by Bartee Haile

By the third week of March 1967, the sensational scam was the talk of the international art world. A Texas tycoon was the not-so-proud owner of the biggest collection of forgeries on the planet.

Algur Hurtle Meadows made his first million before the age of 30. Over the next three decades, the shrewd wheeler-dealer amassed a fortune conservatively estimated at a hundred million dollars.

Despite the cutthroat competition of the oil game, the Georgia transplant maintained a child-like ...