NEW YORK, NY.- The first warning that there might be something wrong with the Andy Warhols that a family of art collectors had been buying through a Miami gallery came last December. When the family decided to sell some of the works, it said in a lawsuit filed Thursday, Christie’s, the auction house, questioned their authenticity.

The family’s art dealer, Leslie Roberts of Miami Fine Art Gallery, went to extraordinary lengths to try to reassure them that they were authentic, the lawsuit said.

An email from a person that the gallery said was its contact at the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts claimed that the works were legitimate, the filing says. And two people came to the family’s Florida home with business cards claiming that they were appraisers from a rival auction house, Phillips, the suit said, and proclaimed the works to be authentic Warhols.

But those assurances fell apart on closer examination, according to the lawsuit that the family — Matthew, Judy and Richard Perlman — filed against Roberts and the gallery in state court in Miami.

The email address claiming to be from the contact at the Warhol foundation was apparently fake, ending in “@andywarholfoundation.co,” while the real foundation’s email domain is “@warholfoundation.org,” the filing said. And Phillips said that it did not employ the two people who visited the family’s home to appraise the works and that the business cards they had presented were fakes, the filing said.

“Les Roberts and Miami Fine Art Gallery are fraudsters,” reads the lawsuit, which accuses the defendants of duping the family into paying more than $6 million for fraudulent Warhols.

Reached by phone Friday, Roberts, the director of Miami Fine Art Gallery, vehemently denied the lawsuit’s version of events, saying that he felt he was being unfairly maligned and that Matthew Perlman had been an active partner in the joint venture and worked alongside him for “every single one” of the art purchases.

He said that some of the Warhols came from the foundation but that many more came from “high-end” galleries that he viewed as all legitimate sources for art. He said that he believed that the Perlman family spent less than $6 million. And he denied hiring the appraisers who said they were from Phillips.

“I don’t believe anything was a forgery; everything looked good to me,” Roberts said, later adding, “I don’t know where the authority is they say it’s fake.”

One of his lawyers, Jonathan Marc Davidoff, said in a statement that “we intend to vigorously defend against the baseless and misleading allegations in the complaint.”

Roberts, 63, has been in legal trouble before. In 2015, he pleaded guilty to mail fraud and served a prison sentence after acknowledging to prosecutors that he and his children had defrauded customers by selling them forged paintings, according to court documents.

“I try to be more cautious than ever because of my past,” Roberts said.

The Perlman family first encountered Roberts in early 2023, when Richard Perlman, a real estate investor, and his son Matthew Perlman visited Roberts’ gallery, a colorful storefront in the upscale Coconut Grove neighborhood of Miami.

The gallery advertised an art selection that included work by Warhol, Jeff Koons, Robert Indiana and Banksy. Its website says the gallery director has a “very strong reputation in the art world with extensive training from New York University and an internship at Sotheby’s, New York.”

The Perlmans were impressed by the gallery’s art and the connections that Roberts said he had in the art world, the lawsuit said, and they were thrilled when Roberts told them that he had a relationship with the Warhol foundation that could get them works by Warhol at a discount. Authentic Warhols fetch some of the highest prices among 20th-century artists.

After the family started buying works it thought were by Warhol, their business relationship with Roberts deepened when they agreed to establish a joint venture with Roberts to buy more Warhols, the lawsuit said. The venture would purchase art directly from the foundation — the family was supposed to pay one half and the gallery the other — and would then sell the works and split the proceeds, the lawsuit said. The Perlmans agreed, signing papers in August of last year that put them in business with Roberts.

Their supposed contact at the Warhol foundation identified himself as Alex Herman, writing from the “alex@andywarholfoundation.co” email address to offer them “rare” Warhols for below-market prices, the lawsuit said. The emails claimed some of the Warhol works were “test prints” that were not initially meant for sale to the public.

“Upon information and belief, the individual named Alex Herman is simply an email address that Roberts created and operates to impersonate a supposed Warhol Foundation employee,” the suit claims, adding that “if Herman is a real person,” he would be part of a criminal conspiracy.

Roberts denied in the phone conversation that he had posed as Herman, saying that he had been in the room with Matthew Perlman when Herman called and that Herman had said he was not with the foundation but could help broker art deals for a fee.

Among the pieces the person offered, the lawsuit said, were a “rendition that Andy Warhol did of his famous John Wayne” for $150,000 and “one of the Original Warhol Canvases of The Royal Queen Elizabeth” for $82,500. (A bargain, indeed: A print of the famed blue portrait of the queen was sold at auction in 2022 for more than $850,000.)

An inventory of purported Warhol works that the Perlmans bought outlined more than 70 items listed in the lawsuit, including a red painting of John Lennon on canvas, a work referred to as “Marilyn Monroe No. 28” and package of screen-prints, a common technique Warhol used.

Things began to unravel in late 2023 when Richard Perlman and his wife, Judy Perlman, a retired lawyer, approached Christie’s to sell some of the works, the lawsuit said. The auction house — which had sold a Warhol silk-screen of Marilyn Monroe for $195 million at a record-breaking auction in 2022 — had concerns about the authenticity of the art, the court papers said.

“In the months that followed, plaintiffs continued to demand answers from Roberts, including backup invoices, proof of wire transfers to the foundation, other documentation regarding the works, and appraisals related to the works that had purportedly been purchased from the foundation,” wrote one of the Perlmans’ lawyers, Luke Nikas. “Roberts failed to provide sufficient backup.”

Nikas has separately represented the Warhol foundation and Phillips, who are not parties to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit accuses Roberts of perpetrating a scheme in which the Perlmans would pay his gallery half of the purchase price, under the impression that it would be transferred, with the other half, to the Warhol foundation. Roberts and his gallery would then ship the Perlmans the works, the filing said. The Perlmans now realize that the invoices they were given do not match the format that the foundation uses for its financial records, the suit said.

The Perlmans’ lawsuit demands that Roberts refund all purchases from the gallery and return several pieces of art that the family consigned to the gallery, including works by Chuck Close, Anne Truitt and Richard Prince — in addition to other monetary damages.

The statement from Roberts’ lawyer, Davidoff, said the allegations in the complaint would be “completely refuted,” adding that the consigned artwork is “fully accounted for.”

“Notably, the plaintiffs have failed to include a significant amount of artwork purchased by our clients, as well as Matthew Perlman’s active role in the joint venture, including procuring and selling artwork for the joint venture with Mr. Roberts and his gallery,” Davidoff said in the statement.

Online, Roberts and his gallery project reverence for Warhol, advertising works on social media that are supposedly signed by the artist and hosting events to celebrate him. In a Q&A with Roberts that was posted to Artnet in June, Roberts said one of his “proudest moments” was “acquiring rare art from the Andy Warhol Foundation.”

He offered some advice to inexperienced art buyers.

“For those new to collecting,” he said, “it’s crucial to find a gallery director you trust.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.