 01:27:51,934
[Ann Freedman] I think I'll be judged for what I've done.

1771
01:27:52,809 --> 01:27:54,728
Of course I've made mistakes,

1772
01:27:54,853 --> 01:27:58,107
and I'm willing to keep on doing what I need to do

1773
01:27:58,232 --> 01:28:00,275
to earn people's trust.

1774
01:28:02,360 --> 01:28:03,946
Well, ask the people who spent

1775
01:28:04,071 --> 01:28:05,989
$80.7 million on their paintings

1776
01:28:06,115 --> 01:28:07,574
whether they think it's good enough.

1777
01:28:14,123 --> 01:28:16,625
[Ann Freedman] All I know how to do is

1778
01:28:19,419 --> 01:28:20,462
to keep going.

1779
01:28:20,587 --> 01:28:24,424
[soft piano music]