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March 19, 2008

Update: Hearing for escaped art dealer is continued

PROVIDENCE -- Magistrate Judge Lincoln D. Almond this afternoon continued a hearing that had been scheduled for a Johnston art dealer who had escaped over the weekend from a federal correctional facility in New Jersey and had surrendered to U.S. Marshals this morning in Providence.

Rocco DeSimone, 55, of 103 Hopkins Ave., surrendered at 9 a.m. – with his lawyer – at the Pastore Building, off Kennedy Plaza, according to a statement from the U.S. Marshal's office. His lawyer, Kevin Bristow, could not appear because of a scheduling conflict.
Substitute counsel represented DeSimone this afternoon. Almond ordered DeSimone held as a flight risk until the removal hearing can be scheduled. The government wants to have DeSimone moved to federal custody in New Jersey, where he is charged with escape.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in New Jersey has charged DeSimone with escape, according to the U.S. Marshal's office. The maximum penalty for escape is five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Officials believe DeSimone fled the Federal Correctional Institution in Fairton, N.J., Saturday. The institution has a prison camp housing minimum-security male offenders.

DeSimone, a high-powered art dealer from Johnston, was sentenced in 2005 to serve 27 months in federal prison for tax fraud in connection with the sale of a Claude Monet painting.

“He didn’t just escape from Attica,” U.S. Marshal C.J. Wyant said yesterday. “It’s federal camp. I always equate it to a college dorm. He basically walked out.”

DeSimone escaped just two days after FBI agents searched his home as part of an investigation into suspected fraud and money laundering, federal authorities said. The agents seized numerous items, including a $180,000 Ford GT sports car, Japanese swords and artifacts, Wyant said.

Authorities suspect DeSimone’s wife, Gail DeSimone, picked him up in a rental car after flying from Rhode Island to Philadelphia on Saturday, Wyant said. Authorities suspect that she drove him to Putnam, Conn., and that someone else later drove him to Warwick, Wyant said.

Gail DeSimone surrendered to federal agents on Monday after a complaint was issued charging her with harboring an escaped prisoner.

The maximum for harboring an escapee is three years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

In August 2005, Rocco DeSimone was sentenced to 27 months in prison for filing a false tax return. A federal jury had found him guilty of fraudulently claiming income from the sale of art as a long-term capital gain rather than ordinary income, to avoid paying higher taxes.

DeSimone also was fined $100,000 and ordered to pay all income taxes due. U.S. District Judge William E. Smith determined that DeSimone had avoided paying between $200,000 and $325,000 through the false tax return.

DeSimone served about six months of his sentence before being released on bail pending the outcome of an appeal. But the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the appeal in June of last year. DeSimone’s bail was then revoked, and he was returned to federal custody to serve the balance of his sentence. Federal authorities estimate that he was to be released in about nine months.

During a five-day trial in March 2005, the government presented evidence that in 1999, DeSimone had brokered the sale of three paintings for $8.3 million: Canal at Zaandam, by Claude Monet, for $4.65 million; Les Mouettes, by Henri Matisse, for $650,000; and Jeune Fille Blonde, by Pierre Auguste Renoir, for $3 million.

Prosecutors said that DeSimone told Janet Traeger Salz, the New York owner of Canal at Zaandam, that he had instead sold the painting for $2.7 million, pocketing most of the difference. Yet on his 1999 tax return, DeSimone reported only $1 million of that income.

-- With Journal archival reports

Posted by Mike McKinney  at 4:55 PM | Permalink

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