Han van Meegeren

I just stumbled across Wikipedia's entry on Han van Meegeren. Why is there not already a movie about this guy?

When art critics decried his work as tired and derivative, Van Meegeren ... decided to prove his talent to the critics by forging paintings of some of the world's most famous artists.... He so well replicated the styles and colours of the artists he copied, that the best art critics and experts of the time regarded his paintings as genuine, and sometimes exquisite. His most successful forgery was The Disciples at Emmaus... [which] was hailed by some of world’s foremost art experts as the finest Vermeer they had ever seen.

During World War II, ... a falsified "Vermeer" ended up in the possession of Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring. Following the war, the forgery was discovered in Göring's possession, and Han van Meegeren was arrested 29 May 1945 as a Collaborator, as the officials believed that he had sold Dutch cultural property to the Nazis. These crimes threatened extensive prison time and so Van Meegeren fearfully confessed to the forgery. On 12 November 1947 Van Meegeren was convicted of falsification and fraud charges, and was sentenced to a modest punishment of one year in prison. He never served his sentence, however; before he could be incarcerated Van Meegeren suffered a heart attack and died on 30 December 1947.

Seriously, that's too good to be made up. Even better: as part of his trial, he had to forge another painting in front of court-appointed witnesses, to prove he could do it. It was, alas, his last forgery.