Leonardo Patterson, Disgraced Dealer in Latin American Artifacts, Dies at 82

New York Times

03-04-2025

Leonardo Patterson, who rose improbably from rural poverty in Costa Rica to the towering heights of the global antiquities market, despite accusations that he trafficked in fake and stolen artifacts — and who fell precipitously when those accusations proved to be true — died on Feb. 11 in Bautzen, a city in northeastern Germany. He was 82.
His death, which had not been previously reported, was confirmed by the authorities in Bautzen. They did not provide an exact location or a cause of death.
The market for Latin American antiquities took off in the 1960s, enabled by an almost complete lack of laws preventing the often wholesale looting of pre-Columbian sites. Carvings, headdresses and jewelry that had sat for centuries in forgotten tombs and temples suddenly flooded galleries in New York, London and Paris.
Mr. Patterson was uniquely positioned to ride the wave. He said he never learned to read, but what he lacked in book learning he made up for in street smarts. First in Miami and then in New York, he developed a reputation for always having rare, beautiful items, at a time when owning an authentic Olmec stone head was the height of Manhattan chic.
'In the '60s, '70s and '80s, when he was very active, nobody really cared,' Arthur Brand, an art detective who later testified against Mr. Patterson in court, said in an interview. 'Museums, auction houses, everybody looked the other way.'
Mr. Patterson's impoverished background only added to his appeal. He claimed to straddle the line between two worlds, as a globe-trotting sophisticate who retained a sturdy foothold in the jungles of Central America, giving him unmatched access and insight into the antiquities trade.
He made a fortune. He frequented Studio 54 in bespoke three-piece suits and tooled around Manhattan in a Ferrari.
But his allure began to curdle as countries crafted agreements to limit the antiquities trade, and as the reduced supply of real artifacts led to an abundance of fake ones. Mr. Patterson always insisted that his items were real and legal, but many experts did not believe him.
'He aided and abetted a great degree of looting,' Karen Olsen Bruhns, a consultant with the National Foundation of Archaeology of El Salvador, said in an interview. 'He ripped off a number of countries.'
In 1984, a grand jury in Boston indicted him for trying to sell a fake Mayan fresco. Not long after receiving a probationary sentence, he was arrested at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport and charged with trying to smuggle in more artifacts, along with several dozen endangered sea turtle eggs.
This time, he claimed that he hadn't broken the law because the artifacts were fake (and that he needed to eat the eggs for his health). He was once again placed on probation.
In 1987, he relocated to Germany, where antiquities laws at the time were much looser and he could reinvent himself once more. He found a small group of wealthy private clients, and soon he was placing items in galleries and exhibitions around Europe. He had a blue, chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce, and he sponsored a local professional polo team.
His recovery was so absolute that in 1992 he put on a show at the Vatican pavilion at the World Expo in Seville, Spain, during which he met Pope John Paul II. In 1995, Costa Rica named him a cultural attaché to the United Nations.
Eventually, though, the authorities caught up with him.
In 2004, after years of investigations, German customs officials at Frankfurt Airport seized a shipment of antiquities bound for Mr. Patterson's collection.
Two years later, British officials, using information from Mr. Brand, recovered a gold Peruvian headdress from Mr. Patterson. That same year, the Spanish police seized 45 objects from a warehouse he had leased in Santiago de Compostela. Shortly after, he moved the rest of the collection, some 1,000 items, to Germany.
Mr. Patterson was arrested several times in the years that followed, though he managed to avoid trial. Finally, in 2015, a court in Munich convicted him of trafficking in fake and illegal artifacts. He received a $40,000 fine and three years of home confinement.
Afterward, he largely withdrew from public life, though his story did not end. Investigators believe he hid hundreds of items around France and Germany that have not yet been found.
At his death, Mr. Patterson was being sued in Dresden, Germany, by the Mexican government, which was seeking to recover 78 Mesoamerican artifacts it claimed had been looted from ancient jungle sites.
Leonardo Augustus Patterson was born on April 15, 1942, in Limon, a town on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica. Little is known about his family history. He said that his father left home when he was very young and that his mother, a farmer, died when he was a teenager.
He said he found his first antiquity, a shard of ancient pottery, in a yam field when he was 7.
He moved to San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica, when he was 15. There, he found work with a jeweler, who tasked him with melting down gold rings and necklaces that looters brought in from unprotected archaeological sites.
But Mr. Patterson saw further potential.
'I wondered why I should be melting these old things down to make a terrible ring out of them,' he told the German magazine Der Spiegel in 2016.
After selling items locally for several years, he moved to Miami, where he imported them for local galleries. A chance encounter with a wealthy collector led to opportunities in New York, where he had moved by the late 1970s.
Mr. Patterson kept his family life largely secret. He claimed to have at least 13 children by five different women. A list of survivors was not immediately available.
Though few people doubted that Mr. Patterson had committed a long list of crimes, even some of his antagonists admitted that he had an endearing side. They cited his serene personality and his dry wit — a quiet charisma that seemed to undergird his entire career.
'He was a lovable guy,' Mr. Brand said.
When he told Mr. Patterson that he was planning to write a book about him, Mr. Brand recalled, Mr. Patterson replied, 'Please, just wait until I'm dead.'