In a post that we missed over the holidays, Derek Fincham of the Illicit Cultural Property Blog has a round-up of the top ten illicit art and antiquities stories of 2007.

Coming in at number 9: 

9. The still-to-be revealed extent of the forgeries created by Shaun Greenhalgh, who lived in Council Housing in Bolton with his aging parents. His forgeries fooled the British Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, and some of the world’s leading experts on Gauguin. The most surprising aspect may be the breadth of the forged objects which ranged from an ancient Greek kouros to Egyptian to ancient cuneiform to a sculpture by Gauguin. How many more Greenhalgh’s are on display now? We don’t know for sure. It calls to mind Orson Welles’ final masterpiece F for Fake: “It’s pretty but is it art? How is it valued? The value depends on opinion, opinion depends on the expert, a faker … makes fool of the experts - so who’s the expert? Who’s the faker?”

Read the whole post here.