Man Accused of Corot Portrait Swindle Gets September Trial Date
"Portrait of a Girl"
The Granger Collection via Bloomberg
"Portrait of a Girl" by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. The painting is missing after a man hired to help sell the painting misplaced it after a night of drinking. The owner valued it at $1.4 million.
"Portrait of a Girl" by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. The painting is missing after a man hired to help sell the painting misplaced it after a night of drinking. The owner valued it at $1.4 million. Source: The Granger Collection via Bloomberg
Mark Hotel
Philip Boroff/Bloomberg
A bar at New York's Mark Hotel. A $1.4 million Corot painting was last seen at the hotel, according to a lawsuit filed on Aug. 30 in New York State Supreme Court.
A bar at New York's Mark Hotel. A $1.4 million Corot painting was last seen at the hotel, according to a lawsuit filed on Aug. 30 in New York State Supreme Court. Photographer: Philip Boroff/Bloomberg
A New York man charged with illegally acquiring a Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot portrait that was found in the bushes across the street from the Metropolitan Museum of Art is scheduled to go on trial Sept. 12
U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon in Manhattan, who set the trial date yesterday, warned Thomas A. Doyle, who is accused of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, not to miss any more court dates. He shouldn’t have refused an order earlier this month by the U.S. Marshals Service to attend court, she said.
“If the marshals tell you to go, you go,” McMahon said. “This never happens again.”
Doyle’s lawyer, Donald Duboulay, told reporters that Doyle, who is incarcerated at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, wasn’t feeling well the morning of April 13, when the status conference was initially scheduled. Doyle knew that Duboulay was involved in a trial at the time, his lawyer said.
Duboulay said his client will probably go to trial, rather than plead guilty to a lesser charge.
“That’s what the innocent do,” he said.
Corot’s 1857-58 “Portrait of a Girl” already had attracted tabloid press coverage by the time Doyle was arrested. A self-described co-owner of the painting and friend of Doyle, Kristyn Trudgeon, had filed a lawsuit in August claiming that another man she and Doyle hired to sell the artwork lost it after a night of heavy drinking in midtown Manhattan.
A week after Doyle’s arrest, the painting turned up in a locker of a doorman on Fifth Avenue at 81st street, across the street from the Met. The doorman told police that he found it in the bushes outside the apartment in late July and stored it because he believed it belonged to a building resident, according to the New York Times.
Two Co-Conspirators
In acquiring the painting, Doyle had at least two co- conspirators and sent a series of e-mails to dealers and a “co- purchaser” of it who lives in Japan, according to the criminal complaint.
From May to August, he fraudulently solicited about $880,000 from an investor, called “Victim 1” by the U.S., in connection with the purchase, prosecutors said. He allegedly misled Victim 1 into believing that the two could jointly buy the painting from a third person for $1.1 million, including a $50,000 commission paid to an unnamed broker.
Doyle told Victim 1 he would pay $880,000, while Doyle would provide the remaining $220,000, the U.S. said in court papers. In May and June, Doyle negotiated the purchase of the painting for $775,000 and not the $1.1 million price he had falsely stated to Victim 1, prosecutors said.
Believing Doyle’s original price, Victim 1 paid Doyle $880,000, the U.S. said.
Doyle pleaded guilty to state charges in 2007 in the theft of an Edgar Degas sculpture and was released from prison in December 2009.
The criminal case is U.S. v. Doyle, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan). The state court lawsuit is Trudgeon v. Haggerty, 111583/2010, Supreme Court of the State of New York.
To contact the reporter on this story: Philip Boroff in New York at pboroff@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Manuela Hoelterhoff at mhoelterhoff@bloomberg.net; Michael Hytha at mhytha@bloomberg.net.
Rate These Stories
Rate this Page