Leslie Roberts, the proprietor and founding father of Miami Tremendous Artwork Gallery in Florida, has been indicted for allegedly promoting solid Andy Warhols. On 9 April, brokers from the FBI’s Artwork Crime Group entered Roberts’s gallery in Miami, eradicating artwork and hauling it away in cardboard bins, overlaying the home windows to forestall the general public from peeking in.
Roberts and an affiliate, Carlos Miguel Rodriguez Melendez, had been arrested and charged. Their arraignment is scheduled for 21 April. They every resist 20 years in jail for wire fraud conspiracy; Roberts may get a further ten years for cash laundering.
Since 1997, Miami Tremendous Artwork Gallery has introduced an array of contemporary and modern artwork to town—together with works by blue-chip stars like Pablo Picasso, Jeff Koons and KAWS. “One among my proudest moments was buying uncommon artwork from the Andy Warhol Basis,” Roberts advised Artnet final 12 months. “This milestone underscored our gallery’s dedication to curating distinctive works.” This relationship with the Pop artist’s basis seems to have been a part of his alleged fraud.
In August 2024, a household of Florida artwork collectors—Matthew, Judy and Richard Perlman—filed a grievance accusing Roberts of an elaborate scheme to promote them counterfeit Warhols. The Perlmans realised that they had been tricked into spending $6m on the fakes after a Christie’s appraisal discovered that the works had been forgeries.
The Perlmans confronted Roberts about this, they usually allege that he despatched two specialists from Phillips to conduct a separate appraisal. These “specialists” confirmed all of the works had been originals; unconvinced, the household contacted Phillips immediately, solely to study that the 2 appraisers weren’t firm workers and had offered pretend enterprise playing cards. (Rodriguez Melendez, Roberts’s affiliate, seems to have posed as one of many Phillips specialists.)
“Roberts betrayed the Perlmans’ belief and went to nice lengths to cowl up his fraud,” Luke Nikas, the Perlman household’s lawyer, tells The Artwork Newspaper. “He’s precisely the form of artwork supplier who must be held accountable—for the sake of the Perlmans, his potential future victims and the artwork market itself.” (Roberts’s lawyer, Jonathan Marc Davidoff, declined to remark.)
In line with the indictment, Roberts developed advanced schemes to persuade consumers that the works he was promoting had been legit Warhols, utilizing pretend stamps and offering fraudulent invoices to his shoppers. He additionally allegedly solid authentication paperwork, claiming that they had been supplied by the Andy Warhol Artwork Authentication Board. (The Warhol Basis dissolved its authentication board in 2011.) Roberts’s money-laundering accusation stems from transferring greater than $200,000 in whole from Miami Tremendous Artwork Gallery to his private checking account.
That is removed from Roberts’s first run-in with the legislation. He has a historical past of lawsuits filed towards him and accusations of fraud. He has even frolicked behind bars—for stealing hundreds of thousands of {dollars} from his great-uncle within the Nineteen Eighties. The Miami New Occasions not too long ago reported on the numerous deceptions the artwork supplier has been concerned in. Amongst them, in 2010 he was discovered to have offered counterfeit works attributed to the Brazilian artist Romero Britto, each in his gallery and on eBay. In 2015, Roberts confronted legal prices for working a Peter Max forgery ring out of Max within the Grove, his gallery in Miami’s Coconut Grove neighbourhood. In line with courtroom paperwork, Roberts’s two youngsters created the “Max” works that he later offered to shoppers.
In an interview final month with the native information outlet Coconut Grove Highlight, Roberts mentioned he had put his previous behind him and was “working exhausting” to rebuild his repute. He advised the paper that the Perlmans had been utilizing him as a scapegoat for offers that had been out of his management. “What is going on on just isn’t truthful,” Roberts mentioned. “They’re digging up my previous and utilizing it towards me.”
