FOG BLOG CANADA JUSTICE LOG: NORVAL MORRISSEAU ART FRAUD, 1000S OF PAINTINGS SEIZED, 8 ARRESTS

8 charged, over 1,000 paintings seized in Norval Morrisseau art fraud investigation Thunder Bay police, OPP announce results of years-long investigation on Friday Eight people face a total of 40 charges resulting from a years-long police investigation into the forgery of artwork by Anishinaabe artist Norval Morrisseau.

The Thunder Bay Police Service in northwestern Ontario began the investigation in 2019 and later brought in Ontario Provincial Police due to the magnitude of the investigation, the TBPS told CBC News. Five of the accused are from Thunder Bay.

"I was looking into the murder of Scott Dove, and during that, his mom called me and asked if I had seen this documentary called There Are No Fakes, which had information on the murder of her son," TBPS Det. Sgt. Jason Rybak said following a news conference in Orillia, Ont., on Friday morning. "I had not, and I watched the documentary. "From there, I reached out to Kevin Hearn, who was the main victim in the documentary, and that really was the jump-off point for this investigation."

There Are No Fakes, a film released in 2019, includes the story of Hearn — the Barenaked Ladies keyboardist and guitarist who purchased a purported Morrisseau painting from a Toronto gallery in 2005. Questions were raised about the painting's authenticity, and Hearn would eventually sue the gallery; he was later awarded $60,000 in compensation by the Ontario Court of Appeal.

'Painting, after painting after painting' seized

Morrisseau, who died in 2007 at age 75, was a renowned artist from the Ojibway Bingwi Neyaashi Anishinaabek First Nation in northwestern Ontario. He's known as the founder of the Woodlands School of art and his work has been exhibited in galleries across Canada, including at Rideau Hall in Ottawa.