Seattle antiques scamsters finally put out of business

From the Seattle Times, a followup on a story we noted here:

Attorney General Christine Gregoire filed consumer-fraud charges yesterday against the owners of Thesaurus Fine Arts, a defunct Seattle store known to sell phony Asian antiquities.

The civil suit comes 13 months after a Seattle Times series, "The Art of Deception," exposed the Pioneer Square gallery, its owners, and two Hong Kong testing laboratories for certifying fakes.

The store was owned by Steven Ng Sheong Cheung, 68, a former University of Washington professor and renowned economist in China, and his wife, Linda Su Cheung, 57, according to the suit filed in King County Superior Court. Steven Cheung, who could not be contacted yesterday, had denied ownership.

As the article correctly notes, there are many bad apples in the field. Citing another dealer:

What made Thesaurus unique, Fairman said, was that nearly everything in the shop was intentionally misrepresented.

"The usual scheme is a little more subtle," he said. "There are shops that open where half the objects are fakes, where the dealers mix good and bad, and kind of shrug their shoulders when things go out the door."

Posted by David on March 22, 2004 2:52 PM