US News

Spanish art dealer busted in $80M phony-art scheme

A Spanish businessman suspected of defrauding Manhattan art galleries out of millions of dollars from fake art sales has been busted in southern Spain, officials said Sunday.

José Carlos Bergantinos Diaz was arrested Friday at a hotel in Seville after allegedly peddling phony art for 15 years — claiming the pieces were undiscovered works by modern masters such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning.

Diaz is wanted for fraud in the United States and is facing extradition.

Glafira Rosales, Diaz’s partner, was arrested in New York in August 2013 and accused of hocking the fake art. The federal indictment charged her with several offenses, saying she had charged two Manhattan art galleries more than $30 million for 63 pieces of fake art.

Each was presented as previously unknown works by 20th-century abstract expressionists, including Mark Rothko, Robert Motherwell and Franz Kline.

The canvases had actually been created by a painter working in a studio in Queens. Around 50 of the pieces the duo peddled were claimed to have been the property of a person of Eastern European ancestry who wished to remain anonymous, the indictment said.

Prosecutors said the galleries sold the paintings for more than $80 million, netting the fraudsters nearly $48 million in profits.

Diaz will appear this week before a judge who will rule on the steps for US extradition.