Manhattan’s Thurgood Marshall Courthouse, where Schiff was sentenced (photo courtesy of Mike Peel)
Lisa Schiff, the Manhattan art advisor who admitted to stealing money from her clients, has just been sentenced to time in prison.
Schiff was a veteran of the art world. She worked in galleries and auction houses in both North America and Europe, finally making a career for herself in art advisory. She even once helped actor Leonardo DiCaprio manage his art collection. However, that all began to unravel in 2023 when her clients discovered that she was using their money to fund a luxurious lifestyle for herself. Schiff would get money in various ways. This included pocketing the proceeds of paintings she sold on behalf of clients, as well as accepting payment to acquire artworks that she never ended up buying. The scheme was all to pay for her apartment (which allegedly cost $25,000 a month), first-class travel, five-star hotels, a chauffeur, private school tuition for her son, and other expenses. According to a later government report, the extravagance of her lifestyle plus her previous legitimate success in art advisory makes it clear that this scheme “was not born out of necessity”.
The full extent of Schiff’s deceit came to light through a lawsuit filed by two of her former clients, Richard Grossman and Candace Carmel Barasch. They alleged that they had each invested in a 25% stake in the painting The Uncle 3 by Adrian Ghenie, with Schiff owning the remaining 50%. When Schiff later sold the painting at Sotheby’s, she gave the two collectors $225K each, a mere fraction of what was owed to them. According to the lawsuit, Schiff owed them an additional $1.8 million. Grossman and Barasch were met with constant delays before Schiff finally admitted that she did not have the money she owed them. After her confession, Schiff turned herself in and eventually pled guilty to wire fraud. She filed for bankruptcy and even consigned works from her private collection to Phillips to raise the money she owed to clients and creditors.
As part of her guilty plea, she agreed to pay $6.4 million as a forfeiture to the state. While the maximum prison sentence for wire fraud is twenty years, Schiff got off relatively lightly as a first-time offender. Judge J. Paul Oetken sentenced her to thirty months, after which she would receive two years of supervised release. Her sentence also included that she pay her victims an additional $9.15 million in damages related to fifty-five works of art. Schiff is expected to report to prison by July 1st.