help with art loss, any legal help

My problem is, my husband is a professional
artist, and last year we became involved with a company, art-exchange.com &
Timothy's Fine art, in Hot Springs, AR. They took $3500., from us to exhibit
in the NY art expo last March. We gave them the money and we decided to
attend the show in person. What they sold us is not what we received. They
made NO attempt to try to sell our art as told to us over the phone. We were
very unhappy the way they treated us and our art at the show. We had shipped 3 original oil paintings to them for the show, but only 2 showed up.

Theycould not find one of them. After the show was over and we returned home to
CA, I called them to have them ship the art to us. They said they did find
the one that was missing back in the warehouse, but now, the two that were
on exhibit in NY are now missing. (Valued at $23K). Before the NY show
started in March, they approached us in Feb., saying that if we signed up
NOW for the Las Vegas Show in Sept., instead of paying $4250., for small
wall space, we could get it for only $2900. So, we gave them the money for
the LV art expo. After talking with them almost every day, to see if they
had found our art, on Monday, July 21, after talking with them just on
Friday, July 18th about the show, I found out from a call from another
artist, that they were not going to exhibit ANYTHING in this show. They will
not refund our money, they will not return our art and we are VERY unhappy.
I have done a LOT of research about these people. COO Matt Valentine, has
done time in prison here in CA, 6 yrs, and lived in Costa Mesa, CA, same
town that Richard Andrew Gipe and Rodger S. Gipe lived in. The Gipe brothers
started the business in l995

[annjd]

Based on what you say here, you could file suit against them (or at least threaten to do so) in small claims court or in regular court; filing in small claims court is easier and requires no attorney...you could try to collect all of the costs and damages that you suffered due to their behavior... You may also report them to your state attorney general's office.

And file a police report for fraud if you suspect outright fraud.

[qploans]

thanks for the post