Talker Michael Smerconish Duped By Fake Photo

Philadelphia-based talk radio personality and ex-Beasley Firm LLC attorney Michael Smerconish said Monday that he was duped by an art dealer into dropping $5,000 on an autographed portrait of Winston Churchill by renowned photographer Yousuf Karsh that he recently determined was a fake.

Smerconish, who hosts programs on both SiriusXM satellite radio and CNN, said in a complaint that he’d purchased the item for $5K from W. Graham Arader III Framing Services Inc. some 15 years ago and that he’d been provided with a document certifying its authenticity.

This was long before Smerconish had his own show on CNN or even radio station WPHT 1210 AM.

Fast forward to 2015, when Smerconish noticed that the Churchill autograph had begun to fade, and, like any good collector, he wanted to get it restored.

In April, Smerconish brought the photograph to the Conservation Center for Art & Historic Artifacts in Philadelphia. Much to Smerconish's shock and dismay, the conservator there had serious doubts about the authenticity of the item, so further investigation ensued.

According to the suit, the conservator discovered that the image was not a photograph at all but a "two-tone halftone reproduction with an AM (amplitude modified) repeating screen pattern" and, further, that the image was not printed directly from any of Karsh's negatives.

Smerconish enlisted an expert in Karsh's photography, who indicated that the image is merely a reproduction from a book that was printed in or after 1980. Churchill died in 1965. Ergo, if the expert is correct, the signature must be a fake.