British citizen Angela Catherine Hamblin, 74, has been extradited from Germany to the United States to serve a prison sentence for selling more than $400,000 in counterfeit artwork, according to the US Department of Health. Justice. announcement April 21. Hamblin originally pleaded guilty to her crimes in 2009 and was sentenced to a year and a day in prison in the United States, but did not report to authorities, instead fleeing to Scotland, where she remained on the run until ‘ in 2022. She was arrested again as she boarded a plane in Frankfurt last May.
Hamblin’s scheme unfolded over a five-month period in 2007, during which she sold at least four counterfeit paintings online which she misrepresented as the works of Milton Avery, Juan Gris, Franz Kline and JMW Turner. She falsified the provenance of the works by claiming that she either inherited the pieces from relatives or purchased them from a long-deceased dealer.
Following a series of complaints, Hamblin was arrested in an undercover operation by US officials. According to prosecutors, she had engaged in this scam”for yearsat the time of his first arrest. She pleaded guilty to two counts of mail fraud and one count of wire fraud, admitting she engaged in false sales to help pay off her mortgage. She was ordered to pay $65,000 to Jeffrey Bergen, owner of ACA Galleries, in addition to serving her prison sentence. However, Hamblin failed to report to prison and fled to the small village of St Boswells, Scotland, with her husband, a former university professor.
“Hamblin has gone to great lengths to avoid accountability for his crimes, but this office and the FBI have long memories and benefit greatly from our cooperation with international partners,” said Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney. of the Southern District of New York, in a statement. .
