Two former Mandeville gallery owners were sentenced Thursday in federal court on mail fraud charges after they pleaded guilty last year in a scheme that defrauded their customers by misrepresenting the artwork they sold.

Christopher Breithoff, 35, and Constance Breithoff, 60, were sentenced to 21 months and 18 months in prison respectively. They were also ordered to pay back $924,023 in expenses to the victims. They are also required to place $50,000 in an escrow account, which will be held for 2 years in case additional victims come forward.

The Breithoffs, both of Covington, opened Barlow Gallery and Transitions, located at 3523 U.S. Highway 190 in Mandeville, in 2004. According to the bill of information issued by U.S. Attorney Jim Letten’s office in October 2008, the mother and son duo would purchase cheap Chinese paintings in bulk from wholesale distributors and resell them in the Mandeville gallery as original works of art.

The bill states that Breithoffs would concoct fictitious artists and even go so far as to develop fictitious biographies and signatures for these artists. Purchasers of the artwork were told the paintings were from “local and regional emerging artist,” and they were priced as such.

Letten’s office said in some instances Constance Breithoff would paint over any existing signatures on the Chinese artwork and would then paint the bogus artist’s unique signature.

At the direction of the Breithoffs, employees at the gallery would misrepresent the true artists’ identities to its customers and would provide them with fictional written biographies of the non-existent artists that they had created.

Letten’s office reported the defendants “would advertise on their Web site and represent to their customers in person that artwork at Barlow was painted by ‘hand-picked local and regional artists’ and by ‘emerging artists’ knowing that to be untrue.”

On more than one occasion, the Breithoffs and their employees would mail a certificate of authenticity along with a description of the fictional artist to the customer when a painting was purchased.

Some employees would tell customers that the artwork would likely become more valuable as the artists became more popular.

The case was investigated by special agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigations, New Orleans Division. Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Klebba, who is the computer and high intellectual property coordinator for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, handled prosecution.