‘He’s sabotaged his entire life for greed’: the $86m rise and fall of Inigo Philbrick
He has been condemned as a “serial swindler”, who duped art investors into parting with an eye-watering $86m, but his victims will never forget the charm and charisma of Inigo Philbrick.
The suave American dealer, with a gallery at an exclusive London address, a Midas touch that brought soaring profits in art sales and a socialite girlfriend from Made in Chelsea, had in fact been running a fraudulent business. This week, he was sentenced to seven years in a US jail, with two years of supervised release and an order “to pay a forfeiture of $86,672,790”.
His was a smoke-and-mirrors trade that involved selling a total of more than 100% of an artwork to multiple investors without their knowledge, using works as collateral on loans without informing their co-owners, and falsifying documents to inflate artwork values, with one contract listing a stolen identity as the seller, according to the US Department of Justice. A life of crime funded Philbrick’s life of luxury, reportedly
