Last Friday, an 83 year old man in a wheel chair and his 47 year old son were convicted of the biggest forgery in history. For years in a garden shed in the north of England, they forged paintings, watercolours, sculptures and reliefs, Celtic jewelry, Roman silverware, artifacts and other “lost” works, some purportedly more than 9,000 years old. The works were authenticated by experts from around the world, and sold for more than a total of twenty million dollars throughout America, Europe, and Britain.
There are several puzzles about the case that remain unresolved. The obvious one is how the experts could have been so comprehensively fooled for so long and over such a diverse range of forgeries.
Another is why the forgers did it. They generated vast amounts of spending money, but claimed welfare benefits and engaged in a decidedly unlavish life style. Their car was a Ford Focus, their furniture battered, their TV old. Maybe they just liked making fools of people they thought were pompous and rich.
And do you know how they finally got caught? An expert spotted a spelling error in a “3,300-year-old Assyrian relief” they were offering for sale to the British Museum.
