“I believe an appropriate apposite value for “Helicopter Cityscape” to be $6,500,000.”
Several weeks before snagging his first victims, Rick Belcastro and Brandon Holmes, David Damante obtained an important tool that enabled him to perpetrate his year-long art fraud scam: a June 7, 2017 letter from Las Vegas gallery Art encounter authenticating a painting Damante possessed as the work of the late artist Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Later, an Art encounter appraiser issued an extensive “Valuation Determination for Potential Resale” for the artwork, entitled “Helicopter Cityscape”, pegging its Fair Market Value at $6,500,000.
Using documents obtained from a confidential source, including the proof of authenticity and appraisal, which a Las Vegas-based Art encounter representative acknowledged in a July 23, 2018 email were genuine, here is the untold story of how Damante used the Art encounter-generated documents (along with a bundle of forged and misleading documents) to pull off an art scam that landed him back in federal custody.
THE ART OF DECEPTION: FAKES, FORGERIES & APPRAISALS
As you might expect, this story begins in prison.
David Damante met co-conspirator, Lumsden (Lu) Quan, while the two were serving time at FCI Terminal Island in Long Beach, California.
Described in a July 18, 2018 post, Damante and Quan both had extensive fraud backgrounds.
Shortly after his February 28, 2017 release, Damante showed up in Las Vegas at Art encounter, retrieving the Basquiat painting Quan claimed to have purchased from Stephen Stilgenbauer at his Costa Mesa, California, coin shop in 2012—before claiming in a December 20, 2013 “Bill of Sale of Personal Property” that he'd actually sold the painting to Damante's father, Angelo, for $750,000.
Confused?
Don't be...Miss Fortune will explain it all.
“I BELIEVE WITHOUT RESERVATION THAT THE HAND OF JEAN M. BASQUIAT HAS CREATED THIS WORK OF ART.”
Following the established paper trail, it appears Damante retrieved Quan's painting from Art encounter in Las Vegas on March 3, 2017.
Roughly three months later, on June 7, 2017, Art encounter's Executive Director, Scott Ferguson, issued a letter to David “Diamante”, opining that the painting formerly housed at the gallery was actually the art world's version of a “unicorn”, a lost work created by Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Holy shit!
A Basquiat!
Less than one month before Ferguson issued his letter to Mr. David Diamante of Sinuessa Fine Art LLC, an untitled Basquiat painting of a skull sold for $110.5 million at Sotheby’s in New York, setting an auction record for American artists and providing a windfall for the daughter of two collectors who purchased it for $19,000 in 1984.
That's a helluva return on investment. (Scroll down for the story.)
Ferguson asserted in a March 12, 2016 affidavit (shown below) that he “personally knew Jean during the early years of his career. I attended the High School of Art & Design while he attended a social experiment school called, City As School.”
In a recent Pawn Stars episode, Ferguson (at left), and Art encounter's Brett Maly (center), an appraiser with a recurring role on as the show's “go-to” art expert, authenticate three postcards as rare artworks created by Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Rick Harrison, owner of the Gold & Silver Pawn Shop in Las Vegas, purchased three postcards from the “seller” for $50,000.
Call me crazy, but those postcards look eerily similar to the crap Kevin Doyle sells on eBay!
The same postcards Doyle claims Basquiat just happened to leave in an art portfolio on a New York City subway that he and Basquiat just happened to be riding together...nearly 40 years ago.
Later today, the rest of the story.
TRUST ME, I'M ON REALITY TV!
Another Glistening, Quivering Underbelly exclusive.
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