Glafira Rosales

The criminal complaint said she had failed to report the receipt of at least $12.5 million in income for the years 2006-2008 from the sale of works she had presented as having been created by some of the titans of Abstract Expressionism, and given to her by clients to sell, but that the government says were actually masterful forgeries. Beginning in the mid-1990s, Ms. Rosales sold most of the disputed works through the East 70th Street offices of Knoedler & Company, then New York’s oldest gallery, offering works she said were by Mark Rothko and other masters like Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Robert Motherwell. The works, all new to the market from a collector Ms. Rosales refused to name, were embraced by Knoedler, which sold them on for millions. But then several experts called the work fake, and the FBI began an investigation. In 2011, after 165 years in business, Knoedler closed, and was later sued by a half dozen clients who bought one of the Rosales works. The scandal has cast a shadow over Knoedler’s former president Ann Freedman, who has not been criminally charged but who has been named in several of the lawsuits. She has maintained that the works are authenict, a position her attorney, Nicholas Gravante Jr., says he will argue at upcoming civil trials.