Article about FAKE in Seattle Post-Intelligencer

An article about FAKE appears in tomorrow's (Thursday's) Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and addresses an interesting twist to the story that wasn't covered in my book.

Back in the 90s, before Fetterman moved to California, he got his start in the art business up in Seattle. I mention this in the book. What I didn't mention was the fact that he was driven out of town by an art scandal that I discovered only recently.

In 1992, at age 24, Fetterman convinced a Seattle Times art critic that he'd unearthed an authenticated an original oil painting by the Italian Renaissance painter Raphael. Its value? $20 million, he claimed. He said he was representing an un-named owner and, after having conducted extensive scientific research to ensure its authenticity, was marketing the piece quietly. The Times ran a fawning story about this miraculous find, and even printed an accompanying story about art forgery, citing Fetterman as an expert at detecting it.

He claimed to be a prodigy, having gotten his start in the art business as a teenager, and said he'd retired to the Northwest at age 22 after having earned "well into the seven figures."

The following day, the Post-Intelligencer, the Times' rival daily newspaper, revealed Fetterman's claims to be untrue. He'd apparently been showing the painting around town for months, and museum and university experts had been telling him it wasn't real. A local auctioneer claimed he'd sold Fetterman the painting for less than $5,000.

Several weeks later, more of the truth came out in a lengthy investigative report published by the Times. Details of Fetterman's sketchy past, including the time he spent in military prison for possession of LSD, were revealed. The reporter found numerous people around Seattle that Fetterman had ripped off in shady art deals. Most telling were the classified ads Fetterman had placed in Seattle newspapers offering high-dollar art at bargain prices - a stark foreshadowing of the much bigger scams he orchestrated on eBay years later.

According to someone I talked to in Seattle, the Times was very embarrassed about the first article it had printed, and the reporter who wrote it was forced into early retirement.

I didn't know about any of this when I got involved with Fetterman's art dealing. He'd mentioned a Raphael that was in storage up in Seattle, and once placed a recording of himself on talk radio bragging about it (before the truth was revealed), but never told me he'd been taken down by the press.

So it is in the context of all of this that today's Post-Intelligencer article was written. Fetterman has a bit of history in the Seattle art world.

eBay spokesman Hani Durzy made an interesting comment about me in the piece, in response to my opinion that fraud on eBay is worse now than ever. He apparently thinks my opinion on the subject is without value, since I was once involved in committing eBay fraud. He, I suppose, as a paid corporate spokesman, is more capable of giving an accurate, unbiased account of how much fraud occurs on the site.