Art Crime's Impact on the Art Market

Deliberate misattribution of artwork and forgery are art crimes that have a huge impact on the art market, though less in the news which seems to focus on thefts. The forgery can be: Wholesale, where a new artwork is passed off as something valuable; Alteration, where a work is altered to make it more valuable; Provenance, where the history of the artwork is faked or changed. For more details, read Noah Charney's article Buyer Beware on Art Info. Apparently, "since the Second World War, art crime has evolved into the third-highest–grossing annual criminal trade worldwide, behind only the drug and arms trades." Rather astounding.