DEALER AT CENTER OF KNOEDLER FORGERY RING WILL NOT RECEIVE ANY MORE JAIL TIME
The Long Island art dealer Glafira Rosales, who had a major role in the historic $80 million forgery scandal that caused the 165-year-old Knoedler Gallery to go out of business, will not be receiving any more jail time, writes Laura Gilbert of the Art Newspaper. When Rosales was brought to court in September 2013, she pleaded guilty to conspiracy, filing false tax returns, money laundering, and wire fraud, among other charges. Since then, she has spent eighty-two days in prison, nine months on house arrest, and three years under supervised release.
Rosales worked with Pei-Shen Qian, a Chinese immigrant who painted about sixty AbEx–style canvases that, over a period of fourteen years, were brought to both Knoedler and Julian Weissman Gallery to sell. Pei-Shen, indicted on similar charges to Rosales, could have spent up to forty-five years in prison. The artist, who lived in Queens, fled the United States and returned to China before he could be arrested.
In court, Rosales said that she acted under duress. She alleged that she was abused by her father and Jose Carlos Bergantiños Diaz, her partner of twenty-five years, with whom she had a daughter (Diaz left New York for Spain before he was indicted as a coconspirator). Rosales’s lawyer, Bryan Skarlatos, said that Diaz threatened his daughter’s life, frequently beat Rosales, and once tried choking Rosales to death. Judge Katharine Polk Failla, addressing Rosales, said that “no purpose would be served by putting you back in jail . . . I do believe that you did a lot of what you did because you were concerned for [your daughter] and that she would be taken away from you.”
Patrick Egan, the assistant US attorney in the case, found no reason to doubt that Rosales acted under extreme circumstances. He also said that Rosales was very helpful in providing the US government with information on finding Spanish bank accounts and putting together indictments against her coconspirators: Diaz, his brother (the US Justice Department failed at extraditing him from Spain), and Pei-Shen. The only asset Rosales has right now is her retirement account. Currently she busses dishes in a restaurant, and rents a room at a friend’s house.
