Today, they live in a safe in the basement of the Met. But the Met continued to defend their statues as being authentic until 1961, when one Alfredo Fioravanti, of Rome, came forward and claimed them as his own creation. He explained that he and a friend had constructed them indoors, and realized too late that the ceiling was too low to create a figure with proper proportions. Were it not for Fioravanti's confession, one imagines, we might still believe that the Etruscans were technologically superior to us. Which brings me to the reason I can't stand fakes.
Fakes distort history.
Worse, they encourage us to recreate history according to our own personal predilections and individual motivations. I don't mean to imply that there is a singular history which must be preserved, but I do believe there are singular authentic objects which can serve as concrete evidence upon which to base our histories. But the ignorance, arrogance, and greed of wealthy collectors creates a market for fakes, like the Etruscan warriors, and that leads to the worst kind of invented history. Take Maury Povich, for example. Without authentic artifacts, we have no authentic history, and are condemned to a hell of the eternal present.