Wendy Beard pulled a lot of stunts to make money off her elderly art customers — like claiming she was in a coma when they inquired about their artwork, or in the hospital for a double-lung transplant, the FBI says.
It worked for years, as her unsuspecting customers gave her artwork to sell on consignment — only she sold it and kept the money, including a mural-sized Ansel Adams photograph she sold for $440,000 without ever telling the owner.
Her customers, however, eventually caught on. The FBI was summoned. And the con artist eventually fessed up.
In U.S. District Court on Thursday, 58-year-old Beard — who inherited a lucrative art gallery from her millionaire father, but then started scamming customers one year after his death — pleaded guilty to wire fraud. In her plea agreement, she admitted she defrauded more than 10 customers who had entrusted her with selling more than $1.5 million worth of art.
Years-long scam from Detroit-area gallery
“She accepted responsibility for her conduct, which was the right thing to do in this situation,” her attorney, Steve Fishman, said following the plea hearing.
The Detroit Free Press, part of the USA TODAY Network, first reported on Beard’s yearslong crime spree following her arrest in 2022, when the FBI detailed her crimes in court documents, explained how she fell on the government’s radar, who she conned and the lengths to which she went to keep her ill-gotten gains.
Among her victims was the 82-year-old owner of the Ansel Adams photo she secretly sold for $440,000. When the owner tried to get the picture back, the FBI says Beard came up with a story: She was in the hospital getting a double lung transplant and was too sick to deal with the request.
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None of it was true, says the FBI, which discovered more victims, including: an 89-year-old man with Alzheimer’s who gave her five photographs to sell on consignment; a 69-year-old Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist and college professor who wanted her to sell some rare original photographs on consignment; a 72-year-old longtime friend; and a 70-year-old art collector who placed four items on consignment with Beard, including a signed Ansel Adams book and three photographs, one of which was “Painter’s Wife, Helen Abelen.”
Dozens of victims, fake emails
According to court documents, Beard initially ran the scheme out of a Detroit-area gallery that her father founded more than 50 years ago, though the business closed in 2020, so she ran it out of her home. The scheme started in 2017, one year after her father died, and ran until 2022, when her clients grew suspicious.
Beard wasn’t returning their artwork, so they contacted the Birmingham, Mich. police, who referred the complaints to the FBI. Dozens more victims came forward, including five individuals whose stories triggered criminal charges.
The victims were conned in many ways, the government says. For example, when her clients would ask for their work back, Beard not only lied about her health, but told some there was a lack of interest in their work, despite having already sold the photographs in question. She also created fake employees, who would correspond with the victims, pretending to work for Beard, when it was Beard herself who was writing the fake emails.
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“This defendant swindled numerous families out of valuable artwork and lied to them repeatedly in order to keep her fraud scheme afloat,” said U.S. Attorney Dawn Ison stated in announcing the guilty plea. “She did this for no reason other than to line her own pockets at the expense of her victims.”
Beard, who is free on bond, will be sentenced in December. While wire fraud carries a maximum 20-year prison sentence, she will likely receive a significantly shorter sentence due to her guilty plea.
Contact Tresa Baldas: tbaldas@freepress.com