MIAMI (CBS12) — Andy Warhol once said, “art is what you can get away with.” Unfortunately for two suspected conmen, prosecutors think what they were trying to get away with was fraud.
Leslie Roberts, a 62-year-old man from Miami, allegedly conspired to sell forged Andy Warhol art with fraudulent authentications and engaged in money laundering with his accused co-conspirator, Carlos Miguel Rodriguez Melendez.
According to the indictment, Roberts sold art from the Miami Fine Art Gallery, located in Coconut Grove. The FBI raided the Gallery on Wednesday, and Roberts and Melendez, 37, were then arrested by law enforcement.
The indictment stated that Roberts supposedly presented the fake art pieces as Andy Warhol originals, a widely renowned artist from the 1960s Pop-Art movement.
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Roberts even went so far as to claim he obtained the pieces directly from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, stating he was an employee of a New York-based auction company and provided fraudulent invoices to the victim, the indictment claims.
The money laundering charges include transferring wire fraud proceeds from his Miami Fine Art Gallery bank account to a personal bank account. The indictment indicates Roberts’ transactions totaled $150,000, $40,000, and $50,000.
Rodriguez Melendez was also charged for his alleged participation in the wire fraud conspiracy.
If convicted of wire fraud, both defendants could face up to 20 years in federal prison, and Roberts could face up to an additional 10 years in federal prison if convicted of money laundering.
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