A Pennsylvania Man Pleads Guilty to Peddling Fake Picasso, Basquiat

A man pled guilty on May 29 to selling works falsely attributed to Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, and other notable artists.

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the man, 77-year-old Carter Reese, of Reading, was charged with one count of wire fraud and one count of mail fraud for an alleged scheme active between February 2019 and March 2021. He was accused of misrepresenting artworks as genuine creations from some of the most decorated names in modern and contemporary , including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Roy Lichtenstein, Keith Haring, Fernand Léger, and Francis Bacon—all of whom have eight- or nine-figure auction records.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the Harvard-educated Reese worked at Pottstown’s Hill School as a fine arts and history teacher and later as di