Italy sting exposes massive art forgery ring

Rome: Italian police have uncovered a large-scale pan-European forgery network making and selling fake artworks attributed to some of the biggest names in modern and contemporary art including Banksy, Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol.

Some 38 people were placed under investigation in Italy, Spain, France and Belgium on suspicion of conspiracy to handle stolen goods, forgery and illegal sale of artworks, the paramilitary Carabinieri art squad and the Pisa prosecutors’ office said in a joint statement.

The chief prosecutor of Pisa, Teresa Angela Camelio, said experts from the Banksy archive who assisted with the investigation considered Monday’s operation as “the biggest act of protection of Banksy’s work”.

Pest Control, the office that represents the artist, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. On its website, it says forgery is common and urges people who want to buy any Banksy pieces to watch out for “expensive fakes”.

Other allegedly forged artists included giants of 19th- and 20th-century art such as Claude Monet, Vincent Van Gogh, Salvador Dali, Henry Moore, Marc Chagall, Francis Bacon, Paul Klee and Piet Mondrian.

Investigators said they had seized more than 2,100 fake pieces, with a potential market value of about 200 million euros ($215 million) and discovered six forgery workshops including two in Tuscany, one in Venice and the rest elsewhere in Europe.

They said their probe started in 2023 when they seized about 200 fake pieces from the collection of a businessman in Pisa including a copy of a drawing by Italian painter Amedeo Modigliani. That led them to forgeries sold by auction houses across Italy, and to connect them to a known group believed to specialise in forgeries of Banksy and Warhol.

To boost their credentials, the unnamed suspects organised two Banksy exhibitions with a published catalogue in prestigious locations in Mestre near Venice and Cortona in Tuscany, investigators said.