An Atlanta-based art appraiser is being sued by his ex-friend, a Floridian multi-millionaire, who claims he was tricked into spending $20 million on fake art.
The plaintiff, named Alvin Malnik in documents, claims he was led to believe the likes of Spanish surrealist Salvador Dalí and British street artist Banksy created the works.
In a lawsuit filed last week, Allan Baitcher and his company, Peachtree Antiques, are accused of falsifying authentication reports for more than 800 works of art.
Baitcher is even accused of falsifying fake websites, email addresses and phone numbers for shadowy authenticators who did not, in fact, exist.
According to the bombshell lawsuit, which the Beaux Arts Museum LLC filed, Baitcher exploited his friendship with the alleged victim.
The pair had known each other since Baitcher was a child in the 1960s, before striking up a professional relationship thirty years later, which involved the Floridian millionaire flying to Atlanta to browse the appraiser’s wares, according to the lawsuit.
“Ultimately, Baitcher betrayed Malnik’s trust and used it against him by selling him thousands of pieces of counterfeit art, creating from whole cloth fictitious appraisal firms to authenticate pieces of art, and sending emails from several fake email addresses purporting to authenticate the artwork he acquired for the plaintiff,” the lawsuit reads.
Many of the fake works of art he passed off as by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jackson Pollock, Dalí, and Banksy were actually sourced from China. Baitcher suggested that the Hong Kong Museum of Art had supplied the works.
The collective value of the fake artworks was estimated at $200 million, purchased for a total of $20 million.
The unnamed plaintiff is suing for full restitution of the artworks' value, as well as damages and interest.
According to his website, Baitcher has been selling antiques since 1974 and has even appraised items for the White House.
He also claims to have earned a place in the Guinness Book of World Records for auctioning the most items in 30 minutes, selling one every 7 seconds over a half-hour period.
Baitcher alleges that he sold the “rarest and most expensive movie poser ever,” a Wizard of Oz poster, for $59,000.
The appraiser and auctioneer has not yet publicly rebuffed the claims made in the lawsuit, which Beaux Arts Museum LLC filed in a federal trial court in Atlanta.
On another one of his websites, though, Baitcher claims that he “loves his career as an appraiser and auctioneer,” and jokes that his job involves being, in part, a “fast-talking pitch man who can get ******s into a bidding war over a block of ice.”
The Independent has contacted Peachtree Antiques, Hong Kong Museum of Art, Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation, Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Pest Control (Banksy’s representation), and the Beaux Arts Museum for comment.
