Man Convicted of Selling Phony Cassatt Painting

A former doctor and Harvard professor who sold a phony Mary Cassatt Impressionist painting to undercover detectives was found guilty of attempted grand theft Friday.

A Los Angeles County Superior Court jury convicted Vilas Likhite of Mission Viejo, who is expected to be sentenced next week and faces up to three years in prison, said Sandi Gibbons, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.

Likhite was arrested in December 2004 after he tried to sell the painting to two detectives posing as a Korean businessman and his interpreter. Likhite told them the painting was worth $800,000. The detectives bought the piece before arresting him on the grand theft charge.

Likhite’s collection included fakes of paintings by Jackson Pollock, Jasper Johns, Willem de Kooning and others. He said the collection of more than 700 paintings was worth more than $1 billion, police said.

He told interested buyers that he hoped to liquidate his collection without the aid of auction houses. He used an elaborate paper trail of certificates of authenticity, appraisals and receipts to pass off the counterfeits as originals.

Authorities also said Likhite reported a phony de Kooning painting stolen from his home in 2003, listing its value at $1.5 million. Detectives later found the piece in a raid of the hematologist’s home.

The Los Angeles Police Department’s art theft detail became aware of Likhite after two businessmen said he asked them to work as brokers and help him find potential buyers. One of the businessmen said he took some of Likhite’s paintings to a professional art dealer, who deemed them fakes, authorities said.

Likhite, a former physician in Massachusetts, was convicted in 1989 of selling two fake artworks to an investment banker and a fellow physician.