{"id":28403,"date":"2017-12-27T10:22:16","date_gmt":"2017-12-27T15:22:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rehs.com\/blog\/?p=28403"},"modified":"2024-02-23T08:07:00","modified_gmt":"2024-02-23T13:07:00","slug":"the-dark-side-ezra-chowaiki-continued","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rehs.com\/eng\/2017\/12\/the-dark-side-ezra-chowaiki-continued\/","title":{"rendered":"The Dark Side: Ezra Chowaiki continued&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In <a href=\"http:\/\/rehscgi.com\/newsletterarchives.htm\">Volume 204 of our Comments on the Art Market<\/a>, we briefly covered the charges brought against art dealer, Ezra Chowaiki.\u00a0 Since then, more information has come to light regarding the now bankrupt art gallery and its crooked dealer.<\/p>\n<p>The court documents regarding the company\u2019s bankruptcy claim reveal it has less than $300,000 in assists and almost $12 million in claims by victims who were defrauded.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Known victims<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">\n1 &#8211; A Cayman Island company, that is managed by a modern-art dealer, alleges that it was cheated out of $900,000. The deal was that he would purchase a 50% stake in a sculpture which Chowaiki would flip for a quick profit of over $100,000 to the victim. Chowaiki claimed a buyer was already lined up and willing to pay $2.15 million. However, once the money was wired, the victim learned that the work was not being sold by Chowaiki but actually up for auction in London.<\/p>\n<p>2 &#8211; Sotheby\u2019s had hired the gallery as an agent to purchase \u201cTitine Trovato in Dress and Hat\u201d by Henri Matisse for $12 million. Sotheby\u2019s then had plans to resell the work for $15-$20 million. Before the deal went through, the gallery sold the work to another buyer for $4.75 million. Sotheby\u2019s is seeking damages for the loss.<\/p>\n<p>3 &#8211; Carpenter Fine Violins and Collectibles LLC., claims they acquired a 50% stake in a Kandinsky for $312,500. What is interesting is that this is the same amount of money \u201cVictim-2\u201d in the lawsuit claims Chowaiki stole; however, there is no information yet that connects these two cases.<\/p>\n<p>Source:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2017-12-15\/manhattan-art-dealer-stole-millions-from-clients-u-s-charges\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Bloomberg: New York Art Dealer Duped Clients Out of Millions, U.S. Says<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Volume 204 of our Comments on the Art Market, we briefly covered the charges brought against art dealer, Ezra Chowaiki.\u00a0 Since then, more information has come to light regarding the now bankrupt art gallery and its crooked dealer. The &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/rehs.com\/eng\/2017\/12\/the-dark-side-ezra-chowaiki-continued\/?contemporary=N\">More&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[385,387,388,389],"class_list":["post-28403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rehs-contemporary","tag-crime","tag-dark-side","tag-ezra","tag-fraud"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.7 (Yoast SEO v27.7) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Dark Side: Ezra Chowaiki continued...<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/rehs.com\/eng\/2017\/12\/the-dark-side-ezra-chowaiki-continued\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Dark Side: Ezra Chowaiki continued...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In Volume 204 of our Comments on the Art Market, we briefly covered the charges brought against art dealer, Ezra Chowaiki.\u00a0 Since then, more information has come to light regarding the now bankrupt art gallery and its crooked dealer. 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