One of his friends, art writer and dealer Kenny Schachter, who also lost around £1.4 million to Inigo, has described how the young impresario would sell him an artwork for 'around a million dollars' and then re-sell it to another client for a higher amount and 'we'd both pocket a few hundred thousand'. He drank £5,000 bottles of wine and had an account at Mayfair restaurant Cipriani so that dinner companions would think he was too important to need to produce a credit card.īut throughout this time, he was lying to clients about ownership and prices of artworks, borrowing money against art he didn't own and misappropriating sales proceeds, as well as forging contracts and documents to try to cover his tracks. Inigo wore £5,000 suits, hand-made shoes, a belt with a diamond lodged in the pin and a £48,000 watch. Until his life of crime unravelled in 2019, Inigo was the toast of the art world, a charming bon viveur who, with Victoria on his arm, cut a swathe through London - and New York - society.įlush with cash, the couple flew around the world on private jets, spending summers in Ibiza. As is the norm in this line of dealing, the artworks themselves remained in secure storage facilities - meaning clients were completely in the dark when Inigo began selling works to several parties, or over-selling shares in paintings that investors never actually set eyes on. Inigo would then help these investors re-sell the artworks at a higher price, taking a share of the profits. While some clients were wealthy collectors, wanting art to hang on the walls of their homes, he increasingly focused on those known in the art world as 'specullectors', who purchase artworks, or a percentage of them, as an investment. In 2013, with Jopling's financial assistance, Inigo opened his own gallery and consultancy in London's Mayfair, specialising in post-war and contemporary art.Ī second Inigo Philbrick gallery opened in Miami in 2018. Gallery founder Jay Jopling - later one of Inigo's victims - was impressed by the bright, sophisticated young man. In 2010, he was taken on as an intern at the prestigious White Cube gallery in London. Philbrick (pictured) has admitted conning investors out of millions of pounds and told a judge he did it all 'for the money'īorn in East London, where his artistic parents were living in an abandoned warehouse, Inigo grew up in Manhattan and Connecticut, and in 2005 followed in his father's footsteps by studying art curation at Goldsmiths, University of London. She added that Philbrick is the 'best person' she knows. 'I dread the day I have to start explaining things to her.' 'She doesn't know she doesn't have a father yet,' she told the paper. The Made in Chelsea socialite posted pictures of their daughter's first birthday on Instagram in November last year. Ms Baker-Harber said that she 'dreads' the day she has to explain things about Philbrick to her daughter, and does not want to take Gaia to the 'barbaric' Brooklyn prison where her father is now being held. She told The Sun that he said he loved her.
Philbrick said their was 'no sweeter sound' than his daughter calling him daddy.Īs he was taken to prison, he whispered to a tearful Ms Baker-Harber, and blew her a kiss. Philbrick has never met Gaia-Grace, but they have spoken on the telephone, after he was arrested in 2019.
The pair began dating in 2017, with their daughter born two years later. Philbrick's scams included the sale of a 1982 painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat named Humidity, pictured above
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