Art of the Con

It was nothing new, the woman told police. Grossman had been "physically and mentally abusing her" since the previous February, when "she told him she wanted out of the relationship," according to the report.

He "has threatened to commit suicide if she left him," holding "knives to himself" and trying "to get her to plunge a knife into him," the report said.

This time, there would be no call to his probation officer. His supervision had ended nine months earlier.

Contacted recently at her Montgomery County home, the woman, now 54, insisted that her name not be published, saying she still fears him.

By September 2005, Grossman had yet another new love: a Main Line woman who would fall hard for both him and his charade. She would promote him and pay his way for months - until her family went to extraordinary lengths to disentangle her.

'Luc Sonnet' emerges

Debra Robinson was 45 and soon to be divorced, with a child in college and three at home in Lower Merion.

None liked the artist their mother had met on a Jewish dating site, and her father and siblings soon concurred.

They smelled a phony when Grossman ran on about his Ph.D from Cornell and his international acclaim as "Luc Sonnet" - his "professional name," he said. They checked the Sonnet Web site, featuring the Picasso-protege shtick, and the odor intensified.

Her twin sister, Patty Adler, plugged his real name into The Inquirer's electronic archive - and up popped his felonious past. Printouts in hand, she flew in from her home in Ohio to confront Robinson, who then reluctantly broke up with him.

But not for long.

Within a month, Grossman was back in touch, Robinson said. They spent a week together at Mill Creek Farm, a Bucks County bed-and-breakfast near Peddler's Village.

"There was something intriguing about him," Robinson said, and she believed she could help sell his art. Her divorce finalized, "I wanted to make my own money."

She began to isolate herself from her family to appease her beau. Her children went to live with their father, enabling Grossman to move in in May 2006.

"He convinced her that we were all wrong . . . that we were crazy," sister Adler said. "He saw to it that she lost contact with each one of us."

With Robinson's help, the enterprise of "Luc Sonnet" began to grow legs.

In June 2006, she filed the name "Sonnet Arts International" with the state, listing herself as the registered agent and her home as the primary place of business.

She bought frames and pricey glass for his prints, hanging them in her living and dining rooms and hosting a July "gallery opening." She purchased an expensive printer for his high-tech inkjet, or giclee, prints. She gave him a used Jeep Cherokee when Charlene Welde's Volvo quit.

She said she did it mostly on credit cards, landing her $85,000 in debt.