Unmasking The Forger
In 1964, now 58-years old, de Hory began to tire of the forgery business, and soon his work began to suffer. Consequently, many art experts began noticing that the paintings they were receiving were forgeries. Some of the galleries examining de Hory's work alerted Interpol, and the police were soon on the trail of Legros and Lessard. Legros sent de Hory to Australia for a year, to keep him out of the eye of the investigation.
By 1966, more of de Hory's paintings were being revealed as forgeries; one man in particular, Texas oil magnate Algur H. Meadows, to whom Legros had sold 56 forged paintings, was so outraged to learn that most of his collection was forged, that he demanded the arrest and prosecution of Legros. Angered, Legros decided to hide from the police at de Hory's house on Ibiza, where he asserted ownership, and threatened to evict de Hory. Coupled with this and with Legros' increasingly violent mood swings, de Hory decided to leave Ibiza. Legros and Lessard were apprehended soon thereafter, imprisoned on charges of check fraud.
Elmyr continued to elude the police for some time, but, tired of life in exile, decided to move back to Ibiza to accept his fate. In August 1968, a Spanish court convicted him of the crimes of homosexuality and of consorting with criminals, sentencing him to 2 months in prison. He was never directly charged with forgery, because the court could not prove that he had ever created any forgeries on Spanish soil. He was released in October 1968 and expelled from Spain.
Read more about this topic: Elmyr De Hory