No Contest Pleas Told on Art Forgery Charges

Independent art broker Frank de Marigny pleaded no contest in Los Angeles Superior Court on Friday to multiple counts of art forgery, including a charge that he tried to sell a fake Renoir to an undercover police officer posing as a Japanese businessman.

The 38-year-old Manhattan Beach resident entered pleas to two counts of grand theft, five counts of forgery and one count of perjury. De Marigny faces up to seven years and eight months in prison. He was returned to jail to face sentencing on Sept. 21.

“It’s a message that crimes involving fraudulent art will be taken seriously and will be prosecuted,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Reva Goetz.

The prosecutor said de Marigny, a French national, entered no-contest pleas, which she equated to admissions of guilt, on his own, without a plea agreement struck with the district attorney’s office.

He was scheduled to go on trial this month before Superior Court Judge Michael Harwin.

De Marigny was arrested during a meeting at the New Otani Hotel in downtown Los Angeles last September, when, police said, he offered to sell a fake Renoir, entitled “Young Girl With Daisies,” for $3.2 million.

The artist’s original hangs in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

De Marigny was jailed in lieu of $1 million bail.

At the time of his arrest, de Marigny, also known as Frank Orval, lived in a posh house on The Strand in Manhattan Beach, drove a Rolls-Royce and a Ferrari and was known to art insiders at “Prince Frank.”

Investigators said they found several paintings and an assault rifle in their search of de Marigny’s house.

De Marigny’s arrest touched off a series of police raids on outlets of the Upstairs Gallery art store chain in West Los Angeles, the San Fernando Valley, Beverly Hills and Costa Mesa and seizure of hundreds of pieces of suspected fraudulent art.

Investigators declined to discuss what connection--if any--may have existed between de Marigny and the Upstairs Gallery.

The Los Angeles Police Department’s art sleuth, Detective Bill Martin, said at the time that some of the allegedly phony artwork seized in the raids appear to be linked to Anthony Gene Tetro, 39, a Claremont resident accused of fabricating and distributing lithographs of the work of well-known painters.

Police said an investigation of Tetro was begun after Japanese artist Hiro Yamagata identified as a fake a miniature watercolor being sold under his name at a Beverly Hills gallery.