It's quite possible that I already knew about this forgery ring in Germany and simply forgot to write about it, but it is back in the news today because actor Steve Martin apparently bought one of the forged paintings involved in this scandal. I encourage everyone to read at least part of the story, which has all the makings of a Hollywood film (maybe Steve Martin could star?): heroin-addicted draftsmen, fraudulent art-marketing companies, a forger's dreams of being the next Andy Warhol (and more!), and follows the trend of art forgery stories to be completely bizarre.
Perhaps the FBI or Interpol has a pathological profile of forgers, but it seems to me that it would be quite difficult to create one. I'm no psychologist, so I mostly just wonder whether the most successful forgery rings all have the same goals and major players; I suspect, however, that they don't. It's hard, at any rate, to imagine that Mark Augustus Landis and Elmyr de Hory, for example, made forgeries for the same reasons. Maybe their great differences are what make them so hard for me to understand, or maybe they are not so different as I suspect. Maybe I should stick to fiction.
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