A Miami art dealer was sentenced to 46 months in federal prison for selling paintings he falsely represented as works by Andy Warhol, according to court records obtained by Local 10 News.
Leslie Howard Roberts, 62, was sentenced Friday by U.S. District Judge Roy K. Altman. He must also serve three years of supervised release and pay a $100 special assessment. He was taken into custody, and the court ordered that he be sent to a federal facility in Florida that can address his medical needs. A restitution hearing is set for Jan. 20, 2027.
The case grew out of a federal investigation into Miami Fine Art Gallery in Coconut Grove. Federal agents raided the gallery at 3180 Commodore Plaza in October 2025 and seized several paintings. Prosecutors said Roberts told customers the works came directly from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and supplied fraudulent invoices to authenticate them.
Carlos Miguel Rodriguez Melendez, 37, of Sunny Isles Beach, was also charged. Prosecutors said he falsely claimed to work for a New York-based auction company to help authenticate the artwork. Prosecutors also alleged that Roberts moved sale proceeds through transfers of $150,000, $40,000 and $50,000 from the gallery account to a personal account.
Roberts has a prior federal fraud record. He pleaded guilty to mail fraud in 2015 over the sale of fake paintings and was convicted in the late 1980s of defrauding his uncle in a stock scheme. Civil suits have also alleged counterfeit Warhol sales. At the hearing, prosecutors dismissed the remaining counts against him, and he was ordered to surrender his passport to his attorney.
