Trying twice to remove a Banksy artwork from a private property, selling a Paula Rego for cash-
in-hand in a Lisbon hotel room, and settling deals in the hundreds of thousands based only
on the veracity of an iPhone photo. These are just some of the details in an upcoming book
by Orlando Whitfield, All That Glitters, as revealed in the Guardian, that publishes 2nd May.
Orlando Whitfield is the former best friend to Inigo Philbrick, the American London-based art
dealer who swindled investors, associates, and friends out of millions of dollars. The FBI so
far have identified 24 people who have been conned, which include Jay Jopling, owner of
White Cube; British property dealers David and Simon Reuben; collector Andre Sakhai,
investor Aleksander ‘Sasha’ Pesko; and gallerist Damian Delahunty. The scale of Philbrick’s
fraud, the FBI says, is the largest art fraud committed in American history.
Back in 2020, Philbrick, 36, was jailed and sentenced to seven years for wire fraud and
ordered to forfeit $86m (£68m). Philbrick was released on 4 March this year from his
sentence — to which Victoria Baker-Harber, the former Made in Chelsea Star and his
fiancée — celebrated in an Instagram post. The two of them can be seen languishing together with
their daughter, in a rather Manet-esque Le Déjeuner sur L’Herbe type garden set up, with
the caption reading: ‘A long stretch, but here we are.’
