Orlando Whitfield was a student when he became best friends with Inigo Philbrick, ‘the art world’s Bernie Madoff’. He talks about how their decade of hustling would lead one to a breakdown – and the other to jail
– it’s a feckless level of wealth’: the inside story of the biggest art fraud in American history
He describes the art market as a corrupt, unregulated orbit sloshing with drugs, $5,000 bottles of wine, yachts, private jets, prostitution, and populated with oligarchs and “sons and daughters of the sinister rich” – all built around betting on “wildly unstable assets of no intrinsic value”. In the end being a part of it made him sick . But Whitfield’s crazed escapades contract to microscopic next to those of Philbrick, whom the FBI says committed the largest art fraud in American history.
Whitfield first made smirking eye contact with Philbrick when a student coming late to a class was told they were studying the male gaze and said, “I thought we weren’t meant to call them that any more … The male gays.” Philbrick, Whitfield says, was “effete” with “bee-stung lips” and “a wild mess of hair”, the sort to talk about skincare and pieces in the New York Times.
These were heady days. Whitfield felt “intoxicated”: “I’d never had a friend like Inigo, someone to discuss books and films and art and music with in an unabashedly earnest fashion.” The friendship was the most formative of his life, he says – a statement borne out by the detail he remembers of their encounters, down to Philbrick’s tortoiseshell Ray-Bans, mismatched socks and “startling” childlike handwriting.
A few months later, Philbrick took Whitfield to Clerkenwell where, next to a motorcycle shop on a wall by an empty lot, was a large painting: four stencilled figures of old people wearing streetwear, one sitting on a beatbox. Above, in pink spray paint, the words OLD SKOOL. This would be worth significantly more than the rat, they realised. Only, how to remove it? After weeks of research, they found a builder who agreed to attempt it and approached the manager of the motorcycle shop.
Art is an asset class. Works bought for investment are often not put on walls, but kept in locked storage in places such as Switzerland, to avoid tax . “Specullectors” spread risk by buying shares of a valuable work, with the explicit intention to resell when the market rises. Unlike property, there’s no way to check ownership , so unscrupulous dealers can keep buying then reselling work at increasing prices, manipulating the market.
Whitfield saw little of Philbrick at the gallery – he was “seldom in the same time zone” – and it was around then that Kenny Schachter met Philbrick. They quickly became “art-world wingmen”. “Friends would accuse me of loving and I can’t deny that,” Schachter wrote for Vulture. “Not in a physical way so much, though there was admittedly a lot of horsing around.”
By now Philbrick had upgraded his Rolex for a 5990 Patek Philippe Nautilus, his suits were $7,000 a piece and he was boasting about buyingfurniture. He was doing his deals in Cipriani in Mayfair, a hedge fund hangout where he had a house account. A side-note is that he simultaneously had time for a relationship with Francisca Mancini, an Argentinian artist, with whom he had a daughter in April 2017.
After that, everything changed. Whitfield believes the stress over that deal, compounded by other issues – the breakup of a relationship, the death of his father – contributed to a dependency on Xanax and tramadol, and an eventual breakdown. In February 2018 he spent two weeks in a psychiatric ward, at first on suicide watch. In treatment, he made a decision to give up his career as a dealer. “It was,” he says now, “a lot harder than quitting drugs.
What he wanted, he told Whitfield, was for them to collaborate on a magazine piece putting forward his side of the story. The way he told it, Whitfield says, “he was just a young man in over his head”. And Whitfield believed him. Next, Philbrick emailed him “an enormous trove” of documents – spreadsheets, correspondence, details of financial dealings that stretched back years. Philbrick told him, “For better or worse … I have a little star power just now.
He had already sold it into a fund he ran for an Israeli-Canadian billionaire for $1.75m. Then he resold it for $2.5m into a fund he joint-owned with Jopling. “The thing is, the numbers aren’t real for those at the top of that world, it’s a feckless level of wealth. The numbers aren’t the same as ifwere to experience them. Literally, I don’t think they do the maths. Inigo might have realised that early on. The money is not real and you’re selling something that has no intrinsic value.”
Australia Latest News, Australia Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
AIR in Dempsey Singapore with star chefs Matt Orlando and Will GoldfarbAIR, in the Dempsey district, shows what can happen when creative visions from different professional perspectives combine.
Read more »
Towering American’s bold promise as rematch clause revealed for Vegas blockbusterBoxing: Despite a new opponent on short notice, Tim Tszyu isn't feeling any pressure against the tall Sebastian Fundora.
Read more »
‘Cathedral of American infrastructure’ to be rebuilt as soon as possiblePresident Joe Biden promised a fast reconstruction, as authorities suspended the search for six workers missing after the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed.
Read more »
‘Cathedral of American infrastructure’ to be rebuilt as soon as possiblePresident Joe Biden promised a fast reconstruction, as authorities suspended the search for six workers missing after the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed.
Read more »
American blown away by Aussie momentAn American tourist has been blown away by Aussie travelators.
Read more »
Intermittent fasting trend may increase heart attack and stroke a new American study has foundA surprising new study has found that some intermittent fasters are more likely to die of heart disease.
Read more »