Miami art dealer charged with selling fake Warhols

A Miami art dealer was indicted on charges that he sold fraudulent Andy Warhols to collectors and provided them with fake invoices and forged authentication documents to make them appear legitimate.

The indictment accuses Leslie Roberts of Miami Fine Art Gallery of going to elaborate lengths to convince buyers that the works were legitimate Warhols, including by using fake stamps and fraudulent identification numbers.

"To make the fraudulent art appear to be authentic pieces created by Andy Warhol, Leslie Howard Roberts utilized forged authentication documents that were purportedly provided by the Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board, Inc.," the indictment read. (The board ceased operations over a decade ago.)

Two other defendants were also charged with taking part in Roberts' scheme by posing as employees of a New York auction house "to fraudulently authenticate artwork in order to conceal that the artwork was not created by Andy Warhol."

Roberts, who was arrested on wire fraud and money laundering charges Wednesday and released on bond, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The details of the indictment, which was filed in US District Court in Miami and unsealed Thursday, align with a lawsuit filed last year against Roberts. The civil suit was filed by a family of art collectors who accused Roberts of duping them into paying millions of dollars for fraudulent Warhols, including the artist's famous colorful portraits of Queen Elizabeth and Marilyn Monroe.

At the time the suit was filed, Roberts denied selling the family forgeries, and he and his lawyers have been fighting the case in civil court.

"I don't believe anything was a forgery -- everything looked good to me," Roberts said in an interview with The New York Times in August. He added: "I don't know where the authority is they say it's fake."

But last week, a grand jury indicted Roberts on criminal charges related to the case. The same day, Roberts filed for bankruptcy.

Another defendant, Carlos Miguel Rodriguez Melendez, was accused of posing as an employee of a New York auction house and charged with wire fraud conspiracy. His lawyer, Nayib Hassan, said in an email that his client "vehemently maintains his innocence and looks forward to the opportunity to present the full facts in a court of law."

A third defendant's name is redacted from court papers.

Roberts has faced criminal charges related to forged artworks before. In 2015, he pleaded guilty to mail fraud and served a prison sentence after acknowledging to prosecutors that he and his children had defrauded customers by selling them forged paintings, according to court documents.

And in 1987, when he was in his 20s, Roberts was sentenced to prison time for defrauding a family member of millions of dollars when he was a young stockbroker.

The new criminal inquiry into Roberts became apparent this week when the local news captured the FBI raiding his art gallery in the upscale Coconut Grove neighborhood of Miami.

In the civil suit, filed in August, a family of art collectors -- Matthew, Judy and Richard Perlman -- accused Roberts of duping them into paying more than $6 million for fraudulent Warhols.

The lawsuit claimed that Roberts told the Perlmans that he could get them Warhols at a discount through his relationship with the Warhol foundation, and the family began buying works it thought were by Warhol. An amended version of the lawsuit lists more than 250 works that the Perlmans purchased, including original canvases (John Lennon and Albert Einstein for about $30,000 each) and silk screens (John Wayne for $75,000; a collection of Maos for $325,000).

The partnership began to fall apart later when Richard Perlman and his wife approached Christie's to sell some of the works, and the auction house raised doubts about their authenticity. The suit said that two people then came to the family's Florida home with business cards claiming that they were appraisers from a rival auction house, Phillips, and declared the works to be authentic Warhols.

"Les Roberts betrayed the Perlmans' trust and went to great lengths to cover up his fraud," Luke Nikas, a lawyer representing the family, said in a statement Thursday.

In the interview in August, Roberts denied the lawsuit's version of events. He said Matthew Perlman had been an active partner in a joint venture they had arranged to purchase Warhols, saying that Perlman worked alongside him for "every single one" of the art purchases. He claimed that all of the artworks had come from legitimate sources.

"I try to be more cautious than ever," he said at the time, "because of my past."