Whilst the Hamptons was the scene of “bidding wars” and “supermarket spats” over £275 bottles of Chablis during the 2020 coronavirus crisis, it’s become the scene of socialites being arrested in “wife beaters” for assaulting “glampin’ workers” in the 2022 cost-of-living-crisis
There’s always been something about the Hamptons that attracts big spenders and badly-behaved berks.
Here is a set of tony townships rife with money, mystery, mayhem and murder and further proof of the madness of this privileged place came this week when Libbie Mugrabi – a soppy “socialite” resident best known for bizarrely once comparing herself to the late Diana, Princess of Wales – opened up to accuse her workers of “glampin’ in the Hamptons” when she got arrested for allegedly violently attacking them.
Setting the scene, during the summer of 2020 coronavirus lockdowns, “überwealthy” residents of this southern fork of Long Island hired nightclub bouncers to “prevent others from using their roads.” To “protect [their] health,” they “compounded” – “buying [up] two and even three seven-and eight-figure homes on the same street, grabbing up surrounding acres for family members” – in order to avoid others.
At the time, Vanity Fair’s Stephanie Krikorian mused of “bidding wars” and “tears,” whilst, to the New York Post’s Jennifer Gould, founder of “upscale supermarket chain” Citraella Joe Guerra lamented: “I had one customer spend $8,000. You know when you see someone with a full shopping cart? Now they have five… [They buy] pretty much everything they can… Instead of asking for one or two steaks on a tray, a customer will buy the whole tray. Then they’ll move on to shrimp, and buy all the shrimp, and then they’ll buy all the salmon steaks. Instead of asking for a slice of lasagna, they’ll buy all of it. Then they’ll buy all of our root vegetables… Business is insane.”
When not “ransacking grocery stores in epic shopping sprees,” these very wealthy folk were to be found at what they themselves termed “quarantine mansions” and many of them did exactly the opposite to what was deemed sensible.
These irresponsible brats threw “Covidiot super-spreader parties” and even worse, in one instance – which has become one of The Steeple Times’ most popular ever stories – a self-declared “power broker” and “well-regarded [estate] agent” named Jonathan Davis got into a serious spat. His crime? This “privileged, preppy prat” and Nest Seekers employed realtor became a “pesky squatter” in a Sag Harbor “dream home” that he supposedly utterly trashed. Here was not a property agent helping a landlord, but instead one seemingly robbing them and wrecking their residence instead.
Confronted by Inside Edition’s cameras in June 2020, Mr Davis raged: “I’ve got no comments except: GET ORF THE GROUNDS!” whilst the landlady to whom he owed thousands, Paula Rosado, responded: “It’s horrific. It really is just horrific… This has been a complete nightmare for us, for our family emotionally and financially…. [His German Shepherd dogs] tear apart [everything] and urinate all over rugs and couches [sic].”
Of him, one fellow agent, Zachary Belil, later commented to The Steeple Times: “The kid is a little freak. He tried suing Compass for no reason” whilst social butterfly Lynn Wyatt added: “I dealt with him once. He has no manners and is an arrogant little f**k. Zachary Belil is a realtor I’ve heard good things about and though I have never dealt with him, I back him up – Jonnie Boy is a FREAK.”
Whilst Jonathan Davis is astoundingly still employed by Nest Seekers at their Bridgehampton office, Libbie Mugrabi has taken up his mantle and featured late last week in a New York Post article by Michael Kaplan as an “arrested socialite” after the Southampton Police Department had “charged [her] with menacing, criminal mischief and criminal possession of a weapon” last Tuesday.
Ms Mugrabi – the ex-wife of “billionaire art collector” David Mugrabi and a woman known for having described her marriage as a “gilded cage” during “New York’s nastiest divorce” in 2020 – Kaplan reported, got cuffed after attacking an “unnamed housekeeper” on 31st July “with a mop handle and a knife, and broke her cellphone” at her 10,000 square foot house in Water Mill.
Ordered now to appear in court on 6th December, Mugrabi showed no sign of remorse and raged to the paper:
“They should have been doing work on my house, but not living in my house. The night I came home, a lady was in my guest room – she was supposed to have been let go. I went to use the bathroom, saw her, and I got scared to death.”
“She started throwing stuff at me. She threw a cellphone and the bottom of a stringy mop at me. She was screaming like a crazy person and threw a bible at me.”
Turning to the “attack allegation leveled against her,” she conceded: “I’m not aggressive physically. I’m aggressive with my voice.”
Her mother, Jane Scher, who claims to have met the staff in question on another occasion, added: “These people had taken over Libbie’s house… They were in the pool and the hot tub and wouldn’t even give me a cup of coffee. I thought they had a better life than I do… Libbie told them to feed me. They gave me some kind of soup with ginger. It tasted OK. I was starving.”
Of the conduct of the police who arrested her, Mugrabi raged:
“[They] were aggressive for no reason. They attacked me and handcuffed me. I said they were twisting my wrist. They said: ‘It’s OK.’ I asked to read me my rights. They said: ‘We don’t read rights for this.’ … I don’t know what I did in Southampton except pay my taxes.”
Her friend, fashion consultant Marko Matysik, who was present during the 22nd November arrest and “watching from the terrace at the time,” whined:
“Next thing I knew, Libbie was in handcuffs. She was wearing a wife-beater and hot pants. I grabbed as many of her handbags and hand luggage as I could [in case she needed anything inside them] and got into the chauffeured Suburban and followed the police car…. They were very happy to have her in the jailhouse.”
Concluding, Libbie Mugrabi ignored the cost-of-living crisis that so many around the world are currently enduring. Instead, she moaned that after the “commotion” of the arrest she’d been forced to “postpone” a trip to Miami and had instead spent “some town in her Upper East Side townhouse.” The somewhat shamed but clearly not ashamed socialite finally bleated: “I had Thanksgiving in New York. I definitely would not have had it in the Hamptons. Right now, I’m scared to go there.” Now, get those damned violins a-playing.
Editor’s Note – Unlike as is the case in many publications, this article was NOT sponsored or supported by a third-party.
Pictured Top – The ritzy residential resort of the Hamptons attracts billionaires with bulging bank balances because of its idyllic charm (top), but it also appeals to brash Botoxed braggarts like Libbie Mugrabi (bottom right) and her mother Jane Scher (bottom left).
Libbie Mugrabi (pictured with her billionaire ex-husband) showed her clear belief that she’s always the victim when she told ‘Page Six’ in June 2021: “I had the same thing as [the late Diana, Princess of Wales] – I got married young. She was told what to do and wear. And so was I. You’re under control and under a rein. It doesn’t matter what’s fair or what you deserve… After divorce, you can breathe, free of the gilded cage. I married someone who thought he was better than me.” She got her ‘plastic-not-fantastic look’ in spite of having had a father who was a plastic surgeon and a mother who was a nurse.After her divorce, ‘Lovely Libbie’ briefly hooked up with Brock Pierce (pictured with her left and right in his acting days) – a former child actor who had appeared in Disney’s ‘The Mighty Ducks’ and who ran as an independent candidate in the 2020 United States of America presidential election. That didn’t last. “I didn’t know anyone at my wedding” at one point further admitted mother-of-two turned “trucker hat-seller” Ms Mugrabi before she arrogantly added in another of many self-grandiose interviews: “My artist friends compare me to Peggy Gugenheim… She was fast and furious and drove in her own lane and no one could keep up with her.” Of subsequent relationships, she’s first to admit they’ve been equally disastrous. “I got robbed by so many people since I got divorced. I’ve been robbed like 10 times… I’m open and I’m free, and I’ve had some really creepy people around me. Now I’m being much more careful. I’ve never been 41 before with money and all this stuff. It’s like a rebirth. You have to relearn everything,” she added. There’s maybe hope for this ridiculous woman yet.During their multi-million divorce in December 2018, things got very “nasty” between Mr and Mrs Mugrabi. Of the pair, unnamed ‘sources’ close to the couple tellingly remarked: “I didn’t know people like us did this… [Libbie and David] met in Aspen and six months later they got engaged… In those days, she was the sweetest, so nice… [David’s family] tried to take her in… They were living the highest life you can imagine: A lot of staff. A lot of nannies, a lot of cleaning people and chefs. Two homes, a lot of drivers and the [Mugrabi] family airplane… Libbie is a big fashionista. [David] didn’t like paying for that.” Of her having employed a personal secretary, “family friends” were supposedly “flabbergasted” and observed: “What? ‘Little Libbie’ who doesn’t even know her way around Bergdorf’s? I think [David] created a monster.” He most definitely did.In an undated video about her “brand” (whatever that might actually be), Libbie Mugrabi bragged: “The brand is since the pandemic and life change [sic]. It’s just happy, kind and cool, funny, spread love brand [sic]. For girls, for dogs, for women, for men, but it’s geared all towards growth; female empowerment but it can be used by blokes too.” She then banged on about ‘Tatler’ magazine having called her a “glamorous divorcee” – which she termed “nice, erm, kind” – and added: “I came up with the French version: ‘Divorcée glam’” – but failed to mention her alleged penchant for attacking her staff with mop handles and knives and breaking their mobile phones.Jonathan Davis of realty firm Nest Seekers developed notoriety during the 2020 coronavirus lockdowns not for helping his clients in the Hamptons get places to live. Instead, this rotten realtor became known as a “pesky squatter” who allowed his dogs to urinate and destroy a house he supposedly owed many thousands of dollars in rent on.Former editor of ‘The Sun’ David Yelland delighted in the story of the arrested socialite yesterday. On Twitter, the veteran newsman observed: “Here’s a splendid out of season Hamptons socialite story to cheer us all up… Libbie Mugrabi claims she is victim of housekeeper and Hamptons cops.” He clearly wasn’t out to show this birdbrained Botox advertisement any sympathy.One of the “gilded cages” in the Hamptons that a woman who believes herself like the late Diana, Princess of Wales calls home and the scene where Libbie Mugrabi allegedly assaulted one of her staff with a mop handle and knife in July this year.In a similar show of out-of-touch behaviour, in March 2020, another self-appointed Hamptons “philanthropist and socialite,” Jean Shafiroff, told the ‘New York Post’ that she was normally “accustomed to dining out on a nightly basis” whilst at her home in the ritzy enclave. The paper continued: “In the face of the coronavirus, she has taken the unfamiliar step of cooking for her husband, daughter and her daughter’s boyfriend. And it’s not been cheap. ‘I’m spending $300 to $1,000 a day on food and supplies,’ she said. The money goes toward chicken and salmon steaks, some of which she freezes, as well as for cleaning supplies and food for her dogs. ‘I even bought the drugstore out of all its dental floss. I wanted to make sure I had enough, along with extra toothbrushes, soap, toothpaste and body lotions,’ she said. ‘If I have to be quarantined, I better look nice.’ Shafiroff also is buying canned goods like the rest of America, but only out of an abundance of caution. ‘I can donate them later,’ she said of the items like Progresso chicken noodle soup and Del Monte peas and carrots – brands ‘I had never heard of before.’ How the other half live; previously, in September 2017, Mrs Shafiroff wailed to ‘Page Six’ about how she’d been attacked by bees at the Hampton Classic horse show. In spite of not actually being stung, the attention seeker told the paper: “I tried to stand still and let them fly off but they wouldn’t get off my face. I was terrified. They must have liked my perfume (which was Nanban).” ‘Page Six’ concluded: “Bystanders tried to help the swarmed socialite by swinging at the bees who eventually buzzed off.”“Gym-bodied and catalogue-model-handsome” Thomas Gilbert Jr. personifies “the Hamptons gone bad.” In 2013, this Princeton graduate and son of hedge fund manager Thomas Gilbert Sr., founder of Wainscott Capital became the primes suspect of throwing a Molotov cocktail into his former roommate Peter Smith’s 300-year-old Sagaponack family home and burning it to the ground; in January 2015, he sent his mother out to get a sandwich and then shot his dad dead with a .40-caliber Glock pistol. Imprisoned to life with an earliest release date of April 2044, prisoner 19A3615 is now said to be dating Lila Chase, the niece of the actor Chevy Chase. An extra also in the 2013 short film ‘And After All,’ Gilbert Jr. was described as “delusional,” is said to have “avoided New York’s JFK airport at all costs” as he viewed it to be “severely contaminated and faked suicide during his trial by claiming he’d swallowed a battery. On being taken for an X-ray, he was found to be holding a battery over his stomach. It’s lucky that this lunatic and the definitely delusional Libbie Mugrabi didn’t meet; the pair might have gotten on like a house-on-fire.What’ll little miss ‘Divorcée Glam’ do next? Apologise? Unlikely… This motormouthed menace will more likely be found ranting and raving to yet another media title than mopping up her own mess. This Marie-Antoinette like woman might be an aspiring “extravagance knows no bounds” Barbara Amiel type figure, but she’s clearly not got the brains, brawn or beauty to pull off even that look. Next!
Wrecking ball sent in to destroy Prince Andrew’s paedo bestie Jeffrey Epstein’s £13.2 million Palm Beach mucky mansion
Today, especially for ‘Rod’ from Australia, the reader who has left more comments than anyone else in the 9 years since The Steeple Times launched in 2012, we can report that a wrecking ball was sent in yesterday to forever rid the world of Jeffrey Epstein’s mucky mansion in Palm Beach.
Whilst Epstein’s palatial New York residence – sold for circa £36 million in March – will no doubt be restored in a graceful fashion (after a visit perhaps for a blessing by a priest or a rabbi), his Florida home at 358 El Brillo Way is being “wiped off the map of Palm Beach” according to the purchaser Todd Michael Glaser’s representative, real estate broker Lawrence A. Moens.
Of his plans for the property, Glaser told The Real Deal last November that he’d be constructing a “14,000 square foot Art Moderne mansion” on the site and added: “Palm Beach is going to be very happy [when] it’s gone.”
With permits issued for destruction last week, demolition crews from BG Group of Delray Beach “used heavy equipment to began pulling down the walls of the mansion. They tore into it again and again, starting on the east side – where vines still clung to the walls, blooming with flowers that were soon crushed – and eating through the house toward the waterfront,” the Palm Beach Daily News reported.
“By noon, debris littered the ground, as broken windows pierced walls that remained standing. And still intact was much of the second-floor balcony that overlooked the water, connected to the pool patio below by a graceful spiral staircase.”
Speaking after hearing of the wrecking ball’s swing yesterday, Michael Reiter, the former Palm Beach police chief who first led investigations into Epstein’s activities at the house, commented:
“The former owner of this house did unmeasurable damage to the lives of countless children and was able to corrupt the legal system to the point that the courts have called it a national disgrace. While it is critical that we learn from this tragedy, it is nearly as important that we follow with doing everything possible to erase any connection of him from our community.”
Situated on a plot of about an acre, 358 El Brillo Way had been enthusiastically marketed by Kerry Warwick of The Corcoran Group as a “beautiful John Volk lakefront residence located in the prestigious Estate Section… [with] westerly views of Tarpon Island and Everglades Island.” Unsurprisingly, the sales associate made no mention of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s monstrous activities whilst living there.
Epstein Gets Wrecking Ball – 358 El Brillo Way seen from the waterfront. Aside from the wraparound balconies, the property also included an outdoor swimming pool and docking facilities.
The Names & Numbers – 358 El Brillo Way, Palm Beach, Florida, FL 33480, United States of America
19th April 2021 – Demolition begins to make way for new build.
15th March 2021 – Sold to Miami property developer Todd Michael Glaser for £13.2 million ($18.5 million, €15.3 million or درهم67.9 million).
July 2020 – Listed for sale for £15.726 million ($21.995 million, €18.227 million or درهم80.777 million) by Kerry Warwick of The Corcoran Group. The property was described as standing on a lot of 36,050 square feet and featured a 14,223 square foot “white box” structure with 6 bedrooms, 8 bathrooms and a 3-car garage.
August 2019 – 12 News reported that the gates to the house had been vandalised by someone who tagged them “@Leroy” in large red letters.
2011 – Ownership transferred by Epstein from his name to an entity named Laurel Inc., a company registered in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
1990 – Sold to Jeffrey Epstein for £1.8 million ($2.5 million, €2.1 million or درهم9.2 million) and “significantly remodeled.”
1952 – Built to the designs of Austrian born John L. Volk (1901 – 1984) “in West Indies-style architecture.”
The wrecking ball was merciless yesterday as it tore down Jeffrey Epstein’s former home. Ridding the world of this house of horrors will not upset anyone other than perhaps his ex-lover associate Ghislaine Maxwell.358 El Brillo Way will most definitely not be remembered as an architectural treasure.An aerial shot of the property illustrates just why this scene of multiple abuse of underage girls truly deserved the wrecking ball.This swimming pool was a place where Ghislaine Maxwell allegedly took many filthy photographs.A view from above looking out across the water.The property is located in a ritzy waterfront district of Palm Beach, Florida.After the evil paedophile Jeffrey Epstein died and before the wrecking ball arrived, the gates of the property became prone to visits from vigilantes and graffiti artists. On one occasion, quite appropriately, a tag that read: “Gone but not forgiven” was added.
Iceberg home formed in part from the former Chelsea studios of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and his wife for sale for sum 1,178% higher than in 2012
The grand location used as Uncle Monty’s London home in Withnail & I – the 1987 classic dark comedy starring Richard E. Grant – was West House at 35 Glebe Place in Chelsea. That building was sold to François Pinault, the owner of amongst other things Christie’s, Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent, for £20 million in 2011, whilst last month we featured an equally fabled residence in a street once home to artists, but now the preserve of billionaires – the £6.95 million former residence of the now in exile oligarch Sergei Pugachev at 53 and 54 Glebe Place.
Yesterday, the Daily Mail reported that Pugachev’s publicity craving ex-partner and mother of three of his children, ‘Karen-esque’ Countess Alexandra Tolstoy, had finally been evicted from that property. “It’s not our choice to leave, it’s painful and oh so sad” blubbed this batshit bonkers woman on Instagram, but now there’s another house for sale in the street that will make headlines and this time because of its connections to an esteemed art nouveau architect, Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868 – 1928).
Glasgow born Charles Rennie Mackintosh and his Black Country born wife Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh (top) and a replacement plaque commemorating their association with the building that is located on the garage door at 43 Glebe Place. A plaque was first erected to mark the centenary of the Glasgow School of Art in 2009, but was “removed at some point between 2009 and 2015.”
Bizarrely sold in November 2012 for a sum £55,000 lower than in February that year, 43 Glebe Place has just come to the market for £14.95 million through agent Johnny Turnbull of The London Broker – a sum 1,178% higher than eight years ago.
Now vastly larger due to the fact that it has been ‘iceberged’ with the addition of an entirely new ‘mega-basement’ level (of similar concept to that created under the five houses opposite during their controversial merger by Monsoon and Accessorize owner Peter Simon in 2015), 43 Glebe Place is formed from the merger of a simple cottage and two artists’ studios. It now extends to 3,871 square foot in total over three levels.
One section of the property formed from the artists’ studios – known at that time as 43a Hans Studio – was used by Mackintosh from August 1915 to circa 1923 whilst his wife, Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh (1864 – 1933), occupied the adjoining space.
The studios were entered through “a small high walled courtyard” which now forms the garden of the newly created house and during this period, the couple lived nearby in Oakley Street, SW3 also. They had been forced to move to London after being banned from Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Suffolk, where they had previously lived, as Mackintosh had been suspected of being a German spy due to his “affinity with Austria.”
Of their time there, writing in 2016, Mackintosh expert Sheila Harris remarked:
“As with most studios the ceilings were high, in order, most probably, to capture as much as light as possible and although they were fairly austere, with the furniture, artefacts and decorative panels originally housed in their Glasgow home, the place would soon have become an extension of their artistic lives.”
“Let’s not forget that whilst Mackintosh was working quietly in his studio another, completely different, scenario was unfolding outside his studio door. A resident of Glebe Place wrote: ‘Never shall I forget how suddenly Chelsea seemed to become an armed camp… Army motor lorries were rattling noisily along the normally quiet Embankment, and those hot nights we lay awake listening to the heavy rumble of laden troop-trains, all night long… It was a heart-rending sight to see the young men of all ranks going up the steps of Chelsea Town Hall to enlist.’”
“Clearly Mackintosh and Margaret embraced life in Chelsea and made the very best of their new-found circumstances. They adopted their new surroundings, making their studios an inviting, hospitable place to spend their days, often in the company of like-minded people. They certainly faced up to the challenges of living in the capital city which was the target of so many bombing raids.”
“Whilst little evidence can be found on the daily routine of the Mackintoshes’ life in London, we know that they… spent their days in the adjoining studios in Glebe Place, and many evenings were enjoyed at the Blue Cockatoo [a long since gone local hostelry in Oakley Street that was popular also with Augustus John and other “artistic Chelsea denizens”] meeting friends and colleagues for dinner… We do know that Margaret held parties, including children’s parties, at the studios.”
Given what the estate agent Turnbull terms a “three year, multi-million pound rebuild by the current owners, creating an exquisite and self-indulgent London home for themselves,” it is doubtful that the Mackintoshes would now recognise their former home. It now provides a 21-foot by 16-foot reception room with a ceiling heght of 14-feet and a study area with a mezzanine beyond, a 30-foot long dining kitchen, 3 bedroom suites, a wine cellar and a gym with a steam room. There is a somewhat narrow garage, off-street parking for an additional car, a 24-foot by 23-foot garden and a 22-foot long roof terrace also.
In their marketing literature, The London Broker interestingly point out also of the freehold house: “This property currently has mixed use. The buyer should speak to their solicitor and seek advice to confirm that this could significantly reduce SDLT.” Who said the rich don’t like a bargain?
The Numbers – 43 Glebe Place, Chelsea, London, SW3 5JE, United Kingdom
July 2020 – For sale for £14.95 million ($18.90 million, €16.67 million or درهم69.40 million) through agents The London Broker.
November 2012 – Sold for £1.17 million ($1.48 million, €1.30 million or درهم5.43 million)
February 2012 – Sold for £1.225 million ($1.548 million, €1.366 million or درهم5.687 million).
A large entrance hall is formed out of the majority of the ground floor of the original, surprisingly unlisted cottage.Out of one of the studio spaces, a vast dining kitchen with doors to the courtyard garden has been created. It is bright and airy as a result of its ceiling lights.Beyond is a reception space, again with studio windows above.Another view of the room.A dividing glass partition leads to a space intended as a study. It has a mezzanine above.The master bedroom suite is to be found in the original cottage. It has its own terrace.The bathroom of the master bedroom also has a door onto the terrace.In the newly recreated ‘iceberg mega-basement’ daylight is brought in courtesy of a lightwell. A most useful wine cellar can be seen at the end of this corridor.The other two bedroom suites are located on the lower level.Also below ground is a large gym. It seems an ideal space for health conscious super-rich yummy mummy types to work out their frustrations in.The courtyard garden (looking towards the original house and garage) is quite charming and restful.The courtyard garden (looking towards the studio conversion section).A floor plan of the very much enlarged property.
A BBC video briefly mentioning Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s time at 43 Glebe Place. Video courtesy of The 78 Derngate Northampton Trust.
Flamboyant Uncle Monty plied Withnail and Marwood with booze in his drawing room at 35 Glebe Place in the film. His intentions were less than decent. In 2011, the house was sold for £20 million to the billionaire businessman François Pinault – reportedly the 27th richest man in the world as of October 2019.
As art fraudster Inigo Philbrick is arrested and dragged onto a private plane by the FBI, his on-off lover ‘Made in Chelsea’s’ Victoria Baker Harber shows no sympathy for victims; meanwhile fellow art conwoman Angela Gulbenkian has been deservedly detained in Lisbon
‘Mini Madoff’ Inigo Philbrick, ex-Jay Jopling employee and on-off squeeze of gobby ‘Made in Chelsea’ participant Victoria Baker Harber, snared in Vanuatu, Oceania last Friday.
Philbrick had bizarrely spent his time as a fugitive from justice petting “abandoned” dogs.
Fellow socialite and art fraudster Angela Gulbenkian, whose victims include Chelsea based interior designers Percy Bass, snared on the same day in Lisbon.
She traded on her loose connections to one of the richest families in the world, the Gulbenkians. Connected foundations and museums consistently have denied any association with the German born crook.
The two con artists are unconnected in terms of their nefarious activities and victims named thus far, but their paths may likely have crossed given the social circles they operated in and around.
‘The Talented Mr Philbrick’ was how one art newspaper somewhat cornily lauded Inigo Philbrick in the wake of this dastardly double dealer being exposed as a Madoff of the art world. He was snared in Vanuatu in Oceania last Friday whilst on Tuesday in Lisbon, fellow trader-on-a-well-known-name Angela Gulbenkian was taken into “preventative detention” to be extradited back to the UK.
Speaking to The Steeple Times on Friday, Jane Morris, managing director of acclaimed Walton Street interior designers Percy Bass remarked:
“Angela Gulbenkian came to Percy Bass to get her flat decorated. We did the work, but never got paid. She forged a bank transfer note pretending to be part of the Gulbenkian Foundation. Percy Bass had a judgment against her, but she fled abroad.”
Now, in addition and facing charges relating to a £1.1 million ($1.4 million, €1.2 million or درهم5 million) Kusama pumpkin sculpture and a £115,000 ($142,000, €127,000 or درهم522,000) Warhol print of Queen Elizabeth II and the theft of £50,000 ($62,000, €55,000 or درهم227,000) from a woman named Jacqui Ball, 38-year-old socialite Gulbenkian is ludicrously still claiming to be an “art collector” and linked to what she lists as the “Gulbenkian Private Art Collection” on Instagram. She is, in fact, even by her own admission, the owner of “just three works of art” and the daughter of an optometrist from Munich, Germany.
Angela Ischwang (as this shameless swindler was born) supposedly moved to London in the early 2000s to study politics. She subsequently met and married Duarte Gulbenkian, the great-grand nephew of the one-time richest man in the world Calouste Gulbenkian, and went into the art business in around 2016.
Listing herself as someone who “brokers high end arts works” through “valuable contacts,” this crooked conwoman – whose suggestions of links to the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation have been firmly denied by the trustees of those organisations – Gulbenkian is surprisingly linked to only one dissolved company, Doctor Duve Medical Skin Care Ltd. of Southwark Bridge Road, SE1.
Charged in relation to the Kusama pumpkin sculpture and the money stolen from Ball in May last year, Angela Gulbenkian was released on unconditional bail in September 2019 after appearing at Southwark Crown Court. She then failed to appear in May 2020 and a European Arrest Warrant was issued for her arrest. Now, ‘Awful Ange’ – as an embarrassed former friend told us she now calls her – will be rightly returned to face her comeuppance and this time she’ll be unlikely to get bail.
Philbrick meanwhile – who was until recently subject to ‘Where’s Wally?’ like speculation since having disappeared off the face of the planet after last being seen with his brash Made In Chelsea motormouth on-off lover Victoria Baker Harber in Australia in late 2019 – was found last Friday in Port Vila, Vanuata, an island nation in the South Pacific.
“Grabbed” by a mix of uniformed and ununiformed cops, the “startled” 33-year-old crook and estranged son of museum director Harry Philbrick – was “hustled” into a police car and taken to the local airport reported Artnet News on Wednesday. “A large Gulfstream jet was waiting on the tarmac” and this, “under instructions from the FBI,” flew him to New York.
Facing allegations of theft, misappropriation, borrowing money against artworks he did not even own and selling overlapping shares of artworks, Ponzi-like pillock Philbrick had supposedly been hiding out in a “house of an expat who died in a tragic accident.” Bizarrely, he had been busying his days helping “abandoned” dogs and of him one local remarked: “He was always calling me about an animal he found.”
Now in chains for his crimes against amongst others the Reuben family, Philbrick faces not only a real-life trial but also further exposure in the media. One-time friend, but ultimately a victim of the shameless scammer, art writer, curator and dealer Kenny Schachter this week wrote:
“I have no doubt that Inigo will capitalize on our collective financial misfortune and turn it into a multimedia bonanza for himself. As far as my own movie and documentary projects, for which deals will be announced shortly, all I want and/or expect is that they make good on part of the money Inigo took from me.”
Meanwhile last Sunday, dippy dope Victoria Baker Harber showed no regret for her association with Philbrick – a man who ferried her around in a private jet at the expense of others – in retweeting an attack on Schachter by someone named ‘Koogs’ on Twitter on 14th June. They opined: “Who quotes themselves?? Get over it! Your wife is a billionaire! Are you crying about cash or cock?”
Though at around £16.2 million ($20 million, €17.9 million or درهم73.5 million) Inigo Philbrick’s total scam is far bigger than Angela Gulbenkian’s, the effects are the same for the victims of these high society crooks: May the authorities now chuck the book at this rotten pair of ratbags.
Pictured top – Con artist Angela Gulbenkian appeared at Southwark Crown Court in September 2019 “in a blue dress decorated with silver stars and black Christian Louboutin high heels” according to ‘Metro’ (right); art fraudster Inigo Philbrick poses looking startled as television screen loving terror Victoria Baker Harber attempts to look sexually provocative.
Aided by their surnames –Inigo Philbrick duped the art world and the use of the surname he shares with his estranged art curator father certainly aided him in his ‘endeavours’; Angela Gulbenkian traded on her connections to the legendary art collecting, billionaire Gulbenkian family also.You’re snared! – A newspaper frontpage chronicling Inigo Philbrick’s detainment; social media users mocked the former fugitive with one joking: “OK bye now!”The ultimate deceiver – In March, Angela Gulbenkian posted an image accompanied by the caption: “Life is art!” on her Instagram page. She hashtagged it with amongst other things #letsgofar and #successfulwomen, but neglected to add the truth about herself: “My life is the art of deception!” is what it should have read.No sympathy for Philbrick’s victims – Victoria Baker Harber took to Twitter on 14th June to retweet an unpleasant comment mocking one of her on-off lover Inigo Philbrick’s victims, Kenny Schachter.Living the high life – Inigo Philbrick liked private jets and swilling champagne in the company of amongst others Victoria Baker Harber; he’s now getting used to porridge.
Described by Gotham Magazine as “the go-to-man for super yachts” and listed by them as one of their ‘Most Eligible Bachelors’ in 2014, Crispin Baynes is a British expat (more…)
Bernie Madoff’s boat on the market at a reduced price
Previously marketed at £2.7 million, Bernie Madoff’s Arno Leopard yacht, Bull, is again on the market. Priced this time at £1.6 million, the 27-metre boat is still in the hands of the joint liquidators of Madoff Securities and cost £5.1 million when built in 2007. (more…)
Some would argue that it isn’t fair to kick a man when he’s down. In the case of Thomas McLoughlin, jailed today for 14 months at Isleworth Crown Court, I’ll make a much deserved exception. (more…)
