Mass forgeries of Indigenous artist Norval Morrisseau’s paintings have caused irreparable harm to the trailblazer’s legacy — and to First Nations art writ large, an Ontario judge acknowledged Thursday in sentencing one of the ringleaders of a sprawling fraud scheme.

David Voss was handed a five-year prison sentence in a Thunder Bay, Ont., court for his role in producing and distributing thousands of Morrisseau fakes from 1996 to the mid-2010s. He had pleaded guilty in June to one count of forgery and one count of uttering forged documents.