Art Adviser. Friend. Thief.
The New York Times
Lisa Schiff became the country’s leading art consultant, and drew her clients close. Then she stole millions from them. Now facing up to 20 years in prison, is she ready to repent?
Lisa Schiff sat at her kitchen table, trying to explain how she went from being one of the world’s most celebrated art advisers to a high-society pariah and a felon.
It was her first time speaking openly about her crimes. But the setting for this unburdening wasn’t her old $25,000-a-month TriBeCa loft, or the V. I.P. lounge at Art Basel Miami Beach where she once brokered art deals for the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio; rather, it was a two-bedroom apartment in Manhattan’s unfussy Stuyvesant Town, where, she said, she needs her parents to pay her rent. Ms. Schiff, 55, has lost her money, all her friends and every shred of influence.
“You become the lie,” Ms. Schiff said, fidgeting with a light-up Lego Christmas tree in her hands. Where once she collected artworks by Nan Goldin and Damien Hirst, today snapshots of her 12-year-old son decorate the apartment. “And I didn’t have anyone to talk to because everyone around me was either paid to be there or was family.”
While her clients and friends saw a successful woman at the top of her career, she hid a secret. She was stealing from them. To conceal her theft, she would do things like pay one client with another’s money, or leverage their friendships to keep them believing that late payments were always almost on their way.
By the time it all came crashing down in 2023, she had stolen some $6.4 million, from at least a dozen people.
But out of all her transgressions, she seemed most ashamed of the glamour that gilded her crimes. Darting around in chartered helicopters and regularly burning through tens of thousands of dollars in shopping sprees at luxury stores, she said, like Loewe in Paris, wasn’t even fun.
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