Shaun Greenhalgh - Monies Involved

Monies Involved

Had the Greenhalghs managed to sell all 120 artworks they had offered it is estimated that they could have earned as much as £10m. This would have made the average value of each piece over £83,000, though in fact monies received varied between £100 (for the Eadred Reliquary) and £440,000 (for the Amarna Princess). However, this grand total figure is highly speculative, and a number of factors underlie its uncertainty.

In the event the Greenhalghs did not manage to offload most of their works. Many they did sell, like the Eadred Reliquary, received only minimal amounts. Others, like the Lowry painting ,The Meeting House only gained in value from their repeated resale, which was not a reflection of the Greenhalghs, and of course would not have benefited them. As time went on, more ambitious, expensive pieces of work were produced, some of which did sell, like the Risley Park Lanx. However, these were subject to more scrutiny and indeed it was one of these, the Assyrian reliefs, which led to their being exposed and caught. This suggests the longevity of their scam was concentrated on the passing off of lower level items.

Balanced against this must be the success of sales to private individuals. They are unlikely to have had the same level of expertise at their disposal as institutions, and are probably less willing to advertise their losses once the forgeries were detected. Certainly they have not had the same exposure as the debacle surrounding the Bolton Museum, for example. Two individual buyers, "wealthy Americans" have been noticed, but only after they donated their purchase to the British Museum. Another piece sold to an unnamed private buyer came to light when the Art Institute of Chicago announced that The Faun, a ceramic sculpture on display since 1997 as the work of the 19th-century French master Paul Gauguin, was also a forgery by Shaun Greenhalgh. The museum purchased the sculpture from a private dealer in London, who had bought it at a Sotheby's auction in 1994.

In addition, the bank records of the Greenhalghs only went back six years, so in the final analysis the exact amount of monies involved over the seventeen-year scam has not been determined. What is known is that "two Halifax accounts... one containing £55,173 and the other £303,646" were frozen, pending a confiscation hearing in January 2008, and Shaun Greenhalgh was convicted for "conspiracy to conceal and transfer £410,392." Estimates of the amount of money the Greenhalghs actually made vary from £850,000 to £1.5 million.

The impact of their remaining forgeries on the market, however many there might be, cannot now be considered of immediate pertinence to the Greenhalghs. These items' worth may fall when they are exposed as forgeries, yet they may gain some cachet from their notoriety.