Art of the Con

But the real deal breaker might have been her insistence that her mother, a retired art teacher, chaperone the shoot. "All of a sudden, something came up and he couldn't do it," Van Loon said.

Besides, she recalled him explaining, his artistic tastes ran to small-breasted women. Hers were too large.

Elsewhere on the Internet, he created photography sites under the name "Avedon" - as in Richard, the late iconic photographer - and listed business addresses in Buckingham, Los Angeles, New York and Washington.

When Brame was shown printouts of Sonnet's online sample photos by The Inquirer, his eyes widened. Behind and beneath the naked women were things he recognized: Mill Creek's parlor couch, Mill Creek's doorway, stairway and hallway.

"That's my kitchen!" Brame exclaimed.

Clearly, his "artist in residence" had taken the modeling sessions beyond the walls of the Jefferson Room.

In late 2006, Grossman had gotten Robinson to pay a crew of film students, mostly from Temple, to document him creating abstracts at the Irvine Auditorium show.

They resumed filming at Mill Creek, where, in the bucolic surrounds, he proclaimed his intention to educate the art world about his "new" technology.

A small, contemporary gallery in New Hope hosted what may have been his last live-art show. Having read the breathless coverage of Sonnet's show at MilkBoy, owner Brian Hanck let him into his ARTisZEN Arts gallery one weekend in January.

Soon after, though, Hanck ended the relationship.

Chief among the reasons was a damning series of e-mails from a woman who said she once dated Sonnet.

That name, she wrote, "is an alias. He is the ex-con scam artist Richard Grossman. . . . He has no doctorate and surely did not have an internship with Picasso! He is a pathological liar and has made up a whole new life."

The anonymous sender turned out to be Liz Shea, bent on outing the man who hated her pets.

More connections

Upon his arrival at Mill Creek, Luc Sonnet advertised on Craigslist.org for an artist's assistant to help promote his art. Among other duties.

"The first time I met him, he talked to me about modeling for him," said Nicole Cordisco of Doylestown.

Desiring both to work and to remain fully clothed, she said she managed "to weasel my way around it," putting him off with a "maybe."

A novice artist, Cordisco agreed to sell his work on commission, hoping she'd learn something. What she learned was that he coveted the connections of her father, John Cordisco, chairman of Bucks' Democratic Committee.

"He kept saying, 'Why not let your dad's friends sell the art?' " she said.