This Week In Blunders – Sept. 20-26
“I like money on the wall.” – Andy Warhol
Miami art dealer Leslie Roberts made millions showing fake Andy Warhols. When it came time for his sentencing Friday, he was a no-show.
Roberts was indicted in April 2025 and later pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud. When he failed to appear for sentencing on Friday, his lawyer told the court he didn’t know where Roberts was, Law360 reports.
The judge rescheduled the hearing for a week later. Roberts could face more than 20 years in prison … if he ever shows.
Pop artist Andy Warhol is perhaps the most diabolically hilarious trend that ever hit the 1%.
He turned soup cans, Coke bottles and Brillo boxes into status objects, often mocking American consumer culture while getting rich collectors to pay enormous sums for images of things everyone else could buy at the grocery store.
Florida real-estate investor Richard Perlman and his family, for instance, spent more than $6.7 million buying more than 200 purported Warhols from Roberts, according to The Wall Street Journal. Perlman settled an earlier lawsuit against Roberts and is now suing a litany of other art-world players he alleges supplied, sold or authenticated bogus works.
