Israel's Foray Into Crime
That one small criminal act quickly spiraled into something much bigger. Israel realised that if she added juicy embellishments to the authors' letters via a postscript, she could make more cash. Soon she was using vintage paper and typewriters to forge entire letters by the likes of Dorothy Parker, Noël Coward, and Ernest Hemingway. Because she charged so little for her forgeries, she got away with selling her fake letters to multiple collectors in the early '90s. It wasn't until she wrote too openly about Coward's sexuality in a few letters that her scheme was discovered.
However, even after she stopped writing letters, she found a new way to make money by swapping handmade duplicates of famous letters from archives across New York City for the originals and selling them to buyers. New York autograph dealer David H. Lowenherz told The Times, "She would go into these libraries and copy the letter in question, go back to her home and fake as best she could the stationery and fake the signature, and then she'd go back to the institution and make the switch. So she was actually not selling fakes: She was substituting the fakes and selling the originals."
Ultimately, the FBI became involved, and in June 1993, Israel pleaded guilty to "conspiracy to transport stolen property in interstate commerce," as reported by The Times. She was sentenced to six months of house arrest and five years' probation and banned from many libraries.