Caveat Emptor (36 page)

I reminded my lawyers that if Hillary Clinton could get away with being unable to remember anything when questioned by federal investigators about Whitewater, a legal case she had been involved in for years, then why should I be expected to remember any pictures that I might have painted?

That settled it. We composed a letter that took up an entire page, explaining with perfect logic to Special Agent Wynne that “Mr. Perenyi has painted many pictures through the years and can't remember if these are his.”

Now it was my turn to wait and see what Wynne's reaction would be. The following week, I had trouble sleeping at night, worried that the feds might come knocking at my door at four in the morning with a warrant. However, time passed and nothing happened. They have a bunch of paintings, I reasoned, but evidently they can't make a case. At least not yet.

The ominous silence dragged on, and in time my lawyers agreed that the case might have been closed—that is, until I discovered that my phones were tapped and the feds had been visiting people I knew both in Florida and in London, their names gleaned, no doubt, from phone records or the two “conspirators” they already had on the hook.

Mob watching and following the lives of hoodlums in the newspapers is a favorite New York pastime. Often, reading about them, I had wondered: How do these guys live with the FBI breathing down their necks? I learned that the answer is
conditioning
. After the initial fear wears off, it's just another nuisance you have to put up with.

Even as the sword of Damocles was dangling over my head, I managed to develop a new business model. Through word of mouth, I had a growing number of people eager to buy my paintings as “reproductions.” These included doctors, lawyers, Palm Beach decorators, antique dealers, three CEOs, private collectors, and more. In fact, a new phenomenon was developing: people were beginning to collect my fakes. The investigation, instead of producing the arrest Special Agent Wynne so desperately wanted, only served to launch me into a new phase of my career, in which hundreds of new fakes of the highest quality were going out into the world—and where they'd end up, no one could tell.

The millennium came and went, and still I was being called to my lawyer's office to reply to Wynne's latest discoveries. Whether they concerned paintings or people I'd once had business with, I always cooperated—that is, to the best of my ability—which invariably meant “I can't remember.”

Even the attack of 9/11 didn't slow down Special Agent Wynne, except that now the investigation passed into another phase. No doubt convinced that he wasn't going to prove his conspiracy theories, Wynne changed tactics and moved on to other issues: sales I had made in the auction houses. I couldn't depend on the catalog disclaimers to protect me. “All they have to do,” my lawyers informed me, “is to establish a pattern with an intent to defraud” and they could bury me.

With suspicious regularity, I began to receive telephone calls from people I'd known or done business with years ago. The common denominator was that they had all purchased fakes from me legitimately—and most probably had sold them as originals. The callers all followed a distinct script. After they began with a hearty good-natured greeting, they wanted to know if they could buy some “Buttersworths” or “Heades” and wanted to reminisce about paintings I had sold them in the past.

It was just another of Wynne's clumsy attempts to use people his investigation had turned up who were either intimidated or compromised into cooperating to try to catch me in an incriminating statement. Where Wynne was going with this, I couldn't tell, but what he didn't figure on was that one of his “informants” was a double agent.

Special Agent Wynne's puzzling yet unflagging devotion to seeing me behind bars for the rest of my life may have been explained when I got an unexpected visit. I was hanging the laundry outside one day when, like an apparition from the past, my old friend Mr. X, the picker, materialized between the blowing bedsheets. Instantly I knew this had to be about the investigation. Although I was constantly on guard about calls or visits from people from the past, I could not believe that my old buddy, a stand-up guy, could be a stooge for the FBI, so when he whispered that he had some information for me, we sat down at the table near the seawall.

His involvement with the fake Buttersworth in 1980, on file with the FBI, combined with the current investigation also involving fake Buttersworths, created a connection, and my friend found himself caught in Special Agent Wynne's dragnet. The feds suspected that we were in cahoots. Fortunately that wasn't the case, at least in the present circumstances. Even if the feds had now figured out the truth about the picker's involvement in 1980, it was too late to do anything about it. My friend had nothing to fear from Special Agent Wynne.

Two agents, who my friend believed were from the New York office, had showed up at his house one day. Following the same routine they'd once tried on me, they began by assuring him that he “wasn't in any trouble” and that he “hadn't done anything wrong.” All they had, they assured him, were “some questions.” Unfortunately for the G-men, Mr. X, a past master in the art of subtlety, found it child's play to glean information from his interrogators while giving them nothing.

“I knew at once it had something to do with your paintings,” he said with great amusement. In fact, he'd been following my movements, recognizing my work in auction catalogs, and picking up gossip through the dealers' grapevine. “They say,” he said, that “Stebbins has been beside himself ever since the fakes turned up in 1980. He installed that fancy million-dollar forensic lab in the Boston Museum just because of
you
.”

“I'm flattered,” I replied, but apparently the lab hadn't done Stebbins much good, because my old friend brought along something he wanted to show me. Theodore Stebbins's long-awaited
Catalogue Raisonné
of Heade's work had recently been published. Not only did my friend point out a couple of works in the
Catalogue
that he rightly believed to be mine, but, most surprising of all, the professor had devoted a couple of pages in the book to the problem of fakes. Stebbins described in detail the work of two forgers whose work had “deceived some of the leading dealers in the field.” He may have been right about that, but he was wrong about the two different forgers. All the paintings described and illustrated were clearly mine.

But what my friend really wanted to give me was a heads-up about what was going on. “By the questions they asked me,” he went on, “they know you've been selling fake Heades and Buttersworths and that you must be the author of the 1980 fakes as well.”

“No wonder Wynne's on the warpath,” I said. “And, on top of that, he had two of his agents sitting right in my house questioning me about fake Buttersworths.”

“I'll bet they had to scrape him off the ceiling,” my friend said, “when he finally realized the truth.”

After all their questions, all the agents had to show for their interview with the picker was “I haven't seen Ken in years and I don't know what you're talking about.” Nevertheless, they advised him that he could be called as a witness in the future, and they hinted that any communication with me could be viewed as “interference in a federal investigation.” He waited two days to be safe and then made a beeline to my house.

Incredibly, four and a half years had passed and still Special Agent Wynne, my nemesis, wouldn't give up or make an arrest. Something just doesn't add up, I often thought. Why hasn't he gotten a search warrant by now and raided my house? Especially since he'd been gathering new information. And why, I puzzled, hadn't he ever charged the two people who were first caught fraudulently selling my pictures with a crime? Perhaps the answer would become evident in Wynne's next move.

One afternoon, I received an urgent call on my cell phone. It was my lawyers' office. They wanted to see me first thing the following morning. I knew something serious was up. After a sleepless night, I was back in their office the next morning. Judging from their grim expressions, I was certain that they had been informed by Wynne of my imminent indictment.

Instead, they had received another list of Wynne's latest discoveries accompanied by supporting documents, more questions for me to answer, and a final ultimatum.

Submitted for my consideration were copies of my London bank accounts, copies of wire-transfer deposits made by auction houses, copies of auction-house catalog covers, copies of auction-house contracts, and copies of the “Big Bucks Birdies” article that had once appeared in the
New York Post
.

Then Wynne asked if I had indeed painted pictures in the manner of a list of American and British artists that included James E. Buttersworth, Martin Johnson Heade, Antonio Jacobsen, Thomas Spencer, John F. Herring, and more, and whether I had sold them as originals in the auction houses. He ended by reminding me that I had also lied to his investigators in 1998.

“Wynne wants you to come up to New York,” one of my lawyers said. “He probably wants to offer you a deal for a confession. Curious thing, though: in a slip of the tongue, he let it out that the statute of limitations is about to expire.” My lawyer thought the slip was, for some reason, deliberate. “But then he warned,” my lawyer continued, “that this would be Mr. Perenyi's last chance.” He'd be calling back soon for an answer.

At five years per count, Wynne was letting me know that he had enough here to put me away for the next century and beyond. Indeed, even my lawyers hinted that I might consider moving to an island in the Caribbean. But as intimidating as this communication was, it raised several questions. If Wynn was intent on obtaining my confession, why didn't he simply start by charging me with a lesser crime, such as lying to the FBI? “If he's discovered all these so-called crimes,” I asked my lawyers, “and he obviously knows the answers to the questions he's asking, then what does he want my confession for?” That question brought us to one conclusion: “He's not getting cooperation from the big boys,” one of my attorneys concluded.

Is it possible, I thought, that my “friends” in New York could be obstructing the investigation in hopes that I would not be indicted? The idea was absurd. Yet I knew the feds had been to the auction houses, and I asked myself: For what other reason could Wynne need my confession? And, most suspicious of all, why had Wynne not included Fat Boy in his catalog of crimes? Was there a calculated reason behind that omission?

Although I wanted to consider the idea of going to New York and finding out what Wynne had in mind, my lawyers wouldn't hear of it. “Talking to the feds is never a good idea,” they said. “They promise deals and double-cross people all the time.” Besides, they didn't feel it could benefit me at all. In fact, they suspected that Special Agent Wynne, nearing the expiration of the statute, was about to indict before it was too late and wanted to save himself the trouble of coming to Florida to arrest me. I, on the other hand, hung on to the hope that he still was unable to make his case. And if that was true, I reasoned, he'd have to offer me a pretty sweet deal to get me to confess. With the statute about to expire, jail time would have to be off the table. Perhaps, I hypothesized, a confession from me might give him what he needed to make a case of obstruction against people in high places. What a coup that would be for Special Agent Wynne! Not only could he claim that he'd caught an international art forger, but he could indict the auction houses as well!

However, there was a problem with that, I thought. If his investigation was being obstructed by the auction houses, there was certainly more than one way he could persuade them to cooperate. All he would have to do would be to inform them of his intention to publicly charge the two “conspirators” he already had on the hook. The resulting trial would not only expose my activities in the art market, but it would also reveal that the auction houses had sold my fakes and, worse yet, were protecting me from prosecution as well. Was there something else going on here? I wondered.

I deferred to my lawyers and accepted their advice, but still I had misgivings that an opportunity might be slipping by. If only Roy were still alive, I lamented. He'd know how to handle things.

Whatever the case, I wouldn't have to wait long for Special Agent Wynne to finally show his hand. Two days after he delivered his ultimatum, he was on the phone to my lawyers demanding my answer. In no uncertain terms, Agent Wynne was informed that Mr. Perenyi:

It would be an understatement to say that Agent Wynne's response to our reply left my lawyers and me bewildered. “He said that he had no intention of indicting Mr. Perenyi,” my lawyer said. “Then he thanked me for my help and said good-bye.” Was Wynne just being sarcastic, we wondered, as he was rounding up a posse to arrest me? Only time would tell.

In the end, after a five-year investigation and a mountain of evidence collected, no one, neither the two “conspirators” nor I, was ever charged with a crime or indicted.

Was the investigation a charade, I asked myself, compromised in some way after it led investigators to the big boys? Had it been planned to let the statute expire without an indictment? Whatever the case, it was over. And now at last I was free to concentrate on the next project.

Postscript

K
en Perenyi continues to paint his fakes. After a number of requests to acquire his FBI file under the Freedom of Information Act, it remains exempt from disclosure.