Forged Banksys and Picassos poised to flood market at premium prices

An extensive forgery ring producing and selling artwork masquerading as Banksys, Picassos and Andy Warholes, has been scotched by the Italian authorities.

The fraudsters generated the fakes out of six workshops in Italy and sold them across Europe to unsuspecting buyers.

This was done with the help of complicit auction houses in Italy, Spain, Belgium and France, which provided the stamps of authenticity.

The investigators have now seized more than 2,100 forgeries of works by at least 30 renowned artists from Joan Miró and Gustav Klimt to Wassily Kandinsky.

The pieces have a collective potential market value of $215 million and would have seriously impacted the art market.

Teresa Angela Camelio, Pisa’s chief prosecutor, said in The Guardian that if police had not ambushed the network, the artworks could have been sold at prices “close to the artists’ original works.”

She added that such an eventuality would “certainly have significantly changed the auction market.”

The investigation kicked off after 200 forgeries were discovered in the collection of a businessman in Pisa, Tuscany in March 2023.

The discovery prompted the Italian authorities to start looking into the e-commerce sites of auction houses across Europe.

Now 38 people have been arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to handle stolen goods, forgery and illegal sale of artworks, Reuters reports.

Photo: screenshot from Euronews video

Camelio said that experts from the Banksy archive involved in the operation to rumble the fraudsters considered it “the biggest act of protection of Banksy’s work”.

Photo: screenshot from Euronews video

While Banksy’s agent has not commented, the artist’s website does warn buyers against being duped by “expensive fakes.”

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Photo: screenshot from Euronews video