5 Scandals that Rocked Art.
1. The Vermeer Forgeries
Disciples at Emmaus, a Vermeer forgery by Han van Meegeren (1936)
Every age sees art through its own eyes, and the cleverest forgers play up to this. One of the most notorious forgeries ever occurred in the 1930s. A Dutchman named Han van Meegeren [wiki] (1889 - 1947) produced forgeries of early works by the Dutch 17-th century master Jan Vermeer. They were technically brilliant and faultless, using old canvas and the correct 17-th century pigments. Cunningly, van Meegeren chose religious imagery that some experts believed Vermeer had painted, but very few examples of which existed. Most (though not all) of the greatest experts were completely taken in, but when you see the paintings now, you’ll wonder why. All the faces look like great film stars of the 1930s, such as Marlene Dietrich and Douglas Fairbanks.
2. The Mona Lisa Theft
It’s sometimes suggested that rich criminals arrange for famous works of art to be 
stolen so that they can have them exclusively to themselves in private. Such theories have never been proven, and the truth is usually just a bit simpler. One of the most bizarre thefts was of the Mona Lisa [wiki] from the Louvre in 1911. An Italian workman, Vincenzo Peruggia [wiki], walked into the gallery, took the painting off the wall, and carried it out. Security was nonexistent. About two years later it was discovered in a trunk in his cheap lodging rooms in Florence. So, why did he take it? It was nothing to do with money. He said that as the painting was by an Italian, Leonardo da Vinci, it was part of Italy’s national cultural heritage, and he was simply taking it back to where it belonged: Florence. (The painting was returned to the Louvre.)
3. The Auction Houses Scandal
The major commercial scandal of recent years has been the alleged collusion between the two big international auction houses Christie’s and Sotheby’s. As the supply of expensive masterpieces began to run out, competition between the two firms became increasingly fierce and each of them found it difficult to make a profit. They got together secretly to fix not the price of works of art themselves but the commission that they would each charge to sellers. In certain parts of the world, such an arrangement is quite legal but not in the United States. Eventually the practice came to light. The federal authorities imposed fines running into hundreds of millions of dollars, and prison sentences were also handed out.
4. The Portland Vase
Wanton acts of destruction in the art world are fortunately rare. One of the strangest occurred in 1845 in the British Museum, London, and is worthy of a Sherlock Holmes story. The Portland Vase, the most famous example of ancient Roman glass, decorated in dark-blue-and-white cameo technique, was brought from Italy in 1783 and purchased by the Duchess of Portland. A drunken young man entered the museum and without explanation smashed the vase and its glass display case. He was imprisoned for breaking the case but not the vase, as British law didn’t impose penalties for destroying works of art of high value. The vase has since been repaired; however, you can still see the bruises.
5. Cellini’s Saltcellar
Saliera or salt cellar by Benvenuto Cellini (ca. 1539 - 1543)
A recent art world disaster/scandal occurred on May 13, 2003 (and it wasn’t even a Friday!). Thieves climbed scaffolding and smashed windows to enter Vienna’s Art History Museum and stole the "Mona Lisa of sculptures" - Cellini’s Saltcellar [wiki]. This intricate 16-centimeter-high sculpture was commissioned by François I, king of France, from Benvenuto Cellini (1500 - 1571), the Renaissance’s most ingenious and gifted goldsmith. Crafted with amazingly rich detail and skill, its principal figures are a naked sea god and a woman who sit opposite of each other, with legs entwined - a symbolic representation of the planet earth. The thieves set off the alarms, but these were ignored as false, and the theft remained undiscovered until 8:20 a.m. The reasons for the theft are as yet unknown. The fear is that these thieves will destroy the sculpture or melt it down, an act of vandalism that would be the equivalent of burning the Mona Lisa.
10 Drug Scandals
1. E. German athletes & government sponsored cheating
2. 1983 Pan Am Games: Dawn of drug testing
3. The U.S. Track & Field coverups
4. Canada's shame: Ben Johnson
5. Last to first: Irish swimmer Michelle Smith
6. Fake dynasty: Chinese swim team
7. Tour de France: Whatever it takes
8. Baseball: Home runs in bulk
9. Cross country skiing and doping: a Nordic tradition
10. Nandrolone goes for the Grand Slam
Top 10 Internet Scandals of All Time
10. Don't Ask, Don't Tell--And Don't Tell AOL
Senior Chief Petty Officer Timothy R. McVeigh figured there was no harm in listing his marital status as "gay" on his AOL profile. Even though he had not divulged his sexual preference to the military, McVeigh (no relation to the Oklahoma City bomber) chose not to disclose his full name or other identifying information to AOL. But his privacy--and his 17-year career in the Navy--were tossed overboard when an AOL employee divulged his full identity to a naval investigator in the fall of 1997.
AOL first denied outing McVeigh, then apologized for violating its own privacy policy, and then criticized the Navy for "tricking" its employee by pretending to be a friend of McVeigh's.
When the Navy accused the 17-year veteran of violating the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy and tried to discharge him, McVeigh sued. After a judge ruled in his favor, McVeigh was allowed to retire as a master chief petty officer, the rank he would have attained had AOL not spilled the beans in the first place.
9. The Rootkit of All Evil
Halloween 2005 was a scary night for Sony BMG Music, but not for the usual reasons. That day Microsoft Technical Fellow Mark Russinovich posted a curious entry on his blog. While scanning his hard drive that day, Russinovich had discovered a rootkit--a tool often used by hackers to mask the presence of malware--and had traced it back to Get Right With the Man, a Sony BMG Music CD.
The scandal snowballed, as other bloggers weighed in and the mainstream media picked up the story. At first Sony denied that its copy-protection software had turned half a million PCs into hacker's toys. It then issued "fixes" that didn't work, and finally it relented to public pressure and offered to help users uninstall the kit and replace their CDs. By then, the company's reputation was as damaged as its customers' hard drives.
8. Sex-Video Scandal #387 in a Series
Stop us if you've seen this one before. Sexy starlet falls madly in love with Hollywood hunk. Sexy starlet and Hollywood hunk fall madly out of love three months later. Soon thereafter a video of the pair making the beast with two backs appears on the Net, though both parties deny all knowledge of it. (What, weren't they there?) It may be a jilted lover's revenge or just a cheap publicity stunt, but it's a little more exposure than any of us really needed. Memo to Pamela and Tommy Lee, Paris and Rick, Colin Farrell and Nicole, and all other would-be video exhibitionists: When you see somebody pointing a camera at you--and you're not on a movie set--put your clothes back on. It's generally not a good career move (though it's still a step up from House of Wax).
7. 'I Sue Dead People'
This is one of those scandals that never seem to end. Beginning in September 2003, the RIAA and MPAA took a new tack in their anti-swapping crusade by suing consumers for illegally downloading music and movie files. They hired firms to infiltrate peer-to-peer networks, capture IP addresses, and force ISPs to reveal the names of the customers who had been assigned them (though some, like Verizon, refused).
Twelve-year-old honor students, dead grandmothers, computerless families, and thousands of John Does are among the 18,000 U.S. consumers sued so far. The upshot: File sharing is continuing, CD sales are dwindling, and legal downloads are climbing. And the RIAA and MPAA are tied for second place as the Dilbert Awards' Weaseliest Organizations of 2006.
6. The Not-So-Secret Service
In October 2004, Paris Hilton's T-Mobile Sidekick account was hacked by 21-year old Nicholas Jacobsen, who shared her private photos and address book across the Net. No big deal; by that time thousands of Netizens had already seen as much of Paris as is possible to see without the aid of medical equipment.
The real scandal was who else got hacked in the same exploit: U.S. Secret Service agent Peter Cavicchia, who happened to be investigating Jacobsen at the time. Jacobsen produced memos that Cavicchia had e-mailed regarding ongoing investigations of Russian cybercrooks. In February 2006, Jacobsen pleaded guilty to one count of hacking, was fined $10,000, and was sentenced to a year of home detention. By then, Cavicchia had already turned in his badge. Though the Secret Service says he should not have been using his personal device for work, Cavicchia said he resigned on his own and was not asked to leave the agency.
5. Scandalous Feats
In 1986, Paul "Freck" Morgan lost the use of his legs following a boating accident. Sometime in the summer of 2001, the paraplegic hit upon a brilliant idea: to cut off his useless feet with a homemade guillotine and broadcast the deed live on the Internet. Those interested in the gruesome spectacle could watch Freck's Webcam for $20 (or $2 a toe); the money would go toward an operation for Morgan to be fitted for prosthetic limbs. Freck's site even featured a charming cartoon depiction of what the event, scheduled for January 2002, might look like.
For a time Freck spurred debate among Netizens: Should someone be allowed to mutilate themselves solely for money and a sick kind of fame? But the cut-off date came and went, and Freck's feet were still attached. Like OurFirstTime.com, where Webpreneur Ken Tipton boasted he would show two virgins deflowering each other on the Web, or Manbeef.com, which claimed to sell human flesh for consumption, CutOffMyFeet.com proved to be just another well-played hoax. In the end, Freck didn't have a leg to stand on. Or maybe he just got cold feet.
4. The China Syndrome
Several Net giants found themselves on the wrong side of "the Great Firewall" last year as they caught heat for cutting deals with China's Communist regime. Google, for one, announced a new Chinese version of its search engine that is censored by the Beijing government. Search for controversial topics like Falun Gong, and the results will look quite different depending on which side of the Pacific you're on.
But Google declined to roll out Chinese versions of Blogger or Gmail, hoping to avoid the scandal that Yahoo brought upon itself when it turned over subscriber e-mail to the Chinese authorities, an action that resulted in the arrests of three dissidents. In late 2005, Microsoft voluntarily removed the blog of an outspoken Chinese journalist from MSN Spaces. Cisco has also come under fire for selling China the equipment to carefully filter Internet access for its 132 million Netizens. Rather than get cut out of the world's largest emerging market, these firms decided to hold their noses and take the money.
3. Dan Rather Bids a Font Farewell
They were supposed to be the smoking gun the Bush Administration was desperate to conceal: four documents, dating from the early 1970s, that allegedly proved that powerful friends of our current president pulled strings to keep him out of Vietnam and put him into the National Guard. But shortly after 60 Minutes host Dan Rather revealed the documents' existence in September 2004, the gun blew up in his face. Conservative blogs Free Republic, Little Green Footballs, and Power Line questioned the authenticity of the documents--specifically, whether a 1970s-era typewriter could produce the superscript th and curly apostrophes found in the four memos.
Instead of focusing on where W actually was when he was supposed to be serving with the National Guard in 1972, political bloggers immersed themselves in the arcana of typewriter fonts--and the mainstream media followed suit. Twelve days after airing the segment, Dan Rather publicly apologized for the story, saying he could not vouch for the documents' authenticity. A few months later, he quietly left CBS--with the inevitable "gate" permanently appended to his name.
2. A Real Page Turner
The "overly friendly" interest that Representative Mark Foley (R-Florida) had in young male congressional pages wasn't really news to Washington, D.C.'s inner circle. But it took the Net--and ABC reporter Brian Ross--to expose Foley's predilections to the world.
When ABC published the transcripts of Foley's explicit text messages with an underage volunteer last September, not even the slickest Beltway spinmeister could shrug them off as benign. Foley's disgrace may not have brought about the Republican electoral debacle last November, but it didn't help his or his party's cause.
1. Monica-gate and Whitewater
On January 17, 1998, Matt Drudge broke the news that White House intern Monica Lewinsky was having an affair with President Bill Clinton. The story appeared on his Web site, the Drudge Report, and quickly turned into one of the biggest scandals in our nation's history--and established the Internet as a news source to be reckoned with.
The Lewinsky scandal put the Internet on hyperalert, drawing its attention to an ongoing and arguably bigger scandal called Whitewater. Without the influence of the Net, Whitewater might have been remembered as an endless investigation into obscure Arkansas real estate deals; instead it gathered a great deal of attention. Meanwhile, the related Independent Counsel investigation eventually led to the impeachment of our 42nd president.
Top 10 Scandals of TIMES
1. MARK FOLEY'S FOLLY
Decades from now, political scientists will still debate the cause of the Republican Party's meltdown in the 2006 midterm elections. Most will say the Iraq War was the culprit, but having a leading advocate of child protection legislation crash and burn because he sent a series of sexually explicit instant messages to young male Congressional pages certainly didn't help. The direct result of "Foleygate" resulted in the Florida representative resigning and checking into alcohol rehab five weeks before the election. The scandal also became the latest in a long list of sour grapes for the G.O.P., and sugar plums for the Democrats.
2. TED HAGGARD
The nation's evangelical movement takes lots of credit for boosting the current administration into office based on a campaign of morality. But every few years, even the evangelicals keep getting caught with their pants down...literally. This time National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) president Ted Haggard, who has been an ardent preacher against homosexuality, fell to allegations of keeping up a gay relationship with a male prostitute/masseur and using crystal meth with him as well. This cost him his pastorship at the New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colo., and he subsequently resigned as NAE leader.
3. THE DELAY-ABRAMOFF AFFAIR
If Tom DeLay became a Congressional giant during his tenure as a Texas representative, Jack Abramoff proved to be his Achilles' Heel. In this tangled web, Abramoff and several others, including two aides of the Congressman, wound up implicated in defrauding an Indian tribe then lining their pockets. It later caused DeLay's resignation amidst the indictment (and subsequent guilty plea) of Abramoff, the former power-wielding lobbyist, and set an early stage for a yearlong slippery slope for the G.O.P. The ironic part of it all is that after all the trouble DeLay has suffered because of lobbyists, what does he plan to become after his resignation? A lobbyist.
4. JEFFERSON'S COLD CASH
Last year, Louisiana was devastated by Hurricane Katrina. This year, a storm of a different kind of material was stirred up when Rep. William Jefferson, a Democrat whose district includes much of New Orleans, became the focus of a federal corruption probe. In May, his Congressional offices and his Washington home were raided, resulting in federal agents discovering $90,000 in cash in his freezer — wrapped in stacks of $10,000 each and placed in frozen food containers. Then-House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi requested that Jefferson resign from the House Ways and Means Committee, to which he refused. He instead ran again for his Congressional seat, and won. But he is facing trouble first with his colleagues in the Congressional Black Caucus and from Pelosi, who now calls the Democratic shots as Speaker of the House. What? Did he think she'd forget?
5. TROUBLE IN TAIWAN
As if it were not bad enough somebody shot and wounded Taiwanese president Chen Shui-bian during his most recent political campaign, his wife, Wu Shu-Chen, is now standing accused of embezzling $450,000 in state funds. Other family members and friends have also been alleged to use their ties to him for illicit gains, most notably his son-in-law Chao Chien-ming who was arrested on charges of insider trading and embezzlement. In November, Wu was formally indicted, but the president himself seems to be wearing a constitutionally tailored Teflon suit, because despite the allegations of his connection with this and other graft, he cannot be charged with anything until his presidential term ends in 2008. Recently, lawmakers fell 28 votes short of the required two-thirds majority that would have instituted an island-wide recall vote.
6. EVEN YOUR GARBAGE ISN'T PRIVATE ANYMORE
Earlier in the year CNET.com published a story that mentioned the long-term direct sales strategy of Hewlett-Packard. The story happened to contain details that were supposed to remain in the hush zone. To determine who leaked the goods, HP CEO Patricia Dunn hired a team of consultants to use a method called pretexting or identity misrepresentation to get the phone records of several HP board members and nine journalists. The firm even rummaged through the garbage of Wall Street Journal reporter Pui-Wing Tam in order to find out which board director was leaking to the press. Dunn then testified to a House Committee that she had no idea pretexting involved identity misrepresentation. But that wasn't enough for her to keep her job and she is expected to step down from her position on Jan. 18 during the next HP board meeting.
7. WHAT HAPPENED THAT NIGHT?
Three members of Duke lacrosse team, David Evans, Colin Finnerty, and Reade Seligmann, were accused of raping stripper Crystal Gail Mangum at a party in April, resulting in the suspension of the team for an entire season and the resignation of its coach, Mike Pressler. The school has been marred by the scandal, and a rift has been torn between Duke and the Durham, N.C. community on the basis of race and victim's rights. The accused deny any wrongdoing, and their lawyers argue the victim's story is false and that she was too inebriated to remember anything. Prosecutors eventually dropped rape charges against the three lacrosse players but, according to defense attorneys, they still faced kidnapping and sexual offense charges.
8. THE CASE OF KATSAV
Israeli President Moshe Katsav has found himself accused of rape and sexual assault by numerous women. Israeli authorities are deciding whether to indict him on the charges. By late September, no fewer than eight women had accused him of sexual assault including one who said he coerced her into having sex with him. Investigators have collected enough evidence against Katsav to hand over to the Jerusalem District Attorney's Office, which will recommend whether to press charges against the president or close the case. Katsav has said that if he is indicted, he would resign. But despite the mounting evidence against her husband, Katsav's wife, Gila, is standing by her man, saying she would never leave him and telling an Israeli news website that "if a girl feels she's in trouble, she can come and speak with him."
9. TOUR DE FARCE
It should be noted that doping problems in professional cycling go back more than a century, and so do claims of innocence in order to retain medal status. So when Phonak Hearing Team cyclist Floyd Landis was accused of taking performance-enhancing drugs at the 2006 Tour de France, then tested positive for unusually high testosterone levels, he followed suit and kept his championship standing (although tour officials do not consider him to be the winner, and Phonak fired him after he tested positive). The reason he gave for the positive test was that the high level of testosterone was a "natural occurrence" and that the hormone was produced by his "own organism." Doctors, however, have scoffed at the notion that his body would produce that amount of testosterone naturally.
10. DON'T MESS WITH OPRAH
Early in 2006, talk-show queen Oprah Winfrey became queen of the blogosphere when her one-time guest, author James Frey's book A Million Little Pieces was exposed as largely fabricated on The Smoking Gun website. Winfrey, willing to stand behind Frey's best-selling memoir of self-renewal and drug rehabilitation, called into CNN's Larry King Live where Frey was appearing to defend him. It turned out that publisher Random House had not checked the total authenticity of Frey's claims. Frey later apologized for the fabrication, but was dropped by his literary agent and publisher and lost a future deal with Penguin Books. He later appeared on Oprah where she admitted that she had made a mistake and called him a flat-out liar. But Frey did get the last word when he told Publisher's Weekly recently that he is "looking forward to showing people that I can write fiction."
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