Beyond the San Francisco fountain's preservation battle and a Prado painting's return, Italian officials escalate inquiries into the Venice Biennale's acceptance of Russian participants, as an unverified Banksy artwork emerges in London.
A father and daughter from New Jersey pleaded guilty to orchestrating a sophisticated, multi-year scheme that involved commissioning at least 200 forged works by artists like Warhol and Scholder, ultimately defrauding collectors of at least $2 million through established auction houses.
Beyond the reported $2 million in illicit gains, the Bankowskis leveraged a sophisticated scheme of over 200 expertly forged artworks, commissioned from Poland, to deceive prominent New York auction houses, extending their counterfeits beyond Warhols and Banksys to include pieces attributed to Andrew Wyeth and Richard Mayhew.
Culminating years of rigorous investigation into the illicit trade, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit and Homeland Security have repatriated 657 artifacts, valued at nearly $14 million and largely traced to the networks of Subhash Kapoor and Nancy Wiener, back to India.
Italian authorities, in collaboration with US counterparts and notably the Manhattan District Attorney's office, have achieved the repatriation of 337 ancient artifacts, encompassing Roman sculptures, Greek, Etruscan, and Egyptian pieces, after their illicit circulation.
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