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Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Back issues
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US Sues Dealer at Heart of Art Scandal

MANHATTAN (CN) - The owner-operator of the Kings Fine Arts gallery laundered money and dodged taxes on $30 million she made by selling dozens of forged works of modern art, whose discovery drove the Knoedler Gallery out business, federal prosecutors say in a seven-count indictment.

The United States sued Glafira Rosales aka Glafira Rosales Rojas in Federal Court.

Rosales, of Sands Point, N.Y., was arrested in May.

One of her alleged victims, the respected Knoedler Gallery, went out of business after its clients sued for the millions of dollars in allegedly phony art.

The 19-page indictment identifies the gallery victims only as Gallery 1 and Gallery 2.

The indictment, obviously referring to Knoedler, states: "Until it closed in or about 2011, a Manhattan-based art gallery ('Gallery 1') was a dealer of fine art. Gallery 1 was founded in or about the middle of the nineteenth century and was one of the most prominent dealers of fine art in the world."

ArtDaily today identified the other victimized gallery as Julian Weissman.

Rosales ran King's Fine Arts with her boyfriend from 1995 through 2006, according to the 19-page indictment. She is a dual citizen of Mexico and the United States.

"Among other things, King's Fine Arts and Glafira Rosales Fine Arts sold a substantial number of works of art that Rosales claimed were by the hand of some of the most

acclaimed abstract expressionist artists of the twentieth century, including Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, Sam Francis, and Franz Kline," the indictment states.

It accuses her of bilking collectors and the two other galleries for a total of $80.7 million for the bogus paintings.

Gallery 1 paid Rosales more than $20.7 million for the phony art, and Gallery 2 paid her more than $12.5 million, the indictment states.

"The purchases of the Rosales Works by Gallery 1 and Gallery 2 also proved to be lucrative to Gallery 1 and Gallery 2," the indictment states. "The Victims paid Gallery 1 more than $63.7 million and Gallery 2 more than $17 million for the Rosales Works."

Rosales claimed she got the works from private collectors in Spain and Switzerland.

All the phony art is believed to have been forged by a single person, according to the voluminous reporting on the scandal.

The United States accuses Rosales of ducking taxes on $14.7 million from 2006 through 2008.

Her boyfriend is not identified in the indictment, nor is he named as a party to it.

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