All language subtitles for American Greed s12e12 Artistic License to Steal

In this episode of American Greed,
Glafira Rosales is a novice to the New

art scene, but she has all the right
moves.

She really played the relationships
right. She says she holds the key to a

treasure trove of never -before -seen
masterpieces.

Jackson Pollock with famous drip
paintings, Mark Rothko, Robert

These are paintings that go for millions
of dollars each.

A tale with enough mystique to draw
millionaire buyers.

Collectors are greedy for recognition
and for artwork that lends

them prestige.

But before you open your wallet, you may
want to look twice.

Every aspect of the story behind those
paintings was a red flag.

It turns out skilled forgers know how to
splash paint, too.

Glafiero Rosales was able to take 63
paintings, get $33 million out of them,

then the gallery stole them for $81
million.

And Glafiero Rosales is a modern master
in the art of the con.

The experts believed it. Collectors
bought it. It was auctioned off by big

auction houses.

I mean, this woman was sitting on top of
the world.

Teaming with gallery, museum, and
hundreds of art dealers,

New Yorkers work hard to keep their art
capital booming.

So in 2011, when one of New York's most
venerable art galleries suddenly closes

its doors, the art world is in shock.

Knoedler and Company has been in
business since 1846.

And according to art historian Jack
Flam, they've held a sterling pedigree.

Knoedler and Company had one of the
largest reputations of any art gallery

the country and one of the largest
reputations of any gallery in the world.

Its legacy was built by supplying art to
Gilded Age tycoons like Cornelius

Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller, and J
.P. Morgan.

Over the years, it evolved.

It handled old master paintings. It
handled modern master paintings. And

from around 1970 or so, it handled
contemporary art.

And in each one of those domains, it
really handled blue -chip art.

Knoedler's closing after 165 years is
surprising.

But the real kicker comes when rumors
start to surface that Knoedler is

embroiled in a massive art fraud.

People who had bought paintings from
Dozer were coming forward, having their

paintings forensically tested.

And soon, former federal prosecutor
Jason Hernandez and U .S. investigators

prove that a supplier provided the
gallery with fakes sold for millions of

dollars to some of America's wealthiest
collectors.

What those paintings represented would
have been one of the greatest finds.

of the Abstract American Expressionist
School.

And these are paintings that go for
millions of dollars each.

Knoedler, along with the gallery's
director, Ann Friedman, say they've been

fleeced, just like their clients, by a
persuasive swindler named Glafira

Rosales.

Glafira Rosales is an incredibly
sophisticated con artist.

Maria Konnikova is the author of The
Confidence Game, a book about

She became intrigued with the story when
the rumors started to erupt.

What drew me to it wasn't just kind of
the glamour of the art fraud

world, but how it is that incredibly
smart people sometimes believe things

to an outsider seem incredibly dumb.

According to court documents, Glafira
Rosales and her boyfriend, Jose Carlos

Burgantinos Diaz, arrived in the U .S.
sometime in the early 1980s.

We don't know that much about what her
life was like in Mexico, which was her

home country. We know that she worked in
different jobs in the United States,

some in the art field.

First, they settled in Houston, where
Glafira waits tables and Jose finds work

as a kitchen helper.

It takes them little over a year to earn
enough money to move to the real city

of dreams, New York.

In 1986, Rosales is granted permanent
residence.

She and Jose Brigantinos have a daughter
and buy a small house in the suburbs.

Rosales even fulfills her childhood
aspirations and opens a small gallery

business called King's Fine Art.

What Glafira Rosales told people was
that she was from a family that loved

that had a lot of people come to their
house for art salons. And so from a very

young age, she was fascinated by this
world.

Sometime later, Rosales meets a well
-liked figure in the New York art scene

happens to hold a position at Knoedler
Gallery.

He offers to set up a meeting with the
gallery's director.

Anne Friedman.

Anne Friedman was pretty new as the
director of Knoedler.

She'd been very successful in her art
career and someone who knows how to sell

things to people, which is what you need
in the art world. But now she really

wanted to make a mark as the female
director of this really prominent

As luck would have it, Rosales is
looking to make her mark too.

So in 1995, when 40 -year -old Glafira
Rosales breezes into Notre and Company

with a canvas, she's the epitome of a
well -dressed and cultivated art dealer.

Lawyer Luke Nikas represented Anne
Friedman in what's been called the art

of the century.

You have a woman who's unassuming. She's
not slick. She doesn't have this well

-planned story.

a relationship with a man who inherited
the painting from his father, and he

lived in Mexico, and he just wanted to
get rid of this collection.

Friedman leads Rosales upstairs to a
small drawing room.

The painting's warm, peachy background
with two ethereal clouds of color is

immediately recognizable as the work of
Mark Rothko, a leading artist of the

abstract expressionist movement.

Rothko, along with Jackson Pollock,
Robert Motherwell, and a few select

were leaders of the abstract
expressionist movement that emerged in

during the 1940s.

That handful of artists are the artists
that are the most valued, have the

largest reputation, and in some cases
also fetch the highest prices.

People don't walk in off the street
carrying a Rothko, and Anne Friedman

it.

When questioned, Rosales spins her tale
of growing up in a prominent Catholic

family in Mexico, surrounded by the
creme de la creme of society.

That's where Glafira came in contact
with the heir to a secret art

man she refers to only as Mr. X.

To begin, she would try to sell the
collection of a painter friend, someone

whose confidentiality she wanted to
respect.

And so he became known as Mr. X.

Mr. X's father had been a patron of the
abstract expressionist art scene.

He purchased artwork straight from the
artist's studios, paying in cash.

So the assets and taxes were never
declared.

According to Rosales, there's another
family secret that needs to be kept.

This man is married, not a family, and
he was a closet homosexual.

And in Mexico, supposedly, it was
dangerous to be a homosexual at that

so the man had died, and now his son was
selling the pictures, but he wanted to

do it as discreetly as possible.

But there's a bonus, and it's alluring.

This Rothko is just the tip of the
iceberg.

Her secretive client has a collection of
previously unknown works by Robert

Motherwell, William de Kooning, Jackson
Pollock, and more.

Pollock painting in 2015 went for $200
million.

Only a few years before that, a Rothko
went for $86 million.

There are really big numbers involved.

This collection has been hidden in
storage for decades.

But Rosales is not an expert in abstract
expressionism.

and her own gallery is too small.

It doesn't seem to matter that few in
the art world have heard of Rosales.

This art is some of the most valued art
of the 20th century. People pay tens of

millions of dollars for it, and we
haven't had anything new in it for a

The gallery's new director, Anne
Friedman, is dazzled by the prospect and

profits.

Up next on American Greed, Rosales'
promise of a trove of masterworks is too

good to pass up.

Can you imagine being the one to
discover this previously unknown

of abstract expressionist art?

You're not just making a name for
yourself, but you are becoming the name.

Up until now, Glafira Rosales has been
circling the fringes of the New York art

scene.

She didn't know that much about art, to
be perfectly honest, but she picked up a

lot from the people around her. Her new
contact, Anne Friedman, the director of

Knoedler Gallery, has the power to
launch her into the upper echelons.

Glafira was delivering a great product.

that she knew would catch the attention
of the right people.

Glafira's portrayal of the unassuming
novice is picture perfect.

I always think about the excitement that
Anne Friedman felt, like the excitement

you might feel finding dinosaur bones.

It's this unearthed discovery.

But a slight drawback emerges.

The recorded history of ownership that
proves its authenticity is called

provenance, and this one is murky.

Provenance is a really important concept
in the art world.

The story was that they were purchased
by a family, a collector, directly from

the artist, often purchased outside the
back of the gallery in exchange for

cash, and they had been kept in storage,
basically, for decades.

So if you believe that story, the lack
of provenance actually makes sense.

So over the next decade, Clefiro Rosales
provides Knoedler with a few new

paintings each year, all by heavy
hitters.

She sells additional works to art broker
Julian Weissman, another New York art

dealer.

Her anonymous collector, Mr.

X, turns out to be the gift horse that
keeps on giving.

The most high -profile artists, Jackson
Pollock, Rothko's, Motherwell's, I mean,

you name it, it was there.

And discretion is fundamental to the
rare art market, where collectors are

tight -lipped about selling.

Secrecy is highly prized in the art
world. When you're a buyer, you're not

entitled, for example, to know who the
seller is.

Or if a broker comes in with a piece of
art, they don't have to necessarily

disclose who their client is.

Still... Rosales' secret collector poses
a vexing setback when it comes to

negotiating prices.

The more provenance you have, the more
detail you have, the more likely the

is going to sell for a higher price
because the backup is there.

When Anne Friedman pushes her for more
details, Rosales names David Herbert, a

deceased New York art dealer, as the go
-between.

She hears the name David Herbert as
someone who has been associated with

artists who was also part of the gay
community at the time. And so all of a

sudden, David Herbert can be someone
who's connected to Mr.

X.

To help shore up the murky provenance,
Knoedler shows the works to art experts

to get their opinions.

Dan Friedman and other galleries showed
these paintings, including the very

first one that came in the door to some
of the finest experts in the world on

Mark Rothko.

They saw these paintings, several of
them, and said these are convincing.

Art historian Jack Flam recalls viewing
a painting at Knoedler by Robert

Motherwell.

She showed me a Motherwell elegy that
was on the floor in her office, and she

said that she had just got it.

Flam had been close friends with
Motherwell until his death in 1991.

The work is credited to Motherwell's
Spanish elegy series, and it catches him

surprise. In the elegies which became
his signature paintings from 1948 to

when he died in 1991, he painted over
170 elegy paintings.

They're also the paintings of his that
fetch the highest price on the market.

Friedman never mentions the name Glafira
Rosales.

Instead, the works are generally
referred to as the Herbert Collection.

And she asked me if I remember
correctly, at that time, whether I'd

of someone named David Herbert.

And I said, no, I had not. And she said
he was a well -known art dealer.

And, you know, at the time, I thought,
well, you know, that's nice.

Jack Flam doesn't think of questioning
Knoedler's rock -solid reputation.

And so, you know, you're in Knoedler,
you don't think twice.

And of course there's that added boon
for buyers who are willing to accept the

lack of documentation.

These are artists that are really,
really difficult to get and that command

incredibly high prices. Now imagine you
can get those works and at a bargain

price. So not only are you a brilliant
art collector, you're also a pretty

genius businessman.

Some collectors are more wary than
others.

Rosales sells this purported Jackson
Pollock to Knoedler for $750 ,000.

In 2001, Knoedler turns around and sells
it to Jack Levy, a co -chairman at

Goldman Sachs, for $2 million.

With one caveat.

The sale hinges on Knoedler obtaining a
review verifying its authenticity from

the International Foundation for Art
Research, otherwise known as IFAR.

It had a panel of experts put together
to give their views about the painting,

and they wrote a report.

But IFAR won't positively attribute the
work to Pollock and deems the provenance

questionable.

Knoedler discreetly cancels Levy's sale
and refunds his $2 million.

But Knoedler's mission is to sell.

These works were really exciting.

And some really smart, prominent people
have bought these works for their

collections. A California collector pays
$3 .1 million for a painting said to be

by Jackson Pollock.

John Howard, who runs a billion -dollar
equity firm...

purchases a William de Kooning for $4
million.

In 2004, Domenico del Sol, a chairman of
Tom Ford and Sotheby's,

buys a purported Rothko for $8 .3
million.

Next, while Rosales and her gallery
clients are celebrating their lucrative

alliance and million -dollar sales...

Eyes are on another painting that's
popped up on the market.

I had certain kind of in my gut
misgivings about it.

By 2006, the market for abstract
expressionist art is enjoying a

Thanks in part to Glafira Rosales'
collection of never -before -seen

masterpieces.

For works by major artists to come up on
the market, it's extremely rare. But

for multiple works by the same artist to
come out of the same collection is

very, very unusual.

The alliance between the little -known
Rosales and the prestigious gallery like

Knoedler might seem strange, too.

But it appears to be kismet.

Rosales just built slowly this
relationship of trust.

She would talk to Anne about her
daughter's musical talent.

She would talk with her every single
birthday. This is the sort of thing that

really made Anne Friedman trust Glafira
Rosales.

While Rosales is the supplier, Anne
Friedman is the face that makes the

Meredith Savona was formerly with the
FBI's Art Crimes Unit.

She offers an analogy of Knoedler's
prestige.

If I buy a diamond from Tiffany, I'm not
going to then take it to find out if

it's authentic. I bought it from
Tiffany.

If I buy a painting from Knoedler
Gallery, I have to assume it's an

painting. It had that same kind of
reputation.

Often there'll be experts who...

in their heart of hearts, think that a
painting is fake, but they'll never

express it. And part of that is due to
the politeness of the art business, but

really it's also driven by the fear of
being sued.

So in January 2007,

art historian Jack Flam is at odds when
a Robert Motherwell painting popped up

at Julian Weissman's, another New York
art broker.

We had no record of it, and this is
always very exciting to see a new

The Spanish elegy reminds him of the
mother well he saw in Friedman's office

before.

But there's something strange in the
details.

I had certain kind of in my gut
misgivings about it and was by then 50

or more.

And although it was warped, the front of
it, the paint was not warped or

cracked, which looked odd.

He holds his tongue despite his
misgivings.

You're always advised not to police the
market. It's not your job.

But nonetheless, you want to protect
your artist's legacy.

As it happens, Flam is also president of
the Daedalus Foundation, founded by

Robert Motherwell.

Daedalus is in the midst of compiling a
catalog raisonne on Motherwell.

A catalog raisonne is a gathering of all
the work by an artist, by...

common usage, it becomes the standard
for establishing what are the authentic

works by the artist and what is their
authentic history.

During the process, researchers track
down every known work by Motherwell.

They enter it into their database and
assign it an ID number.

Can you see the difference in the late
50s?

They still kept that sense of
spontaneity.

While studying seven paintings
attributed to Motherwell's Spanish elegy

they notice a striking anomaly.

My team showed me digital images of the
fronts and the backs of the Spanish

elegies, and there were six from 1953,
and this new one was 1955.

When we saw the back of this one, we saw
that it was signed very much

the way the others.

were, for example, Robert Motherwell and
then underneath it the date 1955.

And then on a painting that was supposed
to have been done three years earlier

in 1953, once again, Spanish elegy in
quotation marks and full caps on the

top. It was exactly the same printing
and the date in the same place.

But Motherwell's signature is known to
be inconsistent.

Motherwell in particular signed pictures
in different ways in different months.

So this was a real tell.

This really made us suspicious.

Another tell has to do with the two
words Spanish elegy.

Now this is something that Motherwell
himself often said, like Spanish elegy

paintings, or that's a Spanish elegy.
But he did not put that on the backs of

the paintings. And this is especially
significant because...

Those paintings that we're beginning to
suspect were fakes had the title Spanish

Elegy on them.

Another tell, and perhaps the most
damning in Flam's mind, has to do with

technique. If you look at the crispness
and the intensity with which the real

paint is painted, and you look at this,
which is all kind of muffled and soft

around the edges, Motherwell was very
proud of and very careful about is the

in which...

He used variations of edge. So you get
very sharp edges, very soft

edges. So that kind of variation was
something very important to him.

But something that the forger misses
entirely.

Their findings leave no doubt to Flam
that the elegies are fake.

For Daedalus, it just begs the question,
where did these pictures come from?

And going through the database, we found
that none of these pictures had a

provenance that went back before 1999.

First owner for four of them, Anne
Friedman Knoedler Gallery.

Other three, Julian Weissman.

This is more than bizarre.

You've got seven paintings.

Four of them come from one gallery, and
they're almost like one from one gallery

the next year, one from the other.

one from one, one from the other.

Up next, more questions arise about
Rosales' elusive collector, Mr. X.

I come to suspect that Mr. X did not
exist.

Every aspect of the story behind those
paintings was a red flag.

The art market can be secretive.

Sometimes super -rich buyers and sellers
opt for discretion.

Sellers like Glafira Rosales.

Glafira wasn't ostentatious.

She didn't have flashy clothes. She
didn't have an

extraordinary mansion that $30 million
can buy.

She had a nice home.

On Long Island, she had a nice,
authentic collection of art.

And she lived a good life.

But brokering art for her anonymous
client, Mr. X, has put plenty of money

her pocket.

The most lucrative sale comes in
November 2007 when hedge fund

Pierre Lagrange buys a Jackson Pollock
painting from Knoedler for $17 million.

So over the course of 15 years, Golfiero
Rosales was able to take 63 paintings,

get $33 million out of them, and then
the gallery sold them for $81 million.

At this point, Jack Flam and researchers
from the Daedalus Foundation appear to

be the only skeptics.

In fact, Flam finds the story of Mr. X
astounding.

And, you know, this sounds like a
classic, you know, these paintings are

to my aunt by her lover, and, you know,
nobody was supposed to know about the

lover, and now the lover's dead and she
wants to sell the paintings. I mean,

this is a classic story for confronting
fake paintings.

He lays out his suspicions to Ann
Friedman, the director of Knoedler

My expectation was that she would be
grateful.

Because we're alerting her to a possible
fraud, and therefore she could take

action. She could go back to the person
she was getting them from and say, hey,

what's the story?

And instead she started arguing with us.

While Anne Friedman declined to speak
with American Greed, lawyer Luke Nickus

defended her in later civil cases.

Anne Friedman believed in these works.

She spent the...

better part of 14 years doing diligence
in them, hiring experts to research

them, and she really believed in them.

So this was very disturbing. We had no
doubt that the paintings were wrong,

Anne was being hoodwinked by someone.

In December 2008, Daedalus refuses to
enter the newly discovered works in

catalog raisonne.

The vast majority of people who own
works by an artist, they want it to be

the catalog resume because this is a
sign of authenticity.

To mitigate their concerns, Knoedler
agrees to submit the Spanish elegy to

forensic testing.

They run an arsenal of tests, including
infrared spectroscopy, to help determine

whether or not certain materials are
present in a painting.

The results?

Paint that was found that didn't exist
at the time of some of these artists.

In particular, the presence of acrylic
polymer emulsion paints.

But Robert Motherwell did not begin
using this kind of paint until the

Based on the findings, the Daedalus
Foundation refuses to stand by any of

seven Motherwell elegies.

As rumors ripple to the art scene, more
collectors are eyeing their paintings.

Everyone who knew this body of work,
whether they thought the paintings were

real or whether they thought the
paintings were fakes, all said the same

If one of them is fake, they're all
fake.

Flam makes the decision to quietly
contact the FBI.

Jack Flam is probably the hero of this
story because the FBI was involved early

on. But he kept it very quiet, and other
people who knew what was going on kept

it very quiet, which is the way that we
can do our investigation.

Next on American Greed, what will it
take to stop a fraud?

From the time the painting was created
to where it walked through Knoller,

was nothing but gap.

There was no paperwork.

There was no trail.

There was no record.

By 2009, Glafira Rosales is enjoying a
long and lucrative run as the supplier

coveted masterpieces.

The market got hotter and hotter, and it
was something that Glafira Rosales was

able to take advantage of.

She's the biggest blessing the art
market has seen in decades.

But the gravy train is about to derail.

So it turned out that I was not the only
person.

who thought the paintings that were
coming through Knoedler and Julian

were fake.

But people weren't talking to each
other.

British billionaire Pierre Lagrange, who
bought a $17 million Jackson Pollock

from Knoedler in 2007, is ready to let
it go.

But suddenly he's having trouble
unloading it.

He tried to sell it at one of the big
auction houses, and they refused to sell

it. And because of Jack Flam's tip, The
FBI Art Crimes Unit is now curious about

the slew of paintings attributed to the
same elusive provenance.

We had to go down every avenue to find
the negative, to find that Mr. X did not

exist, to find that the client did not
exist.

When former Assistant U .S. Attorney
Jason Hernandez joins the case, his

objective is clear.

To get a criminal prosecution for fraud,
you have to prove beyond a reasonable

doubt that someone intended to commit a
fraud, and that's the highest burden in

our law.

Rosales may be the likeliest suspect,
but it's not that simple.

You want to try and figure out some link
to an artist, to a manufacturing

facility, to purchases that are
suspicious, anything that would give us

as to who's making the paintings and
where they're coming from.

But every lead fizzles.

He decides to dig at it from another
angle, the Internal Revenue Service.

I had never worked with the IRS before,
and I thought, oh, man, now this is

going to take forever.

And it didn't.

Enter IRS Special Agent Eric Yonke to
follow the money.

It's hard to walk away from bank
statement while your transfer's in

Between 2006 and 2011, Rosales asked the
galleries to deposit her payments to

two Spanish bank accounts, BBVA and Caja
Madrid.

During the three years of the
investigation that we took into

received over $14 million from prominent
New York City galleries for the works

of art that she was selling.

And central to Rosales' story is that
she's an art broker for her Spanish

client. If that's true...

She would pay 90 % to her mysterious
client and collect a standard fee of

She says she's representing somebody.
Well, it's obviously got to go back to

somebody.

And if it's not going back to the person
she claims to be representing, then

there is nobody she's representing.

The biggest red flag was her sending the
money directly overseas after selling

the pieces of artwork.

The nail in the coffin was that she
wasn't paying any clients.

In particular, Glafira Rosales'
mysterious client, Mr. X.

What that told us was that her story was
false. There is no family in Europe

that owns these paintings.

These are paintings that are almost
certainly fake, and that she's pulling

scam and keeping the money in foreign
bank accounts.

The bank accounts linked to two new
suspects.

Her longtime boyfriend, Carlos
Burgantinos Diaz, and his brother,

While it strengthens the fraud case, it
also breaks another case wide open.

Tax evasion.

During 2006 -2008, we saw her receive a
ton of money, and the majority of it

sent overseas.

So we were able to look at that and see
how much she reported on her tax

returns. She was reporting...

just over $2 million received for those
three years, when, in fact, she was

receiving over $14 million.

She was reporting peanuts in her tax
returns.

So from there, she's understating her
income, lying on her tax returns, and

she's also hiding the Spanish bank
accounts overseas.

In May 2013,

Glafira Rosales is charged and held for
tax fraud and money laundering.

If convicted on all counts, she's
looking at up to 34 years in prison.

In the ensuing weeks, Pierre Legrand
sends Knoedler an expert's report that

Jackson Pollock painting he purchased
for $17 million is yet another fake.

One day later, the long -esteemed
gallery closes its doors.

Over 60 of these paintings spanning
multiple artists, but it was really only

toward the end of the scene that the
full picture was really brought to bear.

Up next.

Glafiero Rosales reveals the shocking
source behind the scheme that duped the

art world for millions.

I was very surprised when I found it was
one man who had done all of those

paintings.

In 2013,

Glafiro Rosales' astonishing 15 -year
art scam appears to be over.

She got so enamored of what she was
doing and thought that she was so good

that she would absolutely never get
caught.

But now, if Rosales is convicted on tax
and wire fraud charges, she faces more

than three decades behind bars.

The magistrate judge denied her bail,
and her being detained, held without

probably caused her to think real hard
about what her options were in this

Clefero Rosales admits to passing off
fake paintings as real with the help of

her boyfriend, Jose Carlos Bergantinos
Diaz, and his brother, Jesus.

One of the things that makes the fraud
like this successful is a good false

provenance. And the Bergantinos Diaz
brothers were adept at that. They would

conduct research in the historical
record, in books, anything they could

that... When the paintings were passed
off, it was believable.

Glafira also names the artist Forger, an
elderly Chinese immigrant in Queens

named Pai Shan Qian.

For 15 years, Pai Shan Qian became
Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell,

Franz Klein, Mark Rothko, and any number
of artists.

In the 1970s, Cheon used to paint
portraits of Chairman Mao for schools

factories before immigrating to the
United States.

He didn't have much luck as a serious
artist in the U .S. and resorted to

hustling portraits on the sidewalks of
Manhattan.

This is someone who Jose Burgantinos
Diaz and Glafiero Rosales found just

painting in New York City one day, and
they challenged him.

They explained to Qian how buyers are
simply looking for works in the manner

abstract expressionist masters.

They asked him to paint in the style of
Rothko or Pollock to see if he could do

it. And not only could he do it, he
could do it well.

For the next 15 years in his modest
studio in Queens, Pei -Shun Qian creates

dozens of lookalikes.

This is a painting created by Pei -Shun
Qian, the forger.

It's a painting that's supposed to look
like Mark Rothko. It had the right color

scheme. It had the right style for Mark
Rothko. You can see if you get close,

you can see some of the brush strokes,
all consistent with the way Rothko

painted. But it takes more than
technique to fool savvy dealers.

According to Rosales, that's where Jose
stepped in to add his expertise.

You need an older canvas for a painting
that's supposed to be 60 years old.

So they would go to flea markets and
look for paintings that were the right

and frames that were of the right age.

Once Pai Shun finished a painting,
Burgantino's added another touch of age.

He would do things like empty the vacuum
cleaner dustbin into the painting so

that dust and dirt would get into the
crevices of the painting as you would

expect to find in an older painting.

And he would stain the canvases with tea
bags and do other things to them to

give them the appearance of age.

Lastly, Bergantinos forges a signature.

You can see it's white paint that he
used to paint the actual words. But when

you get close, you can see a brown tint
to it. And it looks old to the naked

eye. But when you actually test it, the
brown is not... From

grime or age, it's like a varnish on top
to make the white not so brilliant.

But in some cases, the red flags were
remarkably apparent.

Like if anyone had bothered to look
closer at this pollock that hung on Anne

Friedman's wall for decades.

The signature for this work is down here
in the lower.

Right corner, you can see the forger
didn't spell Pollock correctly.

It appears that he left out a C.

Investigators aren't sure whether Pei
Shunchen is onto the scam from the

beginning, but it's clear he eventually
caught on.

As a matter of fact, there came a time
where he learned how much the paintings

were being sold for, and he negotiated a
raise.

IRS agent Eric Yonke determines that Pei
Shun -Chien gets paid a few thousand

dollars each for his imitations of top
abstract expressionists.

Mr. Burgantinos was paying him $3 ,000
to $8 ,000 per painting, which is

compared to what Ms. Rosales was
initially selling them for. She's

for hundreds of thousands to millions of
dollars.

In September 2013...

Glafiro Rosales pleads guilty in court
to wire fraud, money laundering, and tax

evasion.

By the time Glafiro confesses, Pei
Shanqian has fled back to China.

If fame and fortune was what he was
hoping for, then perhaps he is a

His works were in prominent museums.
They sold for tens of millions of

in the aggregate.

He was a famous artist, but not for who
he was, but who he was pretending to be.

Jose Carlos Burgantinos Diaz and his
brother have taken refuge in Spain.

In 2016, Spanish courts ruled against
extraditing 60 -year -old Diaz. He and

brother still face charges in the U .S.

Here in the States, Glefino Rosales is
left holding the bag.

She got nine months of home detention,
and she got some supervised release

and she got restitution and forfeiture
to the tune of

about $81 million.

In her defense, attorneys argued that
LaFerre's boyfriend put her up to the

scheme. He was the one who had found the
art forger, who then supplied Glyphura

Rosales with the paintings.

A string of civil cases have been filed
against Knoedler and Company, art

dealers Ann Friedman and Julian
Weissman, and others taken in by

No criminal charges were filed against
them.

This is so egregious that there are
people who will... go to their grave

Anne Friedman knew, the Knoedler Gallery
knew, Julian Weissman knew. How could

they not know? Because they themselves
have never been on that end, and they

don't realize what it means to be the
victim of a con artist.

Glyphira Rosales really embedded herself
in the art world in a careful way

that allowed Knoedler Gallery to look at
the situation and say, this is

convincing to us.

Julian Weissman declined to comment for
American Greed.

To date, most of the lawsuits have been
settled out of court. The defendants

have denied any wrongdoing.

Art and jewelry are the last sort of
fashions of unregulated business.

If you're a collector, if you're in this
art world, it truly is buyer beware.

This was the discovery of dinosaur bones
that turned out not to be dinosaur

bones.

Glafira Rosales perpetrated the most
important, most significant art fraud in

this century.