Shark Researcher Crushes Speculation tagged the seventeen foot tall white “Poe Girl” was responsible for the fatal attack on a female surfer in Morro Bay on Christmas Eve.

“The beauty of art may be in the eye of the beholder, but the behavior we assume today is objectively ugly.”

Hip art lover Christian Rosa is charged with counterfeiting and selling Raymond Pettibon’s “Wave” series.

According to the US District Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Rosa stole at least four unfinished works from Pettibon’s studio, worked them through to completion and then sold the forgeries, including a certificate of authenticity, through a middleman.

Regarding the case, FBI Assistant Director Michael J. Driscoll said, “The beauty of art may be in the eye of the beholder, but the behavior we claim today is objectively ugly.”

A whip of the truth from the Feds.

Rosa, 43, (actually the less charming Christian Weinberger), was educated in Vienna and enchants with his paintings in the zombie formalism style through the art scenes of LA and NY. (Roll his eyes here.) Both Jay-Z and Leo DiCaprio own his works.

Up until last year, Rosa usually made over a hundred grand, but recently the value of an original has fizzled to thirty at the most. Rosa may have thought that forging the wave paintings would be easy money to keep up the lifestyle he had become accustomed to.

Everyone loves surfing.

The counterfeits were each sold for over six-figure amounts.

Enough for a deposit on a wide riverside spread.

Originally made famous in the 1980s for his cover artwork for the punk band Black Flag, Pettibon was a friend and mentor of Rosa, painting each other’s portraits, sharing gallery spaces and playing dog races.

His wave paintings, begun in 1985, typically sell for around 1.2 million. They are characterized by their simplicity and make the familiar strange, as they say.

While Pettibon’s works are known for their simplicity, little more than elaborate daydream doodles from school notebooks, the style easily reveals a Pettibon wave.

New York art collector Michael Hort, who owns both works by Pettibon and Rosa, says it’s not surprising that Pettibon’s wave images are forged.

“Pettibon is easy to tear off. They are easy to replicate. They’re not that complicated, although you keep coming back and finding new things to look at. “

Experts have certainly found things to look at. It wasn’t long before the auditors sniffed out irregularities in the pieces. Artnet described the forged paintings as “seemingly strange shades of yellow and green mixed in Pettibon’s normal cobalt blue,” misplacement of the text and an overly careful signature.

Basically, Rosa was sloppy, the criminal’s mortal sin.

According to the official indictment:

From around 2017 to 2020 WEINBERGER, along with other known and unknown companies, implemented a plan to scam potential art buyers by selling counterfeit Pettibon paintings. Pettibon is a prominent contemporary artist who lives primarily in New York, New York, and has created a series of paintings depicting ocean waves with surfers accompanied by handwritten text (the “Wave Series”). WEINBERGER is a contemporary visual artist living primarily in Los Angeles, California and Vienna, Austria. As part of the attempted fraud, WEINBERGER sold the following works of art in 2018 and 2020, which WEINBERGER incorrectly referred to as authentic Pettibon “Wave Series” paintings, to two buyers (“Buyer 1” and “Buyer 2”):

Untitled (“It was the moment…”), 2013, 100 cm x 155 cm:

Untitled (“Drop in…”), 2011, 80 cm x 60 cm:

Untitled (“Bail, or bail out…”), 2012, 115 cm x 163 cm:

Untitled (“If there is a line…”), 2016, 118.1 x 208.3 cm:

Rosa fled to Portugal in February but has now been dragged back to the States to await her trial.

If convicted, he faces up to 20 years in prison.