TO CATCH A THIEF: ART FRAUD DETECTIVES FIGHTING CRIME by Yvonne Saxon

Art fraud has been around for centuries. It’s known that the Romans copied statues and passed them off as Greek. So many Old Masters (think Da Vinci, Raphael, Vermeer, and Rembrandt, for starters) have been copied, that there’s an Old Master forgery ring whose extent even the biggest auction houses and the top art specialists don’t know. It's not just paintings that are being counterfeited, either. Artifacts, statues, books, prints, etc., are all being stolen, copied, faked, and fabricated. For example, art dealer Tatiana Khan, owner of  Los Angeles' Chateau Allegre gallery, was paid $1,000 to copy Picasso's "La Femme Au Chapeau Bleu." She then sold the copy for $2 million to a buyer. “Fake art is the third largest criminal activity on Earth after drugs and weapons” according to a source.

Enter the following four art fraud investigators, all recognized as being top in their field.

Arthur Brand has been called the "Indiana Jones of the art world" for spending most of his life tracking down stolen art. He first became interested in art and the art world as an exchange student living in Spain. When he joined some Gypsies on a treasure hunt and found 3 Roman coins, he was hooked on investigating the past. He recently recovered a Picasso painting stolen from a Sheikh's yacht in 1999 which he estimated was worth around $86 million. When a ring once belonging to Oscar Wilde was stolen from Oxford University's Magdelen College, he found it. Surprisingly, even after seeing photos of the recovered ring, the College declared the ring a fake. An angry Brand did more research and proved it to be genuine. All in all, he has found dozens of art works, books, and other items totaling around $307 million. (L250m)

Jordan Arnold and Mark Fishstein from K2Intelligence in New York City investigate all forms of art theft and fraud. Arnold says "Counterfeiters have never had more tools at their disposal as they do today. Technology has made it a lot easier to create counterfeit works and also provenance documents that back up the works." Arnold and Fishstein can take years to build a case for an art crime, then go undercover, "employing many on-the-ground tactics." They both worked on the 2013 Damien Hirst Counterfeit Case "where a defendant was accused of trying to pass off fake "spin" and "dot" paintings worth thousands of dollars. The defendant offered to sell several fake paintings to the undercover detective for $185,000." Arnold, who was an Assistant District Attorney at the New York County District Attorney's Office, never actually studied art in college, but was influenced by his sculptor/artist grandfather. Fishstein, whose father was a graphic artist, was the New York Police Department's art detective for years. He developed an art crime beat for himself. "Buyers should stay away from sellers on sites like eBay that try to take the transaction offline to 'save on fees,' they're demonstrating that they're willing to get outside of the protections of you as the buyer would otherwise have in the marketplace" Arnold says.

James Martin founded Orion Analytical and has been called "the World's Top Art Forgery Detective." From 2000 to 2016 he ran a materials analysis and consulting firm that investigated art, cultural property, and collectibles, spanning more than 4,000 years. Questions about attribution and authenticity of ancient Egyptian artifacts, paintings, sculpture, Bordeaux wines and more were resolved by Orion, who also gave leads and testimony in civil and criminal proceedings. Martin performed more than 1,100 analytical projects for museums, collectors, insurance companies, and law enforcement, including every major FBI art fraud investigation between 2000 and 2016. In 2016, uncertainty over several "Old Masters" had the art world in a spin. French police had been tipped off that a painting by a German Renaissance master dated 1531 was a fake. After that, a string of old masters in galleries were suspect. Sothby's, the premier London art auction house, was concerned that a Franz Hols they sold in 2011 for L8.5m and a 16th century Parmigianino, sold for $842,500, were suspect. They sent them to Martin and within days, they had an answer: both were fakes. Martin had found synthetic pigments that weren't available in the 17th century for the Hals, and a green pigment that was first synthesized  400 years after Parmigianino died. Sothby's had to refund both buyers. Sothby's was so impressed by Martin's work that "they took the unprecedented step of buying Orion Analytical, becoming the first auctioneer to have an in-house conservation and analysis unit." "He has worked so many forgery cases with such success that he serves . . . as a line of fortification against the swells of duff art lapping into the market." James Martin's photo is featured at the top of this blog.

For more stories and background information on the above art detectives, read these: 

theguardian.com "How to spot a perfect fake:the world's top art forgery detective" by Samantha Subramanian 

bbc.com "Meet the world's greatest art detective" by Ralph Jones

vice.com "Art crimes detectives expose the ugly truths of the art world" by Marina Garcia Vasquez