Art, Lies, and Instagram: How Catfishing ‘Collectors’ Duped the Art World
This week’s story begins with an art purchase made like so many others... .
A collector notices his peers talking up an artwork on Instagram, so he messages the artist’s dealer and makes a purchase. In this case, there was just one problem: neither the collector peers nor the artist actually exist.
That fateful transaction is just the tip of the iceberg of a broader scheme: someone (quite possibly a group of people) created fake social media profiles for jet-setting Italian collectors to promote a fake artist—and ended up making real money in the process.
The tale reveals just how easy it is…
The skinny
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