Fine Art Fugitive
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Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Scamfluencers early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or Apple Podcasts. Hi, Hagi. Hey, Sachi. Okay, so what comes to your mind when you hear the words art scam?

I think about a lot of art I have seen in my life that I'm definitely like, this is not real art. This has to be a scam. And I think about forgery, you know, people who are really, really good at forging art and fooling people for decades. Yeah. Yeah.

This week, the scam I'm going to tell you about actually has nothing to do with forgery. It's a surprisingly complicated story, and it reminds us that it's actually a lot harder to pull off an art scam than you would think.

It's May 2019, and Christie's Auction House in Manhattan is packed for a big-time auction. The crowd is buzzing. This auction features work from Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, my personal favorite, and Keith Haring. Giant screens display the art while a fast-talking auctioneer works the room from his podium. ♪

32-year-old Inigo Philbrick is in the crowd, watching carefully. He's an art dealer with short strawberry curls and a charming smile. And Sarah, he actually kind of looks like Ryan Phillippe. Yeah, I'm looking at him and he definitely has like a look. He's very distinct looking. Yeah. Well, tonight Inigo's here to sell a photorealistic painting of Pablo Picasso. It's one done by the Italian artist Rudolf Stengel. Sarah, take a look and tell me what you think.

Wow. I mean, I would never think this is a painting. I would just think it's a photograph. I mean, I guess I've only ever seen like one photo of Picasso where he's like bald. And in this one, you know, he has hair and he's wearing like a double-breasted suit and has a cigar in his hand. It's intimate. It's a great portrait. But for Inigo, this painting is everything. ♪

He bought it for nearly $7 million, and he needs to sell it for a lot more so that he can pay back all of his investors. It's more than just his reputation on the line. It's his bank account and his entire business model.

Inigo waits, seemingly tense, as the auction begins. A Roy Lichtenstein goes for $31 million. One of Warhol's silk screens of Elvis sells for $53 million. And a stainless steel rabbit by Jeff Koons goes for a record-breaking $91 million. ♪

And then the auctioneer announces the next item up for auction. It's Inigo's. Lot number 33 is the Stingle of Picasso of 2012. We start the bidding at $4 million. $4,200,000 for the Stingle. Inigo is sweating bullets. He needs to make money on this sale. And he looks around, waiting for a sea of paddles to rise. But this time, only a few do.

All in all, the bidding for the Stingle lasts less than a minute. And then the gavel drops. Yours at 5'5", 9'3", 6". Well done.

If you didn't catch that, Sarah, that's $5.5 million. Add in the extra fees and taxes, and the final price is $6.5 million. I know that sounds like a lot of money for a painting, but it's not enough for Inigo, because he needed it to sell for about twice as much in order to pay back his investors. Inigo is in the red, and if he doesn't figure out how to recoup the money, his investors are going to start asking a lot of questions.

And the answers will unravel his ruse. He's been defrauding the art world this entire time. From Wondery, I'm Saatchi Cole. And I'm Sarah Hagee. And this is Scamfluencers. Scamfluencers.

Sarah, this is the kind of story that I love. It's all about a niche industry that's super exclusive, really catty, and brimming with uptight snobs trying to show off. There's a lot of grifters in the art world, but I think Inigo takes the cake. He's a jet-setting art dealer with a habit of making promises he cannot keep.

And when he crosses the wrong people, he'll lose everything. This is the fine art fugitive. Let's go back to 2013 when Inigo's career really starts to take off. He's just 24 years old and he's about to open his own gallery, named after himself, of course. It's in the heart of one of London's most upscale neighborhoods. And inside, the white gallery walls are covered in modern art.

I can just picture the opening reception. A tasteful cheese selection, healthy pours of red wine. It's the kind of parties you go to every weekend, right, Sarah? The kind of parties that do not exist in my world. Yeah, correct. I am also not invited to those events, but I do think they exist. But,

But the room is packed with some of the wealthiest, most well-connected art aficionados. Because Inigo isn't just any young gallerist. He's the protege of Jay Jopling, a mega art dealer and icon in the UK art scene. Jay is in his 50s, and as art dealers go, he's practically a celebrity. And now he's backing Inigo's new gallery, instantly making him someone to watch.

Now, I don't know exactly what the opening was like, but I imagine that Indigo is there with his stylish Argentinian girlfriend, Francisca Mancini. She's also an art dealer and together they get to networking.

Inigo is confident. He's got the pedigree to thrive in this world. He recently graduated from the prestigious Goldsmiths University of London with a curatorial studies degree. And after graduating, Inigo rose up the ranks at White Cube, which is Jay's renowned London gallery.

Inigo admires Jay's influence and success, and he might even look up to Jay as a kind of father figure. Inigo's actual dad is Harry Philbrick, a former director of the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut, where Inigo grew up. His mother, Jane, is an artist and a writer.

His parents got divorced when Inigo was a teenager. And after that, Inigo and his father stopped talking. His mother and sibling later claimed that Inigo felt a responsibility to take care of them financially. He even paid his younger siblings way through college. This is a prime scammer, you know, someone who is knowledgeable enough about an industry and is like, you know what?

Forget the steps. Let me just go straight to the top somehow. Yeah. Young, connected and motivated, I would say.

While Inigo mingles, talking about his favorite artists, stars like Rudolph Stengel, Christopher Wohl, and Mike Kelly, he rattles off facts and figures about deep cuts from their catalogs. He specializes in flipping art, buying low and selling high, and he tries to do it as quickly as possible to turn a profit. It's risky, but it's very lucrative, and no one does it quite like Inigo. He's just so brash about it, so American.

He talked about his approach to buying art on the Artelligence podcast. One of the things that I try to do and I'm trying to do more and more as my gallery matures is to not get involved until I'm really confident that it's art that I believe in. Okay, back up 10 steps. What is this cadence? What is this voice? He's like, I need to sound moneyed. You don't like his Katharine Hepburn impression? No, buddy. This guy's our age. You grew up watching.

up watching Lizzie McGuire, bro. Like, there's no way you talk like that. What is this? Yeah, it's a tough pill to swallow. I cannot soften this blow for you. Here's the thing. Inigo's confidence usually pays off, but it comes with a lot of pressure. And for Inigo, it's go big or go home. And now that he's officially on the London art scene, there's no way he's going home.

Inigo knows that if you want to make it in this industry, you need to fly all over the world attending art fairs and schmoozing.

So in December 2014, a year after he opens his gallery, he jets off to Miami for Art Basel. That's basically a week-long party where some of the most influential people in the fine art world rub elbows with celebrities like Andre 3000, Kim Kardashian, and Leonardo DiCaprio. Kenny's best known for his gossipy column on Artnet.com.

He's in his early 50s with overgrown stubble, rimless glasses, and he has so much energy. He's not just a critic. Kenny is also an artist. And one of his favorite motifs is... You know what, Sarah? Can you just look at this picture and then describe it to me? Well, it appears to be some type of ceramic elephant. Yeah. It's yellow and...

and its trunk is sucking its own dick? Yes, correct, Sarah. Thank you. It is an elephant blowing itself. It's art. Accept it.

Anyway, Kenny has been covering the art scene for years. And even though he considers himself an outsider, he's got a big platform and a fair amount of influence. His role as a professional know-it-all means that he can make and break artists and gallerists. So he's someone good for Inigo to know as his own gallery starts actually becoming a pretty big deal. ♪

Inigo's M.O. is to purchase artwork right before artists have a big museum showing. And then, after they get tons of press, he turns around and sells their pieces for serious profit. Art purists, they turn their noses up at such blatant cash grabs, but it is perfectly legal. Inigo also works with a tight crew of friends and associates to regularly trade artworks by his favorite artists, which drives up the value of the work.

And he's been known to recruit celebrities to dazzle other gallerists and charm their way into buying art that Inigo would never be able to get his hands on otherwise, just to flip it and split the profits. Again, it's not illegal, but it's definitely shady. Since he makes his money on commissions, Inigo is working Wall Street broker hours, and he's feeling the pressure.

At this point, it seems like he's living way beyond his means. He and Francisca have moved into a posh flat near his gallery, and his wardrobe is full of Italian suits and Swiss watches. He eats out at five-star hotels and casually orders $5,000 bottles of wine.

He needs to bring in some serious cash to keep up. And though Inigo's using every trick in the book, he still feels like he's drowning. Luckily, Inigo knows just the right people to keep the good times rolling.

In November 2015, Inigo sets up a meeting with a German couple named Daniel Tumpel and Loretta Wurtenberger. He's a former investment banker and she's a former judge. But they also have backgrounds in art. Daniel's dad is a world-renowned Rembrandt scholar, and Loretta founded a nonprofit to support young artists.

And they run a company that provides financing to gallerists and dealers. Inigo's not focused on selling to traditional collectors, people who buy art to hang in their house or loan to a museum. He sells to investors, people who just want to know what the art is worth in their portfolio. Daniel and Loretta are in both camps, but today they're leaning towards the latter. They've done business with Inigo for years, but this time he's got a big ask.

Inigo says he has his eye on a new piece. It's the Stingle painting of Pablo Picasso that I mentioned earlier. Inigo has been so successful at flipping Stingles that he reportedly calls himself Stingle-damus. As he later tells the Arteligence podcast, It's fairly rare for paintings to transact without my having some sort of tangential involvement, just because I'm also someone who gets called for advice a lot by both other dealers and collectors. ♪

I've never heard somebody with a punchable voice. I know it's really something, you know, like everything he says sounds like he's insulting me. Well, Inigo tells Daniel and Loretta that this particular single is worth $7.1 million and that its value is only going up.

He gives them this pitch. What if they buy a stake in the painting? Basically, they're all going in on the painting together. Daniel and Loretta will pay less than half up front while still holding a 50% stake. Plus, Inigo will let them own the painting outright until he sells it, which he promises to do within 18 months.

At that point, they all split the profits down the middle. Daniel and Loretta think this deal is too good to pass up. So they say they're in for $2.5 million.

You know, I am a Rube. I don't know much about art or things that cost millions of dollars. That being said, why would you do all that for these people? It just, it sounds too good to be true for them. Like, what does he have to gain from that then? Well, Sarah, there is a reason that Indigo pitched them such a good deal. First of all, he lied about the value of the painting. He inflated it by more than $400,000. And secondly, Indigo's

Inigo turns right around and pitches another one of his clients, Alexander Pesko, on almost the exact same deal. Now, Alexander is a Serbian investor based in London. He goes by Sasha and he's got deep set eyes, a square jaw and dark wavy hair. And he's also got a soft spot for art or more specifically, making money off of art. So,

So when Inigo pitches the Stingle painting to Sasha, he asks him to invest $3.4 million. That's nearly a million more than Daniel and Loretta paid. They also think Inigo owns half. So that puts us at 150% ownership. I'm not great at math, but I'm like pretty sure that that's not right. And Inigo is doing this with other paintings. It's just a straight up Ponzi scheme.

I mean, how does he get away with offering to people more than he has and still make money off it? Well, Inigo gets away with this because the art market is really unregulated.

Like, typically, galleries don't have to report how much artwork sell for, and the only time sales numbers have to be shared is at auction. And that makes it easy for Inigo to fudge the numbers. And as his confidence grows, so do the zeros on the price tag. And he's about to get a hell of a lot more brazen. ♪

Ethan Valerino is in his 20s with short hair, dark eyes and dimples. He's the head of an investment group that finances art deals, including a wooden sculpture in the shape of the map of China by Ai Weiwei.

Inigo sells that piece at auction for more than $2 million in 2016. But settling accounts after auctions can take forever. So Ethan's firm fronts Inigo the $2 million, at least until his account clears in a few months. It's a straightforward deal, the kind of thing they do all the time. Just the idea that rich people can do this with millions of dollars is so angering. Yeah. It's like, okay, listen, like you're good for the $2 million, right? Like you can pay that back?

Sarah, rich people have different rules than the rest of us. You know that. Oh my God, that is so crazy. Well, months pass with no word from Inigo. Ethan's calls to him go unanswered. And then the auction house tells Ethan that there's actually damage to the sculpture and the buyer doesn't want it anymore.

Ethan thinks that's ridiculous, so Ethan sues. Not long after, Ethan is at Sotheby's and he spots Inigo leaving the showroom. Kenny, who writes about this later for Vulture, says that Ethan runs after Inigo, tailing him into a packed elevator. It's straight out of a movie, except Ethan does not confront Inigo in front of everyone else. He's just too much of a gentleman for all of that mess.

But I do like to imagine them waiting in awkward silence for what feels like an eternity until the doors open and Inigo books it out of the elevator and out of the building.

He runs straight into the busy road, dodging oncoming traffic. He nearly gets ping-ponged between taxis, like in Micho Black, you know? That is such a beautiful reference for me specifically because I have watched that scene a million times. Also, this guy knows who you are. You're going to see him. You run in the same circles. Well, Sarah, it's not really clear how he manages this, but Inigo never pays Ethan back. Oh my God, no. It's too much.

Two million dollars. I know. And it's gone. Inigo has won, at least for now. But he's playing a really dangerous game with millions on the line. And the next time someone confronts him, he might not make it out unscathed.

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Just use the code SCAMPOD. That's happymammoth.com, M-A-M-M-O-T-H, with the code SCAMPOD to get 15% off your entire first order. Not long after the elevator incident, Inigo's on vacation in Italy with Sasha. And Inigo still owes Sasha money. He said he'd sell the single months ago. But so far, no dice. But hey, what's a little debt between friends, you know?

So in the summer of 2016, Inigo and Sasha are sunbathing in Italy with Inigo's girlfriend, Franziska, who's pregnant. Inigo distracts Sasha from thinking about the single deal by, amazingly, proposing another purchase. He suggests that Sasha buy a stake in a Basquiat painting called "Humidity" that he says is worth $18.5 million. But really, it's only valued at roughly $12.5 million.

Once again, Inigo plans on splitting the costs and the profits, except he needs help paying for his share of the painting. So Sasha agrees to loan him $3 million, and Inigo promises he'll get it all back and more when he flips the artwork. And Sasha's like, yeah, sure, why not?

Sasha, my guy, you played yourself here. He really did. A few days later, Inigo purchases the Basquiat for $12.5 million. But he sends Sasha a fake bill of sale for $18 million. And then he pockets the difference. And after that, Inigo sells another stake in the Basquiat to an art finance company. And then he sends Sasha a fake bill of sale for $18 million.

So now he has at least two investors on the line for more than 100% of the shares. And neither of them have any idea about the other one. That is so crazy. Yeah. He's turning into an art world Madoff. And he's getting bolder by the day.

At some point in 2017, when his mentor Jay starts pestering him about payment for the sale of two works he sold years earlier, Inigo pulls a classic scammer move. He tells Jay that he sold the paintings to, quote, Argentine financier Martin Herrero. Except there is no Martin Herrero.

So for a full year, Inigo uses a fake email address to communicate with Jay as Martin, giving him tons of excuses as to why the money just isn't coming. And we don't know exactly how much money is going in and out of his gallery and his pockets at this point, but it's a lot, likely more than $100 million, according to some estimates. And some of that profit is going back to his investors. It's just enough to keep them in his web.

But when the market starts to cool off, he needs to drum up more business and fast. It's April 2017 and Kenny Schachter boards a chartered private jet with Inigo. They're probably off to another art fair or auction in Paris or Milan or Hong Kong. Kenny is always down to jet off to glamorous locations with Inigo.

By this point, Kenny has written some very, very flattering things about him. The relationship is mutually beneficial. Inigo feeds Kenny industry gossip, gets him into exclusive events, and even helps him make some money off flipping paintings. So it's probably easy for Kenny to look the other way when Inigo does some questionable things. But lately, Kenny's noticed that Inigo's getting a little out of control.

It seemed to start earlier this year, after Francisca gave birth to their daughter.

Not long after that, Inigo left her for Victoria Baker-Harbour, a socialite who starred on a TV show called "Made in Chelsea," which is kind of like a British version of "The Hills." That is truly something else. I know. Judging from Kenny's later writings, he doesn't seem like Victoria's biggest fan. But she's rich and famous, and she's all about the glitz and glamour that Inigo loves. She's also quite the character on "Made in Chelsea."

Don't fucking open your fucking fat fucking mouth, you fucking fat turkey. Yeah, they seem like a match made in heaven. Yeah. But for now, Inigo is living a seemingly charmed life, invited to exclusive parties all over the world, wearing the finest clothes and drinking the most expensive wines, even though he's a new dad with a complicated love life and a tremendous amount of debt. As the private jet takes off, I imagine Inigo pulling out a baggie of MDMA and offering Kenny some.

Kenny later writes that Indigo seemed to always have it on hand. And at this point, it fits into his lifestyle.

Inigo has started following a DJ named Marco Carolla, paying $25,000 for tables and nightclubs all over the world. Excuse me? Why? For what? To me, this shows that for Inigo, obviously it has nothing to do with art, but it has everything to do with being accepted by people he thinks are cool. And sadly,

That includes a DJ. But Sarah, here's the thing. Despite his reputation as the gossip hound of the art world, Kenny keeps Indigo's behavior under wraps.

In 2018, when Inigo opens a gallery in Miami, Kenny gives the new space a rave review in Art News. And hilariously, Kenny writes that Inigo has, quote, kept a low profile. But he also says that Inigo's, quote, as cold blooded as the best that ever was. This is insane. Like, we're talking about art here. You know? What?

Well, Kenny's not the only one starting to see the cracks in his friend's facade. The strain is starting to get to Inigo, and he won't be able to keep up the charade forever. On a quiet December morning in 2018, Inigo wakes up, probably with a raging hangover after another night of partying. It's Art Basel time again, and now that he has a gallery in Miami, it's like the whole art world came to party in his backyard.

Inigo welcomes the distraction from his growing financial pressures. He's oversold way too many pieces of artwork and hasn't made nearly enough money back.

All these paintings we've talked about so far, we're just scratching the surface of all the wheeling and dealing he's been doing. And he's faking sales and consignment contracts to cover his tracks. Sarah, he's nearly $20 million in the red and in total denial. This is so remarkable because this is all his fault. Yeah, it's not like he got caught in a bad situation like some people do. Like he...

made this happen. And for what? To hang out with a DJ? Well, all of this is clearly getting to him. Inigo jumps in the shower and he tries to wash away the dread. He's Inigo Philbrick. He can handle anything. He'll sell more paintings and everything will work out. So he starts saying his name over and over, pumping himself up.

He's quiet at first, but then he gets louder until eventually he's shouting at full volume. Inigo. Inigo. Inigo. Imagine being like, I'm Inigo Philbrick. That's a totally normal and respectable name and I'm going to chant it. Well, this isn't a one-time thing either.

According to Kenny, Inigo takes to shouting his own name every single morning in the shower. So the pressure might be getting to him, just a little. And for the first time, Inigo is about to face some serious consequences. As the months go by, Inigo becomes more and more desperate while juggling all of his schemes. He's the most worried about Daniel Tumpel, the German investor who has been on his ass for months about selling the Stengel painting.

Inigo is setting up the Christie's auction for the piece, tap dancing around the fact that both Daniel and Sasha have each paid millions for the exact same painting. And they both think they own it. They have no idea about each other, which is bad enough. But Sarah, there's a third party we haven't even mentioned who also believes they own the whole thing. Gazzini Partners, an art investment company, thinks they purchased the Stingle from Inigo as well.

It's like Inigo is dating three different women and he's just hoping that none of them find out about the others. It's so insane. There's one piece of art. There are all these people who own it who gave him money for this overvalued piece of art. Yeah, I know. Inigo calms Daniel's nerves about the auction by sending him what appears to be a $9 million guarantee from Christie's. That means that if the Stingles sells for anything less at auction, Christie's will cover the remaining balance.

But Inigo is hoping the painting sells for close to $14 million. So that amount would mean that the guarantee wouldn't even need to come up. But then at the Christie's auction in May of 2019, the Stingle only sells for $5.5 million. And this is the scene where Inigo sweats through his very expensive suit.

Now he has to fly into crisis management mode. How would he be able to manage this crisis? Like it's over. That's how much money he got for the painting. Yeah, well, it gets worse. After the auction, he strings Daniel along, assuring him that the guarantee from Christie's will kick in.

But by September, Daniel's patience has run out. He contacts the auction house directly and he finds out the truth, that the guarantee was faked. And even worse, Daniel discovers that he doesn't even own the painting. According to Christie's records, Gazzini owns the painting.

I guess at this point, I'm wondering what Inigo thinks will happen, like how he would be able to get out of this in any case, because he knows the guarantee is fake. He knows he promised the money from this painting to multiple people, and he's still hoping for some kind of miracle. I would pay a lot of money to get into Inigo's head to understand it. But in the meantime, Daniel and Loretta are livid. They

They file a lawsuit and they ask Inigo to cough up seven other pieces of artwork that he's holding for them. But Inigo's already sold some of them to other buyers, or he used the works as collateral to get big fat loans without letting Daniel and Loretta know. Desperate to buy himself time, Inigo takes a picture of himself in front of a blank wall at his Miami studio, holding the day's newspaper like a hostage.

And then he photoshops in one of the paintings that he told Daniel and Loretta that he was holding onto for them. There's desperate, and then there's photoshopping paintings into your selfies. That is how bleak things are right now.

Inigo is so arrogant. He probably did the worst Photoshop job and was like, don't believe it. Everyone's dumb but me. Yeah. At this point, everyone Inigo's built a good relationship with in the art world is embroiled in this scam. The walls are closing in and he's running out of options. Except for one. Going rogue. In October 2019, about five months after the auction, Inigo cuts off contact with everyone. Everyone.

He shuts down his galleries in Miami and London, clearing all the art off the walls in the middle of the night. And then he disappears, and nobody knows where he's gone.

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Kenny is totally shocked when his friend Inigo disappears without a trace. More than that, he's pissed because Inigo stiffed him too. Inigo promised to flip a painting for him. But according to Kenny, he took him for more than a million dollars. And meanwhile, the lawsuits are piling up.

Sasha sues Inigo in London, and even Gazzini jumps on the bandwagon. They're all pissed that they've been fleeced. And in November 2019, after Inigo doesn't show up to two court hearings, his assets are frozen.

Kenny posts a fake wanted sign to Instagram. Sarah, can you please describe this fine work of art? Yeah, it's a photo of Inigo. He's wearing like a blue dress shirt with the top button unbuttoned. And at the top, it says $10,000 reward. And below the photo, it says leading to the arrest of Inigo Philbrick. It is very intense. And also you're like,

This guy is willing to give someone $10,000? Well, yeah. And it kind of works because someone DMs him in response from an anonymous account. It's actually someone willing to defend Inigo. And they say Inigo was, quote, a young man in an immense position of responsibility out of nowhere who wanted to make everyone happy and over-promised and under-delivered in the end, but to no personal benefit.

And in one of their DMs with Kenny, the anonymous account slips up and writes a response in the first person. Will you read it, Sarah? Of course I will. This is my favorite kind of thing. It's no big deal. I did nothing wrong and it will all be forgotten soon.

You know what? When you were reading that first message, I was like, did an Inigo write this? It seems like it's Inigo. Okay, well, we don't know that it was Inigo, but obviously Kenny is convinced. He writes a searing article about his former friend in Artnet, and he reprints the messages in full. But Kenny's also quick to flip his misfortune into an opportunity.

Almost immediately, he starts shopping a screenplay about Inigo. And a few months later, in March 2020, he publishes a brutal personal essay slash takedown about Inigo in Vulture. Inigo's lost a dear friend and his biggest champion. He has truly hit rock bottom. Sarah, you and I know things can always get worse.

Kenny's not the only arts writer obsessing over Inigo's disappearance. His colleague at Artnet, Eileen Kinsella, has been hearing rumors about Inigo's whereabouts for months. Then, in May 2020, Inigo's fiance, Victoria, posts a photo to her hundreds of thousands of followers on Instagram. It's her and her dog. She's in a bright pink shirt, standing barefoot on a white sand beach.

But Sarah, the post is geotagged. She's in Vanuatu, an island in the South Pacific that just so happens not to have an extradition treaty with the U.S.

I love that, like, she had to post on Instagram. She knows what her fiance is going through, but she's like, I need to post. She needed a stunt on these hoes on Instagram. I need to stunt on these hoes with this honestly quite mediocre photo. Yeah. And people from Vanuatu have started reaching out to Aileen, the Artnet writer as well. And as she told the Art Angle podcast, they had receipts.

Somebody sent me a picture of him at the coffee shop. They said that he went there every morning and that he played tennis and he was constantly on his cell phone and that he and, you know, his friend were just having a very leisurely life on the island. Apparently, Inigo had started volunteering at an animal rescue shelter and he even adopted a dog of his own.

Although some locals told Eileen that he kept a low profile, they also said he couldn't help but brag about his status in the London art scene. Between Victoria's chronic posters disease and Inigo's inability to shut the hell up, word gets around about this fugitive's whereabouts. In June 2020, Vanuatu expels Inigo at the request of the U.S. Embassy of Papua New Guinea.

He's arrested while strolling through a market in flip-flops and a bathing suit. And by this point, Victoria's about five months pregnant. Inigo's hands are zip-tied, and he's thrust into a Gulf Stream bound for the U.S. territory of Guam. His time as a fugitive has finally come to an end, thanks in large part to Instagram. And now, Inigo will finally have to fess up to his crimes. ♪

The Justice Department charges Inigo with wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. The U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York calls Inigo a, quote, serial swindler who misled art collectors, investors, and lenders out of more than $20 million.

Inigo is facing more than 20 years in prison for his fraud scheme, and he's locked in a maximum security prison in New York while he awaits trial. In November, Victoria gives birth to their daughter in a London hospital. Because of the COVID restrictions, she can't have any family or friends in the room with her. She's completely alone, and Inigo reportedly doesn't find out about the birth of his daughter until four days later.

And Inigo doesn't end up going to trial because in November 2021, after nearly a year and a half in prison, he pleads guilty. And in the time he's been locked up, authorities have uncovered even more fraudulent activity. At first, they thought that Inigo's scams racked up around $20 million, but it's actually more like $86 million. ♪

During his sentencing hearing, Inigo tells the judge that vanity and greed motivated him. Sarah, do you want to read a bit of a statement? Yeah. He says,

The only goal I have is to make the people who believed in me whole, to restore them to where they were before they met me. Okay, buddy, you can't do that though. Like, do you have all that money to give back to them? No, you swindled them and you're never going to make that right. Yeah, it's all a little too late. But the judge does take Inigo's remorse into account.

Victoria and a handful of his friends and family write letters to the court pleading for leniency. Even his dad writes one, saying that after years of estrangement, Inigo has reached out to reconnect. The letters don't do much to sway the judge. He gives Inigo seven years in prison. It's one of the most severe punishments the art world has ever seen. As for the rest of his victims, they're still untangling the web of transactions Inigo left behind.

It could take years to figure out who actually owns much of the art that Inigo was involved with. Daniel wrote in a letter to the judge in Inigo's case that this fraud led to the, quote, most horrendous and difficult years of his and Loretta's lives. And Kenny is still mad that he got swindled by Inigo. But on the Art Talk podcast, he also blames an overheated market.

I think that Inigo is endemic of, in our world, that's gone money crazy, where these lenders loaned money to him without doing their due diligence, and they just chucked money at him, and he went off the rails for his own sad reasons. He's also still talking about writing that screenplay, and he's pivoted really hard into NFTs.

At Inigo's sentencing, the judge is clear that Inigo's seven-year prison term is meant to send a signal to others in the art world. Kenny's colleague, Eileen, says that investors looking to make a quick buck on art might think twice now. So high-flying art flippers all over the world can learn from Inigo. Play it straight or face the consequences. Or just be more careful and cover your tracks. ♪

Well, Sarah, where should we begin with this bougie burglar? I think this is such a wild story, especially because like, I feel like a lot of Ponzi scheme type scams never really feature anything tangible that you can like really hold in your hands. Yeah. But these are like actual physical pieces of art where people could have double checked the valuation of the art. It

It just kind of shows how someone who's co-signed and legitimized by the right people can kind of do whatever they want. Yeah. And the art world is just so murky. Like people don't really know what they don't know. And then also the art itself, it's all subjective, right? Like who's to say one piece would be more valued than another? The context is important. The artist that did it is important. It just seems like a totally unregulated market full of people like...

throwing money around, begging to be scammed. It has so much to do with people thinking about long-term value over like, oh, this is something beautiful that someone created and that I love, you know? Yeah. It seems like he really took advantage of the type of people he knew he could take advantage of, which is incredibly wealthy people who could stand to lose $2 million and it maybe wouldn't ruin their lives forever. Well, the other thing about it is, you know, Indigo did...

actually do a lot of legit deals. And so he was good at this. He just like could not get out of his own way. He wanted more. It's just like another one of those stories about these guys who push their luck. And if they just did things legitimately, everything would have worked out and they probably wouldn't even had to have worked as hard to keep the scam going. Yeah, but I guess at the end of the day, like it wasn't even about

being a big shot in the art world. It was about hanging out with the right people and getting to date like a reality star that most of the world hasn't even heard about. And to hang out with a DJ, like you did all this for that. You know, he was addicted to the lifestyle and I don't think he's going to go back into the real world and be like, okay, well, time to get a nine to five. Yeah. Sarah, why does everyone who does a scam also have like a vaguely British accent? Yeah.

I think it's like, you know, it's a part of the whole lie of like dissociating yourself from the reality of your world of like having a fake accent or having a fake job or declaring yourself to be this thing. It's like this way to compartmentalize like who you really are versus like what this weird world you created was. Because there's no way this guy has that accent. That blew my mind. Dude, you're from Connecticut. Well, what would your scammer accent be? Like which one would you pick?

Wow, that's a really good question. I think I would go like full Southern. We would get you some suspenders. I do say you say that.

Honestly, Haggy, if you showed up a black woman in a hijab and you started talking like foghorn leghorn, I would give you whatever you asked. I know, right? Because I'd be like, there's no way she knows something that I don't know. She can have all my money. I would do it. I think my lesson here is if you're a scammer, and again, we've seen this many times, pick a good accent.

Pick an accent that confuses people just enough to give you a couple million. But makes you seem like established enough and mysterious enough that people are like, yeah, I trust this person. Well, it's time to brush up on your foghorn leghorn. I'm going to watch a lot of Looney Tunes.

This is Fine Art Fugitive. I'm Sachi Cole. And I'm Sarah Hagee. If you have a tip for us on a story that you think we should cover, please email us at scamfluencersatwondery.com. We use many sources in our research. A few that were particularly helpful were The Talented Mr. Philbrick by Jacob Bernstein in The New York Times, and The Talented Mr. Philbrick by Jacob Bernstein in The New York Times.

In Search of Inigo Philbrick, The Disappearing Art Dealer by Oliver Franklin Wallace and GQ, and The Art World's Mini Madoff and Me by Kenny Schachter and Vulture. Alex Burns wrote this episode. Additional writing by us, Saatchi Cole and Sarah Hagee. Our senior producer is Jen Swan. Our producer is John Reed.

Our associate producers are Charlotte Miller and Lexi Peary. Sarah Enney is our producer and our story editor. Allison Weintraub is our story editor and our senior story editor is Rachel B. Doyle. Sound design is by James Morgan. Fact-checking by Gabrielle Drolet. Additional audio assistance provided by Adrian Tapia. Our music supervisor is Scott Velasquez for Freeze On Sync. Our executive producers are Janine Cornelow, Stephanie Jens, and Marshall Louis for Wondery. Wondery.

If you like Scamfluencers, you can listen to every episode early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.