offering forgeries?

This is being cross posted, please excuse any duplications.

I received an interesting "business proposal" today via e-mail (I also check the web site to see if it was as bad as it sounded). Parts of it strike me as being possibly illegal, or at least on very shaky ground. I was wondering what you all thought of it.

The company, located in Germany, paints pictures, in oil, and sells them to individuals and businesses. Fine. They will take commissions. Fine.

However, they will paint ANY picture. They specialize in reproductions. They claim that a "perfect reproduction is guaranteed," and can do Old Masters as well as contemporary modern art. This is the part that strikes me as not so fine. For the Old Masters I am not too worried if they are using modern paints and canvases since there is no longer any copyright on such paintings and even if they are as good as they claim, a simple check of materials would stop any passing off as originals. However, don't modern paintings still have a copyright? "A perfect reproduction" would be as much of a copy as a xerox is of a journal article. Much more work goes into the painting, but it is not intended to be a creative exercise or another artist's interpretation of a painting. This strikes me as being a possible source of modern forgeries as well.

                                    Angela Putney, Ph.D.
                                    Physics Management Fellow
                                    American Institute of Physics
                                    aputney[_at_]aip.org