Key Figure in World’s Biggest Art Fraud Sentenced

A Canadian court on September 5 sentenced David Voss, who is believed to have overseen the forgery of thousands of artworks falsely attributed to renowned Anishinaabe artist Norval Morrisseau, to five years in prison, theCanadian Broadcasting Corporationreports. Voss on June 4 pleaded guilty to forgery and to disseminating forged documents in connection with a fraud ring operating out of Thunder Bay, Ontario, between 1996 and 2019.

The convicted fraudster was one of eight peoplearrestedin March 2023 on suspicion of forging and selling the work of Morrisseau, known as “the Picasso of the North,” in a scheme that predated the artist’s 2007 death by at least a decade. Done in the Woodlands School of Art style founded by Morrisseau, the works in some instances commanded up to tens of thousands of dollars. According to an agreed statement of facts read in court in June, Voss devised a “paint-by-numbers” assembly-line process in which he outlined in pencil the works’ contents and then assigned areas letter codes indicating the color of paint to be applied by those farther down the “line,” whose ranks were said to include children forced into sweatshop labor as well as young Indigenous artists pressed into service by the accused.

“The purpose of the creation of these fake paintings was to gain an economic benefit, but in the course of creating and selling these fakes, the legacy of Norval Morrisseau has been irrevocably damaged,” Superior Court Justice Bonnie Warkentin told the court at the sentencing. “His spirituality has been undermined and tarnished, so today, we have one small opportunity to address this wrong.”

Voss’s sentencing follows that of Gary Lamont, who in December 2023 received five years in jail, minus time served, for his role as ringleader of the operation. Of the remaining six accused, one saw charges dropped, while the others—among them Benjamin Paul Morrisseau, a nephew of the artist—are expected back in court early next year.