Part 3 - Showdown in the Pacific

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in April 1993 unanimously upheld the Honolulu jury's conviction of Center Art Galleries-Hawaii owner William D. Mett and director Marvin L. Wiseman of mail and wire fraud in the sales of lithographs and etchings falsely attributed to Salvador Dali and celebrity artists Anthony Quinn, Red Skelton and Tony Curtis. The judges said the dealers had deliberately misled their customers about the origin and value of the products they had sold as original art.

"None of the customers were sophisticated in art or its purchase," the court said. "They did not know what characteristics to look for to determine whether the art was original, or whether it was likely that Dali personally supervised the production of the art, as Center Art represented.

"They did not know the characteristics to look for to determine whether their art was an original lithograph or a cheap photomechanical reproduction...There was evidence that the artwork was not authentic and that the defendants, who were extremely sophisticated in the art world, knew that it was not." The court pointed out that the pamphlet titled "What is an Original Print," handed out to customers, correctly defined an "original print" as one for which the artist had created the image on the master plate. The appellate court also said there was no evidence, as defense attorney Brook Hart suggested, that the indictment had been delayed until shortly after Dali's death. And it said there was no evidence that Dali would have helped the defense case by testifying at the trial.

"The 9th Circuit has reached the only possible result in view of the overwhelming evidence of the defendants' treachery and deceit," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Les Osborne.

On April 18, 1994, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to consider overturning the jury's verdict.

Mett and Wiseman turned themselves in to a federal prison camp in Dublin, Calif., in October 1994, after U.S. District Judge Harold Fong rejected last-minute attempts to keep them free on bail. Center Art Galleries continued in operation as a single outlet in the Royal Hawaiian Shopping Center in Waikiki - with works attributed to Salvador Dali not among its inventory - until finally closing in 1995. The 12,000 fake Dalis and nearly 1,400 works attributed to Ernst Miro, Norman Rockwell and other artists that had been sezied by the government in its raid of Center Art in April 1985 and additional pieces seized in November 1994 went on sale at an auction conducted by Koll-Dove Global Disposition Services on October 21, 1995, in Belmont, California, to the consternation of much of the art world. Prints bore small stamps on the backs reading:

"COUNTERFEIT/UNAUTHORIZED/FAKE
NOT A SALVADOR DALI WORK
SALE OF THIS WORK AS AN ORIGINAL
DALI PROHIBITED BY LAW."

Battle of Tetuan: Author Lee Catterall holds the print that he exposed as a fake in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin in 1986, triggering consumer complaints that led to the federal fraud conviction of Hawaii art dealers William Mett and Marvin Wiseman.

Sculptures bore a similar, but removable, sticker. The one-by-two-inch stamp did little to assuage those concerned about the Dali fakes' re-entry into the marketplace. "This sale put the government in the position of being an accessory to future art fraud," Colorado art appraiser Bernard Ewell, who testified for the prosecution in the Center Art trial, told The New York Times. "It's sad," added Constance Lowenthal, executive director of the International Foundation for Art Research in New York, "that the government had to try to recoup its fine money by sending these fraudulent works back into the market, marked or unmarked, when Center Art Galleries' revenues over a period of many, many years exceeded the fine by a huge multiple. Where did the money go?" The auction raised $347,550, less than one-fifth of the more than $2 million in fines and interest that had been imposed on Mett and Wiseman but which they were judged unable to pay.

Hubcap art: Dali presents the wax mold for the bas relief of "The Last Supper" to William Mett and Marvin Wiseman. The mold was altered to allow mass production.

Meanwhile, Mett and Wiseman had found another source of money during their fraud trial and while their convictions were on appeal. Beginning in March 1990 and continuing through October 1991, Mett and Wiseman drew large amounts from the Center Art Galleries employees' pension fund, taking a total of $1.6 million. Finally, an employee checked with the U.S. Department of Labor, discovered what had happened and reported it to authorities. Only after learning of the investigation in 1994, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Larry Tong, did Mett and Wiseman make a promissory note to repay $1.5 million and pledge assets to make it appear as though they intended to pay the money back.

A federal graud jury indicted Mett and Wiseman on June 27, 1996, on 16 counts of conspiracy, theft and embezzlement from employee benefit programs. On June 25, 1997, a federal jury convicted Mett of 14 counts and Wiseman of 13. Visiting U.S. District Judge Edward Rafeedie of Los Angeles, who presided over the pension-fund embezzlement trial, sentenced Mett and Wiseman on November 6, 1997, to 70 months at Lompoc Prison Camp in California. Rafeedie remarked that he saw the two defendants as successful businessmen who had become greedy in their middle age and threw away their "community respect" to "make a few extra bucks," a phenomenon he had seen before in other defendants. The judge's analysis ignored the fact that the Center Art Galleries fraud began in the mid-1970s, when Mett, 54 at the time of Rafeedie's statement, and Wiseman, 53, were in their early 30s, and continued through most of the next decade.

Rafeedie allowed Mett and Wiseman, who completed their prison terms for art fraud in 1996, to be free pending appeal. On June 1, 1999, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the embezzlement conviction against Mett and Wiseman and ordered a new trial. After a nonjury trial based on the transcript of the first trial, minus the testimony thrown out by the Circuit Court, Rafeedie convicted Mett and Wiseman again on March 14, 2000. They were sentenced on June 26, 2000, to five years and three months in prison and began serving their terms soon afterward.