A Michigan-based gallery owner has pleaded guilty to defrauding more than 10 collectors out of an estimated $1.5 million, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Michigan announced.
Merchant, Wendy Halstead Beard, has been charged with one count of wire fraud related to a multi-year scheme in which she concocted elaborate lies to defraud customers of cash and photographic prints. She now faces up to 20 years in federal prison. His sentencing is set for December of this year.
Beard “defrauded numerous families of valuable artwork and repeatedly lied to them in order to keep his fraud scheme afloat,” U.S. attorney Dawn Ison said in a statement. statement. “She did this for no other reason than to line her own pockets at the expense of her victims.”
“There is no place for this kind of criminal deception in our community, and today’s sentencing holds this defendant accountable for her conduct,” Ison added.
Beard, 58, was arrested last october. Charges filed at the time alleged that the dealer, who ran the Wendy Halsted Gallery in the Detroit suburb of Birmingham, defrauded collectors by accepting payment for artwork she never delivered and by taking works of art on consignment and then selling them without informing their owners.
The gallery owner also went to great lengths to avoid customers she defrauded, including making up fake employees and exaggerating her own health conditions, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
In 2018, for example, an 82-year-old art collector entrusted the work of Ansel Adams The Tetons and the Snake River, Grand Teton National Park (1942) with Beard, who estimated the coin to be worth $625,000. She later told the owner she couldn’t sell the print, then consigned it herself to a gallery in Wyoming, where it sold for $440,000.
When the collector asked for the print, Beard claimed she suffered from lung problems. A make-up gallery employee named “Julie” later wrote that Beard had undergone a lung transplant.
That same year, the dealer sold a separate Adams print to a friend for $73,000. But after the piece was not delivered and the buyer asked about it, Beard said she had been in a coma for months.
In an email to Artnet News, Beard’s attorney, Steve Fishman, said his client “admitted her wrongdoing by entering a guilty plea without demanding that the government obtain an indictment.” She has accepted responsibility for her conduct, which is the first step towards rehabilitation.
As part of a plea agreement, Beard admitted defrauding 10 clients and agreeing to forfeit any property obtained through the scheme. Fishman noted that while the U.S. Attorney’s Office estimated his crimes amounted to $1.5 million, he maintains the amount was closer to $500,000. He said the actual amount will likely be decided at sentencing in December.
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