Italian police unveil forged paintings trafficking led by businessmen, lawyers

The Italian military police unveiled a vast forged paintings trafficking network in the northern city of Bergamo led by a group of white-collar professionals.

The discovery brought to the seizure of various fake masterpieces created and sold by eight local Italians including businessmen, lawyers and art merchants, state television RAI reported on Tuesday.

All of these were people above suspicion, well-off and art lovers, not regular criminals. Their parallel activity was to commission forged paintings at a low cost and then resell them at sky-high prices by guaranteeing the works' authenticity through important exhibitions and on leading art magazines.

With their good connections and background, these professionals were able to create a trafficking circuit of forged paintings worth several million euros. They will now be tried for forgery and fraud.

Purchasers were thus led to acquire the works because of the false expertise that proved the authenticity of the paintings. Hundreds of art amateurs were apparently deceived.

Investigations were launched in 2009. The truth came out quite amazingly.

A row between the accomplices allegedly led one of them to denounce his colleagues to the authorities. The forger had recognized one of his works at an important art exhibition being sold as original at a much higher price than one convened upon.