Beard made more than one and a half million dollars out of an art fraud with ten known victims. Following what is now standard operating procedure for the USA's FBI, under a plea agreement, she pleaded guilty to a single sample charge representing a far greater course of conduct.

Wendy Halstead Beard, 58, pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud. She will be sentenced in December this year.

The crime she has not been charged with was a multi-year scheme in which Beard received fine art photography prints on consignment, sold the artwork without the knowledge of the owners, kept the profits for her own personal gain, and continually deceived the owners about the status of their photographs.

The scale of her offending was set out by the FBI in a media release:

Beginning in approximately March 2019 and continuing through October 2022, Beard executed a scheme to defraud a number of her customers. The purpose of the scheme was for Beard to embezzle the proceeds from the sale of multiple fine art photographs that had been provided to her by her customers on a consignment basis.

Throughout the scheme, Beard attempted to lull her victims into a false sense of security by offering excuses for her unwillingness or inability to promptly return the victims’ photographs after the expiration of the operative consignment agreements. These excuses consisted of, among other things, exaggerating the severity of her own health problems, including claiming (

1) to have recently been in a coma and

(2) to have received a double-lung transplant. In other instances, Beard told her victims that there was a lack of interest among potential purchasers—despite having already sold the photographs in question.

Beard also created fake “employee” identities which she used to correspond with her victims in a further effort to deceive them.

In the plea agreement, Beard acknowledged defrauding more than ten victims over the course of her scheme. She further admitted that at least one victim was vulnerable due to the victim’s advanced age. The government asserts that the losses associated with the scheme are at least USD1.5 million.