by Kim Kilpatrick
August 26, 2010 11:05 PM
The FBI arrested a Florida man last week, saying that he was trying to sell counterfeit Picasso, Matisse, and John Singer Sargent paintings. He was also alleged to have forged Sotheby’s documents proving the authenticity of his paintings, and to have mailed those fraudulent documents to an undercover FBI agent. Sixty-eight-year-old Luigi Cugini, allegedly a well known con artist, is said to have told his customers that he was the grandson of Joseph Coletti (now dead), a sculptor from the Boston area. Cugini marketed his paintings as having been part of Coletti’s personal collection, saying that they were worth millions of dollars. Cugini sometimes kept the paintings in his Broward County, Florida apartment, but often kept them in a Massachusetts self storage unit.
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