The portrait of the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci was stolen in August 1911 by a worker, the painter-glass worker Vincenzo Peruggia. Employed for several years at the Louvre, he participated in the work of putting the Salon Carré under glass. He knew everyone at the museum and he knew the security operators. Since the museum was closed to the public on Mondays, he locked himself in one Sunday night. Dressed in a workman's coat, he took advantage of the absence of the staff in the room where the Mona Lisa was on display and simply took it down. At the turn of a staircase, he removed its frame and hid it under his coat. He calmly exited the Louvre with the painted wooden panel under his arm...

Han van Meegeren was born on October 10th, 1889 in Deventer, in the center of the Netherlands. He dreamed of becoming a painter, but his ambitions were immediately put down by his father, a rigid teacher, who did not believe in his talent. His parents enrolled him in architecture school, but he secretly gave it up for the Fine Arts. Bartus Korteling, his traditionalist and no less rigid teacher, considered only works from the Golden Age of painting worthy of interest. He taught Han van Meegeren the techniques of the great 17th century Dutch masters : the preparation of canvases, colors and drawings.

Guy Hain, son of a fruit and vegetable merchant, was born in 1942, in the middle of the Second world war, in Gravelines, in the North of France. He started his career as a banker and then, after his military service, turned to the trade of veterinary products. It is in this environment that he meets many amateurs of animal sculptures in bronze. At the age of 20, he becomes a collector and buys, among other maserworks, Auguste Rodin's Kiss for the modest sum of 550,000 francs. The world of antique dealers being much more exciting than that of flea markets, Guy Hain opens a gallery in Paris in May of 1979, which he names "Aux Ducs de Bourgogne".

There are people you meet and can never forget. Fernand Legros is one of those : he is one of the 20th century's greatest forgers and yet, he never painted a single picture. A flamboyed, mystifier, mythomaniac, there are few verifiable elements of Legros' life...

Born on January 27th, 1935 in Colombes, near Paris, Henri Abel Abraham Haddad is better known under the name of David Stein. During his life, he assumed no less than fourteen pseudonyms including, but not limited to, Philippe Ducrest, Georges Delaunay, Alain, Philippe or Michel Leroy, Jacques Bergerot, Philip Gray or Harcourt, Roger Delorme, Michel de Rivais or Anceline, Guy Lefranc, Jacques Alain de Villene, Claude Zekri...

Of all the forgers in history, here is one who will be remembered for a long time by the art world. With his worn-out rock star look, it is hard to believe that Wolfgang Beltracchi authored over 300 fake paintings. He claims to have imitated a hundred different painters, including the cubists Georges Valmier and Fernand Léger, the expressionist Johannes Molzahn, the German Max Ernst, the Frenchmen Georges Braque, Raoul Dufy and André Derain. A counterfeit bounty estimated at over 19 million euros...

Clifford Irving is the author of several thrillers as well as a book published in 1969 by McGraw-Hill which tells the life of the forger Elmyr de Hory. The success of this book gives him the idea to write another one : a biography of Howard Hughes, the former owner of RKO film studios, distinguished aviator and owner of the TWA airline, big industrialist and casino operator. Irving assures his publisher that he is in close personal contact with the billionaire...

Konrad Kujau was born in June 1938 in the Saxony region of Germany. His childhood was marked by war and poverty. His father, a simple cobbler, was a fervent supporter of Hitler, like many Germans at the time. When he died in 1944, the family found themselves in terrible poverty. In 1945, during the bombing of Dresden, the last members of the family were dispersed. Thereafter, Konrad grew up in various orphanages in East Germany...