NEW YORK (1010 WINS) — A former fine art dealer was sentenced to seven years in prison for an elaborate scheme to defraud several people and entities out of millions of dollars to fund his art business, U.S. Attorney Damian Williams announced Monday.
The 34-year-old, Inigo Philbrick, ran his scheme from about 2016-2019, collecting about $86 million in loans and sale proceeds to benefit his business which included galleries in London, Miami and the United Kingdom, officials said.
Philbrick would make material misrepresentation and omissions to art collectors, investors and lenders in order to get access to valuable art, funding, loan and make money from sale proceeds.
According to authorities, Philbrick would knowingly misrepresent the ownership of certain art pieces by selling a total of more than 100 percent ownership in an artwork to multiple people and entities without their knowledge. He’d also sell artworks or use them as collateral on loans without the co-owners knowing and without disclosing the ownership interests of third parties to buyers and lenders.
Philbrick also made fake contracts and records for investors to inflate the artworks’ value and to hide his scheme. One contract listed a stolen identity as the seller, according to court documents.
Many notable pieces of art were involved in Philbrick’s scheme including a 1982 painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat titled “Humidity,” a 2010 untitled painting by Christopher Wool, and an untitled 2012 painting by Rudolf Stingel depicting Pablo Picasso.
In 2019, Philbrick’s scheme started to come to light. Some investors and lenders learned about the bogus records Philbrick provided and the material misrepresentations and omissions he had made. Around mid-October, one investor officially notified Philbrick he was in default of an approximately $14 million dollar loan. By November, other investors had filed civil lawsuits in different jurisdictions about Philbrick’s fraud.
Around the same time as the lawsuits started flowing in, Philbrick’s Miami and London art galleries closed and he stopped responding to the legal process. Philbrick fled the United States and lived in Vanuatu until he was arrested in June 2020.
“Inigo Philbrick grew his purportedly successful art business by collateralizing and reselling fractional shares in high dollar contemporary art,” Williams said. “Unfortunately, his success was built on brazen lies, including concealed ownership interests, fake documents, and even an invented art collector. When the house of cards fell apart, Philbrick fled for a remote island in the Pacific, leaving many of his victims without recourse. For his extensive fraud, Philbrick is now sentenced to a substantial prison term.”
Along with the prison sentence, the judge gave Philbrick two years of supervised release. He will also have to pay $86,672,790.
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