Speaker 1: They have not pulled the plug on me yet, I'll try to make this brief because
I know I ran over my time.
Again, Mr. Barbee's analysis as the knuckle dragging FBI agent, okay are they fake or
are they not?
That's what I want to know.
Picking back up, I laughed about this, this showed up in the State Times morning advocate
paper, I was laughing with some friends of mine while we were doing some following up
on, and what I said was, "when you got a cartoon made about you, you've made it I guess, I
don't know".
So this showed up, this is a little bit better image of it and the artist was nice enough
to send me a nice hard quality resolution of what I can get out of the newspaper.
In addition to McGrown, the FBI and the U.S attorney's office, they had the most of this
contract.
We contracted with a Orion Analytical like Mr. Barabee, Jamie Morden, super nice guy to
deal with, extremely intelligent, very thorough just like Mr. Barabee, he looked at several I was
real nervous about boxing all that stuff up.
I sent him the paints and several originals and several fakes, several forgeries, sent
that to him.
Again, I said earlier the stuff I'm talking about, it's been talked about in court, a
lot of the McGrown's and Orion's findings were published.
They are in the court records, it's open to the public, anybody as long as you pay the
expense of photocopying or whatever, you can get this information.
So Orion issued a report based upon documents, I sent copies of documents, photographs that
I sent basically saying "Okay, the question was the forgeries for these reasons, the originals
are originals for these reasons".
The stuff that the FBI sees from the Toye's home is consistent with the material, the
paints, the techniques used to create the question, paintings the forgeries. Basically saying
the ones the FBI sends us that were questionable, they're forgeries, they're not by the same
person that created the original Clementine Hunters
That were so graciously given to us by the Mr. Jack Britten and his family and Mr. Whitehead
to use during this investigation.
As an investigator, felt pretty good about that.
I think the prosecutors felt pretty good.
McCrone issued their report, not to go into it but McCrone basically said "yeah, there
is consistencies in the forgeries, there's consistencies in the originals but they're inconsistent,
the groups."
June 2006, we get our first guilty plead, Mr. Toye decides to plead guilty.
He pleads to a felony of conspiracy, the conspiracy counted the indictment.
The FBI, someone in their 80's, late 70's, it's not our normal subjects that we normally
go after but people at some point, you keep committing crimes, you got to do something.
So Mr. Toye decides to plead guilty, this is the press release that's issued.
Oh this is a great story here, there is Mr. Toye on the New York Times website with his
cane, he had a cane by this point.
After he plead guilty, that's the article there.
Again, that's a New York's Time photo there of Mr. Toye.
Maybe he was a sword yeilder in another time, I don't know.
Funny story, I'm standing in the US attorney's office after we get out of court, I'm standing
in the federal courthouse in Lafayette, Louisiana after the guilty plea and I'm with Mr. Toye's
defense council and I'm with Alec Vanhook, the prosecutor and Cytherea Journigan, the
other prosecutor and we're looking out the glass in front of us and I see Mr. Toye going
after the New York Time's photographer and another photographer and he's swinging that
cane like Mort McGuire swinging that bat for the wall and he connects too and I'm thinking
"oh my god, he just committed a felony, the judge just told him he's not supposed to commit
any type of crime, state, federal, local, whatever.
That's a felony assault on the steps of the federal courthouse, which I knew I didn't
want to touch that one with a 10 foot pole.
Again, that's the same photo but on the Baton Rouge paper.
I'm standing, a couple days later on a river in Colorado on the family vacation in June
and I get an email from someone saying that Mr. Toye got his Wikipedia page.
I'm reading my blackberry, oh man I got a fishing rod in one hand and a blackberry in
the other.
So Mr. Toye is an old forger in Baton Rouge, he made it big on that one.
Mrs. Toye shortly there after in August, plead guilty also to a felony conspiracy count.
Not too long after that, Tom Spickahum publishes the article about Robbie Lucky, they set a
court date, he's supposed to plead guilty.
On August 8, 2011, the piece comes out, Mr. Lucky plead guilty to a felony, but not the
conspiracy count but a separate mail fraud count.
Maine Antiques Digest in December 2011 publishes the article in one of their editions.
23 victims are named in the case, I believe there are a lot more out there.
There were victims who did not corporate with us in this investigation, there are many more
victims I believe out there that I just don't know about.
I don't know if I will ever know about, ever.
This is the sentence that judge Dedrall, the federal judge in Alexandria handed down for
Mr. Toye, plead to the felony conspiracy charge.
Mr and Mrs. Toye, they're up in age, a lot of problems with their conditions that was
taken into account during sentencing by the judge.
I think the judge did a very good job in looking at all the evidence and coming up with the
appropriate sentences.
2 years supervised release probation, over $400,000 in restitution paid to the named
victims.
Kind of unique, I don't work a lot of art forgery cases, I've only worked one.
But the judge ordered that Mr. Toye should assist investigators in identifying and cataloging
every Clementine Hunter forgery that he created and that he will also re-sign, upon the request
of any victim, re-sign with his name any Clementine forgeries that he created and that victims
want signed by him.
We're going through the process of that.
No fine.
Mrs. Toye was sentenced the same day, again this is a open court, any of you guys could
of saw this.
She plead to the felony conspiracy count.
She got a year of home confinement, 2 years supervised release, same amount as restitution
and again, she should assist in the identification and cataloging of any Clementine Hunter forgeries
created by her husband, William Toye.
Also, no fine.
After that, someone started a "Justice for Clementine" Facebook that's still out there
now.
I'm sure there will be something about this conference on that when it's over or later
today.
Some very nasty comments on that too.
Press release goes out for the sentencing of Mr. Lucky on January 3, 2012 basically
wrapping up the whole case for the public.
I added some verbiage in here, we had FBI agents interviewing people all over the country.
Thank you to all the field officers that got requests from me and went out and located
these victims, interviewed them and this is like the 3rd time they have been interviewed
by the FBI in the last 20 years, I'm sure they didn't like that and then photographing
the works of art, the forgeries that we were interested in.
We also named the labs including "The National Center for Preservation Technology and Training"
here in Natchitoches giving them credit for assisting in the investigation.
Mr. Lucky received the sentence, he plead to that mail fraud charge, he got 25 months
imprisonment with the federal Bureau of Prisons, he will be in jail for 25 months, he won't
be in jail for 2 months and then out on good behavior, it's not really how the federal
system is set up.
He got 3 years of supervised release probation, once he gets out of prison, he has to be supervised,
including meeting with probation officers for the next 3 years when he gets out and
he was ordered to pay over $300,000 in restitution to the named victims that he sold paintings
to.
He was also ordered to serve 200 hours of community service and according to Judge Durell,
preferably something benefiting the art community.
I'm not sure what that would be and he was not given a fine.
This is what I learned about William Toye through the investigation.
He was a doctor, of what I have no idea but he became a doctor at some point, an art forger,
an inventor, he was a New York Metropolitan Opera employee, symphony conductor, opera
scenery designer, a draftsman, and according to one person we interviewed in Baton Rouge
who witnessed William Toye tear up, we don't know whether it was a fake, forgery or a real
piece of art, in her presence and claimed that he was a patron and protector of the
arts.
Just in summary, this investigation had an excellent prosecution behind it, Alec Vanhook,
the first assistant in Shreveport, Cytherea Journigan, who is now an assistant US attorney,
she was in Shreveport, she is now in Baltimore, Maryland prosecuting cases.
Highly intelligent people, aggressive, very aggressive important investigator to have
an aggressive prosecution behind them.
It's unbelievable, it makes me sleep better at night.
This case dealt with folk art, not fine art.
I could find no reference to any other case by any type of law enforcement agency that
concerned folk art.
FBI works a lot of cases with fine art thefts and forgeries and frauds, nothing really with
folk art.
Kind of unique, there might be some out there, I just don't know about it, I couldn't find
anybody who could tell me about it.
So number one, that was unique in that case.
We stopped an almost 40 year career by mostly unknown forger, Mr. Toye.
I interviewed Mr. Toye at the search in his driveway and obtained a confession from him
about what he did and I remember walking away from that thinking "I just solved a forty
year mystery here".
I never thought I'd be in that position.
Unique about this case, we had such a large number of forgeries that we identified that
I actually have pictures of, some that I have pictures of that have been identified as forgeries,
I may never know where they are.
I'm only going to be an FBI agent so long, I'm only going to be on this earth so long,
they're going to pop up eventually.
Hopefully I kept a good enough record where some investigator later on will inherit my
work and they'll pop up and they'll have some information there.
So that was very unique.
I think it was over 200 or so that we actually identified and we have records of.
We used 5 different labs to include the US secret service.
Our lab in Quantico contracted the US secret service lab about some paper material associated
with some of those false letters of provenance that we had.
MrCrone, Orion Analytical in Massachusetts, the FBI laboratory for the handwriting and
the materials analysis on the documents, secret service and also, the lab here in Natchitoches,
"The National center for Preservation Technology and Training".
Another unique aspect to this case is that we had a lot, and the government incurred a
lot of expense on this, we had an extremely large number of paintings that were analyzed
by two different private labs.
I'm not aware of any state, local, federal case where that many paintings were analyzed
in forensic analysis performed on that many paintings.
So in closing, I thank the National center for Preservation Technology and Training for
hosting this conference, having poor little ol me as a speaker, the work that they did
for us and the openness to partner up with the FBI.
The FBI always values it's relationship it has with other government agencies and in
the private sector too.
It was very nice to have that and right here at home to protect Louisiana's history.
Also, to Mr. Whitehead, Mr. Jack Britain and the Britain family for letting us use their
original paintings which made me nervous to keep for such a long time, the victims in
the case that cooperated with the investigation and did the right thing and then the prosecution
staff, Mr Vanhook and Mrs. Cytherea Journigan for being so aggressive and taking on this
very complex, very crazy case and we had a pretty successful ending to it I believe and
the support staff with the FBI and also at the US attorney's office in Shreveport.
I kind of wish I would have another case like this but I kind of wish I wouldn't have another
case like this so thank you for having me today.