🎨 The Art Dealer Who Got Jailed for Selling Real Paintings
Itzhak Zarug legally bought over 2,000 lost Russian masterpieces after the USSR collapsed — think Kandinsky, Chagall, Malevich.
But a powerful rival collector didn’t like the competition.
So he used his influence to:
Get a shady museum to accuse Zarug of selling fakes
Have him arrested in Germany in 2013
Seize 1,800 paintings
And smear him in top art magazines even after experts proved the works were real
Zarug spent 3.5 years in prison