Skip to main content
Friday, April 28, 2023
10:40 am CET
By Ronny Waburek
Friday, April 28, 2023, 10:40 am CET
By Ronny Waburek

 

 

 

 

Counterfeit Art Fugitive Extradited

British Woman Jailed for $400K Scam

Counterfeit Art Fugitive Extradited

British Woman Jailed for $400K Scam

 

A 74-year-old British citizen named Angela Catherine Hamblin was extradited from Germany to the United States for selling counterfeit art worth over $400,000. Hamblin had pled guilty to her crimes in 2009 and was sentenced to a year and one day in US prison, but she failed to report to authorities and fled to Scotland, where she remained a fugitive until 2022. She was re-arrested while boarding a plane in Frankfurt last May.

Hamblin sold at least four knock-off paintings online that she falsely represented as the works by Milton Avery, Juan Gris, Franz Kline, and JMW Turner. She fudged the works' provenance by claiming she had inherited the pieces from relatives or purchased them from a long-deceased dealer. Hamblin pled guilty to two counts of mail fraud and one count of wire fraud, admitting that she engaged in the phony sales to help with her mortgage payments. She was ordered to pay $65,000 to Jeffrey Bergen, owner of ACA Galleries, in addition to serving her prison sentence.

Hamblin failed to report to prison, however, absconding to the small village of St Boswells, Scotland, with her husband, a former university professor.