A Perfect Reason to Never Buy Expensive Art on eBay.

(h/t Kittybowtie!)

The dynamic duo are back: Fitz and Grant.

Today's episode is: Buyers Beware on Ebay.

Here is the video from ABC7Chicago.

On Wednesday, the feds unveiled charges against Northbrook art wholesaler Michael Zabrin and others for selling counterfeit art -- 15 years after sending Zabrin to prison for doing the same thing.

Zabrin, 55, was sentenced in 1994 to a year behind bars after he was snagged in an investigation called Operation Bogart -- for bogus art.

His supplier in the early '90s was the late Leon Amiel, whose son Leon Amiel Jr., 36, of New York, is charged in the latest case.

U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald also announced charges against five others, including Northbrook art dealer James Kennedy, 55; Oswaldo Aulestia-Bach, 62, of Spain; Elio Bonfiglioli, 53, and Patrizia Soliani, 56, both of Italy, and Jerome Bengis, 61, of Coral Springs, Fla.

They're accused of reaping more than $5 million by selling fake Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, Roy Lichtenstein, Joan Miro and Andy Warhol prints.

"Thousands of fraudulent prints have been dumped onto the market," said Thomas Brady of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.

Undercover agents bought the fakes from the defendants over the last two years in an investigation that spanned the United States and Europe, officials said.

Zabrin "has been and is cooperating with the government," said his lawyer, Jeff Steinback.

Austelia-Bach and Bonfiglioli are accused of acquiring fake prints in Spain and Italy. Austelia-Bach allegedly forged the signatures of Chagall, Lichtenstein, Miro and Picasso. They distributed the bogus works to Zabrin, Bengis and Soliani, who resold them largely through eBay, prosecutors said.

In a separate scheme, Amiel printed fakes and distributed them to Kennedy, who forged the signatures of the artists, prosecutors said. Zabrin and Kennedy allegedly sold the pieces.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/852318,CST-NWS-art20.article