A person in Pennsylvania has been sentenced to 60 days in jail for promoting solid works that he falsely claimed have been by Francis Bacon, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol and different blue-chip artists.
Carter Reese pleaded responsible in Could to at least one rely of wire fraud and one rely of mail fraud, admitting that between February 2019 and March 2021, he knowingly bought and tried to promote counterfeit works. Along with the jail time period, Reese should serve two years of supervised launch, together with 4 months on dwelling detention. He was additionally fined $50,000 and ordered to pay $186,125 in restitution to his victims, in accordance to the US Legal professional’s Workplace for the Jap District of Pennsylvania.
Prosecutors mentioned he misrepresented the items as real works by Bacon, Basquiat, Jean Cocteau, Keith Haring, Fernand Léger, Roy Lichtenstein, Joan Miró, Picasso and Warhol. He would inform potential consumers that he had acquired the works from different collectors or from somebody named “Ken James”, an alias for his Chicago-based provider—a person who had been convicted of promoting greater than $1m of counterfeit artwork. (The provider died in late 2021.) The scheme was investigated by the FBI’s Artwork Crime Workforce, with brokers from its Philadelphia and Miami discipline places of work.
Reese, who lives in Studying, Pennsylvania, is a former trainer and admissions director on the Hill Faculty in Pottstown. He and his spouse later co-founded a global instructional consultancy that suggested households on entry to elite faculties and schools. He previously lived next-door to Taylor Swift’s childhood dwelling, a element that drew media consideration when his responsible plea was first reported.
Reese was additionally an avid collector of antiques. In line with The Philadelphia Inquirer, he valued his assortment of furnishings, rugs, toys and mannequin trains at $6m. In 2019, he declared chapter, claiming he had himself been the sufferer of fraud when an public sale home allegedly mishandled his antiques and highlighted a counterfeit toy he had purchased for $20,000.
Prosecutors had initially sought a sentence of as much as 40 years for Reese, arguing {that a} longer sentence was warranted given the deliberate nature of the fraud and the corrosive impact of such schemes on confidence within the artwork market. The choose within the case, nevertheless, opted to impose a lighter sentence, citing Reese’s responsible plea and settlement to restitution.
