Unwary art buyers get burned by sophisticated forgeries

Steve Martin knows his art. The Hollywood star is an experienced, savvy collector and is so familiar with the art world that he even wrote a novel - "An Object of Beauty" - about it. So when Mr. Martin had the chance in 2004 to buy a painting by the early 20th-century expressionist painter Heinrich Campendonk for the bargain price of about $850,000, he jumped on it.

Bad move. The painting, it turns out, was a forgery - a counterfeit so flawless that even an expert hired to authenticate it had been fooled. Mr. Martin wasn't the only victim; police say the gang may have sold at least 14 forgeries over the past decade, defrauding galleries and collectors of close to $50 million.

Forgery in the art world is pervasive. Fakes priced from a few hundred to several thousand dollars show up regularly at auctions, on websites and in galleries. Over the past 15 years, specialists say, the explosion of new ways to buy art online - particularly through auction sites such as eBay - has brought flocks of inexperienced buyers into the market and made it easier for counterfeiters to find them, fool them, fleece them and forget them.

"It's pervasive," said Alan Bamberger, author of "The Art of Buying Art" and a specialist in online art crime. "Twenty years ago, forgers operated on local or regional levels through auction houses that didn't have art specialists on hand. But these days you can go online and show your masterworks to the world with no problem."

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