A painting falsely attributed to famous painter Jean-Michel Basquiat and sold by a North Hollywood man in 2012. (Credit: Department of Justice)
LOS ANGELES - A former auctioneer admitted to federal authorities Tuesday that he and another man created paintings that the two passed off as being made by famous artist Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Michael Barzman of, North Hollywood, pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about where the artwork came from during an interview in 2022. In the plea agreement, Barzman admitted that he and a second man, identified only as "J.F." hatched a plan to sell the fraudulent artwork.
Back then, Barzman ran an auction business that bought and sold the contents of unpaid storage units. Barzman admitted Tuesday that "J.F. spent a maximum of 30 minutes on each image and as little as five minutes on others," before giving them to Barzman to sell on eBay, according to the plea agreement. The two then split the money they made from selling between 20 and 30 fake Basquiat works.
Barzman even admitted to creating a fake paper trail for the artwork, according to the Department of Justice, claiming that the art had been found in an unpaid storage unit that a famous screenwriter had rented.
The works spent the next decade circulating through the art world, eventually forming the basis of a February 2022 exhibit at the Orlando Museum of Art in Orlando, Florida, when in fact "most of the featured works" had been created by Barzman and "J.F." The investigation led the FBI to seize 25 works of art from the museum in June 2022 that had purportedly been made by Basquiat.
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In an interview with the FBI in August 2022, Barzman lied to agents, saying that he and "J.F." didn't create the art, which the Department of Justice said "were material to the activities and decisions of the FBI and were capable of influencing the agency’s decisions and activities."
In another interview two months later, Barzman admitted that the paintings didn't come from a storage unit, but still denied making the paintings himself. Barzman admitted to the lies in Tuesday's plea agreement.
The charges against Barzman are related to making the artwork, but rather lying to federal agents, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in federal prison.