Thousands of phoney Norval Morrisseaus were seized by police. How did a fake get on a police auction website?
CBC
To the untrained eye, the Thunderbird Protects Young print listed for auction earlier this month looked like a great deal.
With the highest bid sitting at under $100, it was an opportunity to take a piece of famed Anishinaabe artist Norval Morrisseau's work home for cheap. It even said it included a certificate of authenticity, and it was listed on a police auction website.
The catch? It's a fake, according to the Morrisseau estate.
It's not clear how the print came to be listed on the website of Police Auctions Canada, which calls itself the country's official police auction — selling items that were seized, forfeited or found by public municipalities like police services, law enforcement agencies and transit commissions.
Over the years, multiple other fake Thunderbird Protects Young prints have been seized by police during investigations into rings that made fraudulent art attributed to Morrisseau, a key figure in the Indigenous art movement in Canada who died in 2007 at age 75.
Police have called the case "Canada's largest art fraud investigation in history" and some of those involved have been sentenced in the case. Court documents obtained by CBC News show an identical painting listed under "VOSS Ring Forgeries."
CBC News contacted Police Auctions Canada, which said it removed the listing pending an investigation. The auction site did not respond to additional questions about the origin of the print.
The Police Auctions Canada website said it is "not privy to specifics of where the items originated." The site notes a large portion of the sales go back to help non-profit organizations and community groups.
Both the Thunder Bay Police Service (TBPS) and Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) have been involved in a years-long investigation into the fraud ring, during which more than 1,000 paintings were seized.
"It was not our listing," said a TBPS spokesperson in an email. "The Thunder Bay Police Service does not work with this specific auction website."
Multiple OPP detachments are listed on the Police Auctions Canada website. When asked about the print via email, an OPP spokesperson said they did not have any information about the auctions.
The court documents obtained by CBC News show 11 prints titled Thunderbird Protects Young were seized by police. They are listed as Voss ring forgeries "Created at the Direction of James WHITE."
David Voss pleaded guilty in June 2024 to forgery and uttering forged documents for operating an art fraud ring out of Thunder Bay between 1996 and 2019. He was sentenced to five years in prison for his role in overseeing a "paint-by-numbers" assembly line to make thousands of forgeries.
James White of Essa Township was another one of the people charged in March 2023 in connection with the art fraud ring. His case is still before the courts.
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