Such as this one:

The original is by Jean-Michel Basquiat and, to some, it's worth a lot of money: so much so that when the gallery owner tried to sell it he asked for USD12 million.

And he might have got away with it if the collector he was trying to sell to hadn't been an under-cover agent from the FBI's Art Crime Team.

Daniel Elie Bouaziz is the owner of art galleries in South Florida, including Danieli Fine Art (at 226A Worth Avenue) and Galerie Danieli (at 230 Worth Avenue) in what local media describe as a "ritzy" district.

His scheme was simple: he'd trawl the internet for artists who advertise their skill by making copies of expensive art. He found this one, one by Warhol, Lichtenstien, something allegedly by Banksy. He'd pay perhaps USD100 for them, then display them as real and sell for somewhere between USD75,000 and USD240,000. But it was the Basquiat that was to make his drop-dead money.

The sale that was eventually negotiated was for other work. According to the Departmet of Justice " on or about 25 October, 2021, Bouaziz sold counterfeit artwork to a customer, to include pieces purportedly by artist Andy Warhol (“Warhol”) out of his Palm Beach art galleries. Bouaziz had told the customer that the works that he was selling, for between USD75,000 and USD240,000, were authentic, original Warhol pieces, and that some of the pieces were signed by the artist. Relying upon these false and fraudulent representations, the customer purchased artwork from Bouaziz. The customer gave Bouaziz a USD200,000 down payment for the artwork. The money was deposited into Bouaziz’s account and then the commingled funds were wired to other accounts, to include an account controlled by Bouaziz. "

Not drop dead money but a decent score if the deal came off.

He should have run.

In that cute way that the US Department of Justice has of phrasing its charges like a small novel, he was charged that "Bouaziz knowingly engaged in and attempted to engage in a transaction through a financial institution affecting interstate commerce of over USD10,000 in money derived from the unlawful sale of counterfeit art in violation of the wire fraud statute."

Bouaziz will be sentenced on 30 May, 2023.

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*We can't add this case to Financial Crime Case Studies because we cannot access the judgment and we have to rely on material published by the Department of Justice and great as it is for news, it's not good enough for our Case Studies. But we have lots of great cases.