Leslie Roberts, the proprietor and founding father of Miami Nice Artwork Gallery in Florida, has been indicted for allegedly promoting solid Andy Warhols. On 9 April, brokers from the FBI’s Artwork Crime Workforce entered Roberts’s gallery in Miami, eradicating artwork and hauling it away in cardboard packing containers, overlaying the home windows to forestall the general public from peeking in.
Roberts and an affiliate, Carlos Miguel Rodriguez Melendez, have been arrested and charged. Their arraignment is scheduled for 21 April. They every resist 20 years in jail for wire fraud conspiracy; Roberts may get an extra ten years for cash laundering.
Since 1997, Miami Nice Artwork Gallery has introduced an array of recent and modern artwork to town—together with works by blue-chip stars like Pablo Picasso, Jeff Koons and KAWS. “Considered one of my proudest moments was buying uncommon artwork from the Andy Warhol Basis,” Roberts informed Artnet final 12 months. “This milestone underscored our gallery’s dedication to curating distinctive works.” This relationship with the Pop artist’s basis seems to have been a part of his alleged fraud.
In August 2024, a household of Florida artwork collectors—Matthew, Judy and Richard Perlman—filed a criticism accusing Roberts of an elaborate scheme to promote them counterfeit Warhols. The Perlmans realised they’d been tricked into spending $6m on the fakes after a Christie’s appraisal discovered that the works have been forgeries.
The Perlmans confronted Roberts about this, and so they allege that he despatched two specialists from Phillips to conduct a separate appraisal. These “consultants” confirmed all of the works have been originals; unconvinced, the household contacted Phillips instantly, solely to study that the 2 appraisers weren’t firm staff and had introduced faux enterprise playing cards. (Rodriguez Melendez, Roberts’s affiliate, seems to have posed as one of many Phillips consultants.)
“Roberts betrayed the Perlmans’ belief and went to nice lengths to cowl up his fraud,” Luke Nikas, the Perlman household’s lawyer, tells The Artwork Newspaper. “He’s precisely the sort of artwork supplier who must be held accountable—for the sake of the Perlmans, his potential future victims and the artwork market itself.” (Roberts’s lawyer, Jonathan Marc Davidoff, declined to remark.)
In line with the indictment, Roberts developed advanced schemes to persuade consumers that the works he was promoting have been reliable Warhols, utilizing faux stamps and offering fraudulent invoices to his shoppers. He additionally allegedly solid authentication paperwork, claiming they’d been supplied by the Andy Warhol Artwork Authentication Board. (The Warhol Basis dissolved its authentication board in 2011.) Roberts’s money-laundering accusation stems from transferring greater than $200,000 in whole from Miami Nice Artwork Gallery to his private checking account.
That is removed from Roberts’s first run-in with the legislation. He has a historical past of lawsuits filed towards him and accusations of fraud. He has even hung out behind bars—for stealing tens of millions of {dollars} from his great-uncle within the Eighties. The Miami New Occasions lately reported on the various deceptions the artwork supplier has been concerned in. Amongst them, in 2010 he was discovered to have offered counterfeit works attributed to the Brazilian artist Romero Britto, each in his gallery and on eBay. In 2015, Roberts confronted legal prices for working a Peter Max forgery ring out of Max within the Grove, his gallery in Miami’s Coconut Grove neighbourhood. In line with court docket paperwork, Roberts’s two youngsters created the “Max” works that he later offered to shoppers.
In an interview final month with the native information outlet Coconut Grove Highlight, Roberts mentioned he had put his previous behind him and was “working exhausting” to rebuild his status. He informed the paper that the Perlmans have been utilizing him as a scapegoat for offers that have been out of his management. “What is going on on is just not truthful,” Roberts mentioned. “They’re digging up my previous and utilizing it towards me.”
