Strange Experience

The fraudsters who sold a fake painting for $1.7 million were paid with counterfeit bills.

If there were a competition for the unluckiest couple of fraudsters in history, these 2 men from Spain would win it. In 2003, they arranged to sell a fake painting by Goya but in fact, it was painted by a Spanish artist named Antonio María Esquivel.

The buyer, “a rich Arabian sheik” was working with a middleman who asked the sellers for a commission of $300,000. It is strange but the fraudsters didn’t suspect anything and borrowed this money from a person they knew and went to make the deal.

Initially, the men were going to sell the painting for 4 million CHF but they ended up with only 1.7 million CHF (which is around $1.7 million). The problem was that the money was fake just like the painting. The men were arrested when they tried to deposit the money to a bank account and the middleman was never found.