Tuesday, October 25, 2022

Art dealer faked lung transplant to rob seniors in $1.6 million fraud scheme, FBI says

by Tresa Baldas

KEY POINTS

  • A Michigan art dealer is being charged in U.S. District Court with running a $1.6 million scam that preyed on the elderly and involved more than 100 rare, fine art photographs.
  • Instead of honoring her clients’ contracts to sell the artwork on consignment, the FBI says, Wendy Beard sold the photos without their knowledge and kept the money.
  • The FBI also alleges that Beard created fake employees and email addresses, used to send clients messages that claimed Beard couldn't be reached because she was in the hospital or in a coma.

For years, Wendy Beard ran a lucrative art gallery she inherited from her millionaire father in Birmingham, Michigan.

But along the way, the FBI says, she got greedy – so greedy that she scammed seniors by taking their rare art on consignment, selling it and then keeping all the profits, including a mural-sized Ansel Adams photograph she sold for $440,000 without ever telling the owner.

When the 82-year-old owner of the photo tried to get the picture back, the FBI says, Beard came up with a story: She was in the hospital getting a double lung transplant and was too sick to deal with the request.

None of it was true, the FBI says.

Fake employees, fake emails, fake transplant

The 82-year-old woman – identified as Victim No. 1 in court documents – was not alone.

On Thursday, the FBI issued a plea to the public, asking for its help in identifying "additional potential victims" who may have provided art to Beard and never got paid, or who bought art from her and never received it.

In an alleged fraud scheme unraveling in U.S. District Court, Beard is charged with running a $1.6 million scam involving more than 100 rare, fine-art photographs that collectors entrusted her with to sell on consignment.

Instead of honoring her clients’ contracts, the FBI says, she sold the photos without their knowledge and kept the money. Moreover, the FBI says, Beard sold artwork to other victims but never delivered the goods – even after they had paid her – and created fake email addresses of fake employees she pretended worked for her.

It was these fake employees who came up with the lung transplant story, the FBI says, alleging it was really Beard who made up the tale in emails to her unwitting clients.

The FBI detailed these allegations in a criminal complaint in U.S. District Court, where Beard is charged with wire fraud and bank fraud for allegedly running a yearslong scheme that preyed largely on the elderly, out of a gallery that her father founded more than 50 years ago.

Beard is free on bond. Neither she nor her court-appointed attorney could be reached for comment.

How the scam allegedly worked

According to the complaint, Beard’s scheme started in 2017 – one year before her father died – and ran out of two locations.

The gallery, which was renamed the Wendy Halsted Gallery a decade earlier, operated for a few years out of a Birmingham storefront. But in 2020, the business closed and relocated to Beard’s home in Franklin, Michigan.

Full Article & Source:
Art dealer faked lung transplant to rob seniors in $1.6 million fraud scheme, FBI says

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