A disgruntled lawyer in the waning years of California’s dot-com boom, Walton discovered eBay. An old army buddy taught him how to buy cheap art at thrift shops and sell it on the site for thousands. Greed got the better of both men as they began forging famous artists’ signatures’ onto paintings — when one of their forgeries sold for $135,000, that was big news. Then they got caught. And convicted. Fake is Walton’s somewhat reedy, crybaby memoir about the part of his life about which he now says he is most ashamed. Except … while trying to put his shattered life together, Walton sold some software he’d designed for six figures. And he nabbed a major book deal. So if you have a thing about ill-gotten gains, and if you don’t believe that wrongdoers should benefit for their crimes — even, or especially, if the benefit derives from a mea-culpa — then don’t make Walton any richer by buying his book.
Grade: C