Six alleged members of a network for counterfeiting works of art have accepted sentences of between nine months and one year in prison on Monday for plagiarizing paintings by modernist artists such as Sorolla, Rusiñol, Opisso or Casas and selling them to collectors and art galleries, among the years 2011 and 2017.
The fifth section of the Barcelona Court has today issued a sentence in voce that exempts the six defendants from entering prison, for whom the Prosecutor’s Office initially requested fourteen years in prison, after they have accepted the facts of which they were accused and committed to return the 53,700 euros swindled.
The pact with the Public Prosecutor’s Office, which has lowered its sentence request by applying the mitigating factors of undue delay and damage repair, also implies the acquittal of a seventh defendant, Carles Xarrié, president of the Guild of Antique Dealers of Catalonia who was accused of putting for sale works distributed by the network in the auction room that he runs.
The Barcelona Court has agreed to suspend the entry into prison of the six convicts, after they have agreed to a payment plan of 150 euros per month for five years to return the 53,700 euros defrauded with the false works, to which there are another 12,000 who have already paid one of their victims to withdraw as a private prosecution.
According to the Prosecutor’s Office, and the defendants have accepted, since 2011 they formed a “structured” plot that was dedicated to selling counterfeit paintings by renowned artists, sometimes accompanying them with also mendacious certificates of authenticity.
One of the convicted, A.M., was in charge of falsifying the paintings in a warehouse workshop located in Madrid, while another of the defendants, A.J., was the one who prepared the certificates of authenticity and in some cases added “retouches” to the paintings.
Also part of the plot was A.F.V., who was in charge of looking for “potential clients” in Barcelona, ??knowing that the paintings were fake, and his grandson A.F.J., who drove him by car to collect the plagiarized works from parcel companies to distribute them. to buyers.
Two other people were dedicated to contacting clients to place the forged works and distributing the paintings, from Zaragoza.
Specifically, the network sold a forged painting by Ramon Casas in July 2016, for which it received an advance of 7,000 euros, and in November it obtained 11,000 euros by placing another work by this painter, as well as by the artists Joaquim Mir, Eliseu Meifren, Isidre Nonell, Joaquín Sorolla and Joaquín Balcells.
Another collector paid them 70,000 euros for forged works by Rusiñol, Mir, Meifren, Nonell, Serrassanta, Casas, Cecilio Pla, Ricard Opisso and Sorolla, while in October 2016 they made 1,000 euros after selling a painting by Casas.
The plot was uncovered as a result of the Valentine operation, which the Mossos d’Esquadra and the Civil Guard deployed in February 2017, an investigation that started from the complaint of a Barcelona businessman who had acquired a false work attributed to Ramon Casas.
The researchers verified that there were two painting workshops in Madrid where the paintings were made, which included the forged author’s signature and were aged with a suitable frame or canvas to give the appearance of authenticity.
In the records carried out with a court order in the art galleries and homes of the defendants, the agents intervened a hundred forged works.
