“A new chapter opened in the most breathlessly followed art-world scandal of the past year as American federal agents arrested fugitive dealer Inigo Philbrick on the Pacific island of Vanuatu.”
June 18th, 2020: The above flash from Artnet News, on a crime story that has been swirling for months, showcased an alluring but obscure destination. For Vanuatu is a chain of islands in the South Pacific, some 500 miles west of Fiji and far, far removed from the art world. But it is where the infamous American dealer Inigo Philbrick took refuge from his many creditors and claimants, and where he was finally arrested this past weekend. Soon he may be transferred to another, less enchanting island—the dreaded Rikers—to await his fate.
Once hailed as an art-dealing prodigy, the young and debonair Philbrick apparently devised a Ponzi scheme in order to keep funding his increasingly flashy lifestyle. As reported, this scheme involved the following frenzy of deceptions:
“Selling the same partial shares of pieces by in-demand artists to multiple profit-hungry high-rollers looking for a quick-yet-juicy return on investment, as well as using art-backed loans to wring cash out of works whose true ownership may have been questionable at best.”
As this story now plays out in all its shabby particulars, one is reminded that fraud in the art market is a persistent and growing menace. Worse, this fraud is often committed not by hardened career criminals but by the most genial, dapper and lionized individuals—rogues in Savile Row suits.
Take, for example, Englishman Timothy Sammons. After leaving Sotheby’s in the 1990s he began his rise as an art advisor to wealthy and titled families, with posh offices in London and New York. One of his triumphs was the sale at Sotheby’s in 1996 of John Singer Sargent’s magisterial portrait Cashmere for a record $11.1 million. Sammons had style galore and a glittering clientele.
But in 2019 he was convicted of fraud in the U.S. and sent to federal prison, where he is now serving 4-12 years. As the indictment against him read, he had gained the trust of prospective art sellers, only to betray that trust by “pocketing the proceeds of those sales to fund his own lavish lifestyle.”
Perhaps it sounds quaint and old-fashioned, but the art market endures above all on trust, not on flash and flamboyance. Hence it demands constant due diligence. But this is often ignored in the face of smooth, glamorous salesmanship and the allure of quick profit. Sound, impartial advice is thus required at all times but is often cast to the winds.
Taking flight from the mess he left behind, Inigo Philbrick must have thought Vanuatu would be the perfect hiding place. But now he’ll need all the charm and salesmanship he can muster for what looms as a harsh reckoning in New York with his many aggrieved victims.