Art World Infamy is a special series from the team behind The Art Angle, investigating the scandals and schemes that have rocked the art world. In the first chapter, told over four episodes, senior market reporter Eileen Kinsella unravels the rise and fall of dealer Inigo Philbrick.
After months on the run, U.S. authorities finally tracked Inigo Philbrick to a remote island nation in the South Pacific: Vanuatu, a tropical archipelago more than 9,000 miles from London and a world away from the art fairs and galleries where he once thrived. What followed was a scene straight out of an action thriller: a dramatic arrest, a secretive extraction by private jet—at the height of the pandemic, no less—and a return to face justice, along with tens of millions in claims from furious investors and collectors.
In this fourth and final episode, we uncover what happened in the months after Philbrick disappeared and how his high-flying double life came to an abrupt end. Law enforcement officials and art-world insiders weigh in on how they found him, what it takes to prosecute art fraud—and whether a man like this could ever make a comeback in the art world.
