A Long Island art dealer who pawned millions in fake Rothkos and Jackson Pollacks is now claiming she is the victim of an abusive boyfriend who was “the true mastermind” of the $80 million scheme.
Glafira Rosales, who has admitted to tricking dozens of expert sellers and buyers into deals involving $80 million worth of fakes, only did it because she was afraid of her boyfriend, Jose Carlos Diaz Bergantinos Diaz, she alleges in a new court filing.
Diaz, who was arrested in Spain in 2014, allegedly concocted the decades-long scheme and threatened her life whenever she tried to back down, her lawyer, Bryan Skarlatos, said in the filing.
Skarlatos made the claim ahead of Rosales’ sentencing scheduled for Tuesday when he is expected to plead with Manhattan federal judge Katherine Polk Failla to keep Rosales, 60, out of prison.
“Her actions, though legally voluntary, were not the result of free rational decision-making,” Skarlatos said in the letter.
After pocketing $33.2 million from the scheme, Rosales pleaded guilty in 2013 to money laundering, wire fraud and tax crimes. She faces a whopping 99 years in jail.
Her fraud, which rocked the art world and ruined art dealer reputations, started in the late 1980s after Diaz met an elderly painter from Queens, Pei-Shen Qian, her lawyer said.
At first Diaz acted as the dealer, but his success was hampered due to suspicions that he had sold forgeries in Spain, Skarlatos said.
That’s when Diaz “drafted Glafira to serve as the ‘face’ of the scheme,” her lawyer said. Diaz directed Rosales from behind the scenes, including telling Qian, who is believed to be in China, which artists to paint and making “up stories about the provenance of the fake art.”
Rosales tried to back out of the scheme many times, but Diaz wouldn’t let her, Skarlatos said.
Once, when she refused to show a photos of a fake painting to a dealer, he held her against the wall “and shoved the photograph down her throat, nearly asphyxiating her,” Skarlatos told the judge.
Diaz also threatened to take their daughter away, her lawyer said.
Diaz was arrested in Spain in 2014, but blocked from extradition to the US. He could not be immediately reached for comment.
The scandal brought down the once prestigious Knoedler & Co. gallery, which was later accused of selling more than 30 bogus paintings, including an t $8.3 million Mark Rothko to Italian businessman Domenico De Sole, the former president and CEO of Gucci Group.
The federal court’s probation division will recommended that Rosales, who receive closer to four years and seven months in prison.