The World's Greatest Art Fraud - The Wolfgang Beltracchi story
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How did a failed art school application lead to a massive art heist?
So this guy did not get into art school. And that eventually caused actor Steve Martin to get conned out of $750,000. Let me explain. Now the guy, let's call him Lil Mustache Man. And Lil Mustache Man really wants to go to art school. And he applies twice. But unfortunately for him, the school is like, nah bro, and he doesn't get in because he's not very good. But 25 years later, he's chancellor of Germany. Yet he still considers himself a connoisseur of the arts and he's still allegedly a bit salty about getting rejected from art school all those years ago. And as he directs his military to invade other countries around Europe in World War II, He also has them loot museums and raid art collections and steal all the art pieces.
And they become notorious for this. It's estimated his goons took over 600,000 pieces of art during this time. By some estimates, they took nearly 20% of all the art in Europe. And some of it they keep and some of it they destroy. But to this day, a lot of that art has never been recovered. Now, let's fast forward several decades to the 1980s, because I want to talk about this guy, Wolfgang.
Who is Wolfgang Beltracchi and what was his art forgery scheme?
And Wolfgang, he's in his 30s, he's kind of a hippie, and unlike Lil Mustache Man, he's actually a very talented artist. He's a painter. And one day, Wolfgang's like, f*** all this workin', I want to make quick money. And he gets a crazy idea. He's gonna forge some art. He's gonna paint some new paintings in the style of old famous artists who died a long time ago, and he's gonna pass these fake paintings off as originals. Cool plan, bro. And so he does this. He makes these fake paintings and passes them off as old masterpieces. And surprisingly, it works. And he like sells them to people. He sells them to art galleries. And pretty quickly, he starts to make good money from this, like hundreds of thousands of euros. Then in 1993, everything changes for him because he meets this woman, Helene. And he and Helene, they fall in love and eventually they get married. And not only is Helene okay with her new husband being a con artist art forger, but she's like, let me help you out.
How did Wolfgang and Helene perfect their art forgery operation?
And she becomes his partner in this scam. And together, Wolfgang and Helene and some other acquaintances of theirs, they really start to perfect this whole thing. Like they make sure the canvases they're painting on are from the right period, that the paint is from the right period. He even builds an oven and like cooks his paintings to make them seem cracked and old. And then they like approach art dealers and auction houses and they sell them. And when the art dealers are like, hang on a second, where the hell did you get all these priceless long lost paintings from? Wolfgang tells them some complicated story about how they had inherited all these works from their art collector grandparents.
and that they had originally been looted by Little Mustache Man's military back in World War II, and that they were just recently recovered. And since Little Mustache Man really did steal that many collections of art back in the day, these art dealers start to believe that, yeah, it's actually plausible that Wolfgang and Helene's story is true. He inherited a bunch of long-lost art. And so anyway, they start selling all these fake long-lost paintings, allegedly by famous artists, for hundreds of thousands of euros per painting, even millions sometimes. They make two million euros off one painting alone, or about two million US dollars. And so suddenly, they're rich.
What was the outcome of Wolfgang's fraudulent art sales?
And now that they're rich, they gotta go and buy a bunch of sh** for themselves, because that's what you gotta do. And they buy like a big mansion in Germany and a villa in South France. They're traveling around to all kinds of places, chilling on yachts. They apparently dress all high class now, and Wolfgang's driving a pimp-ass Jaguar. And so this scam goes on for years. Wolfgang will make a fake long-lost painting in the style of a well-known dead artist, and they'll claim it's authentic and sell it for a ton of money. And yes, yes, there are actually skeptics. There are authenticators and people in the art world who start to doubt them. Like, no way you have all these old originals. And they really start to push them on the authenticity of these.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
How did a failed art school application lead to a massive art heist?
0:00–1:18
2
Who is Wolfgang Beltracchi and what was his art forgery scheme?
1:18–2:24
3
How did Wolfgang and Helene perfect their art forgery operation?
2:24–3:46
4
What was the outcome of Wolfgang's fraudulent art sales?
3:46–8:37
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast
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