Entertainer Seeks Paintings Seized at Drug Deal

Las Vegas entertainer Wayne Newton insisted that he had nothing to do with the Renoirs, Dalis and a Matisse that were traded in an Irvine hotel parking lot two years ago for 110 pounds of cocaine, authorities said.

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

But now Newton is changing his tune, saying that some of the 17 paintings are his after all and that 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 Bankruptcy Court, the agency is not taking the singer’s word for it, said DEA Special Agent Sharon Carter, and has asked him to prove that the contested artwork is 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 paintings for two suitcases, each stuffed with 25 kilograms of cocaine.

The swap occurred May 24, 1995, at the Irvine Marriott. The drug suppliers turned out to be undercover agents who seized the artwork 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 over the paintings to the U.S. Marshal’s 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 wanted 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 didn’t return calls seeking comment.

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 the artwork 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 3 kilograms of cocaine in exchange for the paintings, and then sought help from his friend, Uribe, in figuring out how to sell the artwork.

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 listed in an extensive inventory 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 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 the singer’s 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 could not be located by The Times and 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--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, a copy of which was obtained by The Times.