Doug Chrismas, the founding father of the now defunct blue-chip Ace Gallery in Los Angeles, was discovered responsible on Friday of embezzling greater than $260,000 from his gallery’s chapter property for which he acted as trustee and custodian.
The decision, which was first printed within the Los Angeles Occasions, marks the tip of a tumultuous profession for the 80-year-old modern artwork vendor, who now faces a statutory most sentence of 15 years in federal jail.
Allegations of fraud and soiled dealing have adopted Chrismas for the reason that Nineteen Seventies. However the vendor, who was as soon as thought-about among the many strongest within the US, with a roster that held names as influential as Richard Serra and Ed Ruscha, was lengthy in a position to keep away from prosecution, regardless of accusations of fabricating works, withholding funds to his artists, and refusing to return works that hadn’t bought.
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The primary main lawsuit got here within the mid-Nineteen Seventies when artist Robert Motherwell sued him for the disappearance of 9 works. A decade later, Chrismas was accused of dropping $1.2 million value of artwork that collector Frederick Stimpson had given Ace Gallery for safekeeping; he spent three days in jail on felony grand theft fees.
His present state of affairs stems from the newest in a string of chapter filings. In 2013, unable to pay hire on his 30,000-square-foot flagship gallery on LA’s Miracle Mile, Chrismas filed for Chapter 11. Throughout the chapter proceedings, which passed off between 2013 and 2016, Chrismas remained Ace Gallery’s president, trustee, and custodian.
It was throughout this time that prosecutors mentioned Chrismas embezzled $264,595 from the chapter property by writing checks to the Ace Museum, a nonprofit company that Chrismas owned and managed, and securing funds owed the gallery from earlier gross sales, a few of which was given to Ace Museum’s landlord for the area’s $225,000 month-to-month hire.
In line with the Los Angeles Occasions, prosecutors mentioned in the course of the trial that Ace Museum was meant to be “the fruits of [Chrismas’s] life’s work.”
“He needed a legacy and he was keen to make use of different individuals’s cash to purchase that legacy,” David Williams, an assistant US legal professional, mentioned in the course of the trial. “You’ll be able to’t chase your goals with any person else’s cash. That’s known as stealing.”
Chrismas’s legal professional, Jennifer Williams, disputed these claims throughout trial, saying “There’s no proof, zero proof that Mr. Chrismas because the proprietor of the gallery couldn’t make loans himself to different firms inside his gallery universe.”
Chrismas was arrested by the FBI in July 2021 on three federal counts of embezzlement, and launched the next day on $50,000 bail. In 2022, a federal court docket ordered Chrismas to pay $14.2 million in a chapter case that dated again to 2013.
A sentencing listening to has been scheduled for September 9.