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The former Beverly Hills resident and owner of the Rapone Shop tried to sell the stolen Andy Warhol Art and lied to federal agents about the plot, authorities said.
Glenn Stephen Bednasch, 58, was accused of deliberately purchasing evidence from the stolen Warhol trial depicting Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin for $6,000 in February 2021. He then tried to sell it to a Dallas-based auction house. This is a news release from the US Lawyer’s Office on Tuesday.
Trial evidence from the iconic pop artist, No. 44 of the only 46 he made is worth an estimated $175,000.
Bednash, who currently lives in Farmington, Michigan, is being charged with two count federal ju trial charges involving conspiracy of stolen goods and interstate transport.
The pawnshop owner, Brian Alec Wright, 58, of Hudson, Ohio, and formerly from downtown Los Angeles, asked to help sell stolen art, officials said. Wright contacted the auction house in March 2021 and is said to have carried the work to his Beverly Hills office before the auction house shipped to a base in Dallas. Officials did not name auction houses or pawn shops.
An employee at the Dallas auction house contacted West Hollywood Art Gallery for his opinion of the work, and the gallery immediately recognized the work as stolen. The gallery, which was not identified by the authorities, notified the auction house and the FBI that the work had been stolen, according to a news release.
When asked about art in March 2021, Light was allegedly lying to an FBI agent, buying the piece for $18,000 at a garage sale in Culver City and providing a fake receipt for the manufactured transaction. As the investigation continues, Bednarsh was questioned by an FBI agent in August and September of the same year, and it is said that Wright asked him to store the artwork and lied to investigators saying he did so without the desire to make a profit from it financially.
According to another news release from the 2024 US Lawyer’s Office, the thief brought the artwork to a pawnshop in Bednash and brought the artwork to the place he purchased it.
Lenin Trial Proof is just one of several Warhol works that have been subject to famous art theft. The 1972 Warhol screenprint was stolen from Orange Coast College in March 2024, titled “Mao.” In 2009, a multi-million dollar Warhol Originals collection was stolen from a home in LA. And several other Warhol thefts have made headlines over the past decades.
Hikari pleaded guilty in November 2024 to one count of interstate transport of stolen goods. His sentence is set for May 27th, and he faces up to 10 years in federal prison.
Bednarsh is scheduled to be arrested in US District Court in downtown Los Angeles in the coming weeks.
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