Art advisor Lisa Schiff, who helped build art collections for a roster of ultra-wealthy clients, including several celebrities, before her business collapsed amid allegations of serious financial misdeeds, was sentenced to two and a half years in prison, with two years supervised release, in federal court in Downtown Manhattan this morning.
During the sentencing, where her victims Candace Barasch and her husband Michael Barasch, and Richard Grossman and his spouse Adam Sheffer were present, Schiff addressed the court in a white blouse under a green shawl. Turning to face her victims, she apologized for her criminal behavior, saying she had read each of their letters.
“Today, I am standing before you as a criminal who has hurt colleagues family and friends,” she said. “I stole from them. I lied to them. I lived lavishly. I’m prepared to accept responsibility. I am scared but ready to make amends.”
Schiff must surrender by July 1.
Last October, Schiff pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud and agreed to forfeit roughly $6.4 million. The maximum penalty for one count of wire fraud is 20 years, though the punishment for first-time offenders is typically lower.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, which oversaw the investigation into Schiff, had asked for a sentence of 41 months to 51 months sentence (three years and five months to four years and three months), which had been stated in a plea agreement Schiff signed.
Authorities say that Schiff defrauded clients of her art advisory business out of roughly $6.5 million in connection with the purchase and sale of about 55 artworks.
Schiff turned herself into authorities in mid-2023 and admitted wrongdoing after she was first hit with seven-figure civil lawsuits. She had been free on $20,000 bail.
Over the course of more than two decades, Schiff developed a reputation as a savvy dealmaker and art-market expert. Many in the industry were shocked when, in May 2023, she was sued by two of her former clients, her friend Barasch and attorney Grossman, who alleged that she defrauded them out of the proceeds of a sale of a major work by the Romanian artist Adrian Ghenie. They said they were each owed $900,000, for a total of $1.8 million. That suit is ongoing. In response to discovery requests that would reveal details about financial transactions and artwork holdings, Schiff and her attorneys have resisted based on her right to avoid self-incrimination.
Schiff subsequently closed a Tribeca office and showroom she had opened to much fanfare about five years earlier, as well as an office she kept at Cromwell Place in London.
Barasch filed a second suit against Schiff, claiming that she was owed at least $2.5 million plus interest and damages for a series of art purchases that Schiff agreed to handle, but which were never, or only partially, completed. That suit is also ongoing.
That second suit alleged a troubling pattern of behavior: Schiff would tell Barasch of artworks that were available by sought-after artists, obtain her permission to acquire them, take full or partial payment, and then, in most cases, fail to complete the purchases. The Barasch family estimates its losses at upward of $5 million, according to court documents.
Schiff filed for bankruptcy in 2023. In an attempt to pay creditors, Phillips auction house began conducting sales of works from Schiff’s collection last November. More are scheduled in the coming months.
Roughly half a dozen of Schiff’s victims submitted statements to the court detailing financial and emotional damage they say they suffered as a result of her fraud. They urged the judge to hand down a tough sentence. (The victims’ names have been redacted to protect their privacy, but most are identifiable via public information.)
One collector wrote that Schiff used the money their family gave her to fund a lavish lifestyle, including “an $1,800 per month luxury SUV with a full-time driver, five-star vacations and shopping sprees, her son’s over-the-top $20,000 birthday party at the Barclays Center, a $100,000 summer house rental in the Hamptons, multimillion dollar rentals of her apartment… Lisa said she ‘had to spend money to make money,’ and by all appearances, she was excellent at spending money.”
A contemporary artist who formerly worked closely with Schiff and counted her as a major source of support said that they have been grappling with the damaging effects of their work sporadically appearing at auction for what they said are far-under-market prices. Since Schiff’s bankruptcy “several of my works have popped up at obscure auction houses,” the artist wrote. “To see my works so devalued was very upsetting.” (The author appears to be Nicole Wittenberg, who did not respond to a request for comment.)
In its pre-sentencing report the government said that, while Schiff self-reported to authorities in mid-2023, she had considered coming clean years earlier, in 2020, but then decided against it, and “doubled down.” That prolonged the fraud and resulted in greater losses for her victims, the report said.
The government and several victims emphasized that Schiff seemed to have a successful art advisory business before the wrongdoing occurred. “The defendant’s crime was not borne out of necessity or a struggle to meet ends meet,” the government report said. “Rather, greed is what motivated the defendant to engage in the fraud.”
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