Michigan dealer accused of defrauding collectors of over $1.6 million expected to enter plea deal

A Michigan-based gallery owner who concocted elaborate lies while allegedly defrauding collectors of $1.6 million reportedly reached a settlement with authorities

According to a report from Detroit News. His plea hearing is scheduled for July.

Barbe, 58, was arrested last october after a years-long investigation by the FBI. Charges filed at the time alleged that the dealer, who operated the Wendy Halsted Gallery in the Detroit suburb of Birmingham, defrauded customers in various ways, including accepting payment for artwork she did not had ever delivered and by accepting works of art on consignment and then selling them. without notifying their owners.

The dealer also went to great lengths to dodge payments and even invented several fake employees to cover up his absence. Five clients, including Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist J. Ross Baughman, claimed they were scammed by Beard in an affidavit filed during his arrest last year. Since then, other victims have also reportedly come forward.

In 2018, an 82-year-old anonymous art collector entrusted an estimated $900,000 worth of photographic prints to the Wendy Halsted Gallery. Among the group was the photo of Ansel Adams from 1942, The Tetons and the Snake River, Grand Teton National Park (1942), which Beard valued at $625,000. She later told the collector she couldn’t sell the Adams print, but court documents revealed the dealer had in fact consigned the piece himself to a gallery in Wyoming, where she went. was sold for $440,000.

When the collector asked for the print, Beard claimed she suffered from lung problems. In August 2021, a gallery employee named “Julie” wrote that Beard had undergone a lung transplant.

A similar situation occurred the same year when the gallery owner sold another photograph of Adams to a friend for $73,000. The print was never delivered to the buyer, however, and when he requested it, Beard cited medical issues as the reason for the delay.

“Finally on computer,” she wrote in an email to the buyer, according to court documents. “It was a crazy last moment… Not all gone but at least out of the months [sic] long coma. Nice to see the sorry sun so short later.

“Beginning at least as early as March 9, 2019 and continuing through at least October 14, 2022”, Beard “knowingly conceived and executed a scheme and artifice to defraud and obtain money and property by means of pretensions and materially false and fraudulent representations,” U.S. Attorney Dawn Ison wrote in a summary of the charges against Beard that was filed in Michigan District Court last week.

If Beard does plead guilty, she will be required to repay all proceeds and forfeit any property obtained through her fraudulent scheme.

Beard’s attorney, Steve Fishman, told Artnet News that a plea deal was expected, but otherwise declined to comment on the case.

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