Fraudsters Duped Sotheby's Into Selling Fake Art, Suit Alleges

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — A Florida couple pocketed millions after using forged letters to dupe Sotheby's into auctioning off fake artworks, the company alleges in a new lawsuit.

The esteemed Upper East Side auction house filed the lawsuit Tuesday in federal court, accusing Frederic Thut and his wife, Bettina Von Marnitz Thut, of perpetrating a monthslong scheme that revolved around works purportedly by Diego Giacometti, a famed Swiss sculptor.

Thut is himself the owner of FAAM, an auction house in Miami that is also named as a defendant.

The saga began in October 2016, when Von Marnitz Thut consigned three supposed Giacometti artworks to Sotheby's, the suit says. She provided three letters attesting to their provenance, including from the New York art dealer Pierre Matisse and the writer James Lord, a friend of the late sculptor, according to the suit.

The artworks were auctioned off for $1,135,000 months later, of which Von Marnitz Thut received $710,800, the suit said.

On three more occasions in 2017, the lawsuit states, Von Marnitz Thut approached Sotheby's with Giacometti sculptures — each accompanied by nearly identical provenance letters — which were ultimately auctioned or sold for $1,171,000 combined.

By December 2018, though, a person who had purchased some of the sculptures began have doubts and hired an expert, who deemed them to be inauthentic, according to the suit.

Sotheby's said it reacted in disbelief to the finding, pointing to the "strength of the provenance documents" it had been given. But after hiring a handwriting expert, the auction house was startled to learn that the letters themselves were all forgeries, "written by the same hand," the lawsuit says.

Diego #Giacometti's animal kingdom will be brought to life in our #Paris auction dedicated to the sculptor on 17 May https://t.co/NRtUUEx7ns pic.twitter.com/7gDNxa5qLA
— Sotheby's (@Sothebys) April 26, 2017

Now, Sotheby's believes that the Thuts acquired the inauthentic artworks, consigned them to their own Miami auction house, re-purchased them themselves in order to conceal their origins, and then approached Sotheby's, claiming they were worth far more than the original estimates, the lawsuit said.

The auction house also learned that an untold number of other fake Giacomettis had been consigned to Sotheby's by other people acting at the Thuts' behest, the suit claims. The suit does not say who may have authored the forged letters.

Despite being presented with evidence of the falsifications, the couple has refused to hand over any of the proceeds they received from the sales, Sotheby's said.

Now, Sotheby's is asking a judge to force the Thuts to pay back nearly $7 million in proceeds from the sales, plus punitive damages.

A message to Thut's Miami auction house was not immediately returned. Summonses have been issued to the couple, forcing them to answer the complaint within three weeks.

Kathleen Culliton contributed to this report.