Art of the Con

To that end, Adler and her husband made up with Grossman - a "fake friendship," she called it. And they bided their time.

Meanwhile, he began booking "live art to live music" performances. He sought out small venues where, using a laptop, digital pen and graphics tablet, he would create abstracts as musicians played and project his works-in-progress onto a large screen.

He and Robinson talked up the management at MilkBoy Coffee, an art and music venue in Ardmore, which agreed to hang his prints during October 2006. He did several live-art shows there, co-owner Jamie Lokoff said, but never delivered the big-name music talents - like British pop star James Blunt - whom he claimed to know very well.

"You're skeptical, but what if it is true?" Lokoff said. "That's how, in my opinion, he gets through with all of this."

Grossman got a big boost from a guileless press, inducing two newspapers to swallow the tale of "Luc Sonnet" virtually whole.

"We're confident that it won't be long now before Luc Sonnet takes the country by storm . . . " began a story in the Nov. 15, 2006, issue of Play, an area entertainment weekly.

Under the heading "Buy a painting," it concluded: "They're not cheap, but they're beautiful. Oils run between $75,000 and $250,000. Sonnet acrylics typically go for $25,000 to $50,000 . . . "

One month later, after a sparsely attended live-art concert at the University of Pennsylvania's Irvine Auditorium, it was the Jewish Exponent's turn.

"His success got the attention of Pablo Picasso, who invited the then 17-year-old for an internship program that he ran from his private estate outside of Barcelona," the Dec. 21 profile said. It went on to quote the "rather well-known artist" observing that Picasso " 'wanted to know everything about you.' "

Yet even as his half-baked star ascended, Grossman was about to be put out to pasture - for a price.

Robinson wanted to shed him. But she didn't know how.

Her artist-in-residence, she said, had grown abusive. His all-night chatter deprived her of sleep. He controlled where she went, sometimes locking her in, she said. And he angered quickly when his artistic pedigree was challenged.

"He swore to me it was true," she said. "If I questioned him on it, he would explode. . . . He held a knife up to me once [and] pulled me down the steps by my hair."

Despite being vice president of a Montgomery County domestic-violence organization, she took no action.

But her housekeeper did.

On Nov. 14, 2006, the couple quarreled at a nearby Wawa and Robinson drove off, leaving Grossman there. Fearing his return, the housekeeper summoned Lower Merion police, according to their report.

Robinson told officers she wanted Grossman out, calling him "emotionally abusive." But they said she would need a court order, since he had established residence there for six months.

That, said Adler, is when Robinson and her family decided to "turn the con."

Robinson told Grossman that she wanted her children back, impossible with him there. Knowing he had nowhere to go, Adler and her husband offered a deal: