Art Fraud

THEY met in Paris in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. He was a struggling painter with a tiny apartment in Greenwich Village; she was a ballerina who lived in Marin County and danced in San Francisco. They married and had two daughters. He became successful enough to make a living with brush and easel. They moved to a tiny farm in Petaluma, where she taught ballet and he painted pricey Irish landscapes and Paris street scenes.

The owner of three paintings attributed to contemporary abstract painter Jackson Pollock has rejected a scientific analysis by Harvard University researchers that questions the age and authenticity of the works. Researchers at the Harvard University Art Museums tested paint pigments and binding media in the three paintings. They found that pigments used in all three works were not commercially available until after Pollock's death in 1956.

A federal judge Wednesday ordered an imprisoned La Canada Flintridge woman to pay more than $275,000 in damages in a case involving the defrauding of a Lake Arrowhead artist by copying her work and selling the paintings as originals. The decision is part of a larger case involving Christine Eubanks, 49, who this month admitted to running a scam that bilked buyers out of more than $20 million by selling bogus artworks and forging the signatures of well-known artists. U.S.

Six Brillo boxes in the Andy Warhol collection at a Swedish museum are fakes made in 1990, three years after the famed pop artist died, the museum says. Warhol created the original Brillo boxes, replicas of Brillo soap pad cartons, as part of a 1964 exhibition displaying artwork resembling supermarket products.

Pseudo Picassos, counterfeit Chagalls and other fakes were on display in London this week, part of an effort by Scotland Yard to warn dealers about forged art that it says fuels crime gangs around the world. While the exhibit at the Victoria and Albert Museum looked like any other art gallery, the chatter among dealers centered on crime rather than composition, and the program was not open to the public.

Robert Volpe, 63, a retired New York Police Department detective renowned for tracking down art fraud and theft -- and the father of the officer imprisoned for a notorious attack on a Haitian immigrant -- died Tuesday of a heart attack at his home on Staten Island, N.Y. Volpe, who was the subject of "Art Cop," a 1974 book about his experiences, attained fame in the 1970s as the only detective in the country assigned to investigate art fraud and theft.

The owner of a closed Manhattan art gallery that once boasted a star-studded clientele was arrested again Tuesday on charges of carrying out an art fraud that now totals $93 million. Lawrence B. Salander of Millbrook, N.Y., is accused of stealing from artists, art owners and investors. The victims include the estate of abstract expressionist Robert De Niro Sr., father of the famed actor, and tennis great John McEnroe. The indictment unsealed Tuesday, the second against Salander in four months, charges him with grand larceny and falsifying business records.

A Turkish carpet in the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art -- acquired as a circa-1600 work but disparaged by a New York rug dealer as a much later reproduction -- has emerged from a preliminary investigation with its authenticity intact but a later estimated date of creation. "We have no significant doubts about the carpet," said Nancy Thomas, deputy director of the museum. "But like a lot of acquisitions, it has gone under a microscope since it came here.

The old doctor told his wealthy acquaintances that his treasure trove of paintings and sculptures had been bequeathed to his family by an Indian maharajah and that his late father had left a will stipulating that he could never sell them through art auction houses. So Vilas Likhite, 66, allegedly proposed selling his collection of paintings by Jackson Pollock, Jasper Johns, Willem de Kooning and other modern masters directly to wealthy individuals he met in Southern California.

Art fraud costs collectors huge sums of money each year. Among the artists most frequently forged are Dali, Chagall, Picasso and Miro. How to protect yourself when buying a piece of art: * Get professional help: Contact an art appraiser or museum curator for aid in confirming the value of anything you are thinking of buying. Ask the seller for edition size, print medium (lithograph, etching, silk-screen, woodcut, etc.), year of publication and printer/publisher.