Most recent edit on 2008-02-12 14:07:21 by MarD

Additions:
From the World Encyclopedia of Con Artists and Confidence Games

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Oldest known version of this page was edited on 2008-02-12 13:46:51 by MarD []
van Meegeren, Han (Henricus Antonius van Meegeren), 1889-1947, Neth., fraud. Hailed as the greatest art forger of all time, Han van Meegeren was born in Deventer, Neth. His father, Henricus van Meegeren, was a schoolmaster who did not encourage his son's ambitions to become a painter. When van Meegeren was twelve his severe parents looked over his sketches and then tore them to shreds, telling their disheartened son he had no artistic abilities whatever. Van Meegeren was allowed, however, to enter the Delft University to study architecture. He failed his examinations and left the university. Van Meegeren, against the wishes of his father and discouraged by other relatives and friends, stubbornly embarked on a career as a painter. He exhibited his work for the first time in 1916 and was well-received by the critics and the public alike. Success in his chosen profession seemed assured.

Throughout the early 1920s, van Meegeren enjoyed continued success. His shows were largely organized and promoted by his wife, Anna. At one show, however, the artist met Johanna Oerlemans, the beautiful and sophisticated wife of a leading art critic. She became his mistress. This affair caused van Meegeren's divorce in 1923. He continued his affair with Oerlemans, who, in turn, was also divorced. They married in 1929. By then van Meegeren's career began a downslide, his popularity dropping off and critics becoming disinterested in his work. He was in financial difficulties in the early 1930s, and angered at being ignored as an artist, decided to mock the critics and make an enormous amount of money by faking works by long-dead masters.

This was not an original idea. Van Meegeren's friend Theo Wijngaarden another painter who had suffered due to Holland's greatest critic, Dr. Abraham Bredius, took his vengeance by faking a work of Rembrandt. Wijngaarden had discovered a painting he believed to be a genuine Frans Hals. It was pronounced authentic by the art critic de Groot, but when Dr. Bredius inspected the work, he called it a fake. To embarrass Bredius, Wijngaarden painted a work that he brought to the art critic, claiming it to be a Rembrandt. The pompous Bredius inspected it carefully, then pronounced it genuine. At that moment, Wijngaarden produced a long knife and slashed the canvas to pieces as Bredius and others stepped back in shock and horror. Wijngaarden announced that he had painted the work and that Bredius was a fool. van Meegeren resolved to perform the same feat, but go even further, creating fake de Hooths and Vermeers and collecting enormous sums for these "discoveries." He would then tear up the check in front of those whom he intended to dupe.

Van Meegeren spent more than four years seeking to duplicate works of Jan Vermeer, a noted sixteenth-century painter with whom he was familiar, having paid particular attention to Vermeer in his art studies as a youth. For years van Meegeren worked with pigments and other materials. The painter baked his canvases so that they would appear to have aged by hundreds of years, and he ground earth and stone by hand into his pigments to provide the proper irregular look to them. Thus, if experts examined them under a microscope, they would be convinced the paintings had been produced by ancient methods rather than pigments produced mechanically.

To authenticate the age of his fake paintings further, van Meegeren discovered that he could strip down a canvas that was three hundred years old and the "crackle," the tiny cracks that appeared over the decades when the oil dried on the canvas, would remain. When he painted over these canvases the crackle of the first layer of paint still appeared on the newly painted canvas, thus making the new painting appear ancient. Living on the Riviera, van Meegeren supported himself by painting portraits of tourists while continuing his research.

He bought chairs, pots, and other items of the seventeenth century so these trappings would appear as genuine in his fake Vermeers. But it was with the oil paint that van Meegeren took the most care. Vermeer had been famous for his ultramarine blue, but van Meegeren found this almost impossible to duplicate. The oldest available paint coming close to this color had a different chemical make-up, one which was not created until 1802, 127 years after Vermeer's death. Van Meegeren solved this problem by locating a firm that produced powdered lapis lazuli, which is what Vermeer used to create his ultramarine blue. Van Meegeren bought all the powdered lapis lazuli the firm had on hand.

Van Meegeren then mixed his oil paints with lilac oil and phenol resin, which produced the proper viscosity and drying properties. However, van Meegeren also knew that the oil paints used by the old masters often took decades to dry thoroughly, so he sped up the drying process by baking his canvases in an electric oven at 105o centigrade for about two hours. He then coated the canvas with a light coat of varnish and, when the crackles broke through to the new surface of paint, brushed india ink over it. Next, he wiped away the ink, which rode inside the crackles, making it appear that three centuries of dirt clung to the canvas. A final coat of yellow-colored varnish was lightly added to the entire canvas to give it a natural yellowing look, the result of aging. He would then roll the canvas to create a few more crackles. As a final touch, van Meegeren would purposely damage a small portion of the canvas and then "restore" this portion.

The human figures van Meegeren chose for his subjects were based on those appearing in genuine Vermeers. He used live models but carefully selected persons who bore a resemblance to Vermeer's subjects. Since Vermeer's work was mostly of a religious nature, van Meegeren opted for the same genre. His first fake Vermeer, produced in 1936 or 1937, he titled Christ at Emmaus. He used himself as the model for Christ, painting himself as reflected in a full-length mirror. When he finished, van Meegeren called a lawyer from Amsterdam, telling him that he had acquired the painting and other items from a noble French family that had fallen on hard times and did not wish their identities known. The lawyer saw the signature of Vermeer and took the painting to the art critic Bredius, who excitedly pronounced the work genuine. The painting was then purchased by Dr. D.G. van Beuningen for about $450,000. Dr. van Beuningen then presented the work to the Boymans Museum in Rotterdam, where it was accepted as an authentic Vermeer.

Van Meegeren painted more fake Vermeers, including Isaac Blessing Jacob, The Last Supper, The Washing of Christ's Feet, and Christ and the Adulteress. He also passed off a fake de Hoogh titled Interior with Drinkers. These paintings, completed between 1937 and 1943, brought millions in payment and were marketed by Dutch art dealer Rienstra van Strijvesande. Van Meegeren grew rich, buying a large house in Holland, then more and more properties. He frequented nightclubs and even bought one of these clubs. Many beautiful women became his mistresses and he indulged himself in heavy doses of morphine until he was addicted to the drug. To explain his new-found riches, van Meegeren claimed that he had inherited a small fortune from a distant relative. He then claimed that he had won a lottery, then two more lotteries.

Van Meegeren's masterful forgeries might never have been discovered had it not been for the treasure-acquiring habits of Nazi Field Marshal Hermann Goering. Following the war, van Meegeren's Christ and the Adulteress was discovered in a salt mine near Salzburg, Aust., part of the art treasures hidden by Goering at the close of the war. Dutch authorities learned that Goering had paid $1.25 million for this painting, acquiring it from Aloys Miedel, a German banker. Miedel had gotten the painting from a Dr. Hofer, who had secured hundreds of art treasures for leading Nazis during the war. Hofer, in turn, had acquired the fake Vermeer from the Dutch art dealer Strijvesande, who told Dutch authorities that he had gotten the painting from van Meegeren.

Van Meegeren was visited by police and he claimed that the Vermeer had been obtained through "an old Italian family." This was a mistake. Dutch officials believed that van Meegeren had been acquiring art treasures from the Italian fascists and selling them through his contacts to the Nazis. He was arrested and charged with selling national art treasures and being a collaborator. He was interrogated for several weeks, but he refused to identify the source of the painting. Finally, exhausted, he finally blurted: "You are fools like the rest of them! I sold no great national treasure! I painted it myself!" To prove his claim, van Meegeren said that if he were allowed to return to his studio and left undisturbed (provided he was given enough morphine), he could create another Vermeer.

The court agreed. The painter went to work on another brilliant fake, which he completed within two months while two members of the Dutch security police watched his every move. The charges of collaboration were dropped, but new charges of forgery and fraud were substituted. Eight faked Vermeers and de Hooths were studied by the best art experts in the Netherlands and finally proclaimed bogus after being subjected to x-ray examinations. Van Meegeren was found guilty and sentenced to one year in prison, but he was by then ill and was confined in a hospital. His lawyers appealed to Queen Wilhelmina to grant a pardon, and after prosecutors agreed to this, the painter was granted his freedom. It was too late. Han van Meegeren, master art forger, died on Dec. 29, 1947, in Amsterdam's Valerium Clinic. Following his death, several more fake Vermeers created by van Meegeren appeared in the art world, but these works, ironically, though known as fakes, brought enormous prices from collectors who finally appreciated the brilliant van Meegeren.

Vanderbourg, Charles, prom. 1782, Fr., hoax. In 1782, Joseph Etienne, the Marquis de Surville, discovered in the family archives the poems of Clothilde, a supposed poetess in the time of Charles VII, and an elaborate hoax of literature perpetrated by Charles Vanderbourg. Clothilde's real name was Marguerite Eleonore Clotilde. The themes of her poetry included the victory of Fornovo by Charles VII in 1495, and the battle of Orleans, led by Joan of Arc, in 1429. Many of her poems were said to have been lost during the Revolution, but the surviving copies allegedly had been kept and given to Vanderbourg by Etienne's widow. Vanderbourg's hoax began to unravel when critics found allusions to events that occurred outside of Clothilde's time, including a quotation from Lucretius, who was unknown in France until fifty years after Clothilde's "death." An allusion to the seven satellites of Saturn also destroyed the illusion of the poetess, since the satellites had been discovered between 1655 and 1789.

Vella, Joseph, prom. 1782-96, Si., hoax. Visiting the monks at Palermo, Si., in 1782, the chaplain of the Knights of Malta, Joseph Vella, expressed his hope to some day discover Arabic writings that would complete the history of their order. Seven years later, Vella published six volumes of The Diplomatic Code of Sicily Concerning the Governance of Arabia, Published Under the Studied Guidance of Alfonso Airoldi. The books, purporting to be an Arabic translation of seventeen of Livy's last books, contained a complex history of Sicily. Visiting Sicily, a German orientalist named Hager looked at the books and declared them phony. Vella was exonerated by memorizing a few passages from his Italian translation of the supposed Arabic tomes, and reciting them before a commission. His ruse succeeded because the listeners did not speak Arabic. A later group of Arabic scholars examined his work and announced that the story they contained was the tale of Muhammad, not Sicily's history. Vella confessed in 1796 and was sentenced to fifteen years in prison for his hoax.

Vesco, Robert Lee, 1935- , U.S., fraud. Until the Wall Street insider trading scandals broke in the 1980s, revealing a new generation of white-collar con men, Robert Lee Vesco was considered by many to be the top financial swindler of modern times. Vesco's ties extended from the board rooms of corporate America to the Nixon White House. Even while in exile, this former "boy wonder" of international finance seemed to enjoy the protection of the government at the very highest levels.

Vesco, the son of a Detroit auto worker, dropped out of high school at sixteen to work as an apprentice in an auto body shop. Later in his career, while working as an automotive engineer, Vesco designed the one-piece aluminum grille, an innovation roundly criticized by consumers and insurance adjustors, because, according to its inventor, "You had to pull the whole damn thing out to put in a whole new one and it ran you three times as much money!" In 1957, Vesco left Detroit to accept a position as an administrative assistant in a New York-based engineering and chemical company. Vesco gained a toehold in the investment world when he bought up two New Jersey manufacturing companies in the early 1960s. By the middle of the decade he had merged them into a major consortium known as International Controls Corporation (ICC). Vesco's October 1967 buy out of Fairfield Aviation was the first of many mergers and
acquisitions that established ICC as a major player in world markets. Within three years, company profits climbed from $1.3 million to more than $100 million.

In 1971, Vesco assumed control of Investor's Overseas Services Ltd. (IOS Ltd.), a Geneva-based international mutual fund empire headed up by the enigmatic Bernard Cornfield, himself the target of a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) probe. Vesco's tactics also left him open to scrutiny from the SEC. As early as 1971, White House counsel John Dean warned President Richard Nixon about the "potential embarrassments" it might cause the administration if the press were to make an issue about the fact that the president's nephew, Donald, was employed by Vesco. Dean's concerns were not unfounded. In 1971 Vesco and two associates were jailed in Switzerland after misusing an IOS Ltd. shareholder's stock. Vesco's people contacted attorney Harry Sears, New Jersey State Senate majority leader, and chairman of the local committee to reelect Nixon. Sears got in touch with Attorney General John Mitchell, who placed a discreet call to the U.S. embassy in Berne. Richard Vine of the diplomatic corps worked through a CIA operative in Berne who negotiated with Swiss intelligence officers to do something on Vesco's behalf. The prisoner was released on a $125,000 bail and left Geneva the next day. The grateful Vesco paid Sears a $10,000 "legal fee" and then offered $500,000 in up-front money to Maurice H. Stans, the chief fundraiser for Nixon's 1972 reelection campaign. Stans accepted only $250,000, part of which went to the Watergate "plumbers" as payment for their covert raid on Democratic campaign headquarters in June 1972. Stans and Mitchell were indicted in New York for their role in the affair but were acquitted in 1974.

Meanwhile, Vesco had further legal problems to contend with. In November 1972, the SEC charged him with embezzling $224 million in cash from the overseas mutual funds belonging to investors of IOS Ltd. On the heels of the SEC investigation, the Justice Department indicted Vesco for making illegal campaign contributions to Stans and the Committee to Re-elect, as a form of bribery in order to influence a favorable outcome of the government probe into his financial affairs. Facing the possibility of a lengthy jail sentence, Vesco fled the country. He settled in San Jose, Costa Rica, where he remained a fugitive from justice for the next five years, despite persistent State Department efforts to have him extradited.

A month before Vesco was scheduled to become eligible for citizenship, a Costa Rican national named Gerardo Wenceslao Villalobos positioned himself in front of the millionaire's posh suburban home and randomly fired a clip of bullets through the windows. "You do not pay taxes, you are corrupting my country!" he screamed. Vesco survived the attack, but a week later on June 9, 1977, President Daniel Oduber ordered him to leave the country. The fugitive financier headed for the Bahamas where he was reportedly reunited with a vast secret fortune estimated at $50 million. While traveling abroad Robert Vesco has been rumored to be involved in a number of lucrative ventures, and has accrued a secondary fortune through the sales of international arms to third world countries, including Libya. At present he resides in Cuba at a lavishly appointed home complete with private yacht and airplane.

Voight, Wilhelm, d.1914, Ger., fraud. Uniforms represent the law of the land, and the commands of a uniformed officer are to be obeyed. Playing on the substantial power of military uniforms, Wilhelm Voight, a petty criminal turned shoemaker, had a field day with the people in the town of Kopenick, Ger. On Oct. 16, 1906, Voight, dressed in a newly purchased and very impressive uniform of a Prussian captain, commandeered a small detachment of German soldiers in the town of Kopenick. He led them to the town hall where he placed the town's burgomaster, Dr. Langerhans, and its treasurer under arrest. He informed them that he had to take them to Berlin to discuss irregularities in the town's finances. Local police officials came into the city hall while this was going on and were also impressed into the captain's service.

After relieving the treasurer of all of the cash in the town's vault, Voight marched his troops and prisoners to Berlin, where he left them and disappeared.

After much confusion as to why the Kopenick officials were in Berlin, the incident was determined to have been a hoax. When the news of the incident got out, the newspapers ridiculed the town of Kopenick for their inordinate respect for a uniform. Nine days later, Voight was apprehended and placed under arrest. The bogus captain served only twenty months in jail, after which he spent a lucrative few years on the American vaudeville circuit telling the story of his adventure in uniform.

Voliva, Wilbur Glenn, 1870-1942, U.S., hoax. In 1895, John Alexander Dowie settled in Zion, Ill., where he founded the Christian Apostolic Church. A fierce, uncompromising Scotsman, Dowie proclaimed himself "General Overseer" of Zion and ruled the community with an iron fist until he was removed from office by his religious associate, Wilbur Glenn Voliva, in 1905. Voliva was an even sterner taskmaster. He made it a criminal offense to smoke or drink in Zion, and a violation of the curfew laws to stay outdoors after 10 p.m.

Zion, about forty miles north of Chicago, was ruled like a dictatorship by Voliva. Provocative attire for women, such as short skirts, swim suits, and high heels were strictly forbidden. Voliva was a proponent of the flat earth theory, and argued that the North Pole was at the center of the earth. Wilbur Voliva offered $5,000 to anyone who could prove him wrong. He claimed to be an authority in all subjects and once bragged, "I can lick to smithereens any man in the world in a mental battle. I have never met any professor or student who knew a millionth as much on any subject as I do." And when challenged in court once, Voliva screamed: "Every man who fights me goes under. Mark what I say! The graveyard is full of fellows who tried to down Voliva!"

Voliva predicted the end of the world for 1923, and revised his prediction often until his disillusioned followers finally abandoned him. Voliva vowed to live until he was 120, but died at the age of seventy-two, on Oct. 11, 1942.