John Drewe

John Drewe (b 1948) is a British purveyor of art forgeries who commissioned impoverished artist John Myatt to paint them. He earned about £1.8 million this way.

John Drewe was born John Cockett in 1948 in Sussex, England. His childhood friend later told that he told tall tales about himself even in school. At the age of 17 he dropped out of school and changed his name to Drewe. He worked briefly with British Atomic Energy Authority when he could initially convince his superiors that he had a PhD in physics but resigned two years later. After that there is a 15-year gap in official records about him - no employment or tax records.

According to himself, Drewe joined the student protests in Paris in 1968, moved to Germany and studied physics in the Kiel University. When he moved back to the UK, he taught experimental physics at the University of Sussex for a year and received a second decree in physics in SUNY Buffalo. Aforementioned educational institutions have never heard of him.

In 1980 Drewe met Israeli expatriate Bat-Sheva Goudsmid and charmed her with claims that he was an advisor to the Atomic Energy Authority, a British Aerospace board member and working for the Ministry of Defense. In fact, he was teaching physics in a Jewish private school in Highgate until he was apparently pressured to leave in 1985.

Also in 1985 Drewe met John Myatt who was in dire need of money. First Drewe presented himself as a nuclear physicist who wanted art copies for his own home and hinted at links to British intelligence. Eventually he persuaded Myatt to paint forgeries for him. He used mud and vacuum cleaner dust to "age" them. Drewe contacted auction houses like Christie's and Sotheby's through intermediaries and sold paintings worth £1.8 million. He game Myatt £50.000-100.000 a piece and made maybe £1 million himself.

Drewe did not try to sell paintings in vacuum but created false backgrounds for them. He forged certificates of authenticity and even invoices of previous sales to establish false provenance and paper trail for the paintings. He wrote to relatives of the artist to fool them into authenticating the forgeries. He threatened a Catholic religious order with a lawsuit to force them to verify some of the paintings.

He also forged documents about previous owners so that the painting did not just suddenly appear from nowhere. In this he used records of dead people, some of them his old acquaintances. He also convinced some of his living friends to sign as previous owners of the paintings - most of them were broke or otherwise in trouble and accepted his money. To an old childhood friend Daniel Stokes he presented a sob story about a drinking wife and needy children and convinced him to pretend to be an owner of a fake of Ben Nicholson's painting. Clive Bellman, another acquaintance, was told that the paintings were sold to provide money for purchases of archive materials from the Soviet Union about the Holocaust. When he could not find anyone, he just invented nonexistent people.

In 1989 Drewe gained access to the letter archives of the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London by claiming to be an interested collector. He also donated two paintings - Myatt's forgeries - for a fundraising auction. Later he used the institute's stationary in his fake documents. Tate Gallery received a donation of two Bissire paintings but Bissire's son did not accept them. Drewe withdrew the paintings but a donation of £20.000 (about $32.000) opened the gallery archives for him. Victoria and Albert Museum also accepted him based on a false reference - he used himself.

Drewe used the opportunity to create false records to the archives. He replaced old pages and inserted numerous new ones into old art catalogues to include Myatt's forgeries. Later the institutions have said that it will take years to purge the archives of all the false information. Through a middleman Drewe also created a company called Art Research Associates and again used himself as a reference.

In 1995 Drewe left Goudsmid to marry doctor Helen Sussman. Goudsmid studied papers that Drewe had left behind and found a number of incriminating letters. She decided to tell the police and the Tate Gallery.

September 1995 Scotland Yard quietly arrested Myatt - he was already fed up and agreed to cooperate. In April 16 1996 police raided Drewe's house in the Reigate suburb of London and found materials he had used to forge certificates of authenticity. They also found two catalogues Drewe had stolen from the Victoria and Albert Museum. Police also found evidence that another artist in addition to Myatt might have supplied some of the forgeries.

During the interrogation, Drewe continuously protested his innocence against all evidence. He was released on bail and disappeared. Two months later police found him by following his mother.

This time Drewe had concocted a conspiracy theory of frame-up. He claimed that he was an arms dealer and a fall guy for a conspiracy including British law enforcement and governments of seven countries and that there had been total of 4000 forgeries that had been used to finance arms deals between UK arms industry and Iran, Iraq and Sierra Leone. He also claimed that he was a British intelligence agent, that Myatt was a neo-nazi operative and that Robert Harris, a name mentioned in many forged certificates, was a South African arms dealer. He could not prove anything, of course.

If he had intended to scare police to drop the case, he failed. Prosecution declared his story pure fantasy and charged him.

The trial against Drewe and Myatt begun at September 1998. Drewe fired his lawyer because he refused to use the story as a defense and decided to defend himself. Again he failed; Myatt called him a liar to his face and the jury declared him guilty in six hours.

In February 13 1999, Drewe was sentenced for six years for conspiracy to defraud, two counts of forgery, one of theft, and one of using a false instrument with intent. He served two years.