Inigo Philbrick may be a thief, but at least he’s honest.
The former London art dealer, who was sentenced on Monday to seven years in prison after pleading guilty to a charge of electronic fraud, was not detained last year when a Manhattan federal court judge he asked why he had defrauded customers with about $ 86 million. .
“For the money, your honor.”
The 33-year-old will be locked up for defrauding shoppers and stealing multimillion-dollar artwork from people like Donald Judd, Christopher Wool and Jean-Michel Basquiat. He was captured in the South Pacific after a six-month FBI human hunt
Despite his honesty, “he showed a total lack of remorse,” lawyer Judd Grossman, who represents several clients in Philbrick-related civil lawsuits, told The Post.
For a time, the Connecticut-born, London-born slippery trader legitimately sold art in a gallery in that city’s Mayfair neighborhood and also in Miami.
But his aspirations grew faster than his portfolio could keep up.
Philbrick lived an extravagant lifestyle with his fiancée Victoria Baker-Harber.
Philbrick wore $ 50,000 watches, $ 5,000 suits, and custom-made shoes. If you dine with him at the Cipriani in London, you don’t have to wait for a check; the attractive art dealer had a home account.
Hers was also a world of great flight: according to New York magazine, Philbrick had MDMA supplies on hand, rented a villa in Ibiza, and became engaged to Victoria Baker-Harber, a world-class British socialite. reality TV star.
“He needed cash to finance his business and, in turn, to finance his lifestyle. He was rising in his career, but not at the speed needed to maintain his lifestyle,” Grossman said. who practices in New York City and specializes in art-related cases.
That’s when Philbrick started defrauding customers with a series of scams. One of the most elegant: selling the same painting to several collectors, none of whom were aware of the interests of others, before publicly auctioning it.
According to court documents, the artwork “Mirror Room” by Japanese artist Yoyai Kusama was sold by Philbrick without informing – or paying – the owners. REUTERS
In a letter to the court, the alleged victim Daniel Tumpel, founder of Fine Art Partners, a company that works in the finance of the art world, recalled that Philbrick came to visit him in Berlin with a private jet and did the tour of the city in a limousine. Tumpel claims he later saw bank statements showing that the money paid to Philbrick for the art purchase was actually used to fund that explosive trip.
Take “Mirror Room,” a work by Japanese artist Yoyai Kusama, which Tumpel, as stated in a court letter, bought in 2017 for $ 2,310,000, with Philbrick intending to sell it for profit.
In 2018, Tumpel saw his “Mirror Room” hanging in the Philbrick Gallery during the time of the Art Basel Miami Fair. For the next 10 months, the dealer made Tumpel believe he was “negotiating a possible sale to a Miami museum,” Tumpel wrote in a letter to the court. But around November 2019, we learned that Philbrick sold the play in 2018 [after Art Basel] without informing us ”.
Tumpel and his company did not receive any payment, according to the court letter.
Philbrick was a regular at the big auctions and seemed like a prodigious art world. Clint Spaulding / PMC
After learning of Kusama’s stealth sale, Tumpel and his wife, Loretta Wurtenberger, began worrying about the whereabouts of another of their paintings, “Untitled 2010,” by postconceptual artist Christopher Wool. . They had paid $ 4,830,000 for the play, believing that Philbrick would sell it for them. When asked about this, Philbrick insisted that the pain was with him, and provided the kind of evidence that was used to verify the vitality of the victims of the abduction: he sent a picture of himself in front of the painting and holding a diary with the diary of that day. date on it.
Tumpel was satisfied at the time. He later stated in the letter that he had discovered the truth: “The painting became a photoshop in the image … and it was no longer in Philbrick’s possession. [at the time]. He had collateralised it with a loan from Athena Finance, which had stored the painting in its warehouse. ”
It’s one of five pieces Philbrick allegedly used to get loans for about $ 15 million. Tumpel wants to get his wool back and describes his former dealer as “a stone criminal.”
But that was not always the case. Philbrick grew up in Connecticut, the privileged son of Harry, a museum director who founded the nonprofit arts organization Philadelphia Contemporary, and Jane, a self-proclaimed enterprising artist. Philbrick, like his father, attended the beloved Goldsmith’s, University of London, which focuses on arts education. Harry has issued a statement saying he is “unaware” of his son’s transgressions.
Philbrick did an internship with London art dealer Jay Jopling (above), whose White Cube Gallery fostered Damien Hirst’s career. Getty Images
Upon graduation, Inigo did an internship with London art dealer and Goldsmith student Jay Jopling, whose White Cube Gallery fostered Damien Hirst’s career. Although Jopling has also put space between him and Philbrick, he once mentored the merchant seller and offered financial support when Philbrick opened his Mayfair gallery in 2013. This gallery did well to focus on the secondary market. of art: buying works by popular artists such as Wade Guyton, Christopher Wool and Rudolph Stengel from collectors and selling them for profit.
Philbrick was a regular at the big auctions and seemed like a prodigious art world. “She was an expert. He wasn’t just a charlatan who knew nothing about art, “Manhattan art dealer Helly Nahmad told The Post.” He had everything he needed to do well. “
But, according to Philbrick’s victims, he lacked integrity. He became involved in buying and promoting valuable art as a fractional investment: people own percentages of the work (and receive potential profits generated from its sale) based on how much they invest. But as deals moved south, Philbrick’s finances stretched and he began to misrepresent the facts to investors. Sometimes he sold more than 100% of a work and other times he inflated prices.
Jean-Michel Basquiat’s painting “Humidity” was allegedly involved in a Philbrick scam.
This was the case with a painting by Basquiat called “Moisture”. According to Grossman, prosecutors alleged that Philbrick approached collector Aleksander “Sasha” Pesko, who is now represented by Grossman, to help buy the work for $ 18.4 million. The idea, Grossman said, “was for them to contribute to the purchase price and share any profit. Our customer thought he’d put half of it in. Then Inigo said he was missing $ 3 million. [ultimately] he invested $ 12 million and was scammed [when Inigo] he transferred it to an offshore entity and used it to borrow money. He lied. We are arguing that our client is the owner of the painting because he placed almost everything [the purchase price]. Our argument is that you can’t promise something you don’t own. “
Philbrick was finally revealed when a painting by Rudolf Stingel, “Untitled,” was sold to Christie’s for $ 5.5 million. It is alleged that Philbrick had received about $ 10 million for the painting from various entities, claiming that it was secretly selling percentages to various investors, one of whom put it up for sale at Christie’s, believing himself the only one. owner. But soon others took a step forward, looking for their cuts at auction. Civil proceedings and criminal charges followed.
The pressure increased on Philbrick and, according to an internal source, in the fall of 2019, he admitted his jobs to two investors. “I knew they would catch him,” the source said. “He confessed to them in great detail.”
Philbrick was confronted by officials in the South Pacific and deported to Guam, where he was detained by FBI agents. Vanuatu Immigration Services
But by November 2019, when a London judge froze Philbrick’s property, he had already left. According to the Justice Department, “flight records show that Philbrick left the United States shortly before he began publicly reporting on the lawsuits.”
The Federals followed him to the South Pacific island nation of Vanuatu, about 500 miles west of Fiji, where he lived with a pregnant Baker-Harber. In June 2021, according to ArtNet, while Philbrick and a friend were walking through an open-air market, local and global law enforcement surrounded the couple. They asked if it was Íñigo. He said yes and officers tied his wrists, put him in a car and took him to a runway. Philbrick’s latest private jet flight was waiting for him: a Gulfstream carrying the fugitive to Guam, where FBI agents arrested the disgraced dealer.
Los Angeles art collector and distributor Stefan Simchowitz, with whom he “made a small deal [Philbrick] – for a $ 20,000 painting, “he told The Post that the dealer was” a young boy who got in his head … and he was too cool for school. He is not an arch criminal, but he is an idiot king. “
His pledge wrote to the court: “He always believed that there was a solution instead of tackling the problem.”
Meanwhile, Philbrick’s lawyer, Jeffrey Lichtman, insists that the glossy plate belies a more complex reality. “People look at Inigo and see what they consider a rich, blue-blooded art dealer,” Lichtman told The Post. “They don’t understand the boy at all … His daughter was born while he was in prison. She hasn’t met him yet. He’s suffering in the way that the average defendants don’t suffer.”
Days before the sentencing, Grossman …