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Andrew Crowley, aged 46, from Longwell Green in Gloucestershire, was caught attempting to sell counterfeit ancient statues to Sotheby’s auction house. His scheme unraveled when the forged documents he presented were found to have been produced with printing technology that only became available 25 years after the dates they claimed to be from. Crowley had sought valuations for three Cycladic figures and one Anatolian stargazer statuette, items he asserted were inherited from his grandfather.
The fraudulent invoices Crowley submitted purportedly dated back to 1976; however, forensic analysis revealed that the printing methods used were invented in 2001. This discrepancy led to Crowley admitting that he had dishonestly made false representations to gain financially. He received a two-year prison sentence, suspended, handed down by Southwark Crown Court.
During the trial, prosecutors indicated that if the statues had been authentic, their combined value could have reached approximately £680,000 based on historical sales. Judge Nicholas Rimmer, however, reduced this valuation to £340,000 due to the speculative nature of the assessment. The court also noted that Crowley’s accompanying paperwork included typewritten documents on paper embossed with an antiques dealer’s logo and even featured a nine-pence stamp. Despite these efforts, Sotheby’s identified the documents as fake early in the investigation, pointing out spelling errors and other inconsistencies.
Judge Rimmer acknowledged that Crowley genuinely believed the statues he inherited were not counterfeit, stating that the dishonesty primarily related to the fabricated paperwork rather than the objects themselves. The Cycladic statues, approximately 30cm tall and weighing around 1kg each, originate from the Cyclades islands in Greece and date back some 3,000 years to the Bronze Age. In addition to his suspended sentence, Crowley was ordered to complete 200 hours of unpaid work and to pay £1,630 in court costs
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