Woman charged with selling faked forgeries

DRESDEN, Germany, April 24 (UPI) -- A great-niece of the notorious German forger Konrad Kujau has been charged with forging his signature on poor-quality fakes imported from Asia.

Police in Dresden say they have seized 200 "fake forgeries" from the office of Petra Kujau, The Times of London reported. She allegedly sold 500 of the fakes on the Internet for a total of 550,000 euros ($680,000).

Konrad Kujau, a talented painter and dealer in military antiquities, spent three years in prison after a 1983 escapade in which he duped several magazines with what were supposed to be Adolf Hitler's diaries. After his release, he produced forged paintings, always carefully signed with his own name.

"An expert examined the seized paintings and he said they weren't of very high quality, not comparable with the good forgeries made by Konrad Kujau," Marko Laske, a Dresden police spokesman, said.

The police investigation began when a former student of Konrad Kujau reported that an improbable number of his works were showing up for sale on the Internet. Petra Kujau allegedly paid as little as 10 euros for copies of famous paintings by Asian art students, selling them for as much as 3,500 euros.