Leslie Howard Roberts

Introduction

Leslie Howard Roberts is a 63-year-old Miami art dealer and the former owner and founder of Miami Fine Art Gallery in Coconut Grove, sentenced on 2 October 2026 to 46 months in federal prison — three years and ten months — after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud for selling counterfeit Andy Warhol artworks to collectors. He was ordered to forfeit $2,581,465, a judgment matching what prosecutors said he obtained from the forged-art sales, and U.S. District Judge Roy K. Altman ordered him remanded into custody on the spot rather than allowing him to self-surrender, citing his failure to appear at his own initial sentencing hearing the week before .

Background Information

Miami Fine Art Gallery had operated on Commodore Plaza in Coconut Grove since 1997, dealing modern and contemporary art including works by Pablo Picasso, Jeff Koons and KAWS. On 9 April 2025, agents from the FBI’s Art Crime Team raided the gallery, removing art in cardboard boxes and covering the windows; Roberts and an associate, Carlos Miguel Rodriguez Melendez, were arrested the same day and charged in a federal indictment — case No. 25-cr-20142 in the Southern District of Florida — with wire fraud conspiracy, with Roberts additionally charged with money laundering for moving proceeds of about $150,000, $40,000 and $50,000 from the gallery’s bank account into his personal account. Both were released on bond .

The Warhol case was not Roberts’s first encounter with art-fraud allegations. He had previously been jailed for stealing millions of dollars from his great-uncle in the 1980s, was found in 2010 to have sold counterfeit works attributed to Brazilian artist Romero Britto both in his gallery and on eBay, and faced criminal charges in 2015 for running a Peter Max forgery ring out of his gallery Max in the Grove, in which court documents said his two children created the “Max” works he sold to clients .

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Convicted and sentenced. Roberts pleaded guilty on 10 June 2026 to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, with the remaining counts dismissed at the government’s request, and was sentenced on 2 October 2026 to 46 months in prison — within the advisory guideline range of 46 to 57 months — followed by three years of supervised release, after failing to appear for his initial sentencing hearing.

According to the indictment, Roberts sold paintings from his Coconut Grove gallery that he fraudulently represented as original works created by Andy Warhol, telling buyers he had acquired them directly from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and backing the claim with fake and fraudulent invoices, forged authentication documents, fabricated identification numbers and fake stamps inscribed on the backs of the pieces. The forged authentication papers were claimed to come from the Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board — an entity the Warhol Foundation had dissolved in 2011 .

The authentication scheme was layered. Rodriguez Melendez, prosecutors said, posed as an employee of a New York-based auction company to falsely authenticate the artworks as genuine; under Roberts’s direction, Melendez and an associate, Maria Urdaneta Frites — whose business card labeled her a “Warhol Art Appraisal Authenticator” — visited clients’ homes dressed in black outfits and white gloves to inspect and falsely certify the works. In the civil case that preceded the criminal charges, the Perlman family of Florida collectors alleged they spent $6 million on Warhols that a Christie’s appraisal revealed to be forgeries, and that when they confronted Roberts he sent two “experts” from Phillips to confirm the works were originals — experts the family discovered were not Phillips employees and had presented fake business cards, with Melendez alleged to have posed as one of them .

The scheme’s scale extended beyond a single sale: Roberts received more than 100 wire payments from victims totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars between April 2023 and May 2024, per NBC6 South Florida, and the wire fraud charges specifically stemmed from six payments totaling $599,850 from one victim plus a $60,000 transfer from a second. Roberts pleaded guilty on 10 June 2026; his co-conspirator Rodriguez Melendez had pleaded guilty the year before and was sentenced — the Post and Hoodline report probation, while Miami New Times reports a year of imprisonment and $5,000 in restitution .

Public Reaction and Consequences

U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida Jason Reding Quiñones said in a statement after sentencing: “He exploited the trust that collectors place in art dealers and the authenticity of the works they purchase.” Luke Nikas, the Perlman family’s lawyer, had said earlier that “Roberts betrayed the Perlmans’ trust and went to great lengths to cover up his fraud,” calling him “exactly the kind of art dealer who needs to be held accountable — for the sake of the Perlmans, his potential future victims and the art market itself.” Roberts’s own lawyer, Jonathan Marc Davidoff, declined to comment .

Before his arrest Roberts had denied wrongdoing, telling the Coconut Grove Spotlight a month before the raid that the Perlman family was “using me as a scapegoat for deals that were out of my control” and that “what’s going on is not fair… They are digging up my past and using it against me.” His case echoes another South Florida prosecution: in 2023, Palm Beach gallery owner Daniel Elie Bouaziz was sentenced to two years and three months in federal prison for selling fake Warhols .

Current Status

Roberts is in federal custody serving his 46-month sentence, with Judge Altman recommending the Bureau of Prisons place him in a Florida facility equipped to handle his medical needs and directing him to surrender his passport to his attorney. He must pay the $2,581,465 forfeiture money judgment plus a $100 mandatory assessment, while final restitution was deferred to a hearing set for 20 January 2027. His three years of supervised release bar him from associating with Rodriguez Melendez, require access to his financial records for probation officials, permission before taking on new debt and court approval before becoming self-employed again .

Civil exposure remains: a UK buyer accuses him of owing more than $447,000 in unrefunded payments for Banksy works, and a suit by the Perlman family against alleged suppliers of the counterfeit paintings — after a January 2026 settlement with Roberts himself — has a conference set for 10 December 2026 .

Impact on Their Career/Life

A dealer who once told Artnet that acquiring art from the Warhol Foundation was “one of my proudest moments” now sits in a Miami federal prison as a three-time art-fraud offender, his gallery emptied by the FBI’s Art Crime Team. Between his criminal cases he had rebranded himself as a Labubu reseller operating “Labubu Headquarters,” a store Miami New Times noted with the question of whether his inventory was genuine — and his sentencing closes the arc of a three-decade pattern in which forged Warhols, fake Peter Maxes and counterfeit Brittos all passed through the same Coconut Grove storefront .

Sources

“NY Post: Florida art dealer Leslie Howard Roberts sentenced for scheme to sell fake Andy Warhol artworks” source
“DOJ Southern District of Florida: Coconut Grove Fine Art Dealer Indicted in Federal Case, Charged with Wire Fraud Conspiracy and Money Laundering Related to Forged Andy Warhol Works” source
“AP via ClickOnDetroit: Florida art dealer gets nearly 4 years in prison for scheme to sell fake Andy Warhol artworks” source
“Hoodline: Coconut Grove Art Dealer Sentenced for Fake Warhol Scheme” source
“Miami New Times: Miami art fraudster Leslie Roberts sentenced to prison” source
“The Art Newspaper: Miami dealer charged for hawking fake Warhols” source