A Manhattan art adviser who has worked with the actor Leonardo DiCaprio and other stars pleaded guilty Thursday to wire fraud — admitting to stealing $6.5 million from more than a dozen clients in a five-year span.
Lisa Schiff, 54, pocketed the full profits from sales of her clients’ art instead of mere commissions — while keeping them in the dark about the deals — and used the ill-gotten proceeds to live large, according to Manhattan federal prosecutors.
The admitted fraudster also promised to use some clients’ money to buy pieces of art, but instead blew the funds to pay personal and business expenses and to plug massive debts, prosecutors said.
Schiff’s fraud scheme involved 55 artworks and ran from at least 2018 until May 2023, according to the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District in New York.
She cheated at least twelve clients, one artist, the estate of another artist, and one gallery, together out of at least $6.5 million, prosecutors said.
“Instead of using client funds as promised, Schiff used the stolen money to fund a lavish lifestyle,” US Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement.
Lawyers for several of her victims wrote in a filing in Manhattan bankruptcy court his week that Schiff had used her stolen funds luxuries like a $25,000-a-month apartment, European shopping sprees at designer boutiques, and a vacation in Greece where she rented a villa, yacht and helicopter.
She treated her clients’ funds as “her personal piggy bank,” the lawyers wrote.
Schiff entered her guilty plea at a hearing Thursday in Manhattan federal court. She agreed to forfeit $6.4 million and her sentencing, in front of Judge J. Paul Oetken, was set for Jan. 17.
Terms of her plea deal call for prosecutors recommending that she be sentenced to serve between 3.5 and 4.25 years in prison, despite the max for wire fraud being 20 years.
Her lawyer, Randy Zelin, said Schiff “will now work to show the court and the world that she has not only accepted responsibility, but she is remorseful.”
“She is humbled,” he added. “She is prepared to do everything to right the wrongs.”
Schiff’s art advisory business, Schiff Fine Art, served as an intermediary between art galleries and auction houses and her art collector clients.
At times, Schiff lied to galleries that she’d promised to buy art from using clients’ money — falsely blaming her clients for payment “delays” when she’d actually run off with the funds, prosecutors say.
Eventually, Schiff “could no longer conceal her scheme due to mounting debts” and “confessed to several clients that she had stolen their money,” the US Attorney’s office wrote in a press release.
Schiff has also faced civil suits from outraged clients like real-estate heiress Candace Carmel Barasch, and her husband, prominent Manhattan lawyer Michael Barasch.
With Post wires