He got rich selling antiques, but he was an expert in counterfeits

The owner of the Sadigh Gallery in Manhattan, New York, is due to appear in court on charges of selling counterfeit antiques that have enabled him in recent years to make a profit that would have made him one of the biggest sellers in counterfeit antiques in the United States, according to today’s US media reports.

The investigation was conducted by the Manhattan District Attorney, Cyrus Vance Jr., who at the beginning of the month held Mehrdad Sadigh, gallery owner, accused of having made the objects behind his Fifth Avenue showroom. Prosecutor Vance Jr. argued that “for many years, this downtown Manhattan bogus antique factory promised its customers rare treasures from the ancient world and instead sold them old-fashioned pieces that were made. internally, “according to statements to the newspaper. The New York Times.

Suspicions of Sadigh’s illegal activities emerged two years ago, when an exhibit on the Rosetta stone Scheduled for the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum in Iowa for April 2019, it was canceled after experts found there were serious issues with most exhibits. Investigators’ clues to Sadigh’s methodology were set in motion when other traffickers tracked down by trafficking looted antiques complained that “the guy who sold all the fakes” went unnoticed.

Undercover federal investigators visited the gallery and paid $ 4,000 each for a gold pendant depicting Tutankhamun’s death mask and an ancient Roman head. Likewise, an investigation by National Security and the Prosecutor’s Office uncovered hundreds of fake artifacts on display on shelves and inside display cases, and thousands more were found in rooms behind the gallery. .

After Sadigh’s arrest, prosecutors, armed with a second search warrant, found tools in the merchant’s gallery for tampering with antiques or “items claiming to be antiques,” as well as a sarcophagus valued at $ 50,000, a cylindrical $ 40,000 stamp and a $ 25,000 statue of the goddess Artemis, suspected of being fake, reported The arts journal.

In recent years, the prosecution has paid particular attention to the illicit trade in antiques, as well as to Matthew Bogdanos, Head of the Antiques Trafficking Unit of the Public Prosecutor’s Office. During the visits the researchers made to the gallery, they detected “a sort of assembly line process that seemed designed to mess up and otherwise alter the mass-produced items of recent times to make them look aged,” said Bogdanos to the newspaper. Times.

Researchers found varnish, spray paints, a belt sander, and mud-like substances of different shades and consistencies, among other tools and materials.

Source: Telam

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