John Drewe - 1995 Arrest and Prosecution

1995 Arrest and Prosecution

In September 1995, Scotland Yard quietly arrested Myatt. He had fallen out with Drewe and agreed to cooperate. On April 16, 1996, police raided Drewe's house in Reigate, Surrey, and found materials he had used to forge certificates of authenticity. They also found two catalogues Drewe had stolen from the Victoria and Albert Museum. Police also found evidence that another artist in addition to Myatt might have supplied some of the forgeries.

During the interrogation, Drewe continuously protested his innocence against all evidence. He was released on bail and disappeared. Two months later police found him by following his mother.

This time, Drewe had concocted a conspiracy theory of frame-up. He claimed that he was an arms dealer and a fall guy for a conspiracy including British law enforcement and governments of seven countries and that there had been a total of 4,000 forgeries that had been used to finance arms deals between the UK arms industry and Iran, Iraq and Sierra Leone. He also claimed that he was a British intelligence agent, that Myatt was a neo-Nazi operative and that Robert Harris, a name mentioned in many forged certificates, was a South African arms dealer. He could not prove any of these stories, of course.

If he had intended to scare police to drop the case, he failed. The prosecution declared his story pure fantasy and charged him.

The trial against Drewe and Myatt began in September 1998. Drewe fired his lawyer because he refused to use Drewe's story as a defence and decided to defend himself. Again he failed; Myatt called him a liar to his face and the jury declared him guilty in six hours.

On February 13, 1999, Drewe was sentenced to six years for conspiracy to defraud, two counts of forgery, one of theft, and one of using a false instrument with intent. He served two years in prison.