[MSN] 'Fake' puts the focus on Seattle art con man again.

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Thursday, July 13, 2006

'Fake' puts the focus on Seattle art con man again

By REGINA HACKETT
P-I ART CRITIC

The poster boy for selling art fakes on the Internet, Ken Fetterman, got his
start in fraud in Seattle and is now back in the limelight. 

His partner in crime, Kenneth Walton, recently published a book about their
lucrative online deceptions titled, "Fake: Forgery, Lies, & eBay,"
subtitled, "How One Man's Con Game Created an International Scandal &
Triggered a Nationwide FBI Manhunt" (Simon & Schuster, $21.95).

Essentially, Walton and Fetterman sold bogus "masterpieces" on eBay by
creating interest among neophyte collectors.

But long before Fetterman's eBay scams, he was working solo in Seattle. He
moved here in 1990 after an Army discharge, having served almost a year in a
military prison for drug possession.

That's a long way from art school, yet Fetterman was soon passing himself
off as an art expert. At 24, he managed to convince a Seattle Times art
critic that he had uncovered a Raphael in Snohomish, worth a "probable $20
million." 

The day after the story ran, May 27, 1992, the Seattle P-I logged in with an
opposing view, backed by the Seattle Art Museum's European curator, Chiyo
Ishikawa, and Joanne Snow-Smith, art historian at the University of
Washington. Both were aware of the painting (and Fetterman). In detail, they
doubted the attribution to the Italian Renaissance painter. A local auction
house claimed to have sold it to him for less than $5,000, "all that it's
worth."

The Times admitted it had been had.

How did a guy who was the focus of an art scandal later become a big eBay
art dealer? 

That's the subject of Walton's book. 



Even though Walton was a lawyer, he didn't check up on Fetterman before
joining him in his eBay auctions. Walton knew nothing of Fetterman's Seattle
experience. If Walton had known, he says now, he "might have been reluctant"
to hook up with Fetterman, as Seattle proved that his touch was far from
golden.

On the other hand, Walton admits that he "didn't want to know." Fetterman
appeared in his life just as Walton was having a career crisis. He was a
young lawyer making $52,000 a year and bored out of his skull. 

He saw Fetterman raking in easy eBay money while he toiled on tedious
municipal law, feeling like "an East German border guard who could only
stand by and watch as gleeful students chipped away at the Berlin Wall."

Their method was simple. They bought cheap paintings at estate sales,
antique shops, small auction houses and even garage sales, then turned
around and offered them for sale on eBay. 

They bid against each other (shill bidding) to drive up the prices and wrote
descriptions of the art that suggested the sellers didn't know the extent of
the "treasures" they owned. They listed art under a wide range of user IDs
(legitimate) and complimented each other's false practices (illegitimate). 

"People want to be fooled," said Walton. 

In 1999, wrote Walton, a lot of online sellers were getting away with
deceptive practices, but toward the end of that year, the press woke up and
began to cover them. At the same time, Fetterman and Walton, who'd been
raking in $10,000 to $40,000 a month, even more in good months, began to get
reckless, hoping for a big score. Instead of just bidding against themselves
early on to create interest, they manufactured their own bidding wars,
inflating prices entirely with shills, hoping to draw out real bidders.

Finally, they faked evidence, such as signing the initials or even the name
of a famous artist to a canvas that resembled that artist's work. 

Walton found an anonymous painting that looked like an early work by
California heavyweight Richard Diebenkorn. He added "RD" and "52" for the
year, and impersonated a know-nothing in his eBay seller's description: "I
got this big abstract painting at a garage sale in Berkeley, California, a
LOOONG time ago." Because his (nonexistent) wife thinks it looks as if a
"nutcase" painted it, he said he's selling. "One thing I can say about this
painting is that it is BIG!"

He didn't mention the signature, as he was pretending to be too dumb to
notice. Fetterman started with multiple shill bids, but real ones quickly
followed, as news of the signature leaked. When the painting's price rose to
$135,000, the press began to call. 

"After his experience in Seattle, Fetterman was terrified of the press,"
said Walton.

The New York Times broke the fraud story, also covered by the Wall Street
Journal and California newspapers and TV. Fetterman disappeared, and Walton
cooperated with the federal prosecutors and the FBI, avoiding jail by
incriminating his associate.

After two years in hiding, Fetterman was picked up on a traffic stop in 2003
and went to prison for 30 months, with nine months probation. He remains
unavailable for comment.

Fetterman schooled himself in art history, becoming what he pretended to be,
an expert. "He has an extensive knowledge that goes beyond books, an
instinct for styles and how a painting fits within a genre," said Walton.

There are self-taught art dealers who rise to the top of their profession.
Fetterman could have been one, said Walton, but he went for fast money
instead. 

No longer a lawyer, Walton says online art fraud is worse than ever, caused
by the delusion of buyers. "My book is intended to warn people away from
risky purchases, the kind I used to encourage."

Hani Durzy, eBay spokesman, doesn't agree that eBay fraud is worse than
ever. 

"Walton's a criminal, right? Why does his opinion matter?" 

The scams described in Walton's book, said Durzy, happened "early in the
century." He said eBay is much better at detecting them now, partly because
eBay employs thousands of people who check bidding patterns for
irregularities. The company's best resource to uncover fraud, however, is
the customers themselves. "There are 89 million listings on eBay, 6 million
going up every day," he said. "People form communities and are fast to
detect problems."

Fetterman never admitted his Raphael was fake. "He said he was storing it in
Seattle," said Walton, who hasn't seen his old partner since the FBI closed
in. "His eyes got misty talking about it. He said he was going to sell it
some day for a lot of money." 

P-I art critic Regina Hackett can be reached at 206-448-8332 or
reginahackett at seattlepi.com.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/