For a detailed introduction to FAKE: Forgery, Lies, & eBay, check out this blog entry.
Here's how my publisher describes it (no, I don't refer to myself in the third person):
It was the golden age of eBay. Optimistic bidders went online to the world's
largest flea market in droves, ready to spend cash on everything from garden
gnomes to Mercedes convertibles. Among them were art collectors willing to spend
big money on unseen paintings, hoping to buy valuable pieces of art at below-market
prices. EBay also attracted the occasional con artist unable to resist the temptation
of abusing a system that prided itself on being "based on trust."
Kenneth Walton -- once a lawyer bound by the ethics of his profession to uphold
the law -- was seduced by just such a con artist and, eventually, became one himself.
Ripped from the headlines of the New York Times, the first newspaper to break
the story, Fake describes Walton's innocent beginnings as an online art-trading hobbyist
and details the downward spiral of greed that ultimately led to his federal felony conviction.
What started out as a satisfying exercise in reselling thrift store paintings for a profit
in order to pay back student loans and mounting credit card debt soon became a fierce
addiction to the subtle deception of luring unsuspecting bidders into overpaying for
paintings of questionable origins.
In a landscape peopled with colorful eccentrics hoping to score museum-quality
paintings at bargain prices, Walton entered into a partnership with Ken Fetterman,
an unslick (yet somehow very effective) con man. Over the course of eighteen months they
managed to take in hundreds of thousands of dollars by selling forged paintings and
bidding on their own auctions to drive up the prices. When their deception was discovered and
made international headlines, Walton found himself stalked by reporters and federal agents
while Fetterman went on the lam, sparking a nationwide FBI manhunt. His elaborate game of
cat and mouse lasted nearly three years, until the feds caught up with him after a routine
traffic violation and brought him to justice.
In this sensational story of the seductive power of greed, Kenneth Walton breaks his
silence for the first time and, in his own words, details the international scandal that
forever changed the way eBay does business.
