Michigan art dealer arrested by FBI for selling counterfeits
By Nate Raymond
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A Michigan art dealer was arrested by the FBI on Wednesday for what authorities say was an extensive scheme to sell counterfeit works by renowned artists including Willem de Kooning.
Eric Ian Hornak Spoutz, 32, was charged with wire fraud in a complaint filed in Manhattan federal court and arrested in an apartment he has in Hollywood, California, a spokeswoman for the Federal Bureau of Investigation said.
A lawyer for Spoutz did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
According to the complaint, Spoutz between 2010 and March 2015 sold dozens of counterfeit works of art by famed American artists, including de Kooning, Franz Kline and Joan Mitchell, creating fake documentation to sway buyers of the pieces' authenticity.
He operated under a series of aliases including "Robert Chad Smith" and "John Goodman" to mask his connection to the sale of counterfeit works, after previously being accused by a website of offering forged artwork on eBay, the complaint said.
To create a fake history of prior ownership, Spoutz, forged letters from law firms and art galleries and created fake receipts and bills of sales, the complaint said.
According to the complaint, an FBI agent interviewed Spoutz, a resident of Mount Clemens, Michigan, by telephone in November 2014.
During the call, Spoutz claimed to have acquired a collection of 30 works by de Kooning, but admitted he did not know if the abstract expressionist had actually created them.
Instead, he said he was selling them as "attributed" to de Kooning, a term referring to art that an expert believes is by the artist, the complaint said.
Asked where the collection came from, the complaint said, Spoutz replied: "That's the big question."
He claimed that in 2003 he was introduced to an individual through one of his employees, who purportedly had an "as attributed" collection to sell, the complaint said.
Spoutz claimed he then acquired works attributed to Mitchell, de Kooning, Kline and Arthur Dove, the complaint said, but told the FBI agent he had no documentation or proof of purchase for these pieces.
Yet Spoutz said he had no contact information for this person, who he called "Gerald Kemper," the complaint said.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in New York)
