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Wednesday, February 01, 2006

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Big Brass Ones On This Dude

What's that old saying about honor among thieves?

In May of 1978, a Berkshires couple went on vacation for Memorial Day. Though they had inherited an extensive collection of original paintings, including a Cezanne, they were fairly lax about security. They returned home from their holiday to find seven paintings (including the Cezanne) stolen. It remained the largest unsolved burglary from a private residence in Massachusetts state history for 28 long years -- and even now that it has been 'solved' there are still questions about some of the finer details, including how the paintings wound up where they wound up. Here's the story, as told by the guy who has the paintings:

~~~~~The alleged thief, one David Colvin (then 31), went to the office of a Watertown attorney (Robert Mardirosian) seeking advice and lugging a bag full of paintings. He told the lawyer, who was representing him in another case, that he was going to take the paintings to Florida to fence them. The lawyer warned him that if he got caught with the paintings while the other case was hanging over his head, he'd be in deep trouble. The lawyer was also representing a young man in another case who was believed by the FBI to be the intended fence.

The lawyer allowed Colvin to spend the night in a room upstairs from his office. Colvin was killed in February of 1979, shot by two men who came to his home to collect on a debt. About a year after Colvin's visit to the attorney, the attorney was in the attic over his office and discovered the bag of paintings, which he did not know Colvin had left behind.

The owner of the paintings had meanwhile hired a private investigator to develop leads. The detective discovered that the lawyer had represented both the suspected thief and the suspected fence in other cases, but with one man dead and the other flatly refusing to cooperate, the investigation was at a standstill.

Apparently, doing the "right thing" never crossed the lawyer's mind when he "found" the paintings:

The lawyer said his first instinct was to return the paintings for the reward money offered by the insurance company. Problem was, there wasn't an insurance company -- the paintings were uninsured. In 1988, he moved them from Massachusetts to Monaco and then to a bank in Switzerland while he tried to figure out a plan for returning them to their owner in exchange for a finder's fee or reward of 10% of their value.

Working through lawyers in London, Monaco and Switzerland, the lawyer ultimately incorporated a dummy company in Panama named "Erie International Trading Co." which did not openly name him as an owner. In 1999, Erie made the owner an offer -- they would return the Cezanne, then valued at about $10 million, if the owner would sign over the other six paintings to Erie. Although a document was signed granting title to the other six paintings to Erie and the Cezanne was returned as promised, the owner of the paintings and the director of the Art Loss Register (a London-based group that tracks stolen art) insist that the owner was coerced and that the document is not valid. They have vowed to contest any effort by Erie to sell the other six paintings, they want a judge to determine ownership.

The owner, meanwhile, put the Cezanne up for auction because he felt he could not sufficiently secure the masterpiece. Sotheby's auctioned it for $29.3 million.

After returning the Cezanne, the lawyer tried to sell the paintings through Erie, but failed when the Art Loss Register intervened. The lawyer says that wasn't fair, that the owner should not be allowed to have the other six paintings back. Last year, the actual owner of the paintings and the Art Loss Register filed suit to stop a second attempted sale of four of the six paintings. That lawsuit led to a hearing in London on January 31, during which Mardirosian was identified as sole owner of Erie International, and ordered by the judge to be held responsible for paying an estimated $3 million in court, legal, and investigative fees accumulated by Bakwin in trying to get his paintings back. The judge further ordered that the ownership of the paintings should be handled through formal abitration in a British court -- but only if Erie put up approximately $50,000 in potential court and legal fees. Mardirosian took his lawyers' advice and conceded defeat.

Julian Radcliffe, chairman of the Art Loss Register said he is hopeful that the paintings will soon be returned to their rightful owner. He was also sharply critical of Mardirosian for not promptly returning the works and said he hoped that the FBI would investigate his role. "Mardirosian should have surrendered these stolen pictures as soon as he knew of their location. We will be providing all the help that we can to the FBI."

Mardirosian said he realizes that the FBI, which originally investigated the theft, will probably want to question him. That he served as the lawyer for both the suspected thief and the alleged intended fence will no doubt trigger questions about whether he actually obtained the paintings in the fashion he has described. "I know some things don't look good here, but I believe I have a legitimate case to make. I could have sold these a dozen times, but never did. My whole intent was to find a way to get them back to the owner in return for a 10 percent commission."

Mardirosian said his next step will probably be to give back the paintings, but he wanted to consult with lawyers in Massachusetts to see if there are any alternatives, including suing Bakwin for breach of contract.

Mardirosian maintained an active criminal law practice, defending numerous individuals charged with narcotics, weapons, and white-collar offenses in Boston-area courts and elsewhere between the early 1960s and 1995 when he retired at age 60. He now lives in a gated community in Falmouth, where he works as a full-time painter and sculptor, under the professional name Romard. He frequently travels to France to sell his artwork. On his website, Mardirosian writes about his decision to give up his law practice: "An occupation that one is really good at sometimes overrides the occupation that one's heart and soul says one should be doing. Fortunately, in some cases that real vocation does bubble up to the surface and rather explodes full-blown."

Too bad honesty didn't come with his newfound talent. [1.]

Kate blogs at The Original Musings.

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posted by Kate at 11:22 PM