Plea gets brush
No wrist slap, judge warns art fraud susp
A Manhattan judge painted a grim picture on Tuesday for a British art dealer busted in a $10 million scam — she won’t bargain on how much time he will spend in jail.
Justice Ann Scherzer told Timothy Sammons, 62, that she would go no lower than the five to 15 years in prison being offered by the district attorney in a proposed plea deal.
When Sammons and his attorney appeared in her courtroom on Tuesday, Scherzer said the offer was “the lowest I’m going to go, knowing all I know about the case.”
She warned that if he went to trial and lost, she would likely hit him with a hard sentence. “I can’t image giving much less than the max on this case,” Scherzer said, noting that Sammons stood to be sentenced to eight to 25 years in the slammer. The judge set a tentative trial date for September.
Sammons was charged in October 2017 in Manhattan Supreme Court in a 15-count indictment that included grand larceny and fraud in a swindle involving the sale of high-end pieces including Pablo Picasso’s “Buste de Femme,” Marc Chagall’s “Reverie” and “Calanque de Canoubiers” by Paul Signac.
He was also accused of misleading clients about the status of deals and used profits to get collateral for loans he never repaid.
His attorney David Touger said after the hearing that the DA’s offer is “completely unfair.” “I don’t think he’s actually done anything, and that will be proven at trial,” Touger told the Daily News.
Touger argued in court papers filed Tuesday that the case should be dismissed on speedy-trial grounds because it was six months before the United Kingdom resident was notified of the charges.
“The district attorney knew the whereabouts of the defendant when the indictment was filed,” his lawyer David Touger wrote. “But the people elected to conceal the existence of the indictment from the defendant and seek the extradition of the defendant from the United Kingdom without first offering the defendant to return to the United States and either testify before the grand jury or to face the charges secretly voted by the grand jury.”