Art forgers told to repay victims

A judge on Thursday ordered a family of British forgers who tricked a museum into buying a fake Egyptian statue to pay back more than $800,000 to institutions they defrauded.

George Greenhalgh, 84; his wife, Olive, 83; and their son Shaun, 47, were convicted last year of selling forged artworks between 1989 and 2006.

Their biggest sale was a fake Egyptian statue, bought by the Bolton Museum in northern England in 2003. A judge in London ordered the family to repay $723,000 to Bolton Borough Council and smaller sums to Sotheby’s auction house and the Henry Moore Institute.

The fakes found their way to the United States as well. In December, the Art Institute of Chicago said a ceramic figure supposedly sculpted by French artist Paul Gauguin, which graced the museum for 10 years, was among the forgeries.