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Banksy works in eBay scam

25/09/2007

Enigmatic graffiti artist Banksy has had his work entangled in a scam involving auction site eBay.

Details of the apparent fraud were passed to The Art Newspaper, by a whistleblower implicated in the operation.

According to the insider, unauthorised prints were put up for auction on eBay, with their prices artificially inflated due to 'shill bidding', whereby associates of the fraudulent seller make repeated bids for the items in question.

It is thought that three junior employees of Pictures On Walls - Banksy's art dealer - distributed a number of the prints to accomplices, who were asked to make the items available for sale on the auction site.

The prints were allegedly embossed with the Pictures On Walls blindstamp - some carried false signatures - and the shill bidding was then encouraged, the whistleblower told the paper.

"They told us to do that...we'd start up other accounts and just...type in £1,000 higher than what someone else had put on it...we did that on everything we sold," he said.

"If there were a lot of people bidding on it...then I'd just see how ridiculous it could get with the money, I'd just keep adding on money. Someone always outbid me...I never had to buy anything myself," he added.

In a statement to the newspaper, Mark Stephens of Banksy's legal representatives Finers Stephens Innocent confirmed: "It appears that in spite of strict fiscal controls and strict controls of the physical prints that 25 bad prints have been sold on eBay."

"Pictures on Walls have called on eBay to assist in tracing these sales and also in tracing the money which will inexorably lead to those that have cynically betrayed the trust of the public, the artist and the company."

The mysterious Banksy - whose painting Space Girl and Bird was auctioned for £288,000 in April 2007 - added: "They say it's better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody, but I don’t think that applies to art prints.

"If it turns out that limited editions have not been limited in edition then I sincerely apologise. This is particularly unfortunate for the people who buy my work to flip it for a quick profit on eBay, as I wouldn't want to affect their mark-up."