2nd Art Dealer Charged in 2-County Fraud Inquiry

A prominent Beverly Hills art dealer was charged with five counts of grand theft Tuesday in connection with a widening police investigation into art fraud in Los Angeles and Orange counties.

Lee Sonnier, former manager of the Upstairs Gallery on Rodeo Drive, was charged with failing to deliver four pieces of art that were sold for about $872,000. Three were works attributed to the Impressionist master Pierre Auguste Renoir and one was a drawing.

Sonnier is scheduled to surrender to Beverly Hills police Friday. Deputy Dist. Atty. Reva Goetz, who filed the case in Los Angeles Superior Court, is seeking $500,000 bail. Goetz is alleging special circumstances in the case, as each artwork cost more than $100,000.

Sonnier, 42, whose address is unknown to authorities, could not be reached for comment.

In raids last month, investigators seized more than 1,600 art prints and other works from Upstairs Gallery outlets in Costa Mesa, West Los Angeles, San Fernando Valley and Beverly Hills. The vast bulk of the seized works came from the firm’s warehouse in Huntington Beach.

Sonnier is the second person implicated in the growing art fraud scandal that has already severely affected business at some of the area’s more prestigious art galleries.

Los Angeles police arrested Frank de Marigny, a Manhattan Beach art broker called “Prince Frank” in art circles, last month on two counts of grand theft and five counts of forgery. Police also seized 1,687 allegedly fraudulent works of art from the Upstairs Gallery chain.

Authorities linked the Upstairs Gallery to an art forgery ring in documents filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, a charge the company denies. They also alleged that Sonnier and De Marigny had “conspired to sell and distribute fraudulent art works.” Another major art dealer, Stanley R. Lerner of the Triangle gallery chain, was identified as a chief witness in the case.

Beverly Hills Police Det. John Ambro said there may be more arrests. “We’re still working,” he said. “This is a first step, as we speak. How far it goes, I don’t know.”

The charges against Sonnier center on the alleged sale of three paintings and one drawing to two wealthy Japanese businessmen identified as Koichi Akemoto and Tatsuya Nishimura.

Police say that Sonnier, working out of the Rodeo Drive branch of Upstairs Gallery, bilked Akemoto and Nishimura out of $872,000 by selling them artworks that were never delivered.

The paintings allegedly sold by Sonnier included Renoir’s “A Young Girl With Daisies,” which actually hangs in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. The drawing was a work attributed to Camille Pissarro.

De Marigny, who is being held in Los Angeles County Jail on $1 million bail, was also tied to the sale of a phony “A Young Girl With Daisies,” this time to a police undercover officer in an earlier case. Investigators have not explained how the two cases might be connected.

Akemoto and Nishimura filed a $3-million damage claim against Sonnier, De Marigny, Lerner and Upstairs Gallery executives earlier this month. They contend that Sonnier and the others actually cheated them on the sale of nine separate pieces of art over the past several months.