A sepia photograph shows a woman in a 1920s room with a modernist masterpiece on the wall behind her. Experts authenticate the painting, an auction house sells it for millions, and everyone is happy, except the painting was made a few years earlier, the photo paper was baked to look old, and the woman is the forger's wife in vintage costume. This episode dissects how Wolfgang Beltracchi built one of the most audacious art scams in modern history, netting an estimated profit north of $100 million.

We start with his upbringing as the son of an art restorer, his teenage Picasso copy, his bohemian drifting, and the crucial insight that he should forge missing works rather than copy existing ones. We break down the mechanics: flea-market canvases scraped clean, hand-ground pigments, oven-baked craquelure, vacuum-cleaner dust, tea-stained Flechth ...