The Art of the Con: The Most Notorious Fakes, Frauds, and Forgeries in the Art World (14 page)

Mardirosian clearly understood the importance of what he had found. In fact, he was uniquely positioned to understand the paintings’ value both in terms of money and culture. Like Cézanne, Mardirosian’s avocation in the law could not suppress his love for art, and Impressionism in particular. In fact, in 1989 the attorney would eventually leave his law practice to become a full-time artist, using the name “Romard” to sign his works. “I understand color. I can make it sing for me . . . I’m not painting the subject, I’m painting the emotion that the subject evokes in me,” he would say of his technique. He counted among his influences Picasso, Van Gogh, Miró, and, of course, Cézanne.
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But despite his close familiarity with the sort of art he had found in his attic and exactly how it was procured, Mardirosian failed to return the paintings to their rightful owner in Stockbridge, betraying his responsibility as an attorney and officer of the court. Instead, he worked diligently to find a way to do the impossible: take well-known, high-priced, and stolen paintings and turn a profit with them. Thus, his was a unique sort of art scam: the art was legitimate, but his decades-long, illicit affair with it was anything but.

Clearly, this was an unethical and unconventional choice, but Mardirosian was no stranger to unorthodox ploys. In what was probably his most newsworthy criminal defense argument, he attempted to get a client—a gardener—cleared of a first-degree murder charge by arguing that the murderer was under the influence of the pesticides he had been mixing. It was the mixture that led the man to strangle his victim, Mardirosian argued in court. The jury saw past his claims and returned a guilty verdict.
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While that argument might have been outlandish, making a desperate argument in order to clear a client is nothing new for a defense attorney. Attempting to monetize a deceased criminal client’s stolen goods, however, is. But off went Robert Mardirosian on a trek that would span more than a quarter century and two continents.

Two decades would pass without Michael Bakwin hearing a word about his stolen treasures. With no new leads, no signs of life, no reason for hope, the idea that he’d ever again see his paintings, especially his precious Cézanne, had faded from his daily thoughts. Then, in 1999, things took a sudden and dramatic turn. On the other side of the Atlantic, Lloyds Insurance Company, the underwriter for the storied insurer Lloyds of London, rang the offices of the Art Loss Register with an inquiry about a number of paintings that were set to be shipped to London from Russia. Intrigued by the inquiry, the staff
went to work researching the paintings to determine whether or not they were stolen. This was the work Julian Radcliffe, the organization’s founder, formed the ALR to do.

Radcliffe, himself a former Lloyds employee who had worked for Britain’s security service MI5, started a firm called Control Risks in 1975 to provide guidance to governments, corporations, and families dealing with extortion attempts and negotiations related to kidnappings throughout the world. Then, in 1986, Radcliffe was asked to examine the feasibility of forming a separate company to deal with the problem of stolen art. There certainly exists a bustling market: the Federal Bureau of Investigation calls art theft “a looming criminal enterprise with estimated losses in the billions of dollars annually.”
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Radcliffe worked with the major auction houses, art dealers, and police from a number of countries and identified a need for a database of stolen art that could be used to vet art sales and auctions. To start such a database, Radcliffe turned to the International Foundation for Art Research in New York—the very same organization to whom Michael Bakwin had reported his stolen paintings in 1978. IFAR had already started a database of its own years earlier, but lacked the resources to grow the database and staff it to the point that it could serve the international market. Radcliffe cut a deal: IFAR would turn over its database to the ALR in return for a share holding of the new company. And thus a powerhouse in the fight against the illicit trade in stolen art was born. By 2008, the ALR would grow to 30 employees working with a database holding nearly 200,000 stolen works of art from around the world and conducting around 400,000 searches per year.
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Radcliffe’s team quickly came back with its findings: the paintings submitted by Lloyds were indeed stolen, and they were taken from the home of Michael Bakwin in 1978. This wasn’t the ALR’s first encounter with Bakwin: in the early 1990s, a Cézanne similar
to the one stolen from Bakwin was put up for auction, and while performing its due diligence, the ALR contacted him to ensure that they had not come upon his
Bouilloire et Fruits.
But now, in 1999, it was certain that Bakwin’s Cézanne and his other paintings were on the market.

Radcliffe asked his associates to put him in touch with the man seeking insurance on the paintings that were awaiting transport, and then notified the FBI and British authorities. Next, the ALR contacted Michael Bakwin to advise him of this much stronger lead. Seeing an opportunity to recover his beloved paintings, Bakwin entered into what Radcliffe described as a “standard recovery contract” and chose to pay the ALR on a contingency basis. The ALR didn’t come cheap: the contingency plan called for Bakwin to pay the firm 15 percent of the first $75,000 of value of the art plus 10 percent of any value above that figure. Such an agreement would mean, for instance, that if the ALR returned, say, just $1 million worth of art to Bakwin, he would in turn owe the ALR $103,750. This, of course, far exceeded the $25,000 reward Bakwin had offered for a brief period shortly after the theft more than 20 years earlier. But he figured the gambit was worth it.

With a signed agreement in hand, the ALR went right to work. ALR contacted Scotland Yard, but because it didn’t appear that a crime had occurred on British soil, they referred the ALR to the FBI. After being briefed on what the ALR had found to date, the bureau recommended that they try to learn more about the individual who sought to insure the stolen paintings through Lloyds. Lloyds obliged and provided the ALR with the individual’s identity: Tony Westbrook. Soon enough, Radcliffe and a trusted deputy, Sarah Jackson, arranged to meet with Westbrook near the offices of Lloyds.

The trio sat in the London restaurant, discussing the art in question, where Westbrook revealed that he had been asked to sell the
paintings in question and thus sought to bring them to London from Russia to have them appraised. Westbrook provided Radcliffe and Jackson with an odd story as to how he became involved with the paintings—he had registered in a hotel listing himself as an “architect,” which was somehow translated to mean “art expert,” and based on this, he alleged, he was asked to help with the sale of highly valuable paintings.

Radcliffe informed Westbrook that the paintings were run through the ALR database and determined to be stolen. This led to a series of meetings and telephone conversations between the parties. Westbrook inquired about a reward or payment for the stolen art. “I explained that no payment or reward could be made unless we were told who was holding the pictures and how they got them,” Radcliffe said, “and I explained my reasons for our position on that.”
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Radcliffe went on to inform Westbrook that the ALR, the insurance industry, and victims of crime are hesitant to pay what amounts to a ransom for stolen property lest they encourage such schemes. So, Radcliffe told Westbrook, a number of conditions would have to be met before any payments would be made to those currently holding the paintings. “The conditions included the fact that we must know the identity of the person to whom the payment was going to be made and have some understanding or assurance that they would not pass that payment on to any criminal. We also needed to know how the pictures had come into the possession of the person holding them. We needed to inform the police, and we needed to make certain that no payment was excessive and that the maximum intelligence for the police was obtained at the same time,” said Radcliffe.
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Perhaps seeing the writing on the wall, Westbrook inquired about the possibility of payments to him for his help. Seizing the opportunity to get Westbrook on his side, Radcliffe agreed to some
payments dependent on his assistance. In other words, he co-opted Westbrook.

It proved to be a wise move. Westbrook opened up to the ALR with more insight into exactly who it was behind the operation. He reported that he was contacted only via telephone by an unknown person who was using him as a conduit for information. He could only confirm that the caller had a “mid-Atlantic accent” and called him in the evening, a fact that led the Londoner to believe his calls were coming from the United States because of the time difference. The only thing that Westbrook was sure of, though, was that the caller was insistent in his expectation that he receive “substantial payment” for any paintings he might turn over.
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Seeking to determine whether the anonymous party in the States was truly in possession of the Bakwin paintings, the ALR team requested proof of life. That’s when the holding party did something that proved it beyond any doubt: he provided photos of all seven works. Ordinarily, this wouldn’t be absolute proof, but unbeknownst to everyone but Bakwin, no photos of the stolen Utrillo existed. Not even the artist himself had photographed the painting. In fact, when Bakwin posted a notice of his stolen art back in 1978, he could produce only an image of a similar Utrillo painting. So when Westbrook produced the ALR with an image of Bakwin’s Utrillo, it was obvious the photo was taken post-theft, and thus it became clear that the man with the mid-Atlantic accent was for real.

Following the proof of life, Radcliffe received a proposal from the shadowy figure through Westbrook. According to Radcliffe, the party holding Bakwin’s art notified him that “if we brought the pictures in to a neutral location, a bank in Switzerland, and they were inspected by an expert and proved to be the pictures stolen from Mr. Bakwin, then they would release those pictures, provided we pay
$15 million.”
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So there it was: a price tag, and a rather exorbitant one at that.

Radcliffe immediately dismissed the proposal. He told Westbrook that his side needed someone—preferably an attorney—with whom the ALR could negotiate face-to-face. In mid-1999, Westbrook informed Radcliffe that a Swiss lawyer, Dr. Bernhard Vischer, would be entering the negotiations on behalf of the party holding the paintings, and within weeks the first of many meetings was held in Geneva at the offices of an attorney for the ALR. Vischer revealed to Radcliffe that the involvement of Russians, which had been cited during the initial overtures made through Westbrook, were false. He also let it be known that the party he represented—and refused to identify—expected payment for the return of the paintings. In response, Radcliffe spelled out again the ethical argument against paying what was essentially a ransom demand, since he had no way of knowing whether the party holding the paintings was one of the thieves or closely connected to them.

Bakwin’s team continued to work feverishly to determine who had possession of his art. Radcliffe submitted a number of questions to Vischer toward that end, but the answers provided were of little value. Finally, Radcliffe told Vischer that he would have to produce a statement stating to whom any payment would go. For instance, Vischer’s boss would have to attest to the fact that he was not the thief, nor a criminal, nor a member of the Bakwin family, and so on. This would provide Bakwin and the ALR with some assurance that they were not making unethical payments. Absent such a statement, Vischer would have to identify the individual who was controlling the stolen paintings. Finally, after further discussion, Vischer agreed to the latter demand.

With the promise of the statement from Vischer in hand, Radcliffe and his team came up with an idea that would nevertheless
keep Michael Bakwin’s money out of the hands of this unscrupulous anonymous figure. Radcliffe successfully negotiated with Vischer a trade of sorts: in return for the Cézanne, ownership of the other six paintings would be signed over to Vischer’s client. Upon hearing of the deal, Bakwin told Radcliffe, “I think that’s extortion, but if we can get the painting back that way, I can’t believe that we could not also get the other six paintings.”
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The deal was to be consummated at the same Geneva offices of the ALR’s lawyer where Radcliffe and Vischer first met. The date was set for October 25, 1999. Radcliffe and a pair of art experts from Sotheby’s—Michel Strauss and Caroline Lang—arrived on time, eager to see if the proposal would go as planned and to inspect the Cézanne should it be delivered as agreed. Tensions were high as hours passed before Vischer finally arrived, looking “hot and bothered,” according to Strauss.
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The parties got right to work and reviewed the pertinent paperwork; seeing everything in order, Vischer made a brief phone call to an unknown party saying that he would be retrieving the painting to bring back to the offices.

Though Vischer instructed everyone to wait inside as he left the office to get the painting, Radcliffe followed at a distance and watched the goings-on. He witnessed Vischer proceed from the grounds of the office to a street corner where he waited beneath a tree. Suddenly, in a scene straight out of a John le Carré novel, a white car drove toward Vischer and stopped at the corner. An object wrapped in a black trash bag was passed through the car door. Once Vischer took possession, he headed back upstairs to the lawyer’s office as the mysterious white car sped away from the scene.

Paul Cézanne could never have imagined such a scene, and he likely never dreamed his precious
Bouilloire et Fruits
would be subject to such cloak-and-dagger intrigue, never mind ending up in a trash bag. But there it was as the bagged package was unwrapped and the
painting inspected by experts in Impressionist paintings from Sotheby’s, both of whom confirmed that the painting was authentic. “Nervously impatient,” Strauss would later write, “I tore a small hole in the bin-bag with my right index finger, pushed aside the layers of soft padding and revealed about six square centimeters of paint. I was instantly in no doubt that this was the Cézanne in question, recognizing the patches of colour and the artist’s distinctive brushwork. Impatiently, I finished unwrapping the package and brought to light the stunning still life, unframed and in fine condition.”
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