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In the mid-'90s, ii high-end New York art galleries began selling one false painting afterward another – works in the style of Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, Mark Rothko and others. It was the largest art fraud in modern U.S. history, totaling more than $80 million. Our starting time story looks at how it happened and why well-nigh no i e'er was punished by authorities.

Our 2d story revisits an investigation into a painting looted by the Nazis during Globe War II. More than half a century later, a journalist helped track it down through the Panama Papers.

This is a rebroadcast of an episode that originally aired in January 2020.

Credits

Reporter and producers: Gisele Regatão and Emily Harris with assistance from Janet Babin | Editor: Brett Myers and Susanne Reber | Production manager: Amy Mostafa | Original score and sound pattern: Jim Briggs and Fernando Arruda, with help from Najib Aminy, Amy Mostafa, Sandra Lopez Monsalve, Claire Mullen, Katherine Rae Mondo and Cat Schuknecht | Executive producer: Kevin Sullivan | Host: Al Letson

Special thanks to Mark Scheffler, Miguel Macias, Victoria Burnett and Deborah Solomon for help with the story most art fraud. It was supported in role by a PSC-CUNY Award, jointly funded by the Professional Staff Congress and Metropolis University of New York. And thanks to Le Monde, NDR and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists for production assistance with the looted artwork story and to CBC/Radio-Canada for partnering on the story.

This show includes songs by Anitek used under the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike iii.0 license .

Back up for Reveal is provided by the Reva and David Logan Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Heising-Simons Foundation, the Hellman Foundation, Commonwealth Fund, and the Inasmuch Foundation.

Transcript

Al Letson: From the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, this is Reveal. I'm Al Letson. John Howard lives in an impressive home, a Manhattan brownstone four stories high covered in green vines.
John Howard: I literally, I walked into this house and I walked over here and I said, "Okay. I'll do information technology. I'll buy it." I didn't even go upstairs.
Al Letson: It's not the business firm that we're here to run across, then much as what's in information technology. John's an fine art collector.
Gisele Regatão: I noticed the art right abroad. Do you have art in all the rooms in this firm?
John Howard: Pretty much.
Al Letson: John's talking to reporter, Gisele Regatão. She's here to come across 1 painting in particular, i that hasn't hung in John'due south house for years.
Gisele Regatão: And so it'southward all wrapped in brown newspaper. Did you wrap it yourself?
John Howard: I did not. And it'due south all tied up very neatly with string, which I'm now going to cutting.
Al Letson: It has a very prestigious signature, Willem de Kooning. He's a famous Dutch-American painter known for his abstruse expressionist piece of work.
John Howard: So I probably haven't seen this in … I don't know, something between five and 10 years. And in that location information technology is.
Al Letson: The painting has vibrant splashes of blue, black, white, and a peculiar yellowish that John just loves.
John Howard: It's non a chrome yellowish, it's a kind of muted yellow. It has more brown in it, and so information technology's an ochre color is what I phone call it.
Al Letson: When he bought it dorsum in 2007, information technology was the most he ever spent on a piece of art, $4 million.
John Howard: In that location was a poignance to my ownership it.
Al Letson: John'due south dad collected fine art. De Kooning was 1 of his favorites.
John Howard: My father could never afford to buy one of his paintings.
Al Letson: His dad was a Jewish immigrant, who escaped from Germany at the offset of World War II. For John, the De Kooning was kind of a argument similar, "Look at how far we've come." It used to hang next to his fireplace. Then a few years after he bought it, he took to an expert.
John Howard: And the guy calls me dorsum in a day and says this is a fake. I said, "How practise you lot know it's a fake?" He goes, "Yous know that yellow on the painting?" I go, "Yeah, I know that yellow. That'south why I bought the painting. The yellow is and then beautiful." He goes, "Well the painting was supposed to be painted in 1953, that particular chrome yellow wasn't invented until 1990."
Al Letson: John fell prey to a fake fine art scheme, one that federal prosecutors say is the largest in mod United states of america history. 63 imitation masterpieces that sold for more than $80 one thousand thousand.
Gisele Regatão: It's a crazy story.
Al Letson: A crazy story that we first aired in January, and ane that Gisele had been tracking for years before that. The story made international news when it broke. At the center were four immigrants, 2 Spanish brothers, a Mexican-American woman, and a Chinese painter.
Gisele Regatão: In the garage behind his house in Queens, the Chinese painter churned out fake painting afterward fake painting, artworks in the style of people like Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, and Mark Rothko.
Al Letson: And then they did all sorts of things to make the paintings look former.
Gisele Regatão: They rubbed teabags on them to make them brown. They even emptied dust buster bins on the canvases because old paintings accept dirt and dust that collect on them.
Al Letson: Simply collectors don't purchase Pollocks and Rothkos from strangers working out of a garage. They purchase them from trusted galleries. And so i of the fraudsters, a woman by the name of Glafira Rosales, approached two galleries with a story.
Gisele Regatão: She told them she was a dealer who was representing an anonymous European collector. He had just died and the family unit was selling some of his works.
Al Letson: The galleries bought the paintings and resold them to collectors. This started in the mid '90s and continued for the next xv years.
Gisele Regatão: 1 of these galleries was the Knoedler Gallery. It was 1 of the oldest and nearly well-respected art galleries in the country. Of the 63 imitation paintings, Knoedler sold 40 of them. Another gallery, Julian Weissman Fine Art, owned by a former Knoedler employee, sold the other 23.
Al Letson: Collectors similar John Howard say they never doubted the actuality of the paintings because those galleries are supposed to make sure they're the existent thing.
John Howard: These are the most baronial, serious people, institutional people in the world, and they're vetting it. So what more work could I take done?
Al Letson: Eventually, the FBI got involved and the whole thing came crashing down. Remember, the victims were conned out of more $lxxx million. Just when the investigation was over, almost no one was punished. Glafira Rosales, the fake fine art dealer, struck a plea deal and spent just three months behind confined. Her partners all fled the land before they could be arrested. Every bit for the art galleries, they were never charged with any crimes and that got Gisele's reporter sense tingling.
Gisele Regatão: I've spent most of my career reporting on arts and culture, and I'm also an immigrant myself. So I've been fascinated with how four people who didn't speak English language particularly well and were not well-connected in high-end art circles, how could they have pulled this whole scheme off. And I only kept thinking that this story isn't simply about them. It'southward also about those two art galleries that sold the 63 imitation paintings.
Al Letson: Gisele ready out on a journeying that would have her from that garage in Queens, to the backrooms of some of the glitziest galleries in the globe. Information technology would open even bigger questions about the winners and losers in this massive multi-one thousand thousand-dollar scam. Gisele takes the story from hither.
Gisele Regatão: The Knoedler Gallery was a legendary place. Paintings past Rembrandt and Vermeer made their way through these doors. It used to sit hither on Eastward 70th Street, in Manhattan'due south Upper Eastward Side. And information technology was in business for 165 years. When the imitation dealer Glafira Rosales would evidence upwards here, she often arrived past car, clutching paintings in her blank easily, no big wooden crates which is how expensive fine art is generally handled. And Glafira had few details to offer most where the paintings were coming from, merely that she was representing a collector who wished to remain anonymous. The first two paintings that Knoedler Gallery bought from her were by Richard Diebenkorn, a California-based artist who had merely died. Before long after, his daughter, Gretchen Diebenkorn Grant, says she got a call from Knoedler. It was from someone you lot're going to hear nearly a lot, someone who wouldn't agree to talk to united states for this story, Ann Freedman, the gallery's president.
Gretchen D. G.: She said, "Some Diebenkorn's have come in and I thought y'all'd be interested in seeing them."
Gisele Regatão: The two pieces Knoedler invited Gretchen to see were a bit of a mystery. They had almost no provenance. Provenance is pretty important in the art world. It's the chronology of everyone who'due south ever owned a detail slice of art. In a backroom at the gallery, Gretchen and her mom looked at the paintings closely, studying them. Gretchen thought they had the right proportions, the right colors.
Gretchen D. Thou.: The tonality of it was pretty practiced. Well, I would say quite good. But there was something wrong somehow to me. And and then I kept looking at it and my female parent kept looking at it.
Gisele Regatão: She finally realized what'due south missing.
Gretchen D. G.: It didn't take whatever soul, information technology had no life.
Gisele Regatão: Simply Gretchen didn't come correct out and say what she was thinking.
Gretchen D. Thousand.: Considering we were advised early on never to say anything was not past my father, the F-give-and-take as we refer to information technology.
Gisele Regatão: F-word meaning simulated. It's a big no-no in the fine art world. Considering if you lot say an artwork is a fake, you can be sued. Owners can come up after you for defamation of property. Fifty-fifty though she didn't use the F-discussion, Gretchen says she made her dubiety about the paintings articulate to the gallery's president, Ann Freedman. So after a few months, she got a letter from the Knoedler Gallery.
Gretchen D. G.: Saying that because we had authenticated this work, they had so sold it and they wanted us to know that. My mother was outraged as was I because we well-nigh certainly did not say that.
Gisele Regatão: Gretchen says she was never asked to authenticate the fine art, only to see information technology. Court documents show that lots of collectors who bought these fake paintings were under the impression that experts had authenticated them. Merely many experts testified that it never happened. So what became of those paintings Gretchen looked at? For that, we caput to Manhattan'south Upper Westward Side. To meet Bernard Kruger.
Bernard Krueger: Molly.
Gisele Regatão: Bernard is a doctor. He lives in an apartment with his wife, ii kids, their dog Molly, and a lot of art. Bernard has been a lifelong fan of Richard Diebenkorn.
Bernard Krueger: I was always attracted to the underpainting, the colour feel, the subtleness of it, and the collage. I similar collage.
Gisele Regatão: He saw several Diebenkorn exhibitions at the Knoedler Gallery. He wanted to buy some of his pieces, but it wasn't easy.
Bernard Krueger: I would get to Knoedler and you'd take to beg her to buy a Diebenkorn.
Gisele Regatão: He's talking about Ann Freedman. She was a tough gatekeeper.
Bernard Krueger: She was absolutely nasty about it and if you weren't somebody that she cared most, she wouldn't permit you buy one.
Gisele Regatão: Why not?
Bernard Krueger: Well, because this is how she gave out her favors. Finally, she allow me buy one. I never got a choice of ane. She never would let me buy the best.
Gisele Regatão: He says it was similar this for years, always quoting Ann Freedman, "Begging to purchase". So in 1994, things changed. Suddenly, he gets a phone call. Ann tells him that Knoedler has 2 pieces available for him to see, those same Diebenkorn's Gretchen and her mom looked at months earlier.
Bernard Krueger: I think I paid 80 for it or 75. And by and then, I was-
Gisele Regatão: I checked. He actually paid $95,000 for it, almost $thirty,000 less than the last Diebenkorn he had bought. I asked him, "Didn't you remember it was foreign of a sudden a Diebenkorn is coming your way and then easily and at such a practiced toll?"
Bernard Krueger: I idea it was great. Finally, I'm getting a good deal on a Diebenkorn.
Gisele Regatão: Knoedler was getting a good bargain besides. Court records show that the gallery made $45,000 on Bernard's fake Diebenkorn, a profit margin of ninety%. That's way above the industry average ,which is more like 20% to 30%. Throughout the years as Knoedler buys more and more than of the fakes, its profit margin skyrockets. In some cases, the gallery sold paintings for more than 10 times what information technology paid to the dealer, Glafira Rosales. I learned that in 2003, the International Foundation for Art Research or IFAR analyzed one of the Pollocks that came from Glafira. Information technology could non confirm the painting was legitimate. Knoedler knew about this simply continued buying pieces from her anyway. Court records reveal that betwixt 1994 and 2011, the fakes were the simply matter keeping the Knoedler Gallery assisting. The business fabricated about $30 million over that period, but take away the fakes and it would have been more than than $3 million in the pigsty.
Gisele Regatão: The art world is notoriously unregulated. It's frequently compared to the markets for drugs and guns. And deals are frequently sealed with handshakes. Still, there are all-time practices. Tried and truthful methods that galleries utilise to ensure that the artwork they are selling is legit. To talk most how information technology's supposed to piece of work, I turned to one of the most prominent art dealers in the state. Everything smells of forest here.
Marc Glimcher: That's me burning incense.
Gisele Regatão: Meet the metaphysical Marc Glimcher.
Marc Glimcher: I'm and so, crystals.
Gisele Regatão: Yeah.
Marc Glimcher: Oh, my God. I'thousand mode past New Age. Okay. This is about enlightenment, am I right? I mean what else is the fine art globe about?
Gisele Regatão: Marc is the president of Pace Gallery. It'southward ane of the largest galleries in New York City. Information technology was founded past his dad in 1960. Stride represents one of the giants of American art, Mark Rothko. Still, it'due south not like the gallery has his paintings sitting on shelves. They are extremely rare, but it seems information technology's my lucky day. So do you take a Rothko available?
Marc Glimcher: Yes, I exercise.
Gisele Regatão: You practise?
Marc Glimcher: Strangely enough.
Gisele Regatão: Could we run across it?
Marc Glimcher: No.
Gisele Regatão: Why?
Marc Glimcher: I'm sorry.
Gisele Regatão: Why not?
Marc Glimcher: Because I'm simply allowed to offer it one person and that person'south waiting.
Gisele Regatão: Oh, but we're not going to purchase it.
Marc Glimcher: I know.
Gisele Regatão: Nosotros're just pretending.
Marc Glimcher: I know.
Gisele Regatão: Tin can you lot describe the painting or tell usa what it is?
Marc Glimcher: Good question. Tin I exercise that?
Gisele Regatão: Well he can't. All Marc can say is it'southward endemic by someone famous.
Marc Glimcher: That famous owner does not want anyone to know that this painting is for sale. Okay? So that lends us towards a possibility for fraud because I can plow to y'all and say, "I can't tell you anything well-nigh this painting."
Gisele Regatão: I know.
Marc Glimcher: It's a secret.
Gisele Regatão: Marc says there's a reason it's done this way.
Marc Glimcher: We don't desire Rothkos floating effectually on the open marketplace. And people discussing the prices, and is it available? Why is information technology bachelor? Why does that person demand the money? Et cetera, et cetera. We're a business where being the first or only person to be offered that painting is very of import to value of that painting.
Gisele Regatão: This is office of how art dealers create excitement and control prices. They don't offer them to simply anybody.
Marc Glimcher: We should be able to offer information technology to one person and sell information technology.
Gisele Regatão: Marc says trusted collectors are the ones who get to buy the best piece of work, no one else. People like me don't get to just walk in off the streets and buy a Rothko. But that's exactly what happened at Knoedler. I collector walked into the gallery for the commencement time and was offered a Rothko and a Pollock. He bought the Rothko. It was imitation. Marc is tight-lipped about his Rothko. But after some prodding, he does tell me the cost. More than $100 million. Even though buyers might not have all the information they would like, Marc says at that place are basic safeguards to make sure people are getting what they pay for.
Marc Glimcher: So we say your painting has been included in the catalogue raisonné. We evidence you that information technology's in the catalogue raisonné.
Gisele Regatão: The catalogue raisonné is like the artist bible. Information technology has all of slice of art works that are believed to be authentic. In the case of the fakes, Knoedler and Julian Weissman were selling works without that. Buyers had no proof that Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, or Robert Motherwell had e'er created the paintings they were paying millions for. There'south another way paintings are authenticated. Y'all tin't tell me who's selling it.
Marc Glimcher: No.
Gisele Regatão: Can you requite me some documentation of provenance?
Marc Glimcher: I tin definitely requite you the documentation of the provenance. But the last entry is going to say, "Individual collection, New York."
Gisele Regatão: Perfect provenance should trace buying of a painting all the way dorsum to the artist'due south studio, proving that information technology's authentic. But holes in provenance are common. So it looks like I'1000 going to this in the dark.
Marc Glimcher: You lot're going to exist a little bit in the night.
Gisele Regatão: The collectors who bought all those fake paintings were completely in the dark, because the works had near cipher provenance and nothing in a catalogue raisonné. Those collectors should take been more skeptical, but and then should the galleries. They bought masterpiece after masterpiece that supposedly came from a single anonymous collector. What collector has dozens of masterpieces of unknown origin? I spoke to several experts who say that after years of ownership up mysterious works, the galleries should have realized it was too adept to exist true. If you had been in that situation, would y'all take bought those paintings?
Marc Glimcher: No, never.
Gisele Regatão: If people that are in this market-
Marc Glimcher: Correct.
Gisele Regatão: … commit some wrongdoing-
Marc Glimcher: Yes.
Gisele Regatão: … in the practice of your profession-
Marc Glimcher: Absolutely.
Gisele Regatão: … don't you think they should be punished for it?
Marc Glimcher: Yes.
Gisele Regatão: Practise you call up they were?
Marc Glimcher: Probably not. We are in a business organization of trust, and I recall that if you intermission trust and do not assume immediately 100% responsibleness, there's nothing worse than that in the art business organisation. At that place could exist no greater criminal offence.
Gisele Regatão: I spoke to multiple victims for this story who believe that at some indicate the two galleries must have suspected that the paintings they were selling were faux, which is why this next particular raises even more than questions. John Howard says a few months after he bought that fake De Kooning, he got a call from Knoedler's president, Ann Freedman.
John Howard: She said, "What other artists are you interested in? What other paintings are you interested in? Because you never know when we're going to come across something."
Gisele Regatão: John says he told her virtually one artist he loves, American abstract painter Robert Motherwell.
John Howard: At that place's a series of paintings he did chosen the Spanish Elegy series, which are beautiful paintings. And they're large format ones and small ones. And I said, "I know the small ones are rarer, but I'd really be interested in a small format Spanish Elegy painting."
Gisele Regatão: Then about six months later, John says Ann calls him again.
John Howard: And she goes, "John Howard, I don't know …" I think this expression. "I don't know what lucky star you live under, only guess what I have in my hands." And I suspension and I think and I become, "A small-scale format Spanish Elegy painting?" And she goes, "Exactly. Tin can you come on Saturday to see information technology?"
Gisele Regatão: But when John sees the painting, he doesn't like it, and decides to pass. That extremely rare Motherwell likewise turned out to be false.
Al Letson: That fake painting came from Glafira Rosales. We don't know if Ann Freedman asked Glafira for it specifically. Just prosecutors did observe that on multiple occasions, gallery employees went to Glafira to request specific hard-to-find works. We'll larn more nigh that after the pause when nosotros sit downwardly with Ann Freedman's lawyer, Luke Nikas.
Luke Nikas: The document product that Knoedler made in this case was thousands, and thousands, and thousands of pages of inquiry and memos and-
Gisele Regatão: Research on what?
Luke Nikas: On the story.
Gisele Regatão: But that was all fake. What enquiry was that?
Luke Nikas: Sure.
Al Letson: That'south coming up on Reveal.
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Al Letson: From the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, this is Reveal. I'm Al Letson. Today on the evidence, we're investigating the biggest art fraud in modernistic United states of america history. 63 fake paintings totalling more than $eighty one thousand thousand. Dozens of collectors were caught up in the scheme. The question we're asking, "How did this happen? How did two well-respected New York galleries, Julian Weissman Fine Art and Knoedler Gallery, resell simulated painting afterwards imitation painting for 15 directly years?" When nosotros left off, collector John Howard had just passed on buying a Castilian Elegy painting from American artist Robert Motherwell. That painting volition become on to expose the whole fraud. Reporter Gisele Regatão, picks upwards the story with what happens adjacent.
Gisele Regatão: Before, I described a catalogue raisonné as a bible of an creative person's work. Everything an artist has always done should be in there. Putting one together is similar a treasure chase. You take to go around the country, the globe, examining each and every work that may take been washed past an artist. And you try to determine whether pieces are real or fake. That'southward what Jack Flam was doing in the early on 2000s. He's the president of the Dedalus Foundation, an organization that promotes modern art. Jack and his team were building the catalogue raisonné for Motherwell's work. And they got their eyes on a black and white painting with exaggerated drip marks.
Jack Flam: There was something off about the painting. Among other things, it was severely warped. I'd never seen a Motherwell painting and then warped.
Gisele Regatão: That piece was from the gallery Julian Weissman Fine Art. Later, they see a slice from the Knoedler Gallery.
Jack Flam: Information technology was out of remainder. The contours were too make clean. In that location were a whole serial of compositional factors that didn't expect correct.
Gisele Regatão: And then the committee decides they need to look at these paintings together. They gather images of seven different Motherwells. Four came from Knoedler and 3 from Julian Weissman.
Jack Flam: Seeing them together, they didn't look right. Vi of them were dated 1953 on the back, and i is dated 1955. Just the curious affair is that they were signed most exactly the same way. In other words, it was well-nigh like a template that somebody was following.
Gisele Regatão: At that bespeak, Jack turns to the group and asks.
Jack Flam: "And so do you think they're fake?" And they said, "Yep." And I said, "I recollect yous're correct. I think they are fake."
Gisele Regatão: They felt they had to act right away.
Jack Flam: The very first matter nosotros did was we called Ann Freedman-
Gisele Regatão: The president of the Knoedler Gallery.
Jack Flam: … thinking we're doing her a big favor because if she's dealing with fake paintings, she should know it.
Gisele Regatão: But when Ann came to meet them, Jack says information technology was clear she didn't see it equally a favor.
Jack Flam: Instead of saying, "Wow, cheers so much for letting us know," she started arguing with us.
Gisele Regatão: Jack starts suspecting that the problem might be bigger than a few fake Motherwells, so he reaches out to fine art experts who've seen other paintings sold to the galleries by Glafira Rosales. She's the woman who would eventually exist convicted for selling all the fake paintings to the galleries.
Jack Flam: And they all tell me that they had harbored suspicions for a long time nigh those paintings, paintings by other artists, by Rothko, by De Kooning.
Gisele Regatão: Why didn't they say anything?
Jack Flam: They didn't say anything for the aforementioned reason that we didn't say annihilation at the beginning publicly, which is they were agape to get sued for defamation of belongings.
Gisele Regatão: In other words, they didn't want to use the F-word either. If they were wrong, they could exist sued for defamation. But proving a painting is imitation tin be hard to practice. And so Jack's team hires a private investigator to look into Glafira Rosales. Very apace, they learn that her boyfriend has been sued in his home country of Spain, including for selling fake fine art. Jack'due south shocked that the two galleries don't seem to know any of this.
Jack Flam: If I were buying millions of dollars worth of paintings from someone who had a classic flimsy story, I would have at the very least googled her, hired a private investigator.
Gisele Regatão: With this new evidence, they decided to hire a forensic skilful. People assume this analysis is commonplace in the art world, but information technology'southward not. Million-dollar paintings are bought and sold all the time without it, considering forensic analysis is expensive. And then information technology's used more as a tool of last resort. The tests on the Motherwell is conclusive. The painting could not have been made back in the '50s because some of the materials didn't fifty-fifty exist then. Just yet Jack says, fifty-fifty at this signal, Ann Freedman keeps insisting the painting is real. And so in March of 2009, he calls the FBI. As the investigation gets underway, Knoedler speedily crumbles. All the paintings from Glafira Rosales were placed on a "Not for sale list".
Gisele Regatão: Without them, the gallery couldn't stay afloat. At the end of 2011, the oldest gallery in New York Urban center which had been in business for 165 years closed its doors. So came a dozen lawsuits. Collectors, including John Howard, sued the owners and presidents of the galleries. All the suits were settled, all for undisclosed amounts. We mentioned earlier that the only one to be prosecuted in all of this was Glafira Rosales, and today, the heads of the galleries like Julian Weissman are still in business. I got in touch with his lawyer, David Baumm, to set up an interview. Only-
David Baumm: Julian is not going to … I mean I don't want to say this rudely or anything, but he's not going to sit downwards for an interview.
Gisele Regatão: No? Why not?
David Baumm: Why would he?
Gisele Regatão: I explained that I wanted to give Julian a chance to tell his side of the story. David told me his client was a victim besides, who just like the collectors was scammed by Glafira Rosales.
David Baumm: As far as we're concerned, this is sort of behind us. It would be dainty for this story to go abroad rather than people continuing to bring information technology upward.
Gisele Regatão: Merely in that location'southward a reason I'm bringing it up. Without the galleries, collectors never would have bought these fakes in the first place. Clients trusted Julian Weissman and the Knoedler Gallery to get this right. So how did they go it and then completely incorrect? The former owner of Knoedler, Michael Hammer, also wouldn't talk to me. He still owns another gallery called the Hammer Galleries. Information technology'due south just a few blocks away from a new gallery called Freedman Art. Ann Freedman, the onetime president of Knoedler, is still selling fine art too.
Ann Freedman: This exhibition is a commemoration.
Gisele Regatão: Here she is in a promotional video for the gallery. I mentioned earlier that Ann wouldn't agree to exist interviewed for this story, but I did manage to sit down with her lawyer, Luke Nikas. I met him at his office on Madison Avenue. I, two, three. The first affair that defenseless my attending was his art. Tell me, what practice you have here?
Luke Nikas: So there are 3 paintings. One is a painting in the style of Mark Rothko.
Gisele Regatão: "In the fashion of", that's his fashion of maxim that yeah, he decorated his office with a few of the faux paintings.
Luke Nikas: The one in the eye is a work in the way of Jackson Pollock, and the bottom, it's signed in the lower right-hand corner. This is the work that got some attention because Pollock is not spelled correctly.
Gisele Regatão: Even though they're not real, he says they have value to him. And then he asked Ann if he could keep them.
Luke Nikas: From my perspective, if I'm non going to buy a $fifteen million Mark Rothko painting, and this is an interesting slice of art history, an interesting slice of forest legal history. And happens to be an interesting piece of work of art itself, that'south good enough reason for me.
Gisele Regatão: I ask Luke, why Knoedler bought and then many paintings with almost zero provenance, merely a story from Glafira Rosales about an bearding European collector. Luke insists the gallery did pressure Glafira to provide more information.
Luke Nikas: And Rosales'southward reaction is in essence, "He'due south an extremely private person. He is non going to reveal his proper name, and you have the work of art in that location. And if you're comfortable with the work of art, then this is in essence a story that's behind it." And then-
Gisele Regatão: At present how common is that for Knoedler to exist buying fine art with a story like that?
Luke Nikas: It is uncommon.
Gisele Regatão: Retrieve, Knoedler was making a lot of money on these paintings. Sometimes selling the fakes for more than 10 times what it paid for them. Merely Luke says, that was for a good reason.
Luke Nikas: Knoedler got them and did an incredible amount of diligence to vet them.
Gisele Regatão: Knoedler claims information technology did two things to vet the paintings. Offset, it brought in experts. The gallery says every one of them believed the paintings were authentic. During a civil lawsuit, some testified that they did believe the works were real. Only other experts say they only saw the paintings briefly, or that they didn't fully authenticate them. 2d, the gallery says it did research on whether Glafira Rosales'due south story about the anonymous collector was plausible, not if the story was true but if it was plausible. Luke says they concluded information technology was.
Luke Nikas: The document product that Knoedler made in this case was thousands and thousands and thousands of pages of research and memos and-
Gisele Regatão: Inquiry on what?
Luke Nikas: On the story.
Gisele Regatão: But at that place was all faux. What research was that?
Luke Nikas: Sure.
Gisele Regatão: You and I would have done better, Luke. I spent months examining courtroom documents, and found a letter that hasn't been reported on before. Information technology's from and then U.s.a. attorney, Preet Bharara, to the gauge who was sentencing Glafira Rosales for her role in all this. Glafira has been silent near the fraud and wouldn't agree to be interviewed for this story, just Bharara's letter is a window into what she told prosecutors. Glafira alleges that gallery employees eagerly demanded hard-to-obtain works from famous artists without every questioning where they came from. Luke says there's a elementary explanation for this, that his client, Ann Freedman, was just trying to empathise what paintings the anonymous collector might have.
Luke Nikas: When you look over the course of the entire fourteen years, Glafira was very careful about what she brought to the gallery. She'd bring one work a year. She'd bring two works a twelvemonth. She would never say completely what was in the drove beyond that. The fashion she did that meant that she didn't create the cerise flags that are easy to see when you look at this today backwards.
Gisele Regatão: Bharara's letter as well says Glafira told investigators that employees at the ii galleries helped come up with fake provenance. Luke sees this differently. He says Knoedler was simply trying to establish provenance. Employees were doing their due diligence and he says, without meaning to, that inquiry ended upwardly making the fake paintings even more attractive to collectors.
Luke Nikas: Only ultimately, this information sold works that were fake. And then did we mean for that to happen? I remember they'd say, "Admittedly not." But did that happen? Of form it did.
Gisele Regatão: I tried reaching out to Preet Bharara about that letter of the alphabet, but I never heard back. Still, I did manage to track down the pb federal prosecutor in the art fraud case, Jason Hernandez.
Jason Hernandez: This was a difficult case.
Gisele Regatão: Jason spent years investigating the faux art scheme when he worked at the United states Attorney's Part. I asked him why the galleries were never indicted. He says it'due south because cases like this are tricky, that it'southward hard to prove the galleries were intentionally selling simulated art.
Jason Hernandez: The brunt in a criminal instance is extremely high. Yous take to prove that someone set out to defraud another person beyond a reasonable dubiousness and you've got to convince 12 people of that.
Gisele Regatão: Jason is careful while he talks to me. He will but reveal so much about the example. One affair he does say is that while one tin argue that the galleries acted carelessly, that isn't plenty to charge them with a crime.
Jason Hernandez: Ultimately, a decision was made not to bring a criminal charge considering you have to be able to prove an intent to defraud across a reasonable doubt.
Gisele Regatão: Did you lot agree with that conclusion?
Jason Hernandez: I'one thousand not going to annotate on any of our internal decision making. That'south not something that's public.
John: Given the other data in the case, it'south inexplicable why the prosecution did non go forward.
Gisele Regatão: John [Lore] is a old federal prosecutor in New York Urban center and partner at a national police firm. I wanted his opinion on the case.
John: I've seen cases with much less evidence get convictions, much less.
Gisele Regatão: John was not involved directly in the case. He says there is a bias that the art world is made up of wealthy people who can accept care of themselves, but he says all victims deserve justice. And he thinks this case doesn't just matter to the people directly involved, merely to anyone who cares most art because part of what art. Because part of what fine art is most is an original thought, non just a reproduction of an thought.
John: If we don't have confidence in the genuineness of the fine art, then the fine art becomes diminished and it becomes near worthless. And so that what'southward the difference between a real Rothko and a imitation Rothko?
Gisele Regatão: Practise y'all think at that place should exist more than regulation or control of the art market? And if then, wouldn't the pursuit of cases similar that ship a message?
John: Admittedly. Ultimately in my mind, the biggest deterrent to fine art fraud is a federal prosecution, pure and simple.
Gisele Regatão: Glafira Rosales remains the merely person who's been arrested for this scheme. In 2013, she spent three months in jail earlier beingness released on bail. She could take faced 99 years in prison house.
Al Letson: Glafira was too ordered to pay $81 million to the victims of the scheme. She sold her house and her bank accounts were confiscated. Gisele tried many times to talk with her and was told that Glafira rented a room from a friend on Long Island. Concluding time she went at that place to endeavour and come across with Glafira, she wasn't home. She was working at her new chore, waiting tables at a restaurant xl minutes away. Thanks to reporter Gisele Regatão for that story. During Globe War II, Nazis looted thousands of pieces of fine art. The story of how one painting worth millions was finally tracked down with the assistance of investigative announcer is coming upwardly next. This is Reveal from the Centre for Investigative Reporting and PRX. Practice y'all want to know more about how we do, what nosotros do? Well our weekly newsletter takes y'all behind the scenes. Our investigations change laws, minds and sure we like to say it, the world. Exist among the showtime read them just text, newsletter to 474747. You tin text upward at any fourth dimension, standard data rates apply. Again, text newsletter to 474747.
Al Letson: From the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, this is Reveal. I'grand Al Letson. Our next story isn't almost an art forgery, but an art theft that sounds like something out of a John Grisham novel. It's a story we get-go brought yous back in 2017, and it's continued to the Panama Papers. Now, you've probably heard of those. That'south when someone leaked millions of documents to the press, back in 2015. Those documents showed how wealthy businesses and politicians used offshore companies to hide money and avoid taxes. The CBC'due south Frédéric Zalac was i of the journalists who started studying those documents.
Frédéric Zalac: We oftentimes recall well-nigh taxes all the time, merely we don't think of the art world of existence one where offshore entities are being used.
Al Letson: Frédéric, would get pulled into this story to observe out what happened to one very rare and very valuable piece of art. He told his story to Reveal'due south, Emily Harris.
Emily Harris: Nosotros beginning in Paris. It's Globe War II. The Nazis are in charge.
Frédéric Zalac: In 1940, darkness fell over the metropolis of light.
Emily Harris: Their orders include seizing and selling off anything of value that Jewish families endemic.
Kenneth Wayne: Art was a central attribute of the Holocaust.
Emily Harris: That's Kenneth Wayne. He'southward an art historian. He specializes in modern fine art.
Kenneth Wayne: So they would loot from Jewish families and from museums too.
Emily Harris: One of the paintings the Nazis looted was from a gallery owned by a Frenchman named Oscar Stettiner. Stettiner'south descendants believe the looted painting was a portrait now called Seated Human being with a Cane.
Kenneth Wayne: Information technology's a man seated, looking very dapper. He's got a mustache. He has a hat, and he looks like a Parisian admirer. Information technology has a caricatural quality to information technology.
Emily Harris: That portrait was painted around 1918 by an Italian artist named Amedeo Modigliani.
Kenneth Wayne: There were all these different movements during the time period he was working, but he actually did his own matter.
Emily Harris: Modigliani died young. He never got rich, just at present, his work is more popular than always.
Speaker 18: So we move to the beautiful Modigliani, Lot viii, painted in Paris in-
Emily Harris: In 2015, a different painting by Modigliani sold for $170 million.
Speaker 18: Sold here.
Emily Harris: That was one of Modigliani'due south famous nudes. That price puts his work into a very exclusive club. But permit's head back to Paris. Information technology's now 1944, July 3rd, a Monday. Allied troops have already landed in Europe. Paris will be free soon, but it's not yet. That Monday, Nazis guild an auction at Oscar Stettiner's gallery. Afterwards that sale, Seated Man with a Pikestaff completely disappears. And nobody sees it publicly for more than 50 years. So where does it go for one-half a century? Well even when information technology turns upwardly, there's very piddling data. It'southward at present 1996. Seated Human with a Cane appears for sale at the swanky auction house Christie's. Christie's doesn't mention Nazis or Oscar Stettiner in the data published for the sale. The descendants of Oscar Stettiner have no idea they might be the rightful owners. Enter the art hunter.
James Palmer: My name is James Palmer, and I'm the founder of Mondex Corporation.
Emily Harris: James is short and serious. He'southward a Canadian, but he lives in London in Hampstead, a leafy neighborhood he loves. Inside James's flat, art is bundled quite tastefully. Art is his passion. Hunting lost fine art is his business organisation.
James Palmer: Our company is in the business of helping clients recover looted assets, and in particular art that was looted during the Second Globe War.
Emily Harris: Effectually 2009, James and his team are searching French archives for information near a completely different case.
James Palmer: And we happened upon a document that referred to the court claim after the war by Oscar Stettiner, for the Seated Homo past Modigliani.
Emily Harris: James knows Modigliani's famous nudes, merely he'due south never heard of the Seated Man, and he's never heard of Oscar Stettiner. So why the big fuss about these old French court documents? Because they tell him in that location is a looted painting out there and he is going to discover it. The papers prove that Oscar Stettiner went to court later the war to get the painting dorsum.
James Palmer: And actually won that court case, and won an society for that painting to be returned.
Emily Harris: Just he never got it back. Meanwhile, James finds Stettiner'south grandson. He tells him about this mystery and in 2011, he helps Stettiner'due south grandson file a lawsuit to claim the painting.
James Palmer: This painting was stolen. Information technology belonged to Mr. Stettiner, and it needs to be returned.
Emily Harris: And this is where the fight over the painting goes effectually and around in circles, Manhattan ceremonious court. Fast forward at present to April 2016. The Panama Papers hit headlines all over the globe. Here's Canadian Broadcasting Corporation announcer Frédéric Zalac, again.
Frédéric Zalac: On this edition of the Fifth Estate, stolen treasures.
Emily Harris: Reporters collaborating on the Panama Papers first find emails about the missing painting. And then they dig deeper.
Phillip L.: This case has multiple moving parts.
Emily Harris: That's New York lawyer, Phillip Landrigan. He's washed commercial police for 35 years.
Phillip Fifty.: I wouldn't say that I'm an fine art lawyer. I fix cases for trial.
Emily Harris: His favorite part of the job is actualization in court. He represents Oscar Stettiner's grandson, trying to get the painting. They sued an extremely wealthy, large fine art-dealing family named Nahmad. One Nahmad son owns a gallery that had tried to sell Seated Man with a Pikestaff a couple years before, but the Nahmads fight back in court. The very showtime newspaper they file, in fact the very first line written in their defense force says to Oscar Stettiner'south grandson, "You're suing the wrong people." This is where the Panama Papers brand the difference. The Nahmads argue that a company chosen the International Fine art Middle or IAC owns and controls the painting. Phillip Landrigan doesn't buy information technology.
Phillip L.: We don't believe that there's any distinction betwixt IAC and the Nahmads, because the company is non operated under normal corporate formalities.
Emily Harris: The IAC was actually created by that Panama house that specializes in shell companies, the firm whose documents were leaked. And deep inside their eleven one thousand thousand records, reporters find evidence that the Nahmads ain the IAC. And then it appears they ain the Modigliani painting, Seated Human being.
Frédéric Zalac: In court, there was a big argue about, "Well no, it'south not the Nahmads. They don't own the painting. They have cypher to practise with it." And even so in the Panama Papers, we could meet that the ownership of the shell company was directly the Nahmad family. It was black and white in that location.
Emily Harris: Then Frédéric takes that proof to the Nahmads' lawyer, Richard Golub. Hither's that interview from Frédéric's CBC report in 2016.
Frédéric Zalac: So we have obtained internal documents of International Fine art Center.
Richard Golub: Have you public records?
Frédéric Zalac: No, actually internal documents that testify, for case, that the ownership of International Art Heart is Mr. Nahmad's 100% shareholder.
Richard Golub: Right.
Frédéric Zalac: So Mr. Nahmad and IAC are one and the same.
Richard Golub: No, they're non. That's your indicate of view, simply that's irrelevant. Whoever owns IAC is irrelevant.
Frédéric Zalac: The person who owns the company-
Richard Golub: Well, that's your point of view.
Frédéric Zalac: Well, it's not my point of view. Information technology's the documents-
Richard Golub: I don't know what the certificate says and information technology doesn't affair what the certificate says. That certificate may be superseded. I don't know what that document means and I don't know where you lot got information technology. It doesn't hateful annihilation.
Frédéric Zalac: The question here-
Richard Golub: No, I'd like to know that.
Frédéric Zalac: Nosotros don't go into-
Richard Golub: The interview is over.
Frédéric Zalac: We don't do that.
Richard Golub: The interview is over. There's zippo else to say. I told y'all before, there's naught else I'1000 going to say because who owns IAC is about as relevant to this as who's living on Pluto.
Emily Harris: I desire to talk with Richard Golub farther, but he declines. The lawyer on the other side representing Oscar Stettiner's grandson says the Panama Papers evidence his allegations against the Nahmads.
Speaker 22: We alleged that they were the change ego, but we didn't have the documentary prove that the Panama Papers provided. Specifically the stock certificate showing that David Nahmad was the sole shareholder.
Emily Harris: Withal, CBC reporters want to know more than. Producer [inaudible] finds a connection that blows her abroad. The human being who bought the painting at the Nazi sale kept it all those years. His daughter and grandson sold information technology through Christie'south, to the Nahmads.
Speaker 23: It merely seemed too much of a coincidence that the surname was the aforementioned every bit the seller of the painting in 1996 to Christie'due south.
Emily Harris: Other reporters are as well hot on the trail. A French TV coiffure manages to pic the painting inside the tax-gratis warehouse in Switzerland, where the Nahmads stash it away. And that crew records something no i has ever seen publicly before.
Frédéric Zalac: Before the painting was put dorsum in place, the handlers turned it effectually.
Emily Harris: On the back, you lot tin can see a label from the Venice Biennale Fine art Bear witness, from 1930.
Frédéric Zalac: There's a space for owner, and it's scratched out and the address below is scratched out. But when y'all look at it closely, when the French team had some experts look at it, y'all could brand out from the $.25 that are all the same in that location that the likely name that was there was Stettiner.
Emily Harris: For the art hunter, James Palmer, this seals the bargain.
James Palmer: Lo and behold, there'south Oscar Stettiner's name and accost. That was stunning data.
Emily Harris: Just it'southward all the same not plenty to finish the difficult fought court case. It does raise new questions. Did Christie's know the painting's full history, or did information technology hide data when the Nahmads bought it in 1996? The grandson'due south lawyer says this.
Speaker 22: The provenance in the 1996 catalog is demonstrably false.
Emily Harris: Christie'due south has said that it reviewed x,000 documents and could not discover anymore records of the painting'south history. It'south at present been more than 70 years since Seated Man with a Cane was looted by the Nazis. The Nahmad family has fought for years to dismiss the lawsuit, but New York State Appeals Court has ruled information technology can go forward. And James Palmer, the art detective, says he's just found new show he believes will be important in that trial. He found a photograph of the painting in a French archive, with this annotation from the 1950, "Modigliani, stolen, sought in America."
Al Letson: That was Reveal'due south Emily Harris. Thanks to the CBC and reporter Frédéric Zalac, for sharing that story with us. Brett Myers and Susanne Reber, edited today's show. Gisele Regatão and Emily Harris produced the show with assist from Janet Babin. Cheers to Mark Scheffler, Miguel Macias, Victoria Burnett and Deborah Solomon for assist with the story about art fraud. Information technology was supported in office by a grant from the Professional Staff Congress and the City University of New York. And thank you to CBC/Radio-Canada, for partnering on the story about looted artwork. Thanks too to Le Monde, NDR, and ICIJ for production assistance with that story. Our production manager is Mwende Hinojosa. Original score and sound design by the dynamic duo, J. Informal, Mr. Jim Briggs and Fernando, my man yo, Arruda.
Al Letson: They had assist this week from Brett Simpson, Najib Aminy, Sandra Lopez Monsalve, Claire Mullen, Katherine Rae Mondo and True cat Schuknecht. Our digital producer is Sarah Mirk. Our CEO is Christa Scharfenberg. Matt Thompson is our editor-in-primary. Our executive producer is Kevin Sullivan. Our theme music is past Commorado, Lightning. Support for Reveal is provided by the Reva and David Logan Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Jonathan Logan Family unit Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Heising-Simons Foundation, the Democracy Fund, and the Ideals and Excellence in Journalism Foundation. Reveal is a co-product of the Middle for Investigative Reporting and PRX. I'm Al Letson. And retrieve, there is always more to the story.
Male: From PRX.
Emily Harris

Emily Harris is a senior reporter and producer for Reveal. She previously served as an NPR international correspondent, based first in Berlin and afterwards in Jerusalem. Her 2016 series on Israelis and Palestinians changing their minds well-nigh some aspect of their disharmonize won the Overseas Press Club's Lowell Thomas Honour, and her 2014 coverage of Gaza was honored with an Overseas Printing Order citation. She also was role of the NPR team that won a 2004 Peabody Laurels for coverage in Republic of iraq. Harris lived in and reported from Russian federation during the upheaval of the 1990s. In the U.S., she covered a range of beats for NPR'due south Washington desk-bound and reported jointly for NPR and PBS' "Now" with Bill Moyers. Harris helped start and host "Remember Out Loud," a daily public diplomacy talk evidence on Oregon Public Broadcasting. She worked to evaluate and share new financial models for journalism every bit editorial director of the Journalism Accelerator startup. She'due south drafted a screenplay about relationships born in state of war and collects audio stories of awful and mind-changing moments in people's lives. Harris is based in Portland, Oregon.

Brett Myers is a senior radio editor for Reveal. His piece of work has received more than 20 national honors, including a George Foster Peabody Award, four nationalEdward R. Murrow Awards and multipleThird Declension/Richard H. Driehaus Contest awards. Before joining Reveal, he was a senior producer at Youth Radio, where he collaborated with teenage reporters to file stories for "Morning Edition," "All Things Considered" and "Marketplace."

Prior to becoming an audio producer, Myers trained as a documentary photographer and was named one of the 25 best American photographers under the age of 25. He loves bikes, California and his family. Before that, he was an independent radio producer and worked with StoryCorps, Sound Portraits and The Kitchen Sisters. Myers is based in Reveal'southward Emeryville, California, role.

More than past Brett Myers

Susanne Reber is the executive editor of Reveal, a nationally broadcast public radio show, and the co-founder of the Peabody Award-winning radio program. Prior to joining The Heart for Investigative Reporting in 2012, Reber formed and led NPR'southward first Investigations Unit, which won multiple Peabody Awards, a Polk award, a Robert F. Kennedy Accolade and others during her tenure. Prior to moving to the U.Due south., Reber spent 23 years at the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., where she held various editorial leadership roles, including deputy managing editor of National Radio News and executive producer of CBC's Michener Award-winning Investigative Unit of measurement from 2003 to 2009. Reber graduated from the Academy of London with a bachelor's degree in German and French language and literature. She earned her graduate diploma in broadcast journalism from Metropolis University London. Reber is based in Reveal's Emeryville, California, office.

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Amy Mostafa (she/they) is the production manager for Reveal. She is a UC Berkeley School of Journalism alum, where she focused on audio and information journalism every bit a Dean's Merit Fellow and an ISF Scholar. She has reported on science, wellness and the environment in Anchorage for Alaska Public Media and on metropolis authorities in Berkeley and San Francisco for KQED. Her piece of work also has appeared on NPR, KALW and KALX. Mostafa holds a bachelor's caste in English literature and public policy. She has most recently reported on housing and aging in the Bay Area. She is based in Reveal's Emeryville, California, office.

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Jim Briggs Three is the senior sound designer, engineer and composer for Reveal. He supervises mail-product and composes original music for the public radio show and podcast. He also leads Reveal's efforts in composition for data sonification and live performances.

Prior to joining Reveal in 2014, Briggs mixed and recorded for clients such as WNYC Studios, NPR, the CBC and American Public Media. Credits include "Marketplace," "Selected Shorts," "Death, Sex activity & Coin," "The Longest Shortest Time," NPR's "Ask Me Another," "Radiolab," "Freakonomics Radio" and "Soundcheck." He also was the sound re-recording mixer and audio editor for several PBS television documentaries, including "American Feel: Walt Whitman," the 2012 Tea Party documentary "Boondocks Hall" and "The Supreme Court" miniseries. His music credits include albums by R.Eastward.Chiliad., Paul Simon and Kelly Clarkson.

Briggs' work with Reveal has been recognized with an Emmy Award (2016) and ii Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Academy Awards (2018, 2019). Previously, he was part of the squad that won the Dart Honor for Excellence in Coverage of Trauma for its work on WNYC's hourlong documentary special "Living ix/11." He has taught sound, radio and music product at The New School and Eugene Lang Higher and has a principal'due south degree in media studies from The New School. Briggs is based in Reveal's Emeryville, California, office.

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Fernando Arruda is the sound designer, engineer and composer for Reveal. A composer and multi-instrumentalist, he contributes to the scoring, recording, editing and mixing of the weekly public radio show and podcast. Prior to joining Reveal, Arruda toured as an international DJ and taught music applied science at Dubspot and ESRA International Film School. He co-founded a film scoring bazaar called Manhattan Composers Commonage and worked at Antfood, a creative sound studio geared toward media and ad spots. Arruda worked with clients such as Marvel and Samsung and ad agencies such as Framestore, Trollbäck + Company, Buck and Vice. Arruda releases experimental music nether the alias FJAZZ and has performed with many jazz, classical and pop ensembles such every bit Krychek, Dark Inc., the New York Standard arabic Orchestra and Art&Sax. His credits in the podcast and radio world include NPR's "51 percent," WNYC's "Bad Feminist Happy Hour" and its alive broadcast of Orson Welles' "The Hitchhiker." Arruda has scored extensively for theatrical, orchestral and chamber music formats, some of which have premiered worldwide. He holds a master's caste in motion-picture show scoring and limerick from NYU Steinhardt. Arruda is based in Reveal's Emeryville, California, office.

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Najib Aminy is a producer for Reveal. Previously, he was an editor at Flipboard, a news aggregation startup, and helped guide the visitor'southward editorial and curation practices and policies. Before that, he spent fourth dimension reporting for newspapers such as Newsday and The Indianapolis Star. He is the host and producer of an independent podcast, "Some Noise," which is based out of Oakland, California, and was featured by Apple, The Guardian and The Paris Review. He is a lifelong New York Knicks fan, has a soon-to-be-named kitten and is a product of Stony Brook Academy'southward School of Journalism. Aminy is based in Reveal's Emeryville, California, part.

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Claire Mullen worked at The Centre for Investigative Reporting until September 2017. is an associate sound designer and sound engineer for Reveal. Before joining Reveal, she was an assistant producer at Radio Ambulante and worked with KALW, KQED, the Association of Independents in Radio and the San Francisco Bay Guardian. She studied humanities and media studies at Scripps Higher.

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Kevin Sullivan is the executive producer of Reveal'southward public radio bear witness and podcast. He joined Reveal from the daily news mag show "Here & Now," where he was senior managing editor. In that location, he helped lead the expansion of the prove equally part of a unique partnership betwixt NPR and WBUR. Prior to radio, Sullivan worked as a documentary picture show producer. That work took him effectually the world, with stories ranging from reconciliation in Northern Ireland to the refugee crisis during the war in Kosovo.

Post-obit the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Sullivan launched an investigative unit of measurement for CBS in Baltimore, where he spearheaded investigations on bioterrorism and the U.S. government's ability to respond to futurity threats. He also dug into local issues. His exposé of local judges constitute widespread lax sentencing of repeat-offender drunken drivers. Other investigations included sexual abuse past Roman Cosmic priests, and doctors who sold OxyContin for cash. Sullivan has won multiple journalism awards, including several Edward R. Murrow awards, a Third Coast / Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Competition award and an Emmy. He has an MBA from Boston University.

Sullivan is based in Reveal's Emeryville, California, office.

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Al Letson is a playwright, performer, screenwriter, journalist, and the host of Reveal. Soul-stirring, interdisciplinary piece of work has garnered Letson national recognition and devoted fans.

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