Last week, Everlast from House of Pain shared his story of being conned out of money by Jason Zenga and Juliann Cyhan of Art Asylum Boston.
Since then, the street art blogs and forums have picked up the story, and KAWS, whose work Everlast was attempting to purchase, has told his fans he has no connection to the Boston gallerists and that he's now actively collecting information about AAB's previous victims.
In January we sold Jason and Juliann a KAWS print. After finding us through eBay, Zenga and Cyhan asked us to meet them in NYC and conduct the transaction in person. We arrived with the print and they with enough cash to cover 90% of the transaction, several thousand dollars. They examined and accepted the print, then explained they lacked the cash for the difference and asked us if we would accept a check. They spoke in detail of their friendship with Shepard Fairey and KAWS and we decided they were good for it or, at worst, if they weren't we wouldn't be losing as much as we were profiting.
After all, no one would be so foolish as to con someone in such a small community. Just weeks prior we were in Pittsburgh taking a private tour of Shepard's show with the Warhol Museum's curator and our blog was revived a year earlier after it appeared on CBS Sunday Morning in a story about KAWS our writing inspired. Yet somehow, mentioning all this made them nervous. We should have seen this coming.
That night, around 2am on January 16th, Jason Zenga began texting us demanding a refund. He would text us non-stop for 36 hours, through the afternoon of the 17th. In the course of his texting he would describe more and more outrageous flaws in the print including screwholes, dry-mounting, tears and creases. During this period he would also e-mail us with even more outrageous descriptions of non-existant damage.
At 8am, on the morning of January 16th, Zenga wrote:
"I was a bit overzealous and angry to see that not only was the print (as I mentioned) was permanently adhered to the foam board but who ever framed it drove nails through the image to suspend it behind the mat and hold it between the frame and the inner wooden frame. In addition to this there was a significant crease along the right corner and also a number of tears and "missing paper" from the upper sections. The condition of this piece is so poor it is not even worth a third of what I paid!
The nature of this piece especially with it being permanently stuck to the backing is for display purposes only, if this was solely for the sake of displaying and not for the actual artwork than it should have been priced accordingly between $500- $1,000 at the most and even that is being generous in price.
As an art collector all of the aforementioned issue's are completely unacceptable and I wish you would have been more honest about the piece, I do not know why you did not realize I would remove the back of the frame to view the condition of the piece?
what you sold me is worthless, not only do I not have the option of re-framing it to my liking but I cannot even re-sell it to recuperate my loss. I am angry and after meeting with some very important people / artists yesterday i was embarrassed when out of excitement I proceeded to show off my new acquisition only to see that it was a severly damaged wrothless piece of paper, rather than a beautiful print that I have been looking to add to my collection, for god's sake there is actual 3M tape on the top front of the print..??? who does that, it looks like it was placed there to hide / disguise tears in the print."
Throughout these texts and e-mails, Zenga demanded an immediate refund. If we failed to accept this offer he would contact his attorneys. We never responded to his texts and he never contacted his attorneys.
Even while harassing us, Zenga posted an image of our print to his Art Asylum Boston Facebook page. (This account has since been deleted.) The print was shown to be in mint condition as we sold it, and at 930am on January 17th he announced it was his gallery's newest acquisition.
For months the image would remain a staple of his Facebook wall photos gallery.
As menioned above, Zenga and Cyhan arrived on the afternoon of the 15th from Boston to pick up the work. They were then headed to see KAWS in Brooklyn to pick up several 4 Foot Compantion pieces from him. Juliann Cyhan's own Facebook wall seemed to confirm this at the time, although we have since learned KAWS has no connection to Zenga or Cyhan.
A later update on Cyhan's Facebook page reveals she and Zenga were back in Boston on the 16th. She mentions they were in New York with a $10,000 work of art and $8,000 in cash the day prior. They clearly had more cash on hand than they owed us. On Sunday Morning, a minute before posting our print as his newest acquisition, Zenga through his AAB account commented on Cyhan's wall that they would be buying art again in NYC the following weekend, then quoted Jay-Z's Empire State of Mind. They both seemed happy, had a romantic weekend, posted lyrics of their dreams being realized, and never once did they mention their weekend was ruined by a damaged work of art.
Soon after this, she made her profile private.
Because Zenga, in one of his more threatening e-mails, wrote the following...
"Also I do not want to come across as being difficult but be aware that i have your phone #, your home address as well as the address that was on the receipt attached to the print which may be your mom or your wife, i have the License plate number, make and model of the car you pulled up in and I link to both your location and IP address from when you visited my site."
...we didn't want to pursue legal remedy fearing he was a psychopath and was going to harm someone close to us. We cut our losses and let the matter go. But in the past year people began to reach out to us from all over the world with their own stories of Zenga, Cyhan, and Art Asylum Boston. One such person was Zenga's ex-girlfriend who shared her story with us in April:
"I have to tell you my story began about 3 years ago, 2007 to be exact. It seems I know a lot more about Jason than anyone ever thought they would, and that my instinctual thoughts are very much an accurate reality of his disgusting con artist and devious personality. You see, Adam, we used to date. He was my boyfriend from January to about May/June, it's hard to tell when the relationship ended, and over the course of the relationship, he had managed to weasel a few thousand dollars out of me, of which I took him to court for. My dealings with him are of a slightly different nature, when he was creating techno/trance music, not dealing in art. The stories I have are woeful, emotional, and heartbreaking. I can tell you more but unfortunately I must be headed out of town this weekend, New Haven, to visit family. If you want to know more I will email you more or we can even chat on the phone to further discuss this if you want. I promise I am a legitimate human being, who was wronged by a vindictive man who used me. He USED ME.
I will tell you that I threatened him with a lawsuit, contacted his work many times, I even nearly hired a private detective to find him so he could serve him with a summons to appear in court. I moved out of state and flew back TWICE to make sure I was at the trial to convict him. He was convicted by default (he never showed) but without the funds to afford a private detective I couldn't have him arrested and eventually the civil suit wore out it's Statue of Limitations. It expired. I am still paying back the money he stole from me. I am well aware of the lines he uses and as I read your email, I just could NOT BELIEVE the accuracy of the same lines he used on me. "I'm good for it. Here's the check. Just don't cash it until I tell you so." (from a bogus account) or my favorite one "I'll call you later in about an hour and we'll meet so I can give you the cash." (That one was used several times).
My advice, if you want the money if it means more about getting vindicated for the acts he's committed and getting him shut down, then, well, go for it. If you have the money and can afford to spend it to get the money back and you want to see him go down for this, DO IT! I wish I could've afforded it at the time, but he basically ruined my life. I had to leave the state because of him, because of the money he stole I could not afford to be in Massachusetts anymore. That being said, my advice is this: You KNOW where he works which is GREAT I mean that's the first part of the battle, since you know where he is, you can have the court documents sent to him. Since the transaction happened in NYC, you have to file with the courts there, then the papers would be sent to his address in MA. I recommend also having the photographs of the art piece on display on his webpage. There's this nifty "snap" program on Windows so you can take a picture of the computer screen as is, PROVING the art piece was displayed without damage. When he doesn't show up for the court summons, which he won't, I can GUARANTEE YOU he won't, he will have forfeited his ability to fight and you will have won by "default". This would be a small claims court case, btw, unless it was a REALLY expensive painting and he owes you more than $2-3,000. After that you have another 'trial' where he should appear to pay damages owed. He WON"T appear again, and in about 2 weeks you will receive a letter in the mail giving you the permission to have him arrested and seek damages from him (it's called Cabias something). NOW you have to hire a police officer (he has a special name for his job) who has to live in Massachusetts IN HIS TOWN to have him arrested, and you have to coordinate your schedules so you show up the same time. It costs about $200 to hire this guy. Since I didn't know where he lived or his exact work address, I couldn't have the arrest warrant issued because I would have had to hire a PI first to find him. BUT that has changed for you. 3 years ago he wasn't on the internet, in photographs, etc, displaying himself as such. So I couldn't find him."
On July 11th, ArtScouting, a European gallery found our original blog post about AAB and sought our help though there was nothing we could do for them. They have since found help through the Collecting Street Art and Graffiti blog after being taken by Zenga and Cyhan for $18,000.
ArtScouting must have caused some fuss regarding our own problem with AAB because Zenga wrote us out of the blue two days prior on July 9th complaining we were damaging his reputation:
"I am writing to you to ask exactly what criminal activity I took part in? I am not writing to argue or to create conflict I am sincerely asking for your help.
I am not really sure what exactly I did that was fraudulent or criminal and we can put the past behind us, I am asking that you assist me in this by providing me with information.
And if this is something that was retaliatory in anyway I would greatly appreciate a revision of sorts. I am now in a situation genuinely were a gentleman is taken what you wrote and copy and pasting it all over the internet and to be honest I am scincerley at a loss, racking my mind trying to think of what i did that made you post that write up about me.?
I am asking for your help in this matter and hope that you will respond as I am both confused and overwhelmed with stress and grief.
I hope that you decide to follow up with me and assist me in clarifying this, I am not asking for anything more or less.
Thank you for your time and I look forward to hearing back from you - Jason"
Since then, e-mails have been fast and furious. In September, a well known gallerist from Los Angeles wrote us:
"hello there, i am an art dealer and just put it together that Juliann Cyhan & Jason Zenga are related somehow—I've had good dealings with one and terrible dealings with the other (which is odd!). I did a google search and came up with your note about nefarious dealings—would you mind sharing? It would be kept confidential."
In the last few days we noticed traffic pointing to our site from a Kid Robot forum where our original complaint about Zenga and Cyhan was linked so we have now decided to share our whole story with the internet, if slightly edited, and the full unedited story with KAWS. Hopefully all of this will encourage more people to come forward and Zenga and Cyhan will be prosecuted and imprisoned, their assets seized and payment made to their victims.
Check it out HERE
Tuesday, January 25, 2011 
