Painter charged with making fake Jackson Pollock paintings

Art collectors paid $ 1.9 million for fake Jackson Pollock paintings — including some splattered works that were audaciously sold on eBay.

John Re, an East Hampton-based painter, has been arrested in connection with the fraud — the latest in a string of Pollock forgeries.

In this case, collectors bought around 60 fakes for a total of $ 1.9 million.

“Online art marketplaces have an obligation to better protect their customers from fraud,” said art-fraud expert Colette Loll, founder and director of Art Fraud Insights.

“The online art marketplace can start by communicating standards for the process of art authentication,” added Loll, who has helped train Homeland Security agents in art-fraud cases.

According to the FBI, Re launched the scam in 2005, and knew enough to create a fictional provenance for the fakes. He made up a back story, telling collectors he “found” a treasure trove of Pollock paintings while cleaning out the basement of a widow whose late husband had been a woodworker and antiques restorer.

Re had been arrested in 1995 for being part of a counterfeit money ring that created fake $ 20 bills on a home printing press. He pleaded guilty to criminally possessing a forged instrument and was sentenced to two to seven years in jail.

The International Foundation for Art Research helped expose the fraud after a collector asked its experts to authenticate 45 of the paintings — none of which passed authentication tests.

One collector bought 58 paintings for $ 519,890 — peanuts for a real Pollock.

Another collector bought 12 paintings for $ 894,500. But when the collector sent one of the paintings to an expert to be authenticated, he was told that the materials in the painting were not around when Pollock was alive, according to the FBI. Pollock died in 1956.

Modern art is especially vulnerable when it comes to forgeries.

The now disgraced New York-based Knoedler & Co., established in 1846, shut down in 2011 following an art scandal in which collectors bought fake.

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