17 Kasım 2018 Cumartesi
Henri Mattise Painting: From Shah to Scam
türkçe links to original Turkish article
(Hürriyet Newspaper, 17 November 2018)
This is what all the fuss is about.
Iranian Milad Ferahmand (24), a medical student at Düzce
University, was scammed while trying to sell a painting by
famed French artist Henri Mattise. Ferahmand told police
that his grandfather had been a close confidante of the
Iranian Shah and a tribal chief. When his grandfather died
in 2006, Ferahmand was told by an art expert in Tehran
that a 1943 Mattise painting among his grandfather's
effects held in storage was quite valuable.
Bonafides
At first, Ferahmand's family was skeptical but then
became convinced of the painting's value. Three years
ago, Ferahmand came to Düzce for medical school by
car and brought the painting with him in order to sell
it. He asked the Turkish Culture and Tourism Ministry
to register the painting but the matter went unaddressed.
Through a friend named 'Amin', Ferahmand got in
contact with an individual living in Alanya named
Yılmaz Evci, who introduced himself to Ferahmand as
a dentist and who agreed to buy the painting for $4 million.
The two met on 10 October to seal the deal but after
dinner, when Ferahmand and Evci went to the former's
car to retrieve the painting, they found the car window
broken and the painting gone.
The great artist never made it to Düzce.
Ferahmand realized at this point that he was being
scammed by Evci, who put a gun to his head and
threatened him. On 2 November Ferahmand filed
a criminal complaint and the next day Evci was
picked up by police in Alanya. In his statement to police,
Evci claimed that he gave Ferahmand 320,000 TL
(about $60,000) for the painting. Nevertheless, Evci was
taken to jail.
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