[MSN] Police Bust Multi-Million Won Art Forgery Ring

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Police Bust Multi-Million Won Art Forgery Ring
  
An art collector bought a tiny painting by senior artist Byun Shi-ji (81)
named "A Pony and a Boy" for W9 million (US$1=W941), along with a written
statement from an expert group to prove that the painting, about half the
size of an A4 page, was genuine. However, the painting was discovered to be
a forgery when Byun examined it. It was such a good copy that even the
experts were deceived. 
Police on Tuesday arrested art brokers and forgers said to have copied and
sold 100 paintings by famous artists including Lee Jung-seob, Park Soo-keun,
Chun Kyung-ja and Lee Man-ik. When not copying great works, one of the
forgers worked as a theater signboard painter. 

Forty one fake paintings that were confiscated from a forgery ring are
displayed in a meeting room at Seocho Police Station on Tuesday. The
right-most painting is so similar to Chun Kyung-ja's 1993 'A Woman from
Baltimore' that experts had a hard time detecting that it is fake.  

Police say a 51-year-old man named Bok who ran a gallery 10 years ago in
In-sa dong in Seoul and his 49-year-old brother handed over original
paintings by senior artists such as Byun Shi-ji and Lee Man-ik to four
forgers, including a 64-year-old man named Roh. The originals turned out to
be stolen by an art broker named Choi (47) from another In-sa dong gallery. 

To copy Lee Jung-seob's paintings, Roh and the other forgers enlarged
photographs from art books and copied them onto writing paper or canvas. The
forgers made 90 copies and received roughly W300,000 for each. The Bok
brothers bought another 38 forgeries of Park Soo-keun's paintings. 

Police believe the Bok brothers netted some W190 million by selling 108
forgeries for around W1 million to W1.5 million each to galleries throughout
Seoul. They are investigating the galleries to find out if they sold the
forgeries to individual customers. The value of the original paintings is
estimated to be more than W100 billion. 

According to the police investigation, Roh had worked as a signboard painter
for 40 years and the other forgers were commercial artists. Seoul Seocho
Police requested an arrest warrant for the Bok brothers and indicted without
detention the four forgers and Choi. 

(englishnews at chosun.com ) 


http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200704/200704040031.html