Singer Changes Tune, Now Claims Art Used in Drug Buy

Las Vegas entertainer Wayne Newton has insisted he had nothing to do with the Renoir, Dali and Matisse artworks that were offered in trade two years ago in an Irvine hotel parking lot for 110 pounds of cocaine.

The would-be drug dealer produced receipts indicating that Newton had purchased some of the art at a prestigious auction house, authorities say, but still the singer didn’t seek to claim them.

But now Newton is changing his tune, saying that some of the 17 renowned paintings are his after all, and he wants them back, according to a spokeswoman for the federal Drug Enforcement Administration.

Because of the flip-flop and some other contradictory statements by Newton in U.S. Bankruptcy Court, the DEA is not taking the singer’s word for it, said Special Agent Sharon Carter, and has asked him to prove that the contested artworks are indeed his.

According to Carter, Newton’s attorney contacted the federal agency after Jose B. Uribe, a onetime Coachella city manager, was convicted last month in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana of attempting to swap the world-famous paintings for two suitcases, each stuffed with 25 kilograms of cocaine.

The attempt occurred May 24, 1995, at the Irvine Marriott. The drug suppliers turned out to be undercover agents who seized the artworks, including 10 Renoirs, two Dalis and a Matisse, and arrested Uribe, 49, and another man, Raymond Torres of Las Vegas. Torres pleaded guilty last year, though he is now attempting to retract that plea.

When Uribe’s trial ended, the DEA was set to turn the paintings over to the U.S. Marshals Service, which would have auctioned the pieces because no one had claimed them, Carter said.

But Newton’s attorney recently called to say the entertainer wants them back.

Carter said the entertainer’s request puzzled agents because Newton, who is currently embroiled in Chapter 11 bankruptcy, had testified under oath in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Reno that some of the paintings were not his.

He testified that he had merely used his account at Sotheby’s auction house to purchase the artwork for a friend.

“You can’t claim something that isn’t yours,” Carter said agents told Newton’s attorney. “Agents are obviously interested in the outcome of his claim.

“Normally, people whose property we seize abandon [it], but they don’t come back and reclaim it. This is unusual.”

Newton and his bankruptcy attorneys did not return calls seeking comment.

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Newton’s claim has caused authorities to review information about how the paintings ended up in the art-for-coke exchange, Carter said.

In a statement to DEA agents shortly after his arrest, Torres said he got 20 paintings from an associate who said he had stolen them from a storage facility at Newton’s Las Vegas estate. The unnamed thief even scooped up some receipts indicating Newton had bought the paintings from Sotheby’s.

Torres 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 sell the artwork.

DEA agents are still trying to recover three of the 20 paintings that were once in Uribe’s possession, Carter said.

One of them, Renoir’s “Baie de Pont Aven,” was seized by Mexican police who arrested Uribe--then a fugitive on the drug charges--and extradited him to the United States to face trial. The agency is trying to recover the paintings from Mexico, Carter said.

The other missing paintings are Renoir’s “Mother and Child” and “Anemones,” a 1916 work last sold for $176,000 by Sotheby’s in 1990 from the estate of Henry Ford II.

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. But the paintings were not included in an extensive list of Newton’s assets filed in Bankruptcy Court.

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.

The singer, who first became famous as a chubby child entertainer with the 1963 hit “Danke Schoen,” and was once listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s highest-paid entertainer, has been mired in personal bankruptcy since 1992.

Newton testified that even though Bankruptcy Court records stated that five of the seized Renoirs were bought at Sotheby’s auctions, charged to his account and shipped to his Las Vegas home, these paintings were actually purchased for a friend from Texas, Keith Wood, who reimbursed him, “and they were hand-delivered to him in Texas.”

“Not one penny of my money went to that [purchase] at all,” Newton testified at the time.

Wood, whose whereabouts are not know, has never contacted the DEA, authorities said.

Despite his denial that he owned the artwork, Newton and his wife, Kathleen, filed a report with Las Vegas police on Nov. 8, 1995--six months after Uribe’s and Torres’ arrests--saying that some paintings were stolen from a storage facility near their house.

The missing paintings included Renoirs and Dalis and were valued at about $1 million, according to the police report.

According to the report, the singer and his wife claimed the missing paintings were among items being kept temporarily in a storage facility in February or March of 1994. The couple discovered that the paintings were missing when they tried to move them back to the house, the police report states.

“Apparently, the property was taken by persons unknown without the victims’ permission,” the report states.

Frank J. Fahrenkopf Jr., Newton’s friend and former personal attorney, said the singer called his Washington offices two weeks ago, asking him for some help in getting his paintings back.

Fahrenkopf, a former Republican National Committee chairman, said he secured some forms from the DEA in Washington and forwarded them to Newton in Las Vegas.

According to Fahrenkopf, DEA officials told him that they had sent the same forms to Newton but that the singer had not sought to claim the paintings--until now.

Fahrenkopf said Newton probably didn’t receive the forms because they were sent by certified and registered mail and the entertainer never accepts such mailings.

Carter said the DEA will give Newton a new chance to file his claim even though he missed a previous deadline.