The Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences announced on Friday that an Oscar from 1944, is a counterfeit statue, E! Online reports.

The Oscar was expected to sell for over a million dollars, and supposedly belonged to director Leo McCarey.

The auction, which was to end on Aug. 16, was cancelled.

The Academy intervened in verifying the Oscar when McCarey’s granddaughter heard about the auction and called the Academy to report all three of the director’s Oscars were in her possession (McCarey himself died in 1969).

The Academy reportedly called the fake Oscar a “high-class counterfeit.”






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