An art dealer from Long Island pleaded not guilty Friday in Manhattan to charges that she laundered money and evaded taxes as part of a scheme in which she sold dozens of fake paintings that she claimed to have been created by some of the most famous artists of the 20th century.
The dealer, Glafira Rosales, who has been held without bail since her arrest in May, entered a federal courtroom in Lower Manhattan handcuffed and dressed in a blue prison smock. She uttered only the words “not guilty†in a low voice when asked about the charges by Federal District Court Judge Katherine Polk Failla.
On Wednesday federal officials in Manhattan announced that Ms. Rosales had been indicted on seven counts of wire fraud, money laundering, filing false tax returns and failing to report foreign bank accounts. Prosecutors said that between 1994 and 2009 Ms. Rosales sold two prominent Manhattan galleries more than 60 works that she said were by artists like Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, and Willem de Kooning but were in fact forgeries.
According to the indictment, Ms. Rosales laundered the proceeds of those sales by transferring money
through foreign bank accounts then hid the income generated by the scheme by filing false tax returns and failing to inform the United States government of the existence of the foreign accounts.
The government says Ms. Rosales received more than $33 million for the works and failed to declare at least $12.5 million of it as income.
