18 Sep Disgraced Michigan Dealer Behind $1.6 Million Con Is Sentenced
Source Credit: Content and images from Artnet News. Read the original article - https://news.artnet.com/art-world/detroit-photography-dealer-wendy-beard-sentenced-2538733
The legal reckoning of Detroit-area photography dealer Wendy Beard concluded last week, when the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Michigan announced her sentencing for allegedly swindling collectors to the tune of $1.6 million.
Beard stole profits from about 100 prints that consignors entrusted to her father’s once-reputed Wendy Halstead Gallery. She also failed to deliver purchases to her customers. After pleading guilty to one count of wire fraud, Beard, 59, will serve five years and three months in prison—compared with the 20 year maximum for her charge. Beard must also pay her more than 40 elderly victims over $2 million in restitution, even though her attorney Steve Fishman had argued the damages she’d caused amounted to only $500,000.
“My office stands ready to investigate and prosecute elder financial abuse in all its forms and will continue to hold perpetrators like Beard accountable,” U.S. Attorney Dawn N. Ison said in a statement. “Beard’s ongoing deception was of a level that we rarely see, even in fraud cases, lying to her customers repeatedly in an attempt to conceal her scheme.”
The FBI arrested Beard in October 2022, after five victims—including Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist J. Ross Baughman—filed an affidavit. The Bureau demonstrated that in 2018, an anonymous 82-year-old photography collector entrusted $900,000 worth of prints to Beard, including a massive edition of The Tetons and the Snake River, Grand Teton National Park (1942) by Ansel Adams. In 2019, Beard told the consignor she’d tried and failed to sell the master work on a trip to Jackson, Wyoming. But court documents showed she had consigned the piece there herself and quietly pocketed the $440,000 profit, rather than just her five percent cut.
When that consignor tried contacting Beard, she invented medical emergencies—and employees—to buy time and sympathy. Beard lied about receiving a lung transplant, which the FBI debunked, and even tried returning fake artworks to police.
In other instances, Beard failed to deliver artworks she’d sold. In 2021, for example, Beard sold another Adams print to a friend for $73,000. When that friend inquired about the artwork’s delivery, Beard responded, “Been a crazy last bit… Not all gone but at least out of the months long coma.” The FBI saw Beard leaving her home two weeks prior.
At least once, “Beard victimized two individuals with one photograph,” last week’s announcement said, “never providing the photograph to the purchaser while also failing to pay the original consigner.”
The FBI charged Beard in May 2023. She pleaded guilty that July. Last summer, Fishman told Artnet News that Beard’s admission marked her first step towards rehabilitation. This morning, he said Beard has no comment on her sentence, and that her plea deal waived her right to appeal.
“Preying on vulnerable individuals in any form is utterly deplorable,” added Cheyvoryea Gibson, the Special Agent in Charge of the FBI in Michigan, in a statement. “Those who scheme to defraud innocent victims of their fine art will face the most severe penalties.”
Despite seizing some 700 photographs, the court reported that about 250 of the 393 known prints consigned to Beard remain at large.
Source Credit: Content and images from Artnet News. Read the original article - https://news.artnet.com/art-world/detroit-photography-dealer-wendy-beard-sentenced-2538733