A Miami art dealer who turned his Coconut Grove gallery into a pipeline for forged Andy Warhols has been handed a 46-month federal prison sentence, marking the second time he has been sent to prison since opening Miami Fine Art Gallery in 1997. Leslie Roberts pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud in the long-running case.

Roberts is no stranger to the inside of a courtroom. In 2015 he received a 22-month sentence over faked paintings attributed to Romero Britto and Peter Max. After three years of supervised release, that agreement was voided in 2018 when he was accused of trying to negotiate the sale of a forged Basquiat, and he returned to prison.

The latest case unraveled after a family claimed in a 2024 lawsuit that it had spent $6 million on Warhols bought from Roberts, including images of Marilyn Monroe and Blondie singer Debbie Harry that recur across the Pop artist's oeuvre. Suspicion hardened when the buyers reviewed their correspondence and realized they had been emailing accounts ending in @andywarholfoundation.co — while the real Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts uses a .org address. Roberts insisted the works were genuine and that the foundation had authenticated them, though the foundation has operated no authentication committee since disbanding it in 2011.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation's account of the sentencing cited fraudulent invoices, fabricated authentication documents and counterfeit stamps, adding that Roberts had even placed bogus Warhol Foundation identification numbers on the backs of works to make the forgeries look legitimate. US Attorney Jason A. Reding Quiñones said Roberts had exploited the trust collectors place in dealers and in the authenticity of the art they buy.