The Gold Coast Bulletin

Bid to sell art crashes

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A WEST Virginia man tried to fetch a total of $55 million for two oil paintings he did not have access to and falsely claimed were stolen in the largest art heist in US history, federal authoritie­s said.

Todd Desper, of Beckley, West Virginia, was arrested on Monday at his home on wire fraud charges. He will face the charges in Boston in June.

FBI agent Geoffrey Kelly said in an affidavit that Desper, 47, solicited buyers on Craigslist for paintings stolen from Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990: Storm on the Sea of Galilee and The Concert.

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