A year ago New York art dealer Robert Rogal received a visit from a young woman identifying herself as Karolina Bankowska, who brought a framed watercolor signed Andrew Wyeth and said it was a family heirloom. Rogal accepted it on consignment, estimating it might bring $20,000–$30,000 at auction, despite fuzzy provenance. He now believes the piece was a fake — one of at least 200 carefully made imitations federal prosecutors say Bankowska, 26, and her father, Erwin Bankowski, 50, tried to sell.
On Tuesday the pair pleaded guilty to defrauding buyers, including major New York auction houses, of at least $2 million. Prosecutors say the counterfeits, forged in Poland by an unnamed co-conspirator, reproduced lesser-known works by prolific artists such as Banksy and Andy Warhol. Their most lucrative sale was a purported Richard Mayhew work sold by DuMouchelles last October for $160,000. DuMouchelles said it cooperated with authorities; other targeted houses named by prosecutors — Bonhams, Phillips, Freeman’s and Antique Arena — declined or did not respond to requests for comment.
The defendants, Polish citizens living in New Jersey, face charges including wire fraud conspiracy and misrepresenting Native American–produced goods after duplicating work by Luiseño artist Fritz Scholder. Federal guidelines expose them to more than three years in prison, about $1.9 million in restitution and possible deportation. In court Bankowska said, “my conduct was wrong and I am guilty.” Her lawyer, Todd Spodek, said she placed more than $1 million into an escrow account. Through an interpreter Erwin Bankowski apologized; his lawyer said he “regrettably made a terrible decision in an effort to support his family.”
Experts called the scheme a familiar example of art-world fraud. Erin Thompson, a City University of New York professor who studies art crime, noted that the only unusual aspect was that the forgers were caught, and warned there are likely many more fakes circulating.
According to prosecutors, the Bankowskis began commissioning a Polish artist in 2020 to produce the forgeries. They used antique paper and forged gallery stamps on the backs of works, inventing plausible histories by citing galleries that had closed. Some stamps contained telltale errors: for example, the stamp on the suspected Wyeth listed the year 1976 but included a zoning number phased out in 1962. That fake also bore the name and address of M. Knoedler & Co., a once-prestigious New York gallery that shuttered in 2011 amid its own forgery scandal.
Scrutiny arose quickly in some cases. In March 2023 representatives for artist Raimonds Staprans flagged a forged “Triple Boats” offered by an auction house; despite the alert the painting sold for $60,000 days later, prosecutors say. Rogal, suspicious of the Wyeth’s “too clean” backstamp, never listed it and when he asked Bankowska to retrieve it she did not respond. Reexamining the painting in a Queens warehouse full of consigned works, Rogal said, “You try to do a service and provide it correctly. Can we be fooled? Absolutely.”