The Inigo Philbrick Saga: From Wunderkind To Art Fraudster

By David Jenkins.

The office of tourism for Vanuatu, an island country near the Australian coast, boasts that on their shores, “couples, families, adrenalin junkies and serenity seekers will all find plenty to do.”^[1] As of late, the office of tourism may want to add one more variety of visitor to that list: fugitive art dealers. On June 11, 2020, agents from the United States Department of Justice worked with local authorities to apprehend Inigo Philbrick, a Miami based blue-chip dealer specializing in contemporary art, right in the middle of one of Vanuatu’s artisan markets.^[2]

Philbrick had been on the run since last October, having fled the U.S. after investigations began into complaints that he had sold artworks he did not own, sold overlapping shares in the same art, and took advantage of a lack of oversight in the market to hide his fraud.^[3] His arrest signals the beginning of the end to a scandal that has dominated the attention of the art world for some time now, with charges by the United States Government in the Southern District of New York amounting to more than $20 million in fraud.^[4] The history of the man behind the alleged crimes and how his fraud could manifest in today’s art world tells a fascinating and potentially cautionary tale about the modern state of the art market.

Rise of the “Wunderkind”