For years, the FBI says, Wendy Beard scammed seniors by taking their rare art on consignment, selling it and then keeping all the profits – including a mural-sized Ansel Adams photograph she sold for $440,000 without ever telling the owner.
The 82-year-old woman – identified as Victim No. 1 in court documents – was not alone.
Instead of honoring her clients’ contracts, the FBI says, she sold the photos without their knowledge and kept the money. Moreover, the FBI says, Beard sold artwork to other victims but never delivered the goods – even after they had paid her – and created fake email addresses of fake employees she pretended worked for her.
The gallery, which was renamed the Wendy Halsted Gallery a decade earlier, operated for a few years out of a Birmingham storefront. But in 2020, the business closed and relocated to Beard’s home in Franklin, Michigan. Beard had appraised the photo's value at $625,000, and brokered a nine-month agreement with its owner to list it for $685,000 – with a 5% commission going to Beard as the consignee. The agreement expired in December 2019.
Meanwhile, the original owner of the photo got nothing, the FBI says, and was never notified by Beard what happened to the photo.The FBI says Victim 1 made multiple attempts to get their photos back from Beard, but that Beard came up with multiple excuses, most of them alleging she was in poor health and struggling with lung issues that put her on a transplant list.
As for the lung transplant story, the agent added:"According to the United Network for Organ Sharing , there is no record of Beard ever being on a transplant list or the recipient of a donor organ."In May, Birmingham police received a report from a person alleging their 89-year-old father with Alzheimer's had been scammed by the owner of the Halsted Gallery.