Ringleader in Norval Morrisseau art fraud ring to be sentenced Thursday in Thunder Bay

One of eight people charged in what Ontario Provincial Police say is the largest art fraud investigation in Canadian history is expected to be sentenced Thursday in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in Thunder Bay, Ont.

Gary Lamont pleaded guilty on Dec. 4 to a charge of making false documents, mainly artwork, that was attributed to Morrisseau and a count of defrauding the public in an amount exceeding $5,000.

Lamont oversaw the production and distribution of hundreds of forged artworks falsely attributed to Morrisseau starting in 2002, according to the agreed statement of facts submitted to the courts. 

According to the statement of facts, 190 "Lamont Ring Forgeries" have been identified to date, with 117 of them seized by investigators.

"To have one of the key figures that we've been interested in admit to his guilt in terms of creating fake Morrisseaus, that's a huge step forward," said Johnathan Sommer, a lawyer who specializes in art forgery. 

Sommer represented Barenaked Ladies keyboardist Kevin Hearn in a lawsuit against a Toronto art dealer for allegedly selling him a fake Morrisseau painting. The Ontario Court of Appeal sided with Hearn and awarded him $60,000 in damages.  

It used to be very difficult to convince police and courts to take art fraud seriously, said Sommer. 

"They treat it almost like an amusing spectacle, you know, a tale of charming rogues that defraud people who have more money than they know what to do with," he said.  "There's a lot of really ugly criminality that's connected with this art fraud, Sommer said." 

Sommer estimates there are significantly more fraudulent works in circulation than genuine Morrisseau paintings. 

"It severely muddied his legacy," he said. "They undermine the relationship between viewers of the art and who Morrisseau really was."

Police laid more than 40 charges against eight people this past March after a years-long investigation into the forgery of the famous Anishinaabe artist's work. The investigation led to the seizure of more than 1,000 pieces of forged Morrisseau artwork

"There is likely at least another 5,000 fraudulent artworks out there, " said Cory Dingle, executive director of Norval Morrisseau's estate. "The real battle hasn't even started." 

Morrisseau's estate faces an expensive and fraught task — finding, investigating and denouncing the thousands of fake works to preserve Morrisseau's authentic legacy. 

The sheer volume of fakes to identify combined with the difficulty of legally proving them as inauthentic is an undue burden for the estate to bear, said Dingle.