MAN ACCUSED OF NOT PAYING FOR $11MILLION OF ART... OR... THERES A SUCKER BORN EVERY MINUTE! By Henry K. Lee A convicted tax evader and trout poacher from San Francisco has been charged with mail fraud for allegedly falsely claiming that he had $11 million to buy artwork. Luke Brugnara, 50, was named in a complaint unsealed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco. Federal prosecutors accused him of taking delivery of the art and then refusing to pay for the pieces or return them. Brugnara made a deal in April to pay $7.3 million to an art dealer from New York for 16 paintings by Willem de Kooning, the Dutch American Abstract Expressionist artist, FBI Special Agent Jeremy Desor wrote in a court affidavit. Brugnara also agreed to pay $3 million for an Edgar Degas sculpture, $450,000 for a painting by American realist artist George Luks, $160,000 for a drawing by Joan Miró and $145,000 for etchings by Pablo Picasso, according to the FBI. The art dealer, who was not named in the affidavit, asked Brugnara to pay some of the money up front. Brugnara, however, said he shouldn’t have to because he had previously bought a Renoir painting for $500,000 and a Picasso drawing from her without any problems, authorities said. Brugnara told the dealer that he was opening a museum in San Francisco, authorities said. When the dealer said she wasn’t aware of any new museums opening in San Francisco, Brugnara told her it would actually be in Las Vegas, investigators said. The art was shipped in crates from New York to Brugnara’s home on Sea Cliff Avenue in San Francisco, investigators said. The dealer traveled to San Francisco to ensure that the art arrived. She showed up April 7, the day the art was delivered. “Brugnara instructed the delivery personnel to leave the crates in his garage,” Desor wrote. The art dealer “had never before seen anyone request art of such value to be placed in a garage.” The dealer went into the home and “observed it was almost empty with the exception of two chairs” and had no artwork inside, Desor wrote. Brugnara rebuffed the dealer’s offer of special tools to open the crates, saying he was “very busy,” the affidavit said. The dealer’s subsequent efforts to collect for the artwork were unsuccessful. Brugnara told his lawyer that the art was given to him as a gift and that the works were “unauthenticated and not worth much,” according to an attorney representing the dealer. The dealer went to authorities earlier this month. Authorities said only some of the art has been recovered, but did not give details. Brugnara is being held without bail pending a court hearing Friday. Brugnara, a onetime real estate investor and casino owner, pleaded guilty in 2010 to filing tax returns from 2000 to 2002 that left out the proceeds of his sale of four buildings in San Francisco and one in Las Vegas. He was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison. He was also convicted of poaching threatened steelhead trout from waters below his private dam in Gilroy and received a 15-month sentence, which he served at the same time as his tax sentence. After his release from prison in 2012, Brugnara had “no assets whatsoever,” a federal probation officer wrote in a report. Henry K. Lee is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: hlee@ sfchronicle Twitter: @henryklee
Posted on: Fri, 30 May 2014 15:46:27 +0000
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