The man who oversaw the creation of thousands of forged artworks falsely attributed to Anishinaabe artist Norval Morrisseau faces a sentencing hearing today in Thunder Bay, Ont.
David John Voss pleaded guilty on June 4 to counts of forgery and uttering forged documents for operating an art fraud ring out of Thunder Bay between 1996 and 2019.
Investigators have called the case Canada’s largest art fraud investigation, resulting in more than 1,000 paintings seized.
The sentencing for Voss, 52, was scheduled for 10 a.m. ET in the Superior Court of Justice. This story will be updated once the proceedings are over.
Morrisseau died at age 75 in 2007. The renowned artist from the Ojibway Bingwi Neyaashi Anishinaabek First Nation in northwestern Ontario is known as the founder of the Woodlands School of Art. His work has been exhibited in galleries across Canada, including at Rideau Hall in Ottawa.
Fraud case involved assembly-line process
According to an agreed statement of facts heard in court this past June, Voss developed an assembly-line process and enlisted multiple painters in the fraud ring. He would draw an outline in pencil and then mark the areas to be coloured in with letter codes corresponding to different colours.
“The painters were paid to apply the paint in accordance with this ‘paint by numbers’ process,” said the statement.
A total of eight people were charged in March 2023 in connection with the art fraud ring, after a years-long police investigation involving the Thunder Bay Police Service and Ontario Provincial Police:
- Gary Lamont, David John Voss, Diane Marie Champagne, Linda Joy Tkachyk and Benjamin Paul Morrisseau of Thunder Bay.
- Jeffrey Gordon Cowan of Niagara-on-the-Lake, James White of Essa Township and David P. Bremner of Locust Hill.
In December 2023, Lamont — who was considered the “ringleader” of the operation — was sentenced to five years of incarceration, with credit for one year of time already served. He pleaded guilty to a charge of making false documents, mainly artwork, attributed to Morrisseau, and a count of defrauding the public in an amount exceeding $5,000.