A Michigan art dealer accused of swindling seniors out of $1.6 million in a photography consignment scheme was sentenced to five years and three months in prison on Wednesday, September 11, according to the US Attorney’s Office in Detroit. 

Former art dealer Wendy Halsted Beard, 59, allegedly used her fine art gallery in Birmingham to sell consigned photography without providing the original owners their cut of the profit, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). In addition to cheating clients out of sales proceeds, Halstead reportedly failed to deliver the works to the new owners after receiving payments. 

Beard pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud in July 2023. Almost two years after her October 2022 arrest, a judge sentenced Beard to five of the 20 years of maximum prison time that wire fraud carries. The judge also ordered Beard to pay over $2 million in restitution. 

Investigators discovered 43 victims and over 393 fine art photographs involved in the scheme, but could only locate fewer than 150 works, according to a September 5 government sentencing memorandum obtained by the Detroit News.

An investigation into Beard by multiple law enforcement agencies, including the FBI Art Theft Unit, found that her crimes typically targeted elderly people and began as early as 2017, according to a criminal complaint from 2022. 

Beard allegedly used the positive reputation of her gallery, which her father established in 1969, to gain the victim’s trust to enter into a consignment contract, which she then violated to profit from the fraudulent sale.

Among the artworks ensnared in the scheme was American landscape photographer Ansel Adams’s “The Tetons and the Snake River, Grand Teton National Park” (1942) given to Beard on consignment in 2018 by an 82-year-old collector, according to court documents.

The alleged victim gave Beard $900,000 worth of fine art photography to sell on consignment, including the original Ansel Adams photograph. Beard was to receive 5% of the $625,000 retail value. Instead, she sold the work to a gallery in Wyoming for $440,000 and pocketed the money.

When the unknowing victim asked for the return of their work, Beard falsely replied that she had been “bumped up on the transplant list” and was unconscious while hospitalized for lung problems. Beard even created fake email accounts to support that she had gone through a double lung transplant, the criminal complaint said.

“Wendy had her double lung transplant and has been a little dicey but we are hoping they take the vent out,” read one email sent to the 82-year-old collector from someone claiming to be Beard’s assistant. 

The FBI said Beard was not listed on the United Network for Organ Sharing.

In another instance of fraud, Beard allegedly returned several false or counterfeit copies of other Ansel Adams photographs, including “Tenaya Creek, Dogwood, Rain, Yosemite National Park, California” (c. 1948), to the original owners when they requested the photographs back.

“Beard’s ongoing deception was of a level that we rarely see, even in fraud cases, lying to her customers repeatedly in an attempt to conceal her scheme,” US Attorney Dawn Ison said in a statement following the sentencing. Ison’s office likened Beard’s behavior to an instance of elder financial abuse.