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Fake: Forgery, Lies, & eBay
Fake: Forgery, Lies, & eBay
Fake: Forgery, Lies, & eBay
Ebook317 pages4 hours

Fake: Forgery, Lies, & eBay

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It was the golden age of eBay. Optimistic bidders went online to the world's largest flea market in droves, ready to spend cash on everything from garden gnomes to Mercedes convertibles. Among them were art collectors willing to spend big money on unseen paintings, hoping to buy valuable pieces of art at below-market prices. EBay also attracted the occasional con artist unable to resist the temptation of abusing a system that prided itself on being "based on trust." Kenneth Walton -- once a lawyer bound by the ethics of his profession to uphold the law -- was seduced by just such a con artist and, eventually, became one himself.

Ripped from the headlines of the New York Times, the first newspaper to break the story, Fake describes Walton's innocent beginnings as an online art-trading hobbyist and details the downward spiral of greed that ultimately led to his federal felony conviction. What started out as a satisfying exercise in reselling thrift store paintings for a profit in order to pay back student loans and mounting credit card debt soon became a fierce addiction to the subtle deception of luring unsuspecting bidders into overpaying for paintings of questionable origins.

In a landscape peopled with colorful eccentrics hoping to score museum-quality paintings at bargain prices, Walton entered into a partnership with Ken Fetterman, an unslick (yet somehow very effective) con man. Over the course of eighteen months they managed to take in hundreds of thousands of dollars by selling forged paintings and bidding on their own auctions to drive up the prices. When their deception was discovered and made international headlines, Walton found himself stalked by reporters and federal agents while Fetterman went on the lam, sparking a nationwide FBI manhunt. His elaborate game of cat and mouse lasted nearly three years, until the feds caught up with him after a routine traffic violation and brought him to justice.

In this sensational story of the seductive power of greed, Kenneth Walton breaks his silence for the first time and, in his own words, details the international scandal that forever changed the way eBay does business.
LanguageEnglish
PublisherGallery Books
Release dateMay 15, 2006
ISBN9781416934615
Fake: Forgery, Lies, & eBay
Author

Kenneth Walton

Kenneth Walton was a lawyer when he began selling art on eBay in 1999. Over time his online sales tactics grew increasingly fraudulent, culminating in the $135,805 sale of a forged Richard Diebenkorn painting in May 2000. The story of this infamous auction, first broken by an investigative report published in the New York Times, ultimately resulted in his prosecution by the federal government for placing shill bids. He was sentenced in June 2004, is no longer a lawyer, and lives in Northern California. This is his first book. You can visit his website at www.kennethwalton.com.

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Rating: 4.166666666666667 out of 5 stars
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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Aieee. Creeps ripping off honest folks on eBay. Also creeps making excuses for bad behaviour and rationalizing stealing. Thoroughly despicable author goes from lawyer to cheat to forger. One wonders what sort of a person then writes it all up, almost proudly, and publishes it. After this book, I needed a shower. With steel wool to get the really sticky nasty bits off. Walton is a decent writer, it's the sordid details that got me down.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Kenneth Walton's memoir brings more than the story of a simple crime - it's the story of the early days of the internet, the story of the small decisions that separate right from wrong and the story of the infamous slippery slope that anyone can fall onto with the right shove.In Walton's case, this shove comes from an old army buddy, Ken Fetterman. Fetterman is reminiscent of Susan Orlean's John Laroche from The Orchid Thief. Both men are frenetic, impatient, distrustful and have an intelligence for making money from unique markets. Fetterman introduces Walton to a new website - eBay - and teaches him how to sell artwork to bidders all over the country.In working with Fetterman and a few others, Walton touches on the merely unethical (vague auction listings that deliberately imply famous authorship where none is warranted), to the unethical (shill bidding with multiple accounts), to the absolutely illegal (knowingly selling forged artwork). What could have been a dull dissertation on auction postings, e-mails and phone calls is instead a memoir that is crisply written that reads as well as any beach-read thriller. There are points where the book philosophizes a bit much, and at times it is hard to swallow the, "of course, I only forged one signature ever" claim, but this is typical of most true crime memoirs written by the perpetrators.

    1 person found this helpful

Book preview

Fake - Kenneth Walton

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