A Queens foundry owner was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison for attempting to score a $11 million payday by pawning off a fake bronze sculpture of artist Jasper John’s iconic 1960 painting “Flag” as the real deal.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry to bring shame to my family,” Brian Ramnarine, 60, told Manhattan federal Judge John Koetl before being sentenced Thursday.
In January, Ramnarine pleaded guilty to three counts of wire fraud — a week after his trial began. He had faced up to 10 years in prison, but Koetl cut him a break after Ramnarine’s lawyer, Troy Smith, said the foundry owner had “serious health problems.”
Not present at the sentencing was Johns, whose testimony at trial likely led to Ramnarine’s plea.
Johns, 84, told jurors that Ramnarine had lied by claiming the artist gave him the bronze copy as a gift. Ramnarine was caught by the feds trying to sell it in 2010 to a collector.
Johns said he had hired Ramnarine in 1990 to make a wax mold of the “Flag” work for the creation of a gold version.
That gold copy was never produced, but Johns said Ramnarine ignored requests to return the mold and even used it to make another bronze statue in the early 1990s that, again, he falsely claimed was Johns’ work.
As part of his plea, Ramnarine also confessed selling sculptures he wrongfully claimed were made two other artists: Brazilian sculptor and painter Saint Clair Cemin and American sculptor Robert Indiana.
“Brian Ramnarine’s only art was as a con artist who concocted and carried out not one, but three separate schemes to peddle fake sculptures to unsuspecting buyers for millions of dollars, pretending that they had been made by well-known artists,” Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara said afterwards.
As part of the sentence, Koeltl also ordered Ramnarine to three years of supervised release following prison and to pay $34,250 in restitution to an online art gallery that bought the fake Indiana and Cemin art.
Ramnarine’s lawyers at trial had claimed their client was told he could keep the “Flag” mold by James Meyer, Johns’ longtime assistant.
Meyer, 52, pleaded guilty in August to stealing 22 works from Johns and then peddling them to an unsuspecting art gallery for $6.5 million.
http://nypost.com/2014/10/16/j...land-forger-in-jail/