An extraordinary memoir is to reveal how a gifted artist managed to forge his way to riches by conning high-profile auctioneers, dealers and collectors over four decades.

The book, Caveat Emptor: The Secret Life of an American Art Forger, will be published next month and tells the story of Ken Perenyi, an American who lived in London for 30 years. The revelations within it are likely to spark embarrassment on both sides of the Atlantic.

Perenyi's specialities included British sporting and marine paintings of the 18th and 19th centuries. He concentrated on the work of well-known but second-rank artists, believing that the output of the greatest masters is too fully documented. Dealers were often told he had found a picture in a relative's attic or spotted it in a car boot sale.

Perhaps Perenyi's proudest moment came when a forgery of Ruby Throats with Apple Blossoms, by the American 19th-century artist Martin Johnson Heade, made the front page of a national newspaper and was heralded as a major "discovery". It later fetched nearly $100,000 at auction in New York.

Claiborne Hancock, of Pegasus Books, describes the revelations in Caveat Emptor as "a bombshell for the major international auction houses and galleries".

Perenyi believes he is free finally to publish his story because, although he was investigated by the FBI, the case was closed in 2003 and is subject to the statute of limitations. He said he has never discovered why the case was dropped, but he suspects the art world may have been keen to prevent the exposure of the serial forgeries.

Born in New Jersey 63 years ago to a factory machinist, Perenyi is a self-taught artist who painted his first pictures as a teenager, discovering a natural talent for "the aesthetic and technical aspects of the old masters".

He recalled at first "trying to become a legitimate… artist" [but] every time I needed supplies or food, I would make a fake and sell it… I started to rely on fakery more and more. I eventually turned it into a full-blown career."

Explaining why he kept away from famous artists, Perenyi said: "I wouldn't want to fake a George Stubbs, as paintings… like that are usually… accounted for. However, you take an artist like John F Herring or Thomas Buttersworth and there could always be another one… in somebody's attic."

Sometimes he painted "in the style" of an artist, sometimes as "British School, 19th century". By rotating the auctioneers and dealers and also going to regional ones in the UK and US, he "could keep under the radar", he said.

Asked whether the experts should have detected the fakes, he said: "I pride myself on my forensic expertise. I started with extensive research… the correct canvas, correct stretchers… framed in good period antique frames. I made sure that… the back side spoke to [experts], that it gave them 'a history'. I had fake stamps, chalk marks, old inventory labels."

Salt water created rust and he found that canvas weaves from India and China had the irregularities of cloth used by 18th-century artists.

Not all of Perenyi's efforts passed muster. Two fakes are featured in a section on forgeries in a scholarly book on Heade. But elsewhere in the book two more appear as genuine paintings.

His love of painting and the old masters remains undimmed and today he owns a studio in Madeira Beach, Florida. Asked if he regrets not finding recognition as an artist in his own right, he said: "I've often pondered that myself. But to have equalled the hand of such artists as Herring and Buttersworth and many others is for me a tremendous satisfaction."

It now seems Perenyi's exploits will be celebrated in the cinema. Oscar-winning director Ron Howard has just snapped up the rights to his life story.