The Deceivers

Maybe it's because my last paying job was in health insurance fraud detection, or maybe it's because I always somewhat marveled at forgers and counterfeiters, that I found the recent book review in the WSJ of Tony Tetro's confessions as a master art forger fascinating on many levels.

The daily WSJ book reviews are great. There are always in the same spot, one page from the last page in the first section. they are always the same length, and are seldom about novels, but rather general interest books on business, science, religion, history and biographies of people you never heard of.

I don't know when my interest in forgers and counterfeiters started, but I distinctly remember when I was a kid I used to get mail from the U.S. Government Printing office listing their publications for sale. I must have ordered one on counterfeiting, probably issued by the Treasury Department. In it I read of a guy who painstakingly drew a decent looking $100 bill, put it on the bar and ordered a drink. The bartender told him to wait, he didn't have enough change yet. While waiting, the bill got wet on the bar and the ink started to run. Uh-oh, trouble. He never got his change, but was rather met by law enforcement.

I've never forgotten that story, and now later in life as I'm older, I wonder if it really happened, or if it was just the U.S. Treasury and Secret Service spinning a good one to would-be, youthful counterfeiters who liked to draw that they we're going to get you. You can't fool Uncle Sam. No matter. I still love the story.

So I forged ahead into Friday's WSJ book review, Con/Artist by Tony Tetro, reviewed by Moira Hodgson with the catchy headline, Forging Ahead. 

Holy cow. It's an autobiography by a guy who is still with us, and who apparently was considered one of the great art forgers of all time until he was brought down, did a little jail time, (very little) and now has to produce art under his signature rather than that of a famous artist's signature, but not before he grew quite rite rich doing what he was doing, oftentimes with the wink-wink of art galleries that just said, give us more.

The book review just about tells us Tony's book is almost a how-to book on creating art forgeries. Well, you do have to be able to draw first, and that's not a talent most of us possess.

And if Tony doesn't bear the strongest resemblance to Sir. Richard Burton, then I'm Liz Taylor. Looks like that and the patter to  go with it, it's no wonder Tony was so good at what he did.

If anyone remembers the show White Collar, you had the Neil Cafferty character played by Matt Bomer who becomes an F.B.I. agent after getting caught and is forgiven for his con artist, counterfeiting and art forgeries if he'll help the F.B.I. Neil is good. We see him baking oil paintings, creating one-of-kind sculptures, and in general being able to fool even the experts, all while working for the F.B.I. in sting operations. To catch a thief, employ a thief.

The theme holds: art forgers do not do serious time. In Tony Tetro's second trial after the first one ended in a hung jury and ruined Tony financially with legal costs, Tony pleads nolo contendere and receives a sentence of 200 hours of community service and is ordered to paint a mural  on a public building. He also has to create prototypes for safety murals as well as getting five year's probation. He was released from jail in 1994.

But what nearly knocked me off the coach was the part in the book review that as a youth Tony picked up a copy of Clifford Irving's book "Fake" about an earlier extraordinaire art forger Elmyr de Hory, and decided that was for him.

I remember when Clifford Irving died in 2018 and wondered who amongst the living might remember his role in the fake will of Howard Hughes. It was a sensational hoax, turned into a movie, turned into a book by Irving on the hoax itself.

In Irving's obit it is speculated that Clifford, after doing the book, "Fake," on the famous forger de Hory, Irving started to think that creating a fake might be for him. He couldn't paint, but he could write.

I have no way of knowing if Ms. Hodgson is aware of Clifford Irving's massive hoodwinking of the publishing world and the media at large. (No Twitter account to ask her.) 

Although an author herself, she doesn't insert anything in her book review text that hints at the massive irony of Tetro taking up his craft after reading Irving's book on another art forger who seems to have inspired Irving to launch his con.

Elmyr de Hory was a Hungarian art forger who eluded the authorities for decades. Even after being caught he only did two months in prison, never being charged with art forgery since the Spainish courts could not prove he committed a crime on their soil. He was released in 1968

So we have the strangest chain reaction of deception being set off by a biography of an art forger by an author who himself later forged a will of a reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes and pulled the wool over everyone's eyes, who himself served as a mentor for another art forger, Tony Tetro. It's enough to make you think we need a vaccine to prevent the spread.

Fake news. Fake stories. Fake Money. Fake art. Fakers. (Congressman George Santos, anyone?) One thing I can say, I can never remember any of the experts on The Antiques Road Show ever using the four-letter word "fake."

They tell the person who brought the object in that it's a reproduction, or not an original. Easy let down.

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