De Niro Art Dealer Heads to Trial as Salander Remains at Rikers
Leigh Morse
Paul Goguen/Bloomberrg News
Leigh Morse, former director of the Salander-OReilly Galleries LLC, exits Manhattan criminal court in New York. Morse is scheduled to go on trial in January 2011.
Leigh Morse, former director of the Salander-OReilly Galleries LLC, exits Manhattan criminal court in New York. Morse is scheduled to go on trial in January 2011. Photographer: Paul Goguen/Bloomberrg News
Leigh Morse Fine Arts
Philip Boroff/Bloomberg
The townhouse that houses Leigh Morse Fine Arts in New York. Morse is scheduled to go on trial for grand larceny and scheming to defraud, in January 2011.
The townhouse that houses Leigh Morse Fine Arts in New York. Morse is scheduled to go on trial for grand larceny and scheming to defraud, in January 2011. Photographer: Philip Boroff/Bloomberg
Leigh Morse, an American art dealer accused of stealing from actor Robert De Niro, is headed to trial.
New York State Supreme Court Judge Michael Obus scheduled the trial of the former Salander-O’Reilly Galleries director to start in late January, Obus said in court this month. Morse, 54, pleaded not guilty to grand larceny and scheming to defraud when she was arrested on July 14, 2009.
The charges are connected in part to paintings by Robert De Niro Sr., who died in 1993 of prostate cancer on his 71st birthday. His son, the actor and entrepreneur, controls his estate.
“It would be highly likely in a trial of Leigh Morse that Robert De Niro would be a witness,” said Charles Ross, a criminal lawyer who represented gallery proprietor Lawrence B. Salander and is familiar with the Morse case.
Morse declined to comment when reached by phone. A spokeswoman for Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. and spokesman for De Niro, 67, declined comment. Lawyers for the actor and Morse didn’t return calls.
In March 2009, Steven Harvey, another former director, pleaded guilty to falsifying business records. He agreed to make about $500,000 of restitution. A year later, Salander pleaded guilty to fraud and grand larceny and was ordered to pay victims more than $100 million. He paid nothing and was sentenced to six to 18 years in prison.
Last week, Salander was moved to another facility on Rikers Island, where he has been incarcerated for three months while awaiting transfer to a state prison because of paperwork issues, said Stephen Morello, a New York City Correction Department spokesman.
Morse continues to sell art, from her fifth-floor gallery off Madison Avenue. She joined Salander-O’Reilly in 1995 and worked primarily with estates of 20th-Century American artists. In about 2002, Salander began to shift the emphasis from American to European Renaissance-era art, which he said offered uncommon value.
The change roughly coincided with Salander’s spending spree and moving Salander-O’Reilly to a neo-Italian Renaissance mansion he rented for $154,000 a month.
In May 2007, with the gallery in debt and teetering on insolvency, Morse sold three De Niro Sr. paintings to San Francisco’s Hackett-Freedman Gallery for $77,000. Two were owned by the actor, according to court papers. The $77,000 was wired to her personal bank account. The prosecution said she orchestrated it without De Niro’s knowledge and was entitled only to a fraction of the sum as a commission.
Morse’s lawyer, Andrew Lankler, said in legal documents that Salander directed that proceeds from the sales be paid to her because Salander-O’Reilly owed her money.
Lankler conceded the structure “may have violated civil and ethical rules regarding how a fiduciary should handle client funds,” but that “does not, per se, establish criminal intent.”
Prosecutors say Morse sold other consignors’ work at prices below agreed-upon minimums and didn’t tell them. Morse “prevented the estates from demanding payment for those sales or the ability to make an informed decision about removing their remaining works from the gallery,” according to a prosecution filing.
Lankler countered that Morse, with an annual salary of $125,000, was a sales person and not responsible for keeping track of art. She wasn’t aware of “the over-arching Ponzi scheme orchestrated by Lawrence Salander,” he wrote.
She left in August 2007, three months before the gallery filed for bankruptcy. She hadn’t been paid for commissions or expenses for several months and was owed hundreds of thousands of dollars, she said in a statement to prosecutors.
Salander-O’Reilly extensively promoted the art of De Niro, Sr., mounting at least five exhibits of his work from 1995 to 2004 and publishing a 208-page book about him.
In the preface, Salander called the actor a friend and the father’s bright, expressionist paintings “among the (20th) century’s highest achievements.”
Lawyers for the actor spent nearly two years in U.S. Bankruptcy court fighting to recover De Niro paintings consigned to the gallery. The actor was able to retrieve them in a settlement that included paying $14,000 to the bankrupt gallery, which could eventually go to creditors.
De Niro displays his father’s art at New York’s Tribeca Grill, one of the restaurants he co-owns. In March, he traveled to Nice, France, for a De Niro Sr. exhibition.
“I’m not an authority on my father but I knew he was a great artist,” De Niro said at a news conference at the Matisse Museum, according to CBS News video. “It’s very important to continue his legacy.”
The criminal case is People v. Morse and People v. Salander, 09-03581, New York State Supreme Court, New York County (Manhattan).
To contact the reporter on this story: Philip Boroff in New York at pboroff@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Manuela Hoelterhoff at mhoelterhoff@bloomberg.net.
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