Picture Still Sketchy in Art-for-Drugs Case

By DAVAN MAHARAJ

Feb. 2, 1997 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

SANTA ANA —

In Room 1516 of the Irvine Marriott, an unusual drug deal was taking place: 110 pounds of cocaine were being swapped for valuable artwork, including 10 Renoirs, two Dalis and a Matisse.

Moments after the alleged art-for-coke exchange, the supposed drug sellers drew their guns, announced that they were federal agents and arrested two San Diego men, Raymond E. Torrez and Jose Becerra Uribe. Both were later charged with attempted cocaine trafficking.

Federal prosecutors believe the artwork, which they seized, was stolen outside California, but won’t say where or from whom.

Torrez pleaded guilty last March and is cooperating with prosecutors. He told Drug Enforcement Agency investigators, whose reports are filed in court, that the artwork was stolen from the Las Vegas estate of singer Wayne Newton.

Newton, once listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s highest-paid entertainer, has been mired in personal bankruptcy since 1992, and Bankruptcy Court documents show that five of the seized Renoirs were bought at Sotheby auctions, charged to Newton’s account, and shipped to the singer’s Las Vegas home.

Through his attorney, Newton said that no artwork has been stolen from his house, but declined to comment further.

The upcoming trial here of Uribe, a former Coachella city administrator, may shed light on several questions: How did the artworks--valued by federal agents at some $2 million--end up in a drug deal in Irvine? And who is their rightful owner?

Assistant U.S. Atty. Thomas Warren, who is handling Uribe’s prosecution, won’t talk about the case.

But court documents, including an affidavit by DEA Agent Jan C. Sakert, provide a wealth of detail about the alleged drug deal.

According to one document, Torrez told DEA agents shortly after his arrest on May 24, 1995, that he got the paintings from an associate who said he had stolen the artwork from a storage room at Newton’s estate. The unnamed thief even scooped up some receipts indicating Newton had bought the paintings from Sotheby’s.

Torrez told the DEA that he promised the thief three kilograms of cocaine in exchange for the paintings, and then sought help from his friend, Uribe, in figuring out how to dispose of the artwork.

According to Sakert, a plan was hatched at a Fuddruckers Restaurant in Buena Park in April 1995, when Uribe and Torrez had a meeting with two supposed cocaine suppliers and broached the idea of trading the paintings for 110 pounds of cocaine. Unbeknownst to Uribe and Torrez, the cocaine suppliers were what federal agents refer to as “cooperating witnesses,” meaning they were government informants.

During the get-together at the Buena Park restaurant, Torrez and Uribe showed the men one of the paintings, court records say, and Uribe later shipped them Polaroid photos of the others.

The photographs represented a small gallery of mostly impressionist works: 13 by Pierre Auguste Renoir, one by Henri Matisse and one by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Other paintings by Marie Laurencin, Salvador Dali and two unidentified artists rounded out the collection.

Two weeks after the Buena Park meeting, one of the informants contacted the DEA and told Sakert about the discussion with Torrez and Uribe.

After two weeks of telephone discussions, Sakert says a meeting was arranged at the Rusty Pelican restaurant in Newport Beach, where Uribe brought three paintings to show to one of the informants, who was accompanied by an undercover FBI agent.

In the restaurant’s parking lot, the FBI agent photographed the three paintings.

“Uribe repeatedly asked the [FBI agent] the dollar value of one . . . of the three [paintings] he had brought,” Sakert’s report states. “Uribe had also discussed the difference in value between a painting by Renoir and one by Toulouse-Lautrec.”

The parties agreed to meet at the Irvine Marriott to consummate the deal, Sakert said, and Torrez and Uribe arrived in separate vans on the appointed day. After the 17 paintings in Torrez’s van were examined, the men retired to a hotel room to make the trade, Sakert said.

Once inside the room, hidden video cameras captured the two would-be coke buyers, with Torrez opening and checking the contents of two suitcases packed with cocaine. “Torrez cut open, tasted and snorted portions of several kilos from the [first] suitcase,” Sakert says, adding that Torrez also opened the second suitcase and repeated the same routine.

But when Torrez picked up one of the suitcases and headed for the door, DEA agents arrested him and Uribe, then seized the 17 paintings from Torrez’s van, Sakert said.

Torrez pleaded guilty last March 6 to a four-count indictment charging him with conspiracy to possess and distribute drugs and using a firearm in a drug-trafficking crime. His sentencing has been postponed so he can testify at Uribe’s trial this month.

Uribe was supposed to show up in federal court the same day to enter a plea, but he fled to Mexico. He was later arrested and extradited back to the United States, according to court documents.

In addition to the original charge of conspiring to distribute cocaine and “sale or bartering” of artwork that “crossed a state boundary after being stolen,” Uribe now also faces charges of failure to appear in court.

Uribe’s attorney, H. Dean Steward, who heads the federal public defender’s office here, said his client “continues to claim he’s absolutely innocent and looks forward to his day in court.”

“He insists he clearly was set up in a most unfair manner by a team of government informants,” Steward said.

Court records indicate that federal agents are still searching for three Renoirs shown in the photographs that Uribe sent to the informant. The three paintings were not among the 17 pieces seized from Torrez’s van.

One of the missing Renoirs is “Anemones,” a 1916 work last sold for $176,000 by Sotheby’s in 1990 from the estate of Henry Ford II. The other missing Renoirs are “Mother and Child’ and “Baie de Pont Aven.”

In December 1994, Newton acknowledged in Bankruptcy Court that his Sotheby’s account was used to pay $112,000 for “Baie de Pont Aven” and five of the 10 Renoirs seized by federal agents.

Newton testified that some of these paintings were actually purchased for a Texan who reimbursed him, “and they were hand-delivered to him in Texas.”

Newton also acknowledged that less than two months after filing for bankruptcy he bought Renoir’s “Tete de Femme” and “Etude de Feuilles” for $36,300 and $6,050 respectively. A month later, he bought Renoir’s “Les Deux Arbres” for $33,000.

Those three paintings were among those seized by federal agents, according to court documents.

Newton had been called to testify about the Renoirs and other expenses after some creditors contended that he was continuing a free-spending lifestyle despite being more than $20 million in debt.

Despite Torrez’s statement that the paintings were stolen, and Bankruptcy Court records indicating that some of the paintings belonged to Newton, their theft has never been reported, either to Las Vegas police or to the New York clearinghouse that maintains lists of stolen artworks for museums and insurance firms.

Warren, the prosecutor handling Uribe’s case, is mum for the moment. But he did acknowledge that information about the artworks’ ownership “may come out” during Uribe’s trial, now set to begin Feb. 25 before U.S. District Judge Alicemarie H. Stotler.

Times librarians Sheila A. Kern and Lois Hooker provided research for this report.

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Portrait of a Drug Sting

Two would-be drug dealers tried to exchange a small gallery of mostly French Impressionist artworks for 110 pounds of cocaine, but they were arrested by federal agents in a sting operation. One of the alleged buyers said the artwork was stolen from entertainer Wayne Newton, who denies the paintings were his. Paintings seized:

By Pierre Auguste-Renoir

Maternite*

Nu*

Tete de Femme*

Les Deux Arbres*

Etude de Feuilles*

Etudes des Nus

Venus

Vue de la Poste a Cagnes

Femme Nue Accrouprie

Payage aux Environs de Cagnes

By Henri Matisse