Auctioneer admits helping create fake works featured as Basquiats in Orlando

A Los Angeles auctioneer has agreed to plead guilty to making false statements to federal investigators and admitted to helping create fake artwork that went on display at the Orlando Museum of Art last year as a only hitherto unknown works by the famous artist Jean-Michel Basquiat.

The United States Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California filed court documents Tuesday announcing Michael Barzman’s plea, nine months after the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided the museum and seized 25 paintings that had hung in its Basquiat, Heroes & Monsters exhibit.

In court papers, prosecutors said Mr Barzman, 45, of North Hollywood, admitted to helping create between 20 and 30 fake works of art and then marketing them for sale as if he was acted as authentic Basquiats.

Prosecutors said Mr. Barzman worked closely with another man, identified only by initials, JF, who took the initiative to create the artwork. The associate spent only five minutes and no more than 30 minutes creating each piece, according to the plea agreement.

The couple then placed the works outside to alter them so they looked like they were created decades ago, according to court records. Mr. Barzman sold the works and gave half of the profits to his associate, prosecutors said.

Court documents also say Mr. Barzman created a false provenance for the fraudulent paintings, including a false story that they were found in a storage unit, and then also created false documents to bolster that story.

He told investigators that he sold the works to several buyers. They eventually ended up on display at the Orlando museum where, prosecutors wrote in court papers, in an exhibit that was supposed to feature 25 Basquiat paintings, most of the works displayed were actually created by the defendant and JF.

Mr. Barzman’s initial accounts to investigators told a much different story, according to court records. He said in several interviews with investigators that he had no role in making the paintings, even when faced with a cardboard canvas that had been seized from the museum. On the back of the artwork was a shipping label with Mr. Barzman’s name and former address, according to court records, but Mr. Barzman claimed he never saw the work before.

Finally, in October 2022, Mr Barzman admitted to officers that he lied about the whole matter. He faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison.

Mr. Barzman did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

A spokeswoman for the Federal Bureau of Investigation said the investigation is ongoing.

For the Orlando museum, the exhibit went from a showcase of rarely seen Basquiats to an embarrassment.

Aaron De Groft, former director and general manager of the Orlando museum, had mounted the Heroes & Monsters exhibit and championed the works even after their authenticity had been questioned. But he was removed from his post shortly after the June 24 raid. The FBI showed up just days before the exhibition was scheduled to close on June 30, after which the works were to be exhibited in Italy.

Mr. De Groft, who has not been implicated in any wrongdoing, did not respond to a request for comment. Previously, he had told the New York Times that he had no doubt that the works he was exhibiting were by Basquiats. My reputation is at stake, he said.

In a statement on Wednesday, Mark Elliott, the chairman of the Orlando Museums Board of Trustees, said the board is aware of the plea deal and wants those who committed crimes to be held accountable.

When this investigation is closed and charges are laid, the museum looks forward to sharing our story regarding the works in question, the statement said.

Basquiats became extremely valuable in the decades following the artist’s death. A 1982 painting sold for $110.5 million at Sotheby’s in 2017. Appraisals revealed that the works on show in Orlando were worth tens of millions of dollars if authentic. (The Basquiat estates authentication committee dissolved in 2012, at a time when many artist estates had stopped trying to authenticate works due to the costly litigation that could ensue when their decisions were challenged.)

Shortly after the Heroes & Monsters exhibit opened in February 2022 at the Orlando museum, a New York Times report raised doubts as to whether the works were in fact by Basquiat. The article noted that one of the artworks featured was painted on the back of a cardboard shipping box with a printed instruction to align the top of the FedEx shipping label here. A cartoonist who worked for Federal Express said the typeface on the cardboard was not used until 1994, six years after Basquiat’s death.

Last May, when it became clear that the FBI Art Crime Squad investigating the authenticity of the paintings, their owners insisted they were authentic Basquiats, created in 1982 and sold for $5,000 to a now-deceased television screenwriter, Thad Mumford, who, according to them, put them in a storage unit and forgot about them.

Mr. Barzman, who for years ran an auction business that bought and resold the contents of unpaid storage units, said he discovered the paintings among the contents of Mr. Mumford, according to the plea agreement. But he later admitted to investigators that he used Mumford’s acquisition of stored items to create a false provenance for the fraudulent paintings, according to court documents.

For his part, Mr. Mumford denied ever buying from Basquiat during a 2014 interview with Elizabeth Rivas, an FBI special agent who for years ran its Los Angeles-based art crime unit. The interview was referenced in an affidavit she filed last year as part of efforts to obtain a search warrant for the museum.

The owners who brought the artworks to the Orlando museum for the exhibition said in earlier interviews that they bought the paintings either from Mr. Barzman or from people who bought them on eBay at Mr Barzman. Leo Mangan, one of the owners, said he and several others spent around $15,000 on a total of 25 paintings and then sold a stake in six of them to Los Angeles trial attorney Pierce. ODonnell, who worked closely with them to establish and market as true Basquiats.

Mr Barzman told agents that buyers had contacted him several times over the years, asking him to sign documents stating that the works were in fact from the Mumford storage unit, according to court documents. He admitted to eventually signing a notarized document saying the work was from the unit after being offered between $10,000 and $15,000 to do so, according to court documents, but said he had no never been paid.

Later, according to court documents, he said he admitted to one of the owners in 2017 or 2018 that he couldn’t actually prove the paintings came from the Mumford storage unit. He said the owner reacted angrily.

On Tuesday, Mr Mangan and Mr ODonnell insisted they still believe the paintings are genuine Basquiats.

I know Mr. Barzman, he is a proven unreliable person, Mr. ODonnell said. He declined to elaborate, but promised more evidence would emerge.

This is not the final chapter in the Mumford-Basquiat story, he said.

Kirsten Noyes contributed research.