24-KARAT CON NETS $18 MIL!
Arts patron sues over Indian ‘princess’ ploy
A MYSTERIOUS INDIAN couple claiming royal connections conned a prominent Manhattan philanthropist into buying $18 million in knock-off jewelry, according to a new lawsuit.
Nisha Sabharwal and her husband befriended art collector Shelley Rubin at an Asia Society event in the summer of 2009 and slowly weaved a web of deceit that included fantastic tales of a cash-strapped Indian princess and access to rare antiquities and baubles.
Sabharwal claimed she was from “India’s upper class and maintaining friendships with and other connections to the social and political elite in India,” according to the suit filed Thursday in Manhattan Supreme Court.
The 56-year-old accused schemer pushed Rubin, 73, to build a museum-quality collection, and “explained that one of her friends, who she claimed to be a princess descended from a historically prominent family in India, wanted to sell some of her family’s jewelry to obtain cash,” according to the court documents.
Rubin, a prominent philanthropist in the New York art world, was intrigued.
The enchanted benefactress thought she was getting dazzling deals and went on a five-year spending spree — dropping $18 million on more than 80 bogus baubles.
Rubin and her husband are known as major patrons of cultural institutions around the city and have donated heavily to art museums in the outer boroughs.
The couple started the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation in 1995, awarding grants to arts and social justice programs.
They also founded the Rubin Museum of Art, a nonprofit focused on Himalayan and Tibetan works, in the former Barney’s department store in Chelsea.
“While Rubin was quite knowledgable about various forms of art, she had no particular expertise in jewelry,” the suit says.
Rubin began to question her counterfeit collection after she told Sabharwal she was pursuing an appraisal in 2014 and the con woman “became uncomfortable,” trying to discourage her from doing so, according to court papers.
Sabharwal peppered Rubin with questions about the appraisal — prompting Rubin “for the first time, to suspect that Nisha may not have been entirely forthright in her representations concerning the jewelry,” the suit says.
In the meantime, the shady saleswoman was busy investing her ill-gotten earnings in real estate, according to the suit.
In June, Netherlands-based Van Gelder Indian Jewelry BV, “a company with an impeccable world-wide reputation,” took a look at some of the pieces, court papers say.
“Rubin was advised that they were modern pieces made to look old, of the sort that were found in bazaars tourists frequented,” the suit claims. In addition, “their value was a mere fraction of the prices — in instances only 2% — charged by Nisha.”
A necklace that Sabharwal claimed came from her own mother’s collection - which she described as an “emerald and diamond necklace in gold” and sold to Rubin for $230,000 “was, in actuality, a recent creation with no emeralds, but garnets and hand cut glass.”
It had an appraised value of $5,750.
A diamond necklace which Sabharwal claimed was worth more than $1 million, sold to Rubin for the “bargain” price of $470,000, contained only diamond shards and was worth a mere $14,155.
The civil complaint, seeking damages to be determined at trial, also maintains that Nisha’s husband, Mohit Sabharwal, was involved in the alleged con.
Neither Rubin nor the Sabharwals could be reached for comment.