TODAY’S UPDATE – James Stunt is now on trial at Leeds Crown Court in the biggest money laundering prosecution ever brought before a British court.
The true, never-been-told, behind the scenes story of how I uncovered James Stunt’s plot to pass fake art to King Charles and make 160 million dollars.
© By Giampiero Ambrosi, September 13, 2024
Marina del Rey, California – 2017. The first time I ever spoke with James Stunt he was screaming at me over the phone, “I want a First Right of Refusal. Give me A First Right of refusal! Don’t you understand?” In fact, I did not understand. I didn’t even know who he was. All I knew was that he had a plummy British accent and a flair for screaming at flunkies.
I had been meeting with Tony Tetro, the notorious L.A. art forger who had been busted in 1989 and had gone down in flames. Tony was now painting reproductions; decorative pieces for wealthy clients who didn’t want the expense and hassle of owning real Picassos and Chagalls. Stunt, the British billionaire berating me on the phone, was one of them.
James had just called Tony. I could clearly hear the shouting. Flustered, Tony had shoved the phone into my hand and asked for help. What James had wanted was a letter proving that he had secured the first rights to purchase a fake that the forger had just finished. It was a whimsical Caravaggio portrait of the young Leonardo Da Vinci except that Tony had replaced Leonardo’s face with a childhood image of his own. Why Stunt – supposedly a serious collector – wanted anything to do with it was baffling.
Tony had planned to float the painting before an audience as a publicity stunt – a prank intended to amuse himself and promote his name. As part of the scheme, Tetro had hired Curtis Dowling, the self-styled British “Treasure Detective” from CNBC’s short-lived show of the same name.
Dowling had been paid to organize a splashy, high profile unveiling of the Caravaggio and drum up coverage from the local press. Instead, Curtis pocketed $10,000, plus an airline ticket, and free hotel stay, and delivered an empty, half-assed spectacle hastily slapped together at a gallery in a Las Vegas shopping mall that – as far as I could tell – specialized in framed posters of Michael Jackson’s pet monkey.
I was at the event incognito. Dowling had invited a posse of Russian gallerists from Scottsdale, Arizona. They suspiciously eyed me and grilled me about my intentions. Unaware of my relationship to Tony, Dowling himself confided in conspiratorial tones that the painting, “just might be an incredible find worth over $40 million,” before disappearing down the escalator for a cappuccino at Starbucks, leaving the supposed masterpiece unattended. Why, I wondered, would a big shot billionaire want to be associated with this nonsense?
In a way, it kind of clicked. Stunt was a showy, brash, nouveau riche wannabe. Though he himself had been reasonably wealthy, when he married Petra Ecclestone, the daughter of Formula 1 racing boss and actual billionaire, Bernie Ecclestone, he was catapulted into an entirely new stratosphere of the ultra-wealthy.
Petra’s money bought them an engagement party in the iconic Battersea Power Station, and an Italian wedding at the Odescalchi Castle at which the American pop star Alicia Keys and the Black Eyed Peas helicoptered in to entertain the guests. More opulently the money had bought them a 123-room Holmby Hills mansion built by the TV producer Aaron Spelling. Originally dubbed “Candyland” in honor of the producer’s wife, Carole, James ostentatiously renamed the ersatz palace “StuntManor” in honor of himself.
In London the ‘billionaire’ drove around the city center in a cavalcade of cars. If he went out for cigarettes he would drive his one-of-a-kind carbon fiber Lamborghini, sandwiched between security staff in Rolls Royces and Range Rovers.
But while Petra’s money could purchase grandeur, it couldn’t buy respect and that was the thing Stunt wanted more than anything. In an interview, Stunt recounted how in the early days among Petra’s sophisticated friends, he had been embarrassed by his ignorance of art and how he had been unable to join in the conversation.
Now, with Petra’s money, Stunt could remake himself as an art world player, just as Mohammed bin Salman, had done with Da Vinci’s $450 million Salvator Mundi. Except whereas MBS had pressured the Louvre to show his painting next to the Mona Lisa, Stunt had pressured me, a baffled journalist, to get him rights to a fake Caravaggio next to the Caesars Palace buffet.
It wouldn’t be the first or the last time James would concoct a half-assed scheme for his self-aggrandizement. Though in reality, Stunt had sought out Tony after the forger had appeared on the BBC art show, Fake Or Fortune, James invented a much more glamorous creation myth for their budding friendship.
On luxurious light blue stationary that Stunt had decorated with a fake family crest, the British playboy laid out an alibi in chatty public school tones, feeding Tony a story about how they had actually met at the Concours d’Elegance in Pebble Beach – the world’s foremost beauty pageant for expensive vintage cars. Stunt joked casually about their gentleman’s rivalry. “You are a horrible fan of Ferrari,” he said, “Viva Lamborghini forever!”
In the letter, Stunt positioned himself as a big-time art collector and sworn enemy to forgery everywhere, “I hate everything about art forgery and forgers” he says, before forgiving Tony with the casual indulgence of an aristocrat, “But you were such a gentleman and my wife thought your were charming.”
Stunt sent this letter to Tony at the beginning of their relationship. What was curious was that the self-identified connoisseur would feel the need to explain his acquaintance with Tony at all. Even then, he must have known that Tony’s work wouldn’t simply be used to hang over his escritoire.
In all, Tetro created a dozen paintings for Stunt. First there was a Picasso Matador inspired by a $175 million dollar sale at Christie’s in New York. Then there was a Chagall, Constable, Dali, Degas, Dominguez, two Monets, another Picasso, a Rembrandt, and a Van Gogh. Stunt also wanted a Pisarro, but Tony steered him away from the laborious million-dot technique of the pointillist master.
The Englishman would send Tony detailed instructions and front and back images of similar paintings he had received from posh Pall Mall dealers like Philip Mould. Stunt, like Donald Trump, never sent emails himself, preferring instead to send instructions via his right hand man, Alex Tulloch, who passed on his master’s wishes with phrases like, “From James” or “James says…”
I had seen some of the paintings in person at Tony’s home, and Tony had shown me photos of others on his phone. He would take them over to Stunt Manor personally in a rented truck. Tony would show up in Bel Air at the appointed hour, but James, sleeping off a binge, would ghost the forger and send down a maid with $1,000 in cash, an apology, and a request for Tony to come back another day.
Once, Stunt urged Tony to rush over to the Manor with brushes and a few tubes of paint. James had just purchased a cheap 19th century landscape that he thought looked like a Constable. He was convinced that if Tony added one of the artist’s signature rainbows, he’d have himself a brand new painting by the master.
Despite Tony’s warning that it wouldn’t work, Stunt hurried the still wet canvas to an expert who put the painting under a black light and unceremoniously rejected it. Under UV illumination, touch ups, restoration, and new paint will appear brighter, different from the underpainting. Tony shook his head when he told me about it saying, “Of course the painting lit up like a fucking Christmas tree. Obviously.”
Working for Stunt was lucrative but frustrating in other ways. Though Tony had wanted to be paid in cash because it was less of a hassle, Stunt sometimes paid with paintings, grabbing them straight off the wall and handing them over on the staircase. First it was. Lady in Pink and then Mrs. Stanhope, both by the 18th century portraitist, Joshua Reynolds.
Though the paintings were payments, Stunt wrote Tony a letter on his signature light blue stock, congratulating himself for gifting the paintings to Tony on his birthday adding a fruity note of noblesse oblige, “You mentioned you were such a fan of old masters especially Reynolds…I’m sending you one from my private collection.”.
Over time, Stunt and Tetro became friends. Stunt would phone Tony from London in the middle of his night, coked to the gills and unable to sleep. Tony would be lounging around bored and watching movies on his couch. The two would talk all night – about cars or women or art. Two lonely men with nothing better to do.
Stunt could be charming, funny, and friendly. Or he could scream at Tony like a spoiled dauphin. The nearly 70 year-old Tony looked on the 35 year-old Stunt with indulgence – as he might a petulant but lovable child. To this day after everything that’s happened, Tony will still say, “He has his demons but he was very generous and I still like him”
A ROYAL SCANDAL
In October of 2017, with their friendship blossoming, Stunt invited Tony to visit him in London. Petra had divorced him and now Stunt was living as a bachelor in Chester Square and wanted company. Stunt’s secretary, Tulloch, arranged Tony’s first class flight with the deference and crisp efficiency of a genteel butler. But though Tony had gone to London as an esteemed guest, when he arrived, Stunt had all but disappeared.
An admitted drug addict, Stunt would stay up until dawn snorting enormous amounts of coke, and ingesting opioids before crashing out and sleeping until dinner time when he would wake, shower, and begin his day.
Left to himself, Tony would take his breakfast alone, and spend the day with Stunt’s friendly Lithuanian drivers and security men. They would chauffeur him to the British Museum or the National Portrait Gallery and treat him to fish and chips at their local pub.
When they returned to Chester Square, a newly cranked up Stunt would regale Tony with behind the scenes accounts of his wheeling and dealing and congratulate himself for his business acumen and art-world nous.
One night, Stunt bragged about his relationship with the Royal Family and recounted his latest deal involving a loan of art to – as Tony recalled it – Prince Andrew. The details were thin, but it was going to make the newly divorced and now broke Stunt a boat load of cash that he excitedly told Tony, “would not have to be paid back.”
One morning as Tony trudged down from his sixth floor bedroom to the second floor kitchen for black coffee and pastries, he found himself bored and perusing a stack of papers left unattended on the kitchen table. They were dense legal contracts– not light breakfast reading – but as he glanced over them, Tetro saw something that got his pulse racing.
Leafing through the papers, he saw photos of his recently created Picasso Bathers, his Monet Waterlily, and his Dali Crucifixion at the top of what looked like a legal contract. Each document showed fantastical values – £42 million for the Picasso, £50 million for the Monet, and £12 million for the Dalí. Most curiously, the paintings bore authentications by the world famous Wildenstein Institute in Paris.
Because Tetro doesn’t copy existing paintings, but rather invents new works in the style of a particular artist, the paintings were identifiable as the same forgeries that Tetro had done for Stunt. Seeing them, something tingled in Tony’s reptilian brain and he decided to take a few quick photos with his phone – just in case. He took three photos of the paintings and a snap each of the contract’s body and signature pages.
That night when James finally woke up, he and Tony had dinner at home with Terry Adams, whom Stunt called his godfather and whom the press called the actual Godfather – the violent mob boss – of London. According to Tetro, Terry’s charming wife, Ruth made a roasted chicken and Yorkshire pudding and the group had a cozy dinner, chatting away about all the things Tony had seen during his stay. The next afternoon, Tony got a ride to the airport and flew back to LA while James slept upstairs. That was the last time the two ever spoke.
Back in L.A., Tony showed me his pictures, recounting James’s antics and his boast of lending art to the Royal Family via Prince Andrew. At first, it sounded like just another elaborate tax dodge that billionaires of questionable ethics might engineer. After all, museum loans with optimistic values are widely used to increase the worth of paintings and to defer the insurance, security, and tax burdens of wealthy collectors. As I dug deeper, I soon changed my mind.
First, I learned that the contracts involved loans to Dumfries House and that this was the stately Scottish headquarters not of Prince Andrew, but rather of Prince Charles, the future King of England. Fake paintings filtering into the King’s collection would be an important story in its own right, but more significantly, I suspected that Charles’s people were in on the shady deal.
As I examined the paintings and documents, it seemed impossible that professional curators could have blessed the art. It had been decorative, mostly on new stretcher bars, with new paints, and only cosmetically aged. Even a casual observer would take one look at them and know that they were replicas for hanging in the den.
What’s more, the Wildenstein provenance was a joke. Wildenstein dealt exclusively in Monet, Renoir, and a handful of French Impressionists. It would never provide provenance for Picasso and certainly not Dalí, and any serious curator would have known that.
Stunt made even grosser errors. In the case of Tetro’s Monet, which Stunt called Lily Pads, the billionaire attached the date of 1882, more than ten years before Monet’s garden at Giverny, the one with the water lilies, was even built. It literally could not have happened without time travel and an expert wouldn’t even have had to see the painting to know it was fake.
At the time, I had been exploring the idea of making a documentary about Tony and his wild life with the Academy Award nominated director, Kief Davidson. Davidson is a busy, sought after veteran who hears dozens of film ideas, stories, and project pitches each week. When I told him what I had found, he seemed interested, but his main comment was a glib, “prove it.”
I told him that I would, but as I left our meeting, I had no real idea where to begin. The British royal family is famous for its secrecy, insularity, and untouchability. It is protected by layers of state bureaucracy and a code of silence. Before the recent Harry and Meghan soap opera, their motto had famously been to, “never complain and never explain” anything.
I knew that if we came forward with the story the reaction of the palace would be to bury the news and pretend that nothing had ever happened. I wasn’t even sure anything had.
THE FLORIST AND A POISONOUS DWARF
In order to prove that the deal had been consummated and that Tetro fakes had entered the royal collection, I would need to have a look around Dumfries House. As a first step, I contacted the sister of a Scottish friend who lived near Cumnock, the small Ayrshire village where the estate is located. She agreed to tour the house and keep an eye out for modern paintings among the collection of mostly 18th century portraits. I couldn’t give her more details for fear of revealing our secret.
At the same time, I began researching Dumfries House. I learned that it was not only Charles’s stately home, but also the headquarters of the Prince’s charities. Charles had rescued the home from private sale literally at the last minute, refurbished it, and saved an impressive collection of art and antique furniture. To head it all up the Prince appointed Michael Fawcett, the man who signed the Stunt loan documents, as the Chief Executive.
Fawcett was perhaps Charles’s closest valet and his figurative and literal right hand man. Each night, it was alleged, it was Fawcett who put the royal toothpaste on the royal toothbrush. Though he had been forced to resign several times, first for bullying other staff members, then for selling gifts that heads of state had presented to Charles, each time, he was rehired and even promoted. So untouchable was Fawcett to the Prince that wagging tongues speculated about a sexual relationship between the two.
Though Charles relied upon him, many people thought that Fawcett was suspect. They mocked his lowly beginnings and louche dealings. One MI6 operative I had contacted derided him as, “The Florist” because Fawcett had started his own company to provide flowers for the Prince’s parties, pocketing the cash from the no-bid contracts he would award himself.
What struck me about Dumfries House was its unusual organizational structure. Though it had its own administrative operations with an Executive Director, an art curatorial staff, conservators, and docents, Fawcett, the Prince’s man, operated in parallel and was apparently answerable to no one. When Stunt signed the loan documents they had been addressed to Kenneth Dunsmuir, the Executive Director of Dumfries, but it was Fawcett who signed the contracts, bypassing any scrutiny.
How Stunt and Fawcett came to have dealings is a mystery. Though Stunt traveled among elite circles by the time Tony had met him, it hadn’t always been that way. James had grown up in Virginia Water, an affluent village in leafy Surrey, home to the mansions and estates of London’s well-heeled gentry. However, James’s father Geoff Stunt, had been a self-made man from gritty Brixton in South London who had built his fortune in commercial printing.
James spoke with a practiced posh accent, but he also bragged about his ability to slide into the twangy south London slang of his father’s childhood. Stunt had attended Bradfield College, a fancy private school that was expensive, but not particularly distinguished. He quipped that its students were, “like cream – rich and thick”. He had made charitable donations to his alma mater, but before he had married Petra, he had been an unremarkable young man who hadn’t been on anyone’s radar.
Even after his marriage to Petra, he was known mostly for his cavalcade of cars prowling around staid Belgravia or parked in front of Sotheby’s. Stunt had been content to cultivate an image of wealth and mystery short on actual details. He had claimed variously to have been an oil tycoon, a shipping magnate, and a gold trader, which few people took seriously.
Mostly, they wondered what was in the mysterious plastic bottle that Stunt seemed to be carrying in every photograph. The billionaire claimed it was a mixture of lemon juice, cayenne pepper, and water, and joked that it was so closely guarded because people were trying to poison him.
His chief concession to burnishing his image was to encourage Matthew Steeples, an associate who published a self-styled gossip website called The Steeple Times, and who occasionally stayed with Stunt, to write cheerleading pieces about him.
By 2017 everything had changed. First, Stunt and Petra went through a messy, contentious, and public divorce whose lurid details were splashed all over the tabloids. The Daily Mail, especially delighted in covering testimony of Stunt’s alleged violent and abusive behavior, his drug overdoses, and his failings as a husband and father.
Next, Lee Stunt, James’s older brother, died of a cocaine and heroin overdose and the Daily Mail suggested it might have been suicide. This caused Stunt to snap. He issued threats to the newspaper’s owner, Jonathan Harmsworth, the Viscount Rothermere, and began a raging feud that lasts to this day.
Stunt would post daily hour-long rants on his social media, accusing him of tax evasion, sexual perversion, and treason. When former father-in-law Bernie Ecclestone was quoted in the articles, James added him to his list of sworn enemies, calling the diminutive Bernie a gangster, and more poetically, “a poisonous dwarf.”
In 2018, Stunt was accused of money laundering and had his assets frozen by the Crown Prosecution Service. James claimed that it was Rothermere and Bernie, the “gruesome twosome” who had framed him.
Stunt portrayed himself as a flawed, but essentially harmless businessman who had been misunderstood and maligned in the press. In his first and only interview he allowed Tatler, the high society magazine of record, to write a glowing puff piece about him, recounting sympathetically how he had emerged from a difficult divorce and a pummeling in the press for a shot at redemption. In the article, James highlighted his history of charitable giving, posing before framed letters from Prince Charles who thanked him for his support.
At roughly the same time, The Daily Mail printed two new articles wondering, “Why is Prince Charles So Fond of Unsavoury Billionaires” and “Why does Prince Charles let James Stunt loan him art?”
On his YouTube channel, Stunt fought back, delivering monologues about his enemies and positioning himself as a man of the people who wished to expose the secret world of the wealthy and powerful. He claimed that his money laundering charge was part of the powerful cabal’s illegal tactics.
He would rap, he would show off his $300,000 watch, he would talk about his fleet of cars, or the Freemasons, or Scientology. He claimed to love cocaine, to sleep with royalty, and to hire prostitutes saying, “I love it.”
At times he was charming, funny, and self-effacing, joking about his small penis and his tendency to sound like “a glammering moron.” At times he appeared wired, other times sedated.
Once he filmed himself smoking glowing crack rocks from aluminum foil perched atop a plastic bottle, chuckling and reporting that he was, “Just chilling, kicking it, smoking crack, and listening to NWA gangster rap.”
Stunt claimed he was a super genius, dispensing advice and sharing his secrets of success and tips for creating wealth. Like the dumbest person in any room, he was convinced he was the smartest.
Eager for validation, he would begin each message with a heartfelt appeal, “My friends, My followers” and end each video with, “I love you all. Thank you very much.” It was as though he believed his legal troubles would dissipate if enough people subscribed to his YouTube channel.
As I was completing my research, my Scottish friend reported back from Dumfries House. She had toured the estate and had seen the collection hanging on the walls. There was nothing exciting and no modern paintings to be found. There was no Picasso, no Monet, no Dali. I hadn’t expected much, but I was still disappointed that we could not yet prove Tetro’s fakes had entered the Prince’s collection.
Our next best option was to back up and prove that the paintings were not still hanging on James Stunt’s walls. To do so, we’d have to get inside. Now the question was, how?
THE POLYGRAPH
Because a quick Google search would show that I had previously written about Tony Tetro, I needed a stand-in to make contact with James Stunt. For this, I turned to a colleague from my early days working freelance on investigative programs for Japan’s state TV broadcaster.
In those days, I had seen that Japanese teams in the US were often granted access where others had tried and failed. It was my impression that they were seen as honest, non-threatening, and “foreign” enough that anything “off” might be chalked up to cultural difference and losses in translation.
My colleague and I had been successful doing large scale documentary pieces focused on illegal or unethical behavior. I asked him to call James, flatter him for his impressive loans to the Prince, and request a tour of his collection.
At first Stunt politely but firmly turned us down. Subsequent requests were met with silence. I continued to follow Stunt’s social media and tried to find another way in. After a month drawing blanks, I finally saw an opening. Upset by The Daily Mail articles about his money laundering charges, James concocted a farcical plan to hold a live polygraph test, submit to questions about his financial dealings, and demonstrate his innocence. Stunt wanted the press to cover it.
While I regarded polygraphs to be barely more credible than stage hypnosis, I asked my Japanese colleague to contact Stunt and offer to film the proceedings in exchange for a tour of his collection. He texted James and explained that he had been a freelancer, but that if things went well, he would speak to a Japanese network and see if they might be interested in broadcasting the polygraph test. Stunt agreed, but before they had even discussed the details, James was posting about it on YouTube, misreporting the network as Hong Kong TV, and bragging inexplicably that his good friend, Bill Gates, had been behind it all.
I had been driving up the coast for a weekend away near Santa Barbara when I heard the news. I immediately pulled a U-turn on the Pacific Coast Highway, sped back to Los Angeles, and booked a flight to London. A couple days later I was driving to Stunt’s Belgravia home with my colleague and a Japanese film crew from New York.
I was nervous. The undercover trip was a daunting proposition and Stunt was an intimidating subject. First off, he constantly threatened to sue his enemies and apparently possessed the deep pockets and high powered attorneys to bankrupt his targets. What’s more, his mob ties seemed real and his security detail was menacing. At the time, I was concerned for the safety of my family, and as a gesture towards caution, I hired a company to suppress my personal details on the internet.
Most of all, the trip itself was a big financial risk. I had been funding the investigation personally and even on the cheap, hiring a professional film crew, flying them to London, putting them up in hotels, paying for meals, cars, and equipment would quickly add up. For less than a week of filming, I’d easily be spending over $50,000.
Doing the math, it was obvious why the first rule of filmmaking is to never use your own money; particularly when the chances for success were so flimsy.
ON STUNT’S TURF
In early May, 2019 we arrived in London. It was cold, dark, and overcast. Before we left, Stunt had been excited, friendly, and eager for his polygraph. He even included cute “xxxs” when replying to my colleague’s texts. When we landed, the problems started almost immediately.
First a text appeared asking if we had procured the polygrapher. We had understood that James would organize his own exam, instead he angrily insisted that it was our responsibility and that he would cancel our tour if we were unable to come through.
In the car, on the way from Gatwick, I scrambled to call every polygrapher I could find in London. Despite having official sounding names like The British Polygraph Institute and The European Polygraph Association, I had the impression that most of them were one-man operations run out of ramshackle offices. I was worried they would not satisfy the demanding billionaire.
To me, the polygraphers’ credentials were comical. One even boasted, that he had received straight “A”s from a polygraph academy in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. But though their organizations seemed silly, like defunct mid-century fraternal lodges, each claimed that their rigorous professional standards prevented them from allowing their polygraph tests to be filmed.
What’s worse, the London polygraph scene was a small and insular world. One person might be the Secretary of another person’s institute and then in turn that person would serve as the Vice Chairman of the other’s foundation. In this thickly entangled network I was quickly running out of options. Would we really fail at this first hurdle?
After many tries, I secured the services of a polygrapher who would allow us to film. Though our cameras couldn’t record the test itself, we would be able to capture the scenes before and after.
I scheduled the exam for the end of the second day so that could be sure to film at both Stunt’s home and office beforehand. Using an alias, I paid the polygrapher $600, confirmed that the test would not involve allegations of sexual misconduct, and agreed to give them the identity of the high profile subject before the test.
We had arranged to stay in a cheap chain hotel in Earl’s Court – close enough to Belgravia and Mayfair, but far enough to be hidden. When we arrived, my Japanese colleague prepared for a dinner with James that his assistant, Reggie (a pseudonym), had organized. An hour before the appointed time, Reggie called to cancel. Though we were told to get in touch in the morning, Stunt’s erratic behavior and inability to keep an appointment worried me.
In the morning, we agreed to meet Stunt at his Belgravia home, Henley House, on South Eaton Place at 1:00 pm. As noon approached, we received a text asking us to check back at 3:00, then at 4:00, then 5:00. By 6:00 pm Stunt was finally ready.
As the crew prepared to enter, I nervously adjusted my disguise – I had grown a beard, put on glasses, and donned a baseball cap. Acting as a roadie, I dropped bags inside Stunt’s home then waited in the van while the crew went inside. I kept my mouth shut so as not to be betrayed by my American accent.
On the first day, Stunt was lucid, gracious, and charming, if a little comical. Appearing at the top of the stairs, he greeted the Japanese crew with a cartoon bow and proclaimed, “Kom-eechee-wawa,” a goofy mangling of the Japanese phrase for, “Good day.”
My colleague started by naively asking Stunt about the “severe” money laundering rumors he had read about in the press. With a sigh, Stunt claimed that the charges were false and that his assets were not frozen. If they had been, he said, his art works would not still be hanging on the walls. In fact, the asset freeze had nothing to do with the confiscation of his art, it merely meant that he could not sell or dispose of it in any way.
Facts rarely interfere with James Stunt. He has the confidence of a man who pays people to agree with him and so for the next three hours, Stunt lectured our team about his collection. During a break, they smoked together while Stunt chugged orange juice and confessed that he had “dabbled with cocaine” but that he was now, “all good.”
Stunt claimed that he had a wonderful eye for finding bargains that other people had missed. He called Philip Mould, the exclusive Pall Mall dealer, his mentor in this regard, and told the team about past triumphs with him.
Mould had started his career at the lower end of the scale, convincing Americans that the minor Earls and Dukes depicted in his portraits and bearing their surnames, might actually be their long lost British ancestors; a brilliant marketing ploy.
The pair had famously been involved in the lucrative sale of a Van Dyck self-portrait, that began with James announcing he would purchase the painting and take it to America and ended with Mould profiting handsomely from its sale to the National Portrait Gallery, subsidized by a “Keep it in Britain” campaign led by Kate Middleton, then Duchess of Cambridge.
During the tour, Stunt showed the crew several Van Dycks, a pair of Dalis, and a Monet – Village de la Roche Blonde au Soleil Couchant. Stunt claimed that it was one of his most beloved paintings, as well as one of his best pieces of business.
At one point he showed the film crew a Dominguez, Bulls Head, claiming to have purchased it at one of the auction houses for £700,000. I knew it was bullshit because I had seen the painting at Tony’s house and had reviewed emails about it that the forger had exchanged with Stunt.
By the end of the tour, it was clear that the visit had gone brilliantly. That night, we had a cheerful Indian dinner and went to bed in a buoyant mood.
In the early morning, I was awoken by a frantic phone call from my colleague. It turns out that Stunt’s bodyguards had filmed us with their iPhones while we were filming James. Overnight, they had uploaded the footage to YouTube and fantastically crowed that a giant global Japanese station, would be broadcasting his polygraph test. In the video Stunt claimed that he would prove that Rothermere and Bernie were criminals who had framed him.
Seeing the video, Rothermere exploded. He immediately sent an aggressive cease and desist letter to the network – who knew nothing about any of this – and threatened to sue for defamation. Blindsided by the news, the network summoned the Japanese team for an explanation. They were angry that Stunt had drawn them into the embarrassing situation and threatened to blackball the entire freelance crew from ever working again.
In crisis mode, I contacted network’s bureau chiefs in Tokyo and New York, and asked Kief, who was back in LA, to send a letter explaining the situation. Finally satisfied, the network contacted The Daily Mail and assured them it had been a misunderstanding, that they were not involved, didn’t know who Stunt was, and that they had no intention of ever broadcasting anything about him.
I was concerned that our investigation would be exposed, but I was also worried about my team. They were angry at me and the crew was on the verge of mutiny. It’s was 50/50 that they’d be on their way to the airport before nightfall.
In the end, they grudgingly agreed to stay and as they headed over to Stunt’s office at Leconfield House, the former MI5 headquarters, the next day, I rushed over to a fancy oyster bar in Mayfair to meet a senior MI6 intelligence officer who had direct connections to the Prince and Camilla.
I arrived just in time to eat one £8 oyster and pay the operative’s champagne and caviar bill, before explaining the Royal art forgery scam and asking if he could discreetly find out if the paintings had actually made it to Dumfries House. Though he was old and in failing health, he agreed to ask around. Naively I hoped he might find an ally.
Read the rest soon…
