The business completely ended in the Michigan gallery. The gallery is still open and the receptionist is there but they don't have any sales people on the floor any more. The incoming traffic practically doesn't exist and there are no more openings or artist receptions. The only thing they’re doing other than the cruise ships are VIP events and auctioneer training. The museum is still there. The retail gallery doesn't exist.

The employee mood is pretty bleak right now. Everybody is very scared. No one knows what's going to happen.

They spend time searching for news on "Fine Art Registry" or "weworshipsatan.com" website.

They used to read "Rip off Report" but after Rip Off Report visited Park West the site changed. Rumor has it that they were paid off.

Instead of Christmas bonuses employees received "Christmas Art". Long time employees are wondering now what all the Dalís, Millennium Golf Player or Peter Maxes are really worth.

All departments were cut down to skeleton crews and everybody's salary was cut 10-25%.

The only people getting fat paychecks are attorneys and PR companies.

Albert left for Barcelona on an emergency basis.

Many ship auctioneers were told by prospective buyers that Park West purchased the Rembrandt Millennium Impression plates.

During the training session one of the auctioneers asked Morris Shapiro if it is so.

"I got very upset when I found out that Park West indeed owns the Millennium plates. I had been told by a couple of the customers that Park West had purchased the plates, and I asked, and was told by Morris Shapiro, 'Oh no, absolutely not, not even close.' It was a shock. I do believe that he lied in my face".

The "last" Raising of Lazarus etching was sold a couple of years ago for $8,000.

After a few months a couple of them appeared in the inventory. "We just purchased them recently," was the explanation. Suddenly there were 80 of them. Where did they all come from?

They're not available for sale except to VIP's

Park West has been selling lifetime Rembrandt etchings for a very long time and still have an unlimited supply of "lifetime" impressions in their inventory. Probably more than many of the world's museums combined.

There was something else that is puzzling. According to Albert Field, Dali did black and white etchings of four of the Muses.

All Park West Dali catalogs containing references to Albert Field were replaced by new ones with information about Bernard Ewell. Then Morris told all sales staff never to use Albert Field's name again "because Field made a lot of mistakes and from now on the only authority we were to use as a Dali expert was Bernard Ewell", the self proclaimed "Dali sleuth" (or is it slut?).

Park West is the only place that got all nine Muses. They are water colored and the additional five looked completely different from the four cataloged by Field. Originally Park West got a very limited number of them and then suddenly the quantities grew. They all came from the Albarettos.

We were always told that the Albaretto credentials were impeccable and the provenance of the collection was beyond any reproach, etc.

I am sure that the documentation is in order but....

About 7-8 years ago Park West Gallery got several sets of the Divine Comedy with full signatures. It would say "Salvador Dalí" and as Ewell put it, "The signature itself is a work of art".

The signatures are truly beautiful and practically identical.

All prints are signed in ink. Signatures are so perfect that it is impossible to tell them apart from one print to another.

Can you imagine Dali calligraphically hand signing 1000+ prints in ink all the same?

It was explained to clients and sales staff that some lawyer had paid Dalí to sign 10 full sets of the "Divine Comedy" and then just put them aside and buried them in a vault for 20 years. After his death his son was going through the estate and found them. The son had no use for the art so he sold them to Park West.

Right after the acquisition the Gallery held an opening with Bernard Ewell present; prints were offered for sale but a little later were taken off the walls and now are available to the VIP's only.

With the exception of Morris Shapiro Bachelors Degree, nobody at Park West has any kind of formal art education or credentials. And about a year ago Morris finally obtained an Appraiser Certificate. Now all certificates of authenticity and appraisals bear his signature instead of Albert's as it always was.

The so-called expert on Dalí at Park West, Bill Smith, can't even pronounce Gala's name correctly. He always calls her Gayla.

Everybody's doing "variations" now. Not just Peter Max, Krasnyansky, Marcus Glen, Tarkay. It's being sold as "that's the way artists evolve, they just really like what they did and they want to relive the experience over and again".

Park West inventory of "limited edition" prints is truly unlimited. You will find the same images under different names...one customer called client services and said that she had many years before purchased a limited edition Tarkay serigraph and now the same image was being sold under a different name, practically the same dimensions and everything the same. It was advertised in the latest sale brochure. She was totally outraged. She went through the roof saying a limited edition is a limited edition. The same thing happened with Tomas Rut - he had two completely identical images under two different names.

During one of the auctioneer trainings Albert told "newbees" not to use the word "originals" but from now on use the word "unique" instead because "everything Park West sells is original art since it "comes from the origin of the artist". Maybe he should explain what the hell this means.

The two Mohammed Ali and George Foreman photographs signed by both are very well known forgeries and listed on the FBI website.