How one man learned to commit art fraud and wound up on the front page of the New York Times at the centre of an international scandal that rocked the eBay universe.

During the golden age of eBay, before the dot-com crash, thousands of gullible, optimistic bidders went online in droves, ready to spend cash on unseen paintings that they hoped might be by well-known artists. It was the perfect place for con artists to practice their craft: an unpoliced marketplace where over $1 million changes hands each week. Fakeis an intimate, behind-the-scenes account of one man's downward spiral into two years of scamming and fraud in the most active art market in the world.

Faketakes readers from the innocent beginning of Ken Walton's online art trading hobby to the federal felony conviction that would rock the eBay universe. Populated by a colourful cast of characters, including the master manipulator, Ken Fetterman, the world's least slick con man; Robert Keeraweer, the wealthy Dutch software tycoon who admits to buying over $100,000 of fake art on eBay; Rudy Curiel, a real-life art dealer whose greed led him to participate in a scam; Tracie Keewan, a girlfriend of Fetterman's who goes on the lam with him and ends up in jail, and many other fascinating dreamers and schemers, Fakeexposes the vagaries of the art world in alarming and engrossing detail.

As Walton recounts the events that led to his headline-making scandal he also describes the transformation he went through, from a low-profile lawyer with middle-class roots to an internet fraudster without a conscience. While his career as a con artist began innocently enough, Walton's story is one of the American dream gone bad, and he tells it with honesty, humour, and yes, regret.