The disgraced Miami art dealer Leslie Roberts has been convicted and sentenced to nearly four years in prison for his role in a scheme to sell counterfeit paintings he claimed were the work of Andy Warhol.
The former owner of Miami Fine Art Gallery in the city’s Coconut Grove neighbourhood received the 46-month sentence on 2 October in federal district court, reported Antonio María Delgado of the Miami Herald. As prosecutors argued in a 2025 indictment, Roberts had used forged authentication documents, stamps and identification numbers to convince buyers that their paintings were genuine Warhols sourced directly from the Andy Warhol Foundation.
Roberts pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud on 10 June, admitting to more than $2.5m in fake art sales as part of a plea deal that saw other charges for money laundering dropped. His co-conspirator Carlos Miguel Rodriguez Melendez, who posed as an employee of the auction house Phillips as part of the scheme, pleaded guilty last year and was sentenced to one year of probation…