Glafira Rosales, 60, was arrested in 2013 and has served three months in prison after she pleaded guilty to the consignment of 40 fake artworks.
She has blamed her boyfriend of the time, Jose Carlos Bergantiños Diaz, for the scam.
The judge in the US federal court case sentenced her to three years of supervised release including nine months of house arrest. She will also have to pay an as yet undecided amount for a “restitution” payment.
Chinese forger
The 15-year art fraud, which is believed to have been masterminded by Rosales’ boyfriend Bergantiños Diaz, involved Rosales selling works described as being by artists including Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock to top New York galleries. The paintings were actually produced by Chinese forger Pei-Shen Qian in Queens.
She sold these faked artworks to New York art galleries including the venerable Knoedler & Company on the Upper East Side and pretended they were from a private collector.
Qian has since fled to China. Bergantiños Diaz, who was arrested in 2014 in Spain, has since had his extradition blocked.
A previous law suit against Knoedler was settled for an undisclosed amount.
