A Florida family says it suffered a multimillion-dollar loss after purchasing more than 200 works it now alleges were forged Andy Warhols. The complaint, filed September 9 in Miami-Dade County by real-estate investor Richard Perlman, asserts the Perlmans paid over $6.7 million between 2023 and 2024 for prints and canvases purportedly depicting figures such as Superman and Queen Elizabeth.
The lawsuit frames the purchases not as isolated errors but as the product of an organised supply chain. It alleges canvases painted in Peru were moved across borders and entered the U.S. market through dealers, authenticators, and distributors who presented the pieces as genuine Warhols. The complaint describes the operation as a coordinated enterprise in which each participant had a defined role.
The suit targets a cluster of dealers and intermediaries. It names Leslie Roberts, owner of Miami Fine Art Gallery, as the seller from whom the Perlmans first bought the works in 2023. After questions about authenticity prompted a 2024 legal challenge and an undisclosed settlement with Roberts, the Perlmans expanded their case to allege broader fraud. The complaint also identifies Nathan Isen, whose gallery Dane Fine Art was raided by FBI agents in July and who was previously convicted in 2015 for money laundering. Two other Florida dealers, Oscar Cordova and Edward Kurstak, are accused respectively of supplying bogus Warhol canvases and of applying counterfeit authentication stamps.
The filing additionally points to retired dentist Allan Dampf as a source of false provenance for items in Roberts’s inventory. The complaint recalls an earlier episode in which Dampf was the subject of litigation after acquiring limited-edition Warhol prints in exchange for two Marc Chagall watercolors, works that auction house Sotheby’s called "flat-out fakes." The Perlmans’ suit also alleges that inexpensive pieces painted in Peru sold for as little as $30 were routed directly to Roberts’s gallery.
The complaint arrives amid a wider wave of litigation and law enforcement actions involving works attributed to the late Pop artist. In 2024, Italian authorities seized more than 2,100 counterfeit works, and separate U.S. prosecutions have resulted in prison sentences and guilty pleas tied to fake Warhols. The Perlmans’ racketeering suit now moves forward in Miami-Dade, and it seeks to hold the named dealers and facilitators accountable for the alleged, coordinated fraud.
