Art fraud mastermind ordered to repay £125,000
The mastermind behind one of history's biggest art frauds has been ordered to hand over £125,000 of his ill-gotten gains or face being sent back to prison.
During a decade of deceit John Drewe, 52, nicknamed the Puppet Master for the way he manipulated anyone he felt could further his criminal designs, made an estimated £1m selling bogus modern masters to an unsuspecting market.
To ensure the success of the sophisticated swindle he even smuggled fictitious backgrounds about them into the archives of the Tate Gallery and Victoria and Albert Museum.
Such breathtaking dishonesty left those researching the history of the various works convinced they were genuine, completely unaware that most had been painted by talented Stafford artist John Myatt, who was jailed for a year for his part in the scam.
London's Southwark Crown court judge Geoffrey Rivlin, QC, told Drewe - already released from a six-year prison sentence imposed nearly two years' ago because of time served on remand - that it was clear his crimes had put hundreds of thousands of pounds in his pocket.
So it was perhaps fortunate for the fraudster, of Washington Close, Reigate, Surrey that the case against him had only featured nine of the many pastiches involved, thereby legally confining confiscation proceedings to the cash he had made from these alone.
The other works and the considerable amount of money they had generated could not be taken into account.
Dismissing Drewe's claims of effective penury, the judge said it was clear he had not been "frank" about his assets and had undoubtedly had funds available.
For that reason he would be sent back to jail for two years if the £125,000 was not forthcoming within three months.
In his ruling, which followed a week of legal submissions, the judge also rejected Drewe's continued assertions of innocence.
