A years-long investigation by the Thunder Bay Police Service and Ontario Provincial Police has resulted in charges against eight people for the forgery of artwork by Anishinaabe artist Norval Morrisseau.
The accused face a total of 40 charges, with five of them from Thunder Bay. The investigation began in 2019 when TBPS Det. Sgt. Jason Rybak was investigating the murder of Scott Dove and came across the documentary There Are No Fakes, which prompted the investigation into Morrisseau’s artwork.
The film tells the story of Kevin Hearn, the Barenaked Ladies keyboardist and guitarist, who purchased a purported Morrisseau painting from a Toronto gallery in 2005, raising questions about its authenticity. The investigation led to the seizure of over 1,000 pieces of forged Morrisseau artwork.
The accused were part of three distinct groups that created the fraudulent artwork, with the first group launched in 1996 and operating in Thunder Bay. The second group started in 2002 and brought in talented Indigenous artists to create the paintings. Finally, a third group began operating in southern Ontario in 2008.
The three groups traded paintings back and forth, with two of the accused involved in the distribution of paintings by all three groups. The fraud included creating fake certificates of authenticity, and some of the paintings, prints, and other pieces of artwork that were seized had sold for “tens of thousands of dollars to unsuspecting members of the public who had no reason to believe they weren’t genuine.”
According to Rybak, money was the main motivation for the fraud, and Morrisseau’s work was targeted because they knew he had struggles and never kept a list of his paintings.
The authenticity of Morrisseau’s paintings is a “multifaceted approach,” and the police conducted a wide range of witness interviews and reached out to different groups that had the ability to do certain forensic testing. The accused face charges for the forgery of artwork, fraud over $5,000, and proceeds of crime over $5,000.
The investigation led to an interim funding agreement for the women’s national team players with Canada Soccer, with eight people charged as a result of the investigation.
The terms of the interim agreement mirror a similar deal with the men’s national team, including per-game incentives and results-based compensation.
A new overarching collective bargaining agreement with both the men’s and women’s national teams is still being negotiated. Five-time Olympian Charmaine Crooks has been named interim president of Canada Soccer, the first woman and person of colour appointed to the role.
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