As many of my articles have shown, the world of watches is populated with an incredible amount of unscrupulous scammers, con artists and charlatans, more often than not posing as honorable connoisseurs or scholars of the highest order. The story you are about to read is another such instance, this time involving the highly revered Italian super collector Sandro Fratini and the respected Patek Philippe expert Eric Tortella, who charges top dollars for his famous watch “authentications”. Some time ago, an anonymous source sent me one of Tortella’s authentication reports in which a multi-million dollar watch with an obviously fake ‘Yacht Master’ dial belonging to Fratini was praised to high heaven. It was all part of a scheme, never meant to come to light. Through an underhand private treaty deal orchestrated with the assistance of a major auction house, the individuals involved managed to swindle an unsuspecting collector out of 2.2 million dollars. The perfect case for the horrorlogical Christmas story of 2024.

---

Update November 19, 2025
In the meantime, it has come to light that the auction house Christie’s had absolutely no involvement in the deal. The watch was sold in commission by Dubai dealer Tariq Malik of Momentum Dubai and Singapore dealer Ali Nael of FutureGrail on behalf of Fratini. For the price of USD 2.7 million. It is rumoured that each dealer took a commission of USD 250k. USD 2.2 million is the amount that went to Fratini. As of now, none of them appears to want to assume any responsibility.

Update February 8, 2025
In a desperate but futile attempt to bury the truth, the former criminal convict Eric Tortella filed a copyright infringement complaint against me through a lawyer named Beau Epperly of the Swiss law firm Impulsius (ex Epperly Elam Fuochi). In consequence, Meta removed my Instagram post related to this story. I had used pictures from Tortella’s fraudulent authentication report for comparison purposes, something that is normally covered by the Fair Use Act, if there is a substantial public interest for the purpose of criticism, comment, news reporting, scholarship, or research, which in this case is certainly given. Needless to say, I submitted an appeal to get my content reinstated. In the meantime, to protect myself and this article, I removed all pictures owned by Tortella, and the link to his phony authentication report.

---

What is a Cosmograph ‘Yacht Master’?

First things first. The Cosmograph ‘Yacht Master’ Ref. 6242 appears to have been an actual Rolex project which, for some reason, never came to fruition. The trademark was registered on August 4, 1967, in the wake of a veritable yachting craze among major watch brands. Famous are the Heuer Ring Master, Nivada Chronomaster, Yema Yachtingraf, and Aquastar Regate.

The only remnants of Rolex’s abandoned project are three dials, two of which came from a Singer dial sample book and were installed in random watches. Singer is a Swiss dial maker going back to the year 1919. In addition to the three dials, there are around 30 casebacks stamped 6242, ordered in January 1969 and ultimately utilized in a regular Ref. 6239 batch. The first Rolex Cosmograph featuring a ‘Yacht Master’ dial surfaced in 1991 at Christie’s New York. Bearing case number 1196021 from late 1964, it is clear a loose dial was installed in a random watch.

The same watch was auctioned again in 2001 at Christie’s London where it was acquired by British singer and songwriter Eric Clapton. Only two years later it sold again at Christie’s New York, probably as a result of Clapton learning about the true nature of the watch, namely that it was put together and therefore not original.

2001 auction: Lot 121 – Exceptionally rare Rolex chronograph with prototype dial (christies.com)
2003 auction: Lot 181 – Extremely rare prototype chronograph (christies.com)

The second known dial is currently installed in a Rolex Cosmograph Ref. 6262 with case number 2621xxx belonging to ‘Unicorn’ swindler John Goldberger a.k.a. Auro Montanari. Where there is baloney, Goldberger is never far. The third dial is said to reside in the Rolex archives in Geneva.

Unbeknown to the uninitiated, there is a fourth dial which came into the limelight after the collection of Italian super collector Sandro Fratini was presented in a book titled ‘My Time’, published in 2018 in collaboration with Christie’s. In an interview with RobbReport, Fratini made conflicting statements as to why the book watch published: “I never wear my watches because for me, it’s not necessary to show other people”. He then followed up with the exact opposite: “For this reason, I decided to get with Christie’s to make a book together to show only a part of my collection to other people. I am very happy for this”. Let me get this right, so is it necessary to show other people or not? I suspect the book was created as a sales catalogue to attract private treaty buyers.

Fratini’s ‘Yacht Master’ dial is not only super weird, it also has a crooked subdial, and is unlike the first two known, undoubtly original dials. Of course, Fratini’s dial is without the shadow of a doubt fake and every experienced dealer says so. Fratini’s book is riddled with watches featuring highly questionable dials. There is even a rumour going around that many of those dials were commissioned in Italy by Fratini himself, just for fun. Italians doing their thing, I guess. The following picture shows Fratini (right), or Fraudini as I like to call him more appropriately since I discovered this story, together with Goldberger (left) and Scamegiani (center), the disgraced vintage watch dealer Davide Parmegiani of Monaco Legend Auctions.

Fratini and Parmegiani are very close, as you can tell from this picture. Last auction season, Parmegiani’s Monaco Legend Auctions sold one of Fratini’s many questionable watches, an asymmetric Jaeger LeCoultre with obviously later added Cartier print. Luckily, nobody really bought into it. It fetched “only” EUR 59,800.

Auction: Lot 5 – Extremely rare asymmetrical Cartier (monacolegendauction.com)

---

Rolex Daytona Ref. 6242 ‘Yacht-Master’, 2011194

One look at Fratini’s ‘Yacht Master’ dial suffices to understand something is terribly wrong. As with Mr. Hyde in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, “there is something wrong with his appearance; something displeasing, something downright detestable”, and “he gives a strong feeling of deformity, although I couldn’t specify the point”.

Once we draw some straight lines over the dial, the point is easily specified. Not only is the 30 minutes subdial at 3 o’clock totally crooked, the whole dial is twisted. To counter this flaw, the bezel was slightly turned clockwise to make it less obvious. Singer would never have produced such horrendous quality, not on a Monday, not on a Friday, probably not even on the wildest absinthe rush. No way, Jose!

A comparison of the Rolex Cosmograph ‘Yacht Master’ print shows that Fratini’s dial is full of weird-looking serifs, the small lines or strokes attached to the end of a larger stroke in a letter. The serifs on the R of Master look like the famous Klompen from The Netherlands (wooden cloqs), trying to walk away from the dial. Back in the day, when Italian counterfeiters had not yet figured out how to make proper serifs, they exagerated them in an almost comical fashion. Anybody with a bit of experience in this field can immediately tell it’s totally fake. (Pay attention dear ip lawyer, the picture used in the following comparison is NOT Tortella’s, make no mistake.)

If we compare the print on the original ‘Yacht Master’ dial to the print on a regular ‘Paul Newman’ dial in close case number proximity, you can see it’s basically identical, except for the usual imperfections due to varying pressure, or worn tampons (pad printing).

The 30 minutes subdial is a total mess. Nothing is properly aligned. Sure, the 10 and 20 numerals are also not perfectly horizontal on the original dial but its minimal compared to Fratini’s dial.

The yachting counter, the very element that sets these dials apart from regular Paul Newman models, is not properly aligned either. If we extrapolate the black radial lines of the counter on Fratini’s dial, they do not meet at the center of the subdial, whereas on the original dial, they absolutely do. Of course, Swiss-made precision. Take a wild guess where Fratini’s dial was made.

Let’s compare the small seconds subdial at 9 o’clock. As you can see, on the original dial (right) everything is perfectly aligned as it should be and was common for Singer dials, while on Fratini’s dial (left) everything is all over the place. Namely, the 45 minutes line is not aligned with the horizontal center line of the subdial which in turn is not aligned with the hole in the subdial. Then with have the 15 and 60 numerals which are too close to the edge, and of course the famous Paul Newman square markers which are off-centre.

The coup de grâce is finally administered by a quick look at the obviously fake Singer stamp on the back of the dial. As you can see, the stamp looks nothing like the punches used at the time. Fratini’s dial is without the shadow of a doubt a total fake, and a bad one too.

At least one of the two original ‘Yacht Master’ dials has a different punch altogether. Since these dials came from a Singer dial sample catalogue, which was used to showcase their latest designs, the dials didn’t have a regular production stamp but only the JS (Jean Singer) symbol followed by a specific number which was repeated in the catalogue. In the case of the ‘Yacht Master’ dial, the number was 27316, as you can see in the picture below published in Pucci Papaleo’s book Ultimate Rolex Daytona.

The picture below, published in the same book, shows the dial sample catalogues. Some people insist on calling the dials found in these books ‘prototypes’; I, on the other hand am more pragmatic. To me they are samples or proposals. Design concepts Singer produced and tried to sell to Rolex. By the way, none of the dials found in these books had dial feet as they were not meant to be installed in watches.

A lot of “prototypes” were created with dials from these catalogues, not only Rolex but many other brands as well. It would be interesting to know how these books left Singer in the first place as I don’t think they were ever meant to leave the factory.

Coming back to Fratini’s “Yuck Master’, Tortella has got some splainin’ to do. How could a super expert of his caliber be fooled by such a clumsy counterfeit? I suspect he wasn’t. As insiders have told me, if the price is right, and I bet he was offered a nice piece of the ‘Yuck Master’ cake for his “authentication” services, Tortella will legitimize everything. The guy is a fascinating character. Reportedly, he is also known for bad-mouthing perfectly fine watches should dealers and collectors not get one of his ‘watch passports’ when they want to sell their rare vintage Patek Philippe watches. People often use the word ‘extortion’ when describing these actions. Extort-ella anyone? Knowing Tortella’s past, it doesn’t surprise me a bit. As many of you already know from some of my articles, Tortella is an ex-convict who was locked away for 16 months in pre-trial detention and subsequently criminally charged by a Swiss court for misappropriation of 38 million Swiss Francs, mismanagement and forgery of documents. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison (suspended). Being the offspring of “charming fraudster” Gabriel Tortella (acc. to a famous auctioneer), co-founder of the shady watch auction house Antiquorum together with Osvaldo Patrizzi, Eric had amassed countless horological items. To cover some of the damage caused, the Swiss government seized all of Eric Tortella’s assets. Lots of watches, but also hundreds of loose dials, many of which were fake Paul Newman dials (Texas dials). Famous are also the four Rolex ‘Space Dweller’ dials which turned up at Sotheby’s in 2008. Reportedly, there was also a super rare Paul Newman ‘Legend’ dial (Lemon ROC, Ref. 6263) which was brought to a major auction house and put in a watch that sold for 3.7 million Swiss Francs; another mind-blowing story waiting to unravel.

During his time in jail, Tortella created a Patek Philippe database at the request of a famous German watch expert. Tortella was given auction catalogues, a laptop and of course a salary for his work. However, when Tortella was released from jail, he refused to hand over the database. Lawyers got involved and at a meeting at a firm in Geneva, Tortella threatened to commit suicide by jumping out of the window on the first floor if he couldn’t keep the database. Out of compassion, it was agreed that he could keep a copy. This is how Tortella became a Patek Philippe expert. Now, I am all for second chances, but as far as I can tell, and the present case clearly demonstrates, Tortella hasn’t learned a thing.

---

Thoughts

Unfortunately, the watch market is an unregulated minefield full of schemes and dirty players. As long as things happen in public, there is a chance that questionable watches, but also fraudulent results, can be exposed. Fratini’s ‘Yuck Master’ would have been torn apart if it had been auctioned in public. That is the reason why it was unloaded through a secretive private treaty deal. If not for the anonymous source who sent me Tortella’s “authentication” report, this case would have remained in the dark. God knows how many other fraudulent sales were done this way, especially concerning new markets like Mainland China. Private treaty deals are common practice in the auction world. The risk for experienced collectors and dealers who know the game and the players is low, but for newcomers who are led to believe they can rely on authentication reports from established experts, chances they will get burned are extremely high. Individuals like Tortella, who lack integrity and abuse their position of power to make an extra buck, are a cancer to the otherwise wonderful world of watch collecting. Auction houses that still work with these people need to take a hard long look in the mirror. Maybe something to think about for a New Year’s resolution?

Thank you for your interest.

---

Download: Authentication Report ‘Yacht Master’ by Eric Tortella (PDF, 4.4 MB)
Link removed due to a copyright infringement complaint by Eric Tortella, who is trying to bury the truth.

Read More

• Rolex Daytona 6265 – The ‘Unicorn’ Frankenstein Plot
• Shitshow in Monaco – A made-up Rolex Daytona ‘John Player Special’ and a fake Tiffany
• The Usual Suspects and the Rolex ‘Deep Sea Special ‘ No. 1 Scheme

https://www.instagram.com/perezcope/p/DEC7t7wy5pt