It took 84-year-old wheelchair-bound George Greenhalgh, his 82-year-old wife Olive Greenhalgh and their talented son, Shaun, to perpetuate this spectacular art crime – drawing the world's attention to the wily world of art forgery.

Shaun Greenhalgh was the artist. His elderly parents, George and Olivia, did the sales pitch. His older brother, George, Jr., managed the money. But other members of the family (including an ancestor), referred to as "the most diverse forgery team in the world, ever" by Scotland Yard, were solicited to lend an air of legitimacy to this counterfeit art operation.

By the time they were arrested, the Greenhalghs' "art collection" included a 3,300-year-old statuette known as the Amarna Princess, depicting a daughter of the pharaoh Akhenaten. Made from Egyptian alabaster, it was authenticated by Egyptologists at the British Museum…but turned out to be a fake. It was bought by the Bolton Museum for £439,767.

Other "artworks" included LS Lowry paintings, 19^th century American landscapes, a Thomas Jefferson bust, a Barbara Hepworth sculpture and Assyrian reliefs dating from 700 BC. All were painted, carved or molded in the Greenhalgh family's garden shed by Shaun, who worked from sketches and old pictures and invested in silver, stone, marble and other materials needed to recreate lost works.

Had the Greenhalghs managed to sell all the 120 artworks they presented to museums and auction houses, their estimated earnings could have been as much as £10 million, making the average value of each piece over £83,000. They made at least £850,000 and, at the time of arrests, had more than £350,000 in the bank. In the end, the Greenhalghs were unable to offload most of their works, receiving minimal amounts for many of the pieces (like the Eadred Reliquary). Other works (like the Lowry painting The Meeting House) gained in value only from repeated resale and more ambitious and expensive pieces (like the Risley Park Lanx), while sold eventually, were more scrutinized and one of these led to their exposure.

However, sales to private individuals, who did not have the same level of expertise at their disposal as institutions and were probably less willing to advertise their losses, were deemed to be more profitable. Such buyers also did not show up on the radar until they had donated or resold the artwork. This was how The Faun, a ceramic sculpture purported to be the work of 19^th century Franch master Paul Gauguin, was exposed as a forgery by the Art Institute of Chicago.

After successfully duping the experts for 17 years, however, the Greenhalghs were finally caught when they produced what were purportedly three Assyrian reliefs from the Palace of Sennacherib in 600 BC. The British Museum examined them in November 2005, concluded that they were genuine, and expressed an interest in buying one of them, which seemed to match a drawing by A. H. Layard in its collection. However, when two of the reliefs were submitted to Bonhams auction house, its antiquities consultant Richard Falkiner spotted the fakes. The British Museum, consulted by Bonhams, also identified several anomalies and inconsistencies. The suspicions grew when George seemed too willing to part with the items at a low price. It was then that the Museum contacted the Arts and Antiquities Unit of Scotland Yard, and eighteen months later the family was arrested.

Shaun Greenhalgh was convicted of selling forged art and laundering the proceeds, specifically the money for the Amarna Princess and sentenced to four years and eight months. Olive Greenhalgh, who came to court on crutches, admitted conspiracy to defraud and received a 12-month suspended sentence. The sentencing on George Greenhalgh, a former technical drawing teacher, was deferred.