http://blogs.wsj.com/bankruptcy/2010/09 ... o-auction/
Marc Dreier
http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/35718 ... collector/
Phillips de Pury Hopes to Sell the Hoard of Another Disgraced Collector
By ARTINFO
Published: September 8, 2010
NEW YORK—As Sotheby's and Christie's stake out their blue-chip consignment territory in advance of the fall market season, second-string boutique Phillips de Pury seems to be working a burgeoning, if unglamorous, niche: helping disgraced financiers sell off their ill-gotten art. After bringing in more than $24 million this spring by auctioning the collection of debt-ridden Internet entrepreneur Hasley Minor, Phillips is now angling for the corporate art collection of the defunct law firm of Marc Dreier, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for federal fraud after having attempted to sell $700 million bonus promissory notes to investors.
According to the Wall Street Journal, a bankruptcy official has filed for court approval for a November 21 Phillips auction of the modern and contemporary works Dreier amassed before his 2008 arrest. The 81-piece collection includes works by Damien Hirst, Henri Matisse, Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, and Willem de Kooning, as well as photographs of the Dreier family and of Audrey Hepburn playing that other fiscally inept individual Holly Golightly in "Breakfast at Tiffany’s."
A major Gagosian Gallery client, Dreier is known to have spent over $10 million for art in a single year. The bankruptcy estate of the former firm Dreier, LLP gained the rights to the art — which was confiscated after federal criminal charges were levied against Dreier — as a part of a deal that divided Dreier’s assets between the firm and his cheated clients, among whose ranks were such celebrities as Bill Cosby, Tim Burton, Justin Timberlake, rock group the Ramones, Elvis Costello, the New York Mets, and many others.
http://www.duhaime.org/LawFun/LawArticl ... 0-USA.aspx
Marc Stuart Dreier presently (2010) sits in a jail cell in Chicago, Illinois, where he completes his 20-year sentence for fraud. In his wake are losses of about $400-million and 800 victims, including celebrities such as Bill Cosby, Tim Burton, Justin Timberlake, Harry Connick, Jr., Elvis Costello, Jon Bon Jovi, Diana Krall, Andy Pettitte, Sammy Sosa and tennis star Maria Sharapova.
Starting in at least 2002, Dreier began stealing money from his clients, at first monies from settlement proceeds.
But starting in 2004, Dreier entered the big leagues of commercial fraud, and began secretly stealing millions from his clients and others, most in the form of fake IOUs, promissory notes, purportedly issued by companies in the United States and Canada and that he would then con Wall Street financiers to buy. If any note needing vetting, Dreier made sure he was somewhere along the line and he'd then vouch for the promissory note, with his word being passed up the line and standing as reference. He had fake email accounts and cellphone and land lines all leading back to him. He even prepared false financial statements. All details, he kept in secret black notebooks so that he could, as required, breath life into the bogus IOUs, sometimes paying off older ones to add credibility to newer, more valuable notes.
http://www.wikidfranchise.org/20090316-dreirs-star
