Philip Righter
Strap in for a complicated story today of art fraud that spans years, different artists and countries and even involves an aspiring actor from Montreal. This one’s going to be a ride.
Jumping Right In…
Philip Righter was born in 1976 in Elgin, Illinois. He moved around a lot as a kid, first to Florida then to South Carolina where he attended high school. Classmates now say that he was very focused on what would come after high school, that he didn’t have a lot of interest in being cool or socialising, and that he usually carried a briefcase instead of a backpack.
Upon graduation, he attended Furman University in Greenville but was only there for a year before transferring to Cornell University in Ithica, New York in 1996. At Cornell is where Righter really developed his persona. He told anyone who would listen about his upbringing filled with significant privilege, he claimed that his mother was a successful lawyer and part of a South Carolina political dynasty, and his biggest claim was that his great-uncle was then South Carolina senator Storm Thurmond (a social conservative infamous for his opposition to the civil rights movement). Los Angeles Magazine looked into this claim and couldn’t find any trace of a connection between him, his mother, or any other family member to the Thurmond family. Yet, everyone at Cornell in his circle remembers this connection to the senator being his calling card, he used it to get into the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity and generally to cement his privileged, cultured, well-connected persona.
It’s also worth pointing out that Righter was gay, this was kind of an open secret at the time since he didn’t feel that being completely out was really an option, especially not as a member of the fraternity. When he graduated with a degree from the School of Industrial and Labour Relations in 1999, he immediately moved to LA, and people thought this was to live more freely as his authentic self. And while it was, it was also to start living out the lies he had been setting in motion at Cornell.
When he got to LA he worked first in sourcing and procurement in Newport Beach, a position which he leveraged to get a job at Disney as a purchasing manager. From there he worked for NBCUniversal for a year, claiming that he was a VP at the time. He claims that during this time, in his 20s, he was going to glamorous parties hosted by people like Sandy Gallin (an openly gay manager whos clients included Cher, Mariah Carey, and Barbara Streisand). Unsure if that’s true.
Before leaving NBCUniversal in 2006 he founded Righter Holdings LLC, an umbrella corporation which had several other companies under it like Righter Corp., Righter Development Corp., The Righter Foundation, Righter Consulting Group, Righter Design Firm, and Righter Art Collection Inc. He told friends that he started these businesses with money from his massive family fortune, this time claiming to be the great-great-grandson of John Righter of Selchow & Righter (the makers of games like Scrabble and Parcheesi). “In 2013, an individual with the username “Right591” edited the Wikipedia page for Selchow & Righter, asserting that “the trademark for ‘Righter’ in the commercial use of games and entertainment remains under the control of the Righter family; specifically, Philip Righter.” The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has no record for a live trademark in the Righter name owned by anyone, let alone Philip Righter. “Right591” is also the username associated with his Twitter account” (Flanagin, 2021).
I promise we’re almost at the part where the art comes in. In 2016 Righter does his own taxes and submits them claiming that he’s had several pieces of valuable art stolen and that he had lost $2,575,000 from this theft. This resulted in him receiving a $100,000 return. Thus begins him using art and fraud to fund the kind of lifestyle he wanted.
That same month, in 2016, he submitted fake Keith Harring and Roy Lichtenstein paintings, along with forged provenance papers, to an online lending company as collateral against a loan of $5,000. He told the lender that he had paid $103,200 for the Lichtenstein alone. Later, when Righter defaulted on the loan the lender sold the Harring for $50,000 but the buyer went to have the piece authenticated only to discover it was a fake (Righter had purchased it on eBay) and the auction house lost $35,341 on that transaction.
In July 2016 Righter upped his game and purchased embossers that were designed to replicate stamps issued by the authentication committees for artists like Haring and Basquiat. Since the Lichtenstein painting hadn’t been sold he again submitted it as collateral for a $270,000 loan but the lender contacted an auction house which deemed the piece illegitimate and his application for the loan was denied. But that didn’t stop him.
Righter started researching the estates of different artists and started adopting different aliases to fly under the FBI’s radar. He went by names such as Gerard Basquiat, Kevin Benoit, and simply, H.H.
Kevin Benoit, though, was a real person that Righter knew. He was one of his close friends. Benoit (the real one) was a Canadian actor who had moved to LA for work, he was introduced to Righter in 2015 and, being starved for friends and finding this new city very lonely, was delighted to meet someone so personable and nice and genuinely invested in his success. Righter told Benoit that he had an Oscar, an Emmy and that he was very well connected, but there is no record of him ever even being nominated for these awards. Righter loaned Benoit money, helped him get a credit card, and took him to swanky events in Hollywood and Benoit had no reason (or chose not to see a reason) not to believe him. As the relationship developed he started asking Benoit to do small favours for him and since Righter had always been so generous, of course Benoit agreed. It might be dropping off a package or two at FedEx (how could Benoit know they were fake paintings), or sending him residuals payments that had gone into Benoit’s bank account by mistake (payments from art buyers thinking they were dealing with a man named Kevin Benoit). In late 2016 Righter sold five fake Basquiat paintings for $196,000 and in 2017 he sold another for $37,790 (honestly shockingly low if the buyers believed them to be real) and all of this money went into the real Benoit’s account, and he promptly transferred it to his friend.
In 2018, Benoit was visiting New York for Pride and he got a call from the FBI, they wanted to interview him. At the meeting, they showed him documents from a pawn shop in LA, a loan application for $30,000 using a Basquiat painting as collateral. He was confused because he’d never applied for a loan in the US and he didn’t own that painting yet there was his name (but not in his signature) at the bottom of the application. The FBI quickly filled him in on what was going on and told him that Righter had even used Benoit’s mother’s maiden name and address in Montreal to make sales, and those packages he had been dropping off were fraudulent art. Following that conversation Benoit started cooperating with the FBI, helping them get more evidence against Righter by recording conversations, giving the police access to their shared credit card, and taking covert photographs of any art hanging in Righter’s apartment. “All told, Righter’s scheme cost victims at least $758,265, and the government around $100,000 in taxes” (Kamp, 2020).
Finally, in July 2019 Righter was arrested in LA and extradited to Miami and in 2020 he pled guilty to “two counts of felony mail fraud and aggravated identity theft arising out of his activities in Florida and to additional counts of wire fraud, identity theft, and tax fraud in California” (Flanagin, 2021). He was sentenced to five years in federal prison, and now behind bars, he’s writing not a memoir but a novelization of all the events leading up to his conviction. Convenient for someone who likes to bend the truth.
Works Cited:
Flanagin, Jake. “Philip Righter’s Basquiats Were as Fake as his Origin Story. How the Masquerade Unraveled”. Los Angeles Magazine. 2021. https://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/philip-righter-basquiat-fraud/
Kamp, Justin. “A California Man who Sold Fake Works by Basquiat, Warhol, and Others was Sentenced to Prison”. Artsy. 2020. https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-california-man-sold-fake-works-basquiat-warhol-sentenced-prison