Displaying items by tag: scam

On July 2, 2013, a U.S. District judge decided the fate of 15 contemporary artworks once belonging to the disgraced financier and attorney, Marc S. Dreier. Dreier was convicted of fraud in 2009 for selling hundreds of millions of dollars in fake promissory notes to hedge funders and a section of his collection has remained in limbo ever since.

Judge Jed S. Rakoff ruled that the art holdings, worth $33 million, will be turned over to New York’s Heathfield Capital Limited, the company that suffered the greatest from Dreier’s scam. The works going to Heathfield Capital include a piece by the conceptual artist John Baldessari (b. 1931), an untitled work by Keith Haring (1958-1990), one work by Alex Katz (b. 1927), three by Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997), an untitled work by Mark Rothko (1903-1970) and three pieces by Andy Warhol (1928-1987) including the iconic Jackie portrait of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. The bulk of Dreier’s collection was sold in 2010 at Phillips and the profits were reserved for creditors of Dreier’s law firm.

Drier is currently service a 20-year sentence at a federal prison in Minnesota.

A 46-year-old German man was arrested by authorities in connection to the devastating art heist that took place in the Netherlands on October 16, 2012. The man was arrested in southwestern Germany for allegedly trying to sell the seven stolen paintings back to the Triton Foundation, the owner of the artworks.

The paintings, which include masterpieces by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Claude Monet (1840-1926), Henri Matisse (1869-1954), and Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), were on view at the Kunsthal Museum in the Netherlands and have yet to be recovered. The bounty, which includes Picasso’s Harlequin Head (1971), Monet’s Waterloo Bridge, London and Charing Cross Bridge, London (1901), and Matisse’s Reading Girl in White and Yellow (1919), is believed to be worth between $66 million and $266 million.  

This is the fifth arrest made in connection to the heist; three Romanian men accused of carrying out the heist were arrested on January 22, 2013 and a Romanian woman was arrested on March 4, 2013 on suspicion of assisting the robbers. Officials are working to determine whether the German suspect had ties to the stolen paintings or was simply trying to scam the Triton Foundation. He was arrested on the grounds of suspected blackmail and is currently under investigation.