We've looked at Philbrick a couple times and it's a bit surprising he got away with it as long as he did.
From CrimeReads, August 19:
Orlando Whitfield’s All That Glitters: A Story of Friendship, Fraud, and Fine Art is a memoir that reserves a co-starring role for his erstwhile business partner, an ingratiating con artist whose $87 million fraud earned him a four-year prison term that ended in 2024. Inigo Philbrick’s misdeeds, which involved sham contracts, fake clients and works by well-known contemporary artists like Christopher Wool and Wade Guyton, confirmed that the contemporary art trade is a soft target for an urbane crook, ideally one whose clients include credulous mega-rich collectors willing to pay millions for the latest must-have canvas or sculpture or, God help us, generative AI video collage.
Whitfield’s book, which has been optioned by HBO, is based on documents Philbrick shared with Whitfield and phone calls between the men when Philbrick, prior to his arrest, was hiding out on a South Pacific island. Speaking from his home in London, the author talked about the art market’s veneer of respectability, his former friend’s creative bookkeeping and why, as he writes, selling fine art is “a business done really well by real bastards.”
Years before his crimes, you and Inigo Philbrick were briefly in business together as art dealers. How did I & O Fine Art get its start?
We’d met at college in the UK, and we both found ourselves having a lot of spare time. We both had backgrounds, via our families, in the art world. Inigo’s father was a curator and his mother was an artist, whereas my father worked in auction houses. Art dealing, the art market, had been present in both of our lives from an early age. Inigo suggested putting together a few art deals. I didn’t know what that meant, but Inigo knew exactly what that meant.
How long was this business partnership?
Two years, 18 months—not long at all. We did a few (Portuguese-British artist) Paula Rego deals. We tried to do some Banksy deals, neither of which ever came off.
One of the Banksy paintings was on a public-facing wall, which you considered removing.
The wall is still there, I pass it quite often. Having since spent some time working in conservation, I now understand that you’d have to get a buildings conservator in, whereas we were just bringing builders and structural engineers. A slightly ridiculous approach....
....MUCH MORE
Previously:April 2020
"Inigo Philbrick is a Ponzi-scheming gallerist who got in over his head. Now he’s gone missing—with a pack of furious collectors on his trail"
November 2021
"‘Serial swindler’ Inigo Philbrick made £65m selling paintings twice"
