A man from Gloucestershire tried to pass off counterfeit ancient statues as genuine artefacts worth hundreds of thousands of pounds at one of the world's most famous auction houses. His plan unravelled not because experts doubted the objects themselves but because the paperwork he submitted gave him away entirely.
Andrew Crowley, 46, from Longwell Green, approached Sotheby's to value three Cycladic figures and one Anatolian stargazer statuette. He said he had inherited them from his grandfather. If genuine, the four pieces would have fetched around £680,000 based on previous comparable sales. The judge at Southwark Crown Court later revised that figure to £340,000 given the number of uncertainties involved.
