It was one of the greatest art scandals of all time. Myatt spent countless hours making incredibly detailed "new" works in the style of Marc Chagall, Le Corbusier, Alberto Giacometti, Matisse, and Graham Sutherland, among others. He often scoured flea markets for paints, brushes, and canvases from an artist's time period, in addition to obsessively studying their techniques.

Partnering with art dealer John Drewe , the duo sold more than an estimated 200 fraudulent pieces of art for millions of pounds, ensnaring some of the world's most prestigious collectors, galleries, auction houses, and storied institutions, including London's Tate Gallery.

It was the mid-1980s and at 41, he was a working painter who never made a splash—or a profit—in the London gallery scene. His wife left him, and he struggled to provide for his two young children.

Myatt, who served prison time and is now living and working as a painter in the United Kingdom, is among the handful of art forgers who say the very environment in which their past crimes flourished is, in many respects, just as fertile now. As art prices hit stratospheric highs and Trump-era momentum to regulate anything reaches record lows , the art world continues to be an under-explored haven for illicit activity, that often hangs, literally, in plain sight.

He acknowledges his skill as a forger, but says that much of pulling off the con was "about manipulating the publicity machine or just being in the right place at the right time" in making a sale; promoting the fake story of the creation of the image and how it fit into an artist's body of work; and explaining how the piece had changed hands over the years.

Driving criminal interest is the amount of cash that has been injected in the art world in the years since Myatt's forgery heyday. In some respects, it mirrors the giant pools of money sloshing around in Manhattan or London real estate—funds that are relatively concentrated in a few hands spending it in a few places. Critics contend there's low incentive to catch criminals and that, in some cases, alleged victims may benefit from being in on the con. (Others are so desperate to be in the art market, they're taking on massive debt to do so .)

What is often dismissed as a largely victimless crime befitting of The Thomas Crown Affair (the one starring Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo , not Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway) may carry far higher stakes. Art forgery typically elicits images of the pearl-clasping super-rich with jaws dropped at fake Picassos, but the crime is also often linked to money laundering, tax evasion, and drug trafficking. Art crime was the third highest-grossing criminal trade in the world over the last 40 years, according to the US Department of Justice and UNESCO, just behind drugs and weapons. Thomas Hoving, the former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, once estimated that 40 percent of the artwork in circulation was fake.

The global art market in 2018 totaled some $67.4 billion, according to a joint report from Art Basel and UBS, an increase from $39.5 billion in recession-era 2009. And as the super wealthy look for more places to park money while diversifying their holdings, wealth managers and art dealers have welcomed new dollars, with some going so far to pitch (fee-heavy) hedge fund-like investment vehicles that pool money to acquire art.

That's reaped fortunes for some, but not necessarily motivation to catch art criminals. Generally, art—be it real or fake—is being used to move money more than ever, former forgers, law enforcement agents, and experts suggest. And ironically, the forgers are among the most vocal.

"It was a mistake I made and it was time to come to do good things," Myatt said. "To just face up to it."

"I’m trying to do something good out of something bad."

As Russian billionaire and avid art collector Dmitry Rybolovlev faced divorce from his wife, Elena, in 2008, the works that once proudly graced the walls of auction houses and made their way into his own collection were now a financial liability. So Rybolovlev set up an elaborate scheme to park his lofty art collection in an offshore entity, according to the Panama Papers.