A leading art adviser whose clients have included Leonardo DiCaprio, and who was accused by the government of bilking her clients of millions, pleaded guilty on Thursday in federal court in Manhattan to one count of wire fraud, for stealing $6.5 million from people who trusted her to buy art for them.
The adviser, Lisa Schiff, 54, whose eye for contemporary art launched a lucrative career acquiring blue-chip pieces for a host of major collectors, was accused by federal prosecutors of stealing money that clients had entrusted to her for the purchase of approximately 55 artworks. As part of the plea agreement, Ms. Schiff will forfeit about $6.4 million. The felony fraud charge also carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. Ms. Schiff will learn about any prison term at sentencing for the case.
“For years, Lisa Schiff breached the trust of her art advisory clients by lying to them and diverting millions of dollars her clients had entrusted to her,” Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York said in a statement. “Instead of using client funds as promised, Schiff used the stolen money to fund a lavish lifestyle.”
Her lawyer, Randy Zelin, said the plea agreement had been in the works for several months. “Lisa has been anxious to have the opportunity to accept responsibility, she has been anxious to set out on a path of righting the wrongs and making amends,” he said in an interview on Thursday.
Ms. Schiff, who is based in Manhattan, will be sentenced on Jan. 17 by J. Paul Oetken, a judge for the U.S. District Court in Manhattan.
“The specter of standing in front of a judge and acknowledging criminal wrongdoing, and acknowledging the prospect of a prison sentence, is an extraordinarily daunting thing,” Mr. Zelin added. “But that is a fire that Lisa ran to, not away from.”
Ms. Schiff’s fraud came to light last year, when a pair of lawsuits led by Candace Carmel Barasch, a real estate heiress, accused Ms. Schiff of making off with millions. In one lawsuit, Ms. Barasch and another collector, Richard Grossman, accused Ms. Schiff of never paying the $1.8 million she owed them as a result of selling a painting for them by the well-regarded Romanian artist Adrian Ghenie.
In a second lawsuit Ms. Barasch and her husband, Michael, said Ms. Schiff, who over the years became a friend and confidante, and was entrusted with a credit card and total oversight of the couple’s collection, had taken $6.6 million they gave her to buy art for them.
“Lisa Schiff attempted to paint a picture of a successful fine art advisory business, when in reality — as she admitted today — it was actually a multimillion-dollar fraudulent scheme,” James E. Dennehy, the F.B.I.’s assistant director in charge of the New York field office, said in a statement. “After half a decade of deceit, Ms. Schiff will now be held accountable for her lies and duplicitous actions.”
Prosecutors said Ms. Schiff’s fraud began in 2018 and involved as many as 12 clients, including an artist, a gallery and the estate of another artist. They were not named. (Ms. Schiff helped Mr. DiCaprio, who was seeking to purchase a work by Jean-Michel Basquiat in 2017, according to reports at the time. It is not known if Mr. DiCaprio was one of the dozen clients.)
On Thursday law enforcement officials outlined how Ms. Schiff’s schemes unfolded. There were two methods: Sometimes, they said, she kept the money from an art sale she had brokered without telling clients their art had sold. At other times she would not pay for art she had been instructed to buy for clients, and would instead use their money to pay her own debts, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
In a feature story in The New York Times in 2019 about the artwork Ms. Barasch had amassed at her Park Avenue apartment — about 600 pieces at the time — she discussed her 15 years of collecting with Ms. Schiff’s help. The two friends would rearrange the art thematically into an exhibition of sorts at least once a year. “It’s like an actual nightmare, the planning!,” Ms. Barasch said of the task.
Earlier this year, Ms. Schiff, whose company is called Schiff Fine Art, or SFA, filed for bankruptcy; as part of the proceedings, Phillips New York will be auctioning off works from her personal collection. A spokesman for the auction house declined to identify the works, which will be for sale over several months, beginning Nov. 20. But her formidable collection of hundreds of pieces was detailed in documents submitted to the New York State Supreme Court outlining a possible plan for the bankruptcy. They include pieces by Damien Hirst, Anicka Yi, Judy Chicago and Nan Goldin.
Mr. Zelin, Ms. Schiff’s lawyer, said she has acknowledged her wrongdoing, and wants to make things right — and perhaps, then, return to the New York City art scene. “We are a town in particular that loves a good comeback,” he said. “And loves to see somebody rise up from the ashes.”
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