by Giampiero Ambrosi
I met Tony Tetro in 1998 when I was still just a young reporter for Japanese TV. Tony was an elusive figure, a notorious art forger who had just finished a stint in jail and after his release, had gone underground. I paid a PI to track him down and drove to a nondescript condo in Upland, California – at the eastern edge of L.A. County where modest tract homes peter out into high desert foothills. I rang the bell and waited for three or four minutes under a perfect blue sky, watching a hummingbird buzz a yellow cactus flower. As I was heading back down the driveway towards my car, a middle aged man in a bathrobe emerged from the house. It wasn’t Tony but he told me if I gave him my number he might be able to pass it on.
A few days later, as I was walking past boats in Marina del Rey, Tony called me. He was friendly, his gravelly voice purring. I told him I’d like to meet and the next week I drove down to Windows, a chic ocean front bar in the heart of Newport Beach – one of California’s most expensive zip codes.
When I walked in, Tony was smoking a cigar, drinking bourbon, and flirting with the pretty waitresses who seemed to know and like him. Tony was holding court with his cronies – guys from the old days in Upland – crooked investment bankers, a timeshare developer, and Paul who had been the biggest bookie in California before pleading out to the Feds. Paul wasn’t happy to have a reporter hanging around and quizzed me suspiciously. He wanted to know my name and who I worked for though, when he went to write it all down, he had to borrow a pen from the waitress because as part of his plea, Paul was not allowed to carry so much as a pencil for fear that he might start booking bets against his court order.
Despite Paul’s warnings, Tony regaled me with stories about his past – how he had gotten his girlfriend pregnant at 16, how he had moved out to California to make a better life for them, how he had stumbled upon art forgery almost by accident. He told me how he had made the big time, cruising around Beverly Hills in a Rolls Royce and summering at the Loews Hotel in Monte Carlo. He told me how shady dealers had commissioned him for scores of Picassos and Dalís and Chagalls and how one of them had worn the wire that put him behind bars.
That night, when we left the bar, the young car valets shook Tony’s hand and bantered with him about Ferraris – they knew Tony had owned a half dozen of them and they were dreaming of the day they’d own their first. What they didn’t know was that Tony, who had walked over to Windows from across the street, now drove a Honda hatchback and lived in a dingy motel, the Newport Classic Inn, where, when he could pay the rent, Tony kept a cramped second floor room next to the Chinese restaurant.
Inside, a battered microwave butted up against the TV. Piles of takeout containers and clothes were jumbled up with vintage car magazines, Panama hats, and old video tapes of his arrest. All that was left of the high life was a few obscure art books, some dog eared Chagall lithographs, and the weirdly painted female mannequin that Dali’s friend, Jose Puig Marti, had given him.
I liked Tony immediately and I started visiting him regularly at Windows. Each time, I’d drive back to L.A. and to reality like a spaceman returning to Earth. I’d tell friends about this crazy character I had just met, recounting his elaborate cons, backroom deals, his high life, and ultimately, his downfall. He must have liked me too because he spoke with an easy openness and trusted me with sensitive details about his personal life. The first few times I heard the stories they had a stranger-than-fiction sheen. Now I’ve heard them so many times that I can anticipate which story Tony will tell based on the way the conversation is going. It doesn’t make them any less interesting.
It’s been 25 years since then. In the intervening years, I’ve gotten to know his daughter and his grandchildren – saw them grow up. Tony came to my wedding – driving up the lawn in a purple Ferrari with a woman 30 years younger than him. At the birth of my daughter, we smoked cigars. When Tony needed surgery in Costa Rica, I went along to take care of him.
For many years, Tony and I had talked about doing a book. Over the decades I’ve met many of his friends, the people who figured in his tales, and Tony’s closest confidantes. I’ve had his emails, and boxes of his personal papers, court records, and duplicate passports for years.
In 2019, Tony told me about his dealings with a shady British billionaire and what seemed like a curious scheme to defraud the royal family. My resulting investigation uncovered a massive art forgery scandal involving Prince Charles and turned into an upcoming documentary called The Royal Stunt, with the noted director, Kief Davidson. As we chased the elusive investigation we leaked parts of the story to Vanity Fair and Mail on Sunday whose coverage occupied the entire first five pages of the UK’s biggest paper. Clearly, people had an appetite for Tony’s story and the time had finally come for him to lay it all out.
Though I already knew so much about Tony’s life and work, I wanted to dig deeper, to get beyond the polished anecdotes and well-oiled punchlines of Tony-the-raconteur and to tap into to his real emotions, his regrets and misgivings, and to feel his genuine passion for art. I also wanted to examine his tales with a journalistic rigor that wouldn’t have happened over drinks with friends.
In 2020, while the world stopped for Covid, I sat down with Tony and interviewed him for over a hundred hours covering every part of his life in minute detail, and driving Tony to exasperation. It annoyed him and jarred him to confront his past, but the discoveries were rich and revealing. I think the resulting book, Con/Artist, is worth it.
Even Tony’s best friends, the art dealers Tommy Wallace and Charles Fletcher (not his real name) sat down with me and corroborated much of what I had heard. It was just in time, because they both passed away within days of each other during the post production of our documentary. I was glad we had a chance to talk then. We couldn’t have waited another 25 years.
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