Lawsuit Alleges Multimillion-Dollar Andy Warhol Fraud Scheme
A civil racketeering lawsuit filed September 9 in Miami-Dade County alleges a multimillion-dollar scheme involving forged Andy Warhol works sold to a Florida family. Real-estate investor Richard Perlman says he, his wife, and son paid more than $6.7 million from 2023 to 2024 for over 200 fake Warhol prints and paintings depicting subjects such as Superman and Queen Elizabeth, allegedly produced in Peru, smuggled into the US, and falsely presented as authenticated. The complaint names Miami Fine Art Gallery owner Leslie Roberts (previously sued by the Perlmans in 2024 and later settling; he is expected to be sentenced on related wire-fraud charges), dealer Nathan Isen (a 2015 money-laundering convict whose Philadelphia gallery was raided by the FBI in July), and Florida dealers Oscar Cordova and Edward Kurstak, as well as retired dentist Allan Dampf, accused of promoting false provenance. The suit claims some fakes were shipped directly to the gallery for as little as $30 and falsely linked to the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, whose authentication board closed in 2011 after legal and financial pressures.
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This story was covered in Icons in Peril, Restitution Wars Escalate