ORLANDO BASQUIAT SQUEEZE: LA Attorney Pierce O’Donnell Wants A Big Payday From The Ultimate Sale Of His Six “Lost Basquiats”, While A Little-Known 2017 Fake Basquiat Auction Fraud Scheme Executed By His Client Is Revealed
O’Donnell had no patience for such comparisons. “You would have to have a big old conspiracy that would rival the Jan. 6 insurrection for these things not to be authentic,” he scoffed, adding that it just didn’t make sense. “A forger who wanted to make big hay over Basquiat would paint one extraordinary Basquiat, or maybe two or three, all large on canvas. He wouldn’t just go out and get cardboard from a supermarket or liquor store and create 25 paintings.”
New York Times, February 17, 2022
The Basquiat authentication scam that installed 25 paintings in an Orlando, Florida, museum actually began in 2017 with a dry-run executed by convicted felon, now Florida resident, David Damante.
While other reporters gush about the too-good-to-be-true “lost Basquiat” paintings on display in Florida, or quote prominent Los Angeles attorney, Pierce O’Donnell (owner of six of the 25 paintings) defending his involvement (“I treated these paintings as a client,” the lawyer explained. “I believe I could win this case nine and a half out of ten times with a jury. I’m not bragging. I’m just saying the evidence is compelling.”), I’m breaking the news that Lumsden (Lu) Quan, an O’Donnell client, played a major role in a 2017–2018 scheme to sell one of the so-called “Mumford storage unit” Basquiat paintings for millions.
And although Quan crudely executed documents purporting to have purchased a “lost Basquiat” from the so-called Mumford collection (below), he conversely asserted in a 2018 email to an attorney representing a now-bankrupt Scottsdale, Arizona, art auction house an alternate explanation: Quan had purchased swap meet “Basquiat-like” paintings “from Mr. Stilgenbauer from Coast Coin and Collectibles in Costa Mesa, California”.
So who you going to believe?
Pierce O’Donnell, who stands to make multiple millions from the sale of six of the “lost” Mumford Basquiats, or Lu Quan?
Maybe neither one.
And, as Pierce O’Donnell stated in the February 17, 2022 New York Times article, “You can’t make up this stuff, you just can’t.”
No, you can’t, Pierce. No, you can’t.
DAVID AND LU
Damante and Quan met where you’d expect two experienced con men to hook up — in stir, the tank, the Gray Bar Hotel, the slammer.
Take your pick, they all mean the same thing: prison.
In this case, FCI Terminal Island, located between San Pedro and Long Beach, California.
Quan was serving a year and two days’ incarceration, followed by three years supervised release, for his role in the illegal sale of black rhinoceros horns.
Damante was serving a ten-month stretch at Terminal Island for violating the terms of his release for a 2012 federal wire fraud conviction.
Damante chatted up Quan, learning he’d previously run a San Francisco-based art gallery and owned a purported Basquiat work titled “Cityscape/Helicopter Cityscape”.
The painting had been one of a group of “Basquiat like art” purchased by Quan in 2012 from Stephen Stilgenbauer, the owner of Coast Coin and Collectibles in Costa Mesa, California.
In a “Certificate of Previous Ownership” issued on March 19, 2018, Quan claimed that he’d “acquired the painting following a purchase of a storage unit formerly owned by Thadius [sic] Mumford, Jr. in 2008”.
Pierce O’Donnell’s client Lu Quan concocted a “Bill of Sale Personal Property” document, backdating a purported sales agreement dated December 20, 2013 between Quan and Damante’s father, Angelo, to make it appear Quan was transferring ownership of “Helicopter/Cityscape” from himself to Angelo Damante for $750,000.
The “Bill of Sale” enabled Damante to use his purported “ownership” of the painting to obtain loans, and later in a scheme to auction “Cityscape/Helicopter Cityscape” in May 2018.
Confused?
Read on.
According to exclusive documents obtained from Las Vegas-based Art Encounter, Damante arranged for Quan to ship the painting to Art Encounter.
Shortly after his February 28, 2017 release from prison in California, David Damante returned to Las Vegas, and began using the last name “Diamante”.
Following the established paper trail, it appears Damante retrieved Quan’s painting from Art Encounter in Las Vegas on March 3, 2017.
In early 2018, he hit art galleries, beginning with Laguna Gallery of Contemporary Art in Laguna Beach, California.
With exclusive documents provided by a confidential source, who initiated contact with the gallery after locating its sale listing on Artsy, here’s the tick-tock of David “Diamante” Damante’s spring 2018 foray to Laguna Beach.
According to an email sent by Bridgette Shaw, director of the Laguna Gallery of Contemporary Art (LGOCA), Damante (using the last name, “Diamante”) showed up in early March 2018 with an unframed artwork, painted on a small sheet of plywood, he claimed was an authentic Basquiat:
Mr. Diamante came to LGOCA one afternoon upon being ‘referred’ from an Art dealer that previously resided in Las Vegas.
LGOCA had no idea who Diamante was as he showed up with a painting in his hand unannounced and asked that we take a look to see what it was.
This is a common occurrence, almost daily, in the art business. Mr. Diamante proceed to unbox the painting and stated that the painting was from his father’s trust.
After we looked at the painting, he asked if we could take professional photographs of it for him which we agreed to do as the gallery was not busy on the Wednesday morning and we are courteous to most patrons.
After Mr. Diamante left, he called the next day and asked if we wanted to sell his painting.
We said that if there is sufficient and required documentation that we would be able to list the painting on a trial period of two weeks.
As shown in the undated screen grab above, the LGOCA had listed artwork purported to be an original Basquiat work. As you can see in the image, the gallery claimed it was prepared provide provenance (a list of owners, beginning with the artist), signed documents from previous owners confirming authenticity and bills of sale.
But it appears that in Damante’s case, the gallery made special arrangements, listing his purported Basquiat on Artsy on the strength of the craptastic documents listed in this March 17, 2018 email from a LGOCA art consultant — including an affidavit signed by Damante as Diamante claiming he’d inherited the painting from his late father, Angelo.
Shaw continues her tale:
The painting was listed on Artsy for approximately 10 days.
Upon a client inquiring about a correct certificate for the painting, I called Mr. Diamante and asked him for the certificate.
He said he would send it to me that afternoon.
The certificate copy arrived and we also received paperwork from storage units in Nevada where the painting had supposedly been stored.
The certificate was then reviewed and some noticeable issues on the copy started to make the gallery question the authenticity of the painting.
As the red flags began appearing with Mr. Diamante, the gallery decided to distance itself from him.
The gallery has never signed any paperwork with Mr. Diamante and no form of consignment was ever given as we were waiting to see the physical certificate, which never came.
As per our findings we permanently barred Mr. Diamante from bringing any artwork to LGOCA again.
TOMORROW, Part 2
Here’s a taste:
On June 5, 2018, as managing member for New Mexico-based Sinuessa Fine Art, LLC, David Damante executed a financial document titled “Agreement”, conveying a work of art referenced to as “Helicopter” to a San Francisco art dealer, Lumsden (Lu) Quan.
According to the June 5 document, the conveyance of the painting was the resolution of a dispute between the two parties “regarding ownership of 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”, known by the working titles of “Helicopter” and “Helicopter Cityscape” — Quan and Damante both claimed ownership of the single original artwork.
John Re, convicted art fraudster
After receiving an email threat on July 5 from Quan’s associate, Taryn Burns, I began investigating Quan, Burns and their shared past — and discovered a multi-million dollar art forgery scam, a man with ties to the former Colombian drug cartel and a mini-submarine.
My investigation further revealed evidence that strongly suggested three people who wrote character reference letters on Quan’s behalf — Kevin Doyle, Taryn Burns and William Michael Force — played significant roles in the scam executed in California and Nevada by David Damante.
The letters contain these choice whoppers about Lu Quan: “hard working and law-abiding” (Doyle), “possesses high moral character, with integrity and values” (Burns) and someone who “has continued to demonstrate his deep desire to assist and help me, and others, without consideration of his needs, believing his needs will always be supplied by the grace of God.” (Force)
Hey, I was born at night…but not last night!
