Con artist stung by FBI pleads guilty

ST. LOUIS, March 9 (UPI) -- A con artist who got stung when she tried to sell a phony Rembrandt to an FBI agent pleaded guilty in federal court in St. Louis.

Marilyn Karos of Whitefish Bay, Wis., told a judge that she conspired with Majed Ihmoud, who posed as a Saudi sheik during the sale, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. Ihmoud pleaded guilty in October, admitting his role in the attempt to sell a copy of "Man with a Golden Helmet" as a genuine Rembrandt and brass doors that supposedly once belonged to the boxer Mohammed Ali.

Karos has several convictions already. In the 1990s, she was involved in an attempt to sell genuine museum pieces -- navigational instruments that had been stolen from a Rome museum. When a co-conspirator double-crossed her, she beat him with a baseball bat.