Thanks to Find The Warhols! and the Pebble Beach Pollock, 2009 was the Year Of Sketchy Art Thefts here on greg.org. Definitely didn’t see that coming. But after a couple of intense months, both cases have grown dishearteningly cold of late.
Fortunately, Benjamin Amadio, the collector/dealer/consultant/puppy mill operator/boy toy/possible insurance scammer decided to end the year with a flourish. According to the Contra Costa Times, Amadio filed a “rambling complaint” with the Monterey County district attorney using his lawyer/boss/law school professor’s letterhead, demanding an investigation of the local sheriff for botching the theft investigation–and for persecuting a friend of his with check kiting charges or something.
The lawyer has publicly disavowed the complaint, whose “subjects swing from accusations of sex slavery to a detective’s allergy to cats.” Also, the reported insurance policy on the supposed $20-60-80 million hoard turns out to have been off-the-shelf, $500,000 renter’s insurance.
UPDATE local CBS affiliate KION has published the full text of the complaint. It’s like an un-spellchecked script for a telenovela.
But rambling incoherence and teenage psychodrama aside, Amadio’s memo does put what he calls the “Pebble Beach Art Heist” into the context of several months of wrangling with/persecution by the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office. And we get some new characters/suspects: the art driver Todd Griffiths [to whom Dr Kennaugh had given some kind of educational grant, which he canceled?], some other live-in waitresses and hangers-on, and a possible lockbox-stealing guesthouse squatter [their house was a repossessed rental.]
None of this changes the fact, though, that Amadio consistently calls prints “paintings,” or that their still-unseen Pollock is still almost certainly a fiction, fake or fraud. [thanks greg.org reader chris for the heads up.]
Rambling complaint is latest twist in Pebble Beach art heist [contracostatimes.com]
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the making of, by greg allen