LET’S DO THE TIME WARP AGAIN! I Nailed The “Fugazi” Basquiat Scheme In 2018 & I Have The Proof…It’s Right Here
On July 20, 2018, I published a report on my fraud/crime blog “Glistening, Quivering Underbelly” that was uncannily prescient.
It was the sprawling tale of David Damante, a convicted felon, and a scam he perpetrated using a “lost Basquiat painting”. Damante obtained the painting from a former San Francisco art dealer he met in prison, Lumsden (Lu) Quan, one of two “Basquiat” paintings Quan had shipped to Damante.
(Meeting in prison…guess that’s the definition of a “meet-cute”.)
The painting titled “Helicopter” was described in federal court documents as “an unfinished work for art attributed to the late artist, Jean-Michel Basquiat, that being, a mixed media work in paint, spray paint, and oil stick on wood panel, measuring 64” x 48”.
“Helicopter” was one of two paintings Quan provided to Damante (shown below), the other being “Crack Apple Night”, shown with Damante.
Quan owned “Helicopter”, and “Crack Apple Night” was owned by an unidentified client of Quan’s.
Damante parlayed “Helicopter” (with a lip-smacking $6,500,000 “apposite value” provided by Brett Maly of Art Encounter) to a May 11, 2018 auction at Scottsdale, Arizona auction house.
But Damante’s windfall never happened.
An associate of “Lumpy” Quan’s dispatched an attorney to unwind the transaction and recover the painting.
That associate was Taryn Burns, and the attorney was Pierce O’Donnell.
Damante’s 2018 “Basquiat” auction involved Taryn Burns, Michael William Force, Lumsden Quan and Pierce O’Donnell — with the exception of Quan, all are linked to a collection of 25 “lost Basquiats” currently being exhibited at the Orlando Museum of Art.
Taryn Burns, using the name ‘Ta Bu’, began communicating directly with me on June 23, 2018, when she sent me this Facebook message: “hi, sadly our web got entangled by the poisonous David Damante. I heard he is in jail, since yesterday. No details. Can you get on the case and keep us informed of your findings? Thanks”
Quickly realizing who she was, I responded.
On June 26, 2018, I broke the news of Damante’s arrest and sent Taryn Burns a link to the blog post.
On June 28, 2018, I sent Taryn Burns a private Facebook message, suggesting that since she may have incriminating evidence, she should consider contacting Assistant U. S. Attorney, Robert Knief, who was prosecuting Damante’s probation revocation case. Burns never acknowledged the message but, after receiving a July 5, 2018 update I’d sent regarding a Damante expose, the worm really turned.
Things got dark.
She continued:
Taking another stab at convincing me to hold off publishing my new revelations, Taryn Burns wrote:
Burns turned on a dime, and sent me an email with a not-so-subtle threat:
When the Orlando Museum of Art “Basquiat” story broke, I realized the 2018 scheme executed by David Damante was likely linked to the “Venice Collection” flogged by the man who defended Lu Quan in 2018 — Los Angeles attorney Pierce O’Donnell.
And as I read the media coverage, and burst into laughter at the uniform acceptance of Pierce O’Donnell’s bullshit tale of “Billy” and “Lee” and their stroke of luck at the expense of Thaddeus Mumford — and his mention of “Taryn” as Billy’s “life partner” — I knew I had them.
I’d heard a version of that story before — in 2018, from “Taryn” herself.
Media coverage of the exhibit identified William Force, a “Massachusetts treasure hunter” and Lee Mangin, Force’s “financial backer”, as the men who purchased the lot of 25 “lost Basquiat” paintings at a 2012 storage unit auction in Los Angeles. All of the paintings were said to have been created in late 1982 while Basquiat, then 22, was living and working out of a studio space beneath Larry Gagosian’s home in Venice, California, preparing fresh canvases for a show at the art dealer’s Los Angeles gallery.
But “Taryn” is an integral part of Pierce O’Donnell’s team of drug smugglers, art fraudsters and forgers.
Unlike “Billy” and “Lee”, she’s featured in the official documents for the Venice Collection.
In the February 16, 2022 New York Times report, we learned that the “25 artworks then disappeared for three decades, the museum said, only resurfacing in 2012 after Mumford failed to pay the bill on his Los Angeles storage unit, and its contents — the Basquiats tucked in amid baseball memorabilia and TV industry ephemera — were auctioned off. William Force, a treasure hunting “picker,” and Lee Mangin, his financial backer, who both scour small auctions for mislabeled items, saw photos of the colorful cardboards and eventually snagged the lot — for about $15,000.”
But that’s not what Taryn Burns declares: she asserts that her “partners Lu Quan and William Force” purchased 26 paintings by Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Hmmm? “25 lost Basquiats” plus Quan’s “Helicopter” equals 26, right?
I have no words — not really.
So it was Lumpy Quan and Taryn Burns who bought 26 paintings, and not “Billy” and “Lee”.
Was the “Helicopter” painting supposedly “Lost Basquiat” number 26?
Who has that painting now?
And why did Taryn Burns,on July 5, 2018, send me a Facebook message with a June 14, 2018 “Certificate of Authentication” from Art Encounter that’s completely different from the affidavit she’d signed nearly a year before?
Was Burns lying in 2017, 2018…or now?
