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A Palm Seashore artwork vendor was sentenced to greater than two years in jail this week after pleading responsible to laundering cash from the sale of counterfeit works by blue-chip artists together with Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Roy Lichtenstein.
Daniel Elie Bouaziz, who owned Danieli High quality Artwork and Galerie Danieli in Palm Seashore County, was sentenced to 27 months in federal jail adopted by three years of supervised launch. Bouaziz was additionally ordered by Aileen M. Cannon, the US District Choose, to pay a $15,000 wonderful. Prosecutors dropped 16 different fraud and embezzlement-related prices as a part of a plea deal.
Bouaziz pleaded responsible in February and admitted to knowingly partaking in interstate commerce of greater than $10,000 from the sale of counterfeit artwork, which falls underneath a violation of wire fraud. The Division of Justice stated Boaziz bought reproductions at discount costs and bought them as originals at a markup, generally with pretend invoices and provenance paperwork to idiot purchasers into pondering the works had been genuine. Bouaziz’s prospects unknowingly bought the fraudulent work “for tens of 1000’s, if not lots of of 1000’s, of {dollars}”, the DOJ stated final October.
Bouaziz bought what he claimed had been genuine and unique works by Andy Warhol, priced between $75,000 and $240,000, in October 2022. After the shopper put down a $200,000 deposit, Bouaziz comingled the cash with different funds and wired the cash to different accounts. Bouaziz additionally tried to promote work he claimed had been originals by artists like Banksy, Lichtenstein and Basquiat. When Bouaziz was first charged in October, the vendor had a pretend Basquiat on sale for $12m at Danieli High quality Artwork, in response to the DOJ.
A restitution listening to for Bouaziz has been set for August 16.
Final yr, the FBI raided the Orlando Museum of Artwork throughout a Basquiat exhibition and seized 25 allegedly counterfeit work attributed to the artist. A Los Angeles-based auctioneer confessed final month that he helped create and market the pretend works.
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