The FBI issued a warrant last week for the arrest of an East Hampton man on one count of wire fraud after investigators said he sold at least 60 fraudulent Jackson Pollock paintings, earning himself more than $1.8 million in the process.
In addition to the sale of the paintings, which John D. Re “well knew” were fake, according to the warrant issued on Thursday, June 19, Mr. Re also is accused of falsely claiming that he obtained the paintings from someone’s basement in East Hampton, then falsely represented to several victims that they had purchased his entire collection of Pollocks.
Additionally, Mr. Re allegedly “threaten[ed] ... to change the provenance for the purported Pollock paintings” that he’d sold to a victim to “render the paintings worthless,” and caused others to engage in “shill bidding” to inflate the price of the paintings, according to the complaint filed by Special Agent Meridith Savona, who has worked on the FBI’s Major Theft Squad since January 2010, with a specialty in art theft and art fraud.
Throughout the scam, Mr. Re had five victims, alleged Ms. Savona. “Collector-1,” as one of the victims is identified in the warrant, bought 12 paintings from Mr. Re for $894,500 in March 2006. Mr. Re said he’d found the paintings in George and Barbara Schulte’s basement in East Hampton in 1999. He told the victim that Mr. Schulte had received the paintings from Pollock directly and that he had happened across them while helping Ms. Schulte clean out her husband’s basement after his death.
One year prior to that incident, another buyer purchased 58 paintings from Mr. Re for approximately $519,890 in March 2005, under the impression the paintings were legitimate. Mr. Re claimed they, too, were part of the collection found in the Schultes’s basement.
In May 2013, Mr. Re sold three more fraudulent paintings for $475,000, also claiming they were part of the collection. Shortly after, Mr. Re sold another painting to “Collector-4,” and offered “Collector-5’s” art agent “several other” Pollock paintings as recently as January 2014, according to the warrant.
Ms. Savona’s investigation is supported by interviews with each collector, one of whom sent the paintings to be “scientifically examined” by an expert, who concluded “the paintings were not authentic ... because the materials in the paintings were not available during Pollock’s lifetime,” the warrant reads.
Another collector who contemplated having the paintings tested for authenticity was “dissuaded” by Mr. Re, according to an email exchange between the two parties referenced in the warrant.
“I tries [sic] to make it clear not to [sic] long ago that using IFAR was NOT a good idea,” read Mr. Re’s email, referring to the International Foundation for Art Research, a nonprofit that “offers impartial or authoritative information on authenticity, ownership, [or] theft” of artwork. IFAR found that none of the paintings was, in fact, authentic, given the materials used to create them and the lack of artistic consistency with legitimate Pollock paintings, according to the warrant.
Mr. Re also threatened some of the collectors who began to doubt the legitimacy of the paintings, according to other emails referenced in the warrant. “I would never threaten anybody unless I’m gonna follow through. I grew up in Brooklyn, ok? My mother’s from the Bonanno family, which means Gambino,” Mr. Re said in a recorded phone call to Collector-3. “And if you got to call me back and ask one more time, your mother’s going to start wondering why you stopped visiting her.”
Lastly, according to the warrant, Mr. Re coerced confederates into placing “shill bids” on the fake paintings to purposefully inflate the price of the Pollocks in online auctions. Mr. Re wrote to one individual, asking the person to place a $26,000 bid on a painting listed on eBay, stating he was “[expletive] dead” if it did not sell.
Mr. Re was previously arrested in 1995 and charged with creating counterfeit money, to which he pleaded guilty.
Erica Thompson on Jul 1, 2014