(Newsday.com) Eighteen contemporary artworks valued at $33 million have been transferred to a hedge fund victimized in a massive $400 million fraud scheme, the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office said Monday.
The works by such boldface artists as Andy Warhol, Mark Rothko and Damien Hirst had belonged to Marc Dreier, a once-prominent Manhattan lawyer whom prosecutors called “the Houdini of impersonation and false documents.”
Dreier is serving 20 years in the federal prison in Sandstone, Minn., after pleading guilty to money laundering and other charges in 2009. The scheme involved the sale of hundreds of millions of dollars in fake promissory notes to hedge funds.
U.S. marshals turned over the works, valued at some $33 million, to New York-based Heathfield Capital Ltd.
