He went undercover to catch art thieves. Now he's using tech to stop forgeries
Over the course of his nearly 30 years working as an undercover agent with the FBI, Walker had taken part in countless stings like this: posing as a buyer or dealer, meeting suspects in art-scented lounges or dusty storage units, working to earn their trust. He caught Warhol counterfeiters slapping fake signatures over bogus canvases. He helped recover stolen Rembrandt paintings from a Seattle-area art thief. He spent months earning the trust of Earl Marshawn Washington, the now-infamous printmaker and forger who created and sold thousands of knockoffs.
The Bouaziz case stood out only for how little effort it seemed to require. His Palm Beach gallery peddled fakes—Georgia O'Keeffe, Keith Haring, and Banksy among them— marketing inexpensive reproductions as originals, aided by bogus provenance documents and falsified signatures. His con worked well, for a while at least: Pieces could fetch prices into the tens or even hundreds of thousands.
Walker knew how that line worked. As a founding member of the FBI's Art Crime Team, he'd gone undercover in dozens of operations. Formed in 2004 in response to the looting of Iraqi museums and growing international art trafficking, the Art Crime Team was designed as a specialized unit of agents trained in cultural property law, art history, and international smuggling.
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