Angela Hamblin was charged with one count of mail fraud in connection with her scheme to sell fake works of art over the internet auction website eBay and in private transactions.

Art lovers beware! That exquisite Turner painting you’ve always wanted to own could be the real thing – or not. That beautiful Juan Gris work your eyes have been feasting on could actually have been painted by another “Juan.” These are just two of the artists whose masterpieces may have been copied and sold to unsuspecting customers.

This piece of bad news for art connoisseurs comes to light with the recent arrest – announced by Michael J. Garcia, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York and Mark J. Mershon, the Assistant Director-in-Charge of the FBI New York Office – of Angela Hamblin, 58, of Revere, Massachusetts.

According to the complaint filed in Manhattan federal court, she engaged in a fraudulent scheme to sell various paintings that she claimed to be original works by artists such as Joseph Mallord William Turner (the British watercolorist and printmaker), Milton Avery (the American abstract expressionist painter), Franz Kline (the American abstract painter) and Juan Gris (the Spanish Cubist painter and sculptor), when she actually knew they were not authentic pieces by the famous artists.

Hamblin responded with a range of excuses that included:

·         She or her husband inherited the paintings from long-dead relatives

·         They purchased one of the paintings from a now-dead seller.

·         The artist who painted one of the pieces gave it to George Balanchine who sold it to Hamblin’s great-grandfather

However, experts who examined the paintings themselves or images of the paintings have determined that all four of the paintings described in the complaint are fake.

Hamblin has been charged with mail fraud which is covered under 18 U.S.C. § 1341 – a statute that in general terms states that whoever schemes to defraud, to obtain money by false pretenses, or to sell any counterfeit article and uses the Postal Service to execute such a scheme, faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

Garcia praised the investigative work of the New York and Boston offices of the FBI, which led to the arrest. The case is being prosecuted by the Major Crimes Unit of the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. Assistant US Attorney Christine Meding is in charge of the prosecution.

The charges and allegations contained in the complaint are mere accusations and the defendant is presumed innocent unless proven and until proven guilty.