Coconut Grove art dealer Leslie Roberts gets 46 months for selling fake Warhols

A Coconut Grove art dealer who sold forged Andy Warhol works to collectors has been sentenced to 46 months in federal prison, about 18 months after FBI agents raided his gallery on Commodore Plaza. U.S. District Judge Roy K. Altman imposed the sentence on Oct. 2 and ordered Leslie Roberts, former owner of Miami Fine Art Gallery, to forfeit $2,581,465, the amount prosecutors said he obtained from the scheme, and to serve three years of supervised release after prison.

Roberts pleaded guilty on June 10 to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and the remaining charges against him, including money laundering, were dismissed at the government's request, according to court records reported by Hoodline and NBC6. The sentence fell at the bottom of the advisory guideline range of 46 to 57 months.

A missed hearing and an immediate remand

Roberts did not start his sentence on his own schedule. He failed to appear for his first scheduled sentencing hearing in late September, and his lawyer told the court he did not know where Roberts was, according to news reports on the hearing. The judge reset the hearing for the following week.

When Roberts appeared on Friday, Oct. 2, Altman cited the earlier no-show in ordering him taken into custody immediately rather than allowing him to surrender later to the Bureau of Prisons, according to Hoodline's account of the court record. WLRN and its partner the Coconut Grove Spotlight reported that the judge directed officials to assign Roberts to a Florida facility able to address his medical needs, which were not specified.

How the scheme worked

According to the April 2025 indictment, as summarized by NBC6 and WSVN, Roberts sold artwork from his gallery that he falsely presented as original Warhol pieces, claiming he had acquired it directly from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. To make the works look authentic, he allegedly used forged authentication documents purportedly from the Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board, along with fraudulent identification numbers and fake stamps, and gave at least one buyer fake invoices that appeared to come from the Warhol Foundation.

Prosecutors alleged that Roberts received more than 100 wire payments from victims, totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars, between April 2023 and May 2024, and that about $240,000 in proceeds was moved from the gallery's bank account to a personal account. The money laundering count tied to that transfer was among the charges dismissed under the plea agreement. The forfeiture judgment of about $2.58 million reflects the total prosecutors said he obtained from sales of the forged works. Public reports on the sentencing did not give a total number of victims.

The indictment also alleged that a co-defendant, Carlos Miguel Rodriguez Melendez, 37, posed as an employee of a New York-based auction company to fraudulently authenticate the works and conceal that Warhol did not create them. Rodriguez Melendez pleaded guilty in June 2025 and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors, WLRN reported. Miami New Times reported that he admitted Roberts paid him to pose as a "senior art appraisal authenticator," and that he was later sentenced to one year of probation and ordered to pay $5,000 in restitution.

A repeat offender

The Warhol case was not Roberts' first. WLRN reported that he has a 1980s conviction for investment fraud involving money taken from his uncle, and that he pleaded guilty in 2014 to selling forgeries of works by the pop artist Peter Max, a case that ended with a 22-month federal prison sentence.

The April 9, 2025 raid drew attention in Coconut Grove's village center, where WSVN cameras showed agents carrying artwork out of the gallery at 3180 Commodore Plaza. Neighbors and customers began checking their own purchases. "My whole family has actually purchased pieces from here," Gaby Cuadra told the station at the time. Roberts, then 62, and Rodriguez Melendez were arrested that day and appeared in federal court, and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida announced the indictment the next day. At the time, the conspiracy charge carried a maximum of 20 years in prison, and the money laundering charge up to an additional 10.

The defense's plea for leniency

Defense attorney Jason Wandner asked Altman for leniency, pointing to Roberts' traumatic childhood and his help to law enforcement. "Robert's life has not been easy," Wandner wrote in a sentencing memo to the court, according to WLRN. As part of his plea deal, Roberts agreed to cooperate with federal investigators working on his case and other art fraud cases, which may have helped him avoid a longer term.

"He was home when his Mother killed his Father. He was 12 years old at the time," Wandner wrote. "Certainly, this is something the Court may and should consider when fashioning an appropriate sentence."

Wandner also wrote that "Roberts is not asking to go unpunished."

Fallout in Miami's art market

The case has played out in a city whose art market draws global collectors every December, when Art Basel Miami Beach takes over the Miami Beach Convention Center. This year's fair runs Dec. 2 through 6, including preview days.

The civil fallout is continuing. Collectors Richard and Judy Perlman, who sued Roberts in Miami-Dade County in August 2024 and later settled out of court, filed a new civil racketeering lawsuit in Miami-Dade County in September, alleging that their family spent more than $6.7 million on fraudulent Warhol prints in 2023 and 2024, according to Miami New Times and other outlets. That suit does not name Roberts as a defendant, though it describes him as having sold the family numerous forged works, Miami New Times reported. The suit names a Pennsylvania art dealer among the defendants, and his attorney has denied any wrongdoing, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The allegations in the lawsuit have not been proven in court.

What's next

Roberts will serve his sentence in federal custody, followed by three years of supervised release. The government's forfeiture judgment of about $2.58 million remains to be collected, and the Perlman family's separate civil suit is pending in Miami-Dade County.