Andrew Crowley Receives Suspended Sentence for Fraudulent Antique Sales Attempt at Sotheby's

Andrew Crowley, 46, of Longwell Green, Gloucestershire, has been handed a two-year suspended prison sentence at Southwark Crown Court after admitting to dishonestly making a false representation with intent to gain.

Crowley attempted to sell three Cycladic figures and an Anatolian stargazer statuette, purportedly inherited from his grandfather, to Sotheby's auction house in London between November 2022 and July 2023. He presented fake invoices, allegedly dated 1976, to substantiate the items' provenance.

However, forensic examination revealed that the accompanying paperwork was produced using printing methods not available until 2001, some 25 years after the supposed creation date. Sotheby's experts also identified multiple spelling mistakes within the fraudulent documents.

Prosecutors initially suggested the genuine value of such items could be around £680,000 based on prior sales. Judge Nicholas Rimmer adjusted this estimate to £340,000, acknowledging the hypothetical nature of the original valuation.

Judge Rimmer noted that the attempt was "crude" and that Sotheby's identified the documents as bogus early in the process. While accepting that Crowley had inherited the statues and did not believe them to be counterfeits themselves, the judge concluded that "the offending and dishonesty in this case must turn around the paperwork."

The court ordered Crowley to complete 200 hours of unpaid work and pay £1,630 in costs.