A Father and Daughter Forged More Than 200 Artworks by Warhol, Banksy, Picasso and Others—and Sold Them for $2 Million
The New Jersey residents, who face up to 20 years in prison, commissioned an artist in Poland to create the fakes. They got special penalties for forging paintings by Native American artists
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A father-daughter duo living in New Jersey pleaded guilty in federal court this week to operating a prolific scheme commissioning and selling forgeries they falsely credited to some of the most recognizable names in the art world.
Between 2020 and 2025, Erwin Bankowski, 50, and Karolina Bankowska, 26, sold more than 200 artworks wrongly attributed to the likes of Andy Warhol, Banksy and Pablo Picasso to auction houses and galleries across the United States, taking in roughly $2 million.
The pair went to great lengths to falsify the provenance of the forgeries and muddy dealers’ attempts to verify the paintings’ pasts.
“Unsophisticated people who are engaging in the art world tend not to know the right questions to ask before transacting,” Gareth Fletcher, director of the art crimes program at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, tells the New York Times’ Santul Nerkar.
Many paintings were listed as held in private collections, displayed in closed galleries or owned by shuttered corporations. In some instances, Bankowski and Bankowska consulted antique books to forge certificates of authenticity on aged paper.
“These two individuals didn’t just sell counterfeit art—they undermined trust, exploited buyers and attempted to profit from fraud,” says James C. Barnacle Jr., FBI assistant director in charge, in a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York.
Many of the forgeries were created by an artist based in Poland.
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One Warhol fabrication, which sold for $5,500, depicts a nude couple draped in neon yellow and blue light. The piece is a copy of one of Warhol’s pop art screenprints from his 1983 Love series.
“Today’s printers have become so sophisticated that the reproductions they produce have become almost indistinguishable from Warhol’s originals,” writes art dealer Richard Polsky for My Art Broker. “Mind you, these are not perfect copies, but they are good enough to fool most collectors and many dealers.”
Another counterfeit depicts stenciled army helicopters—one with a child’s bow tied to it—on a piece of cardboard above the text “Wrong War.” The piece is a copy of those distributed by Banksy during a 2003 London demonstration against the Iraq War. The fake sold for $2,000, according to the federal government. By comparison, three artworks from that protest, presumed to be authentic, sold at auction in 2023 for the equivalent of nearly $33,000 in today’s currency, BBC News reported at the time.
Meanwhile a forgery of Triple Boats, a 1963 painting by Latvian American artist Raimonds Staprans, fetched $60,000.
One of the duo’s most profitable forgeries garnered them an additional penalty. The $160,000 sale of a fake painting wrongly attributed to Richard Mayhew, a Native American and Black artist—among other forgeries of Indigenous artworks, including by Luiseño painter Fritz Scholder—earned a federal charge for the misrepresentation of Native American-produced goods.
“This artwork scheme doesn’t just cheat buyers,” Doug Ault, assistant director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, says in the federal statement. “It steals from Native American artists and undermines the integrity of an entire cultural marketplace.”
Did you know? Look twice
The fabrication of First Nations artworks was at the center of one of the largest art fraud schemes in history, reported Jordan Michael Smith for Smithsonian magazine in March 2024. Up to 10,000 fake works sold over decades and attributed to Anishinaabe artist Norval Morrisseau, known as the “Picasso of the North,” netted some $100 million in criminal profits.
With the global art market valued at $57.5 billion, art forgeries remain a lucrative business. In October 2025, authorities in Germany shuttered an international forgery ring accused of producing fake Rembrandts, Picassos and Kahlos—among works by other high-profile artists. One painting, a Rembrandt fake, was listed for sale at $150 million.
Bankowski and Bankowska face a maximum prison sentence of 20 years and a restitution payment of at least $1.9 million.
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