United States Attorney David Metcalf announced that Carter Reese, 77, of Reading, Pennsylvania, entered a plea of guilty today before United States District Court Judge Jeffrey L. Schmehl to one count of wire fraud and one count of mail fraud, in connection with a scheme in which he defrauded customers by making false representations about the source and authenticity of certain art purportedly created by prominent artists.
Reese was charged by information with those offenses earlier this month.
As detailed in court filings and admitted to by the defendant, from about February 2019 to March 2021, Reese sold and attempted to sell art that he represented as genuine pieces created by prominent artists, including Francis Bacon, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jean Cocteau, Keith Haring, Fernand Léger, Roy Lichtenstein, Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, and others. Reese knew that the pieces were fake and had not been created by those artists.
The defendant is scheduled to be sentenced on September 12 and faces a maximum possible term of 40 years in prison.
The case was investigated by members of the FBI’s Art Crime Team assigned to the Philadelphia and Miami field offices and is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Ruth Mandelbaum and Jason Grenell.
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