The $50 Million Art Swindle • 2019

Category: People | Torrent: | Subtitle:

Tells the remarkable story of a charlatan art dealer who swindled over $50 million from the art establishment before going on the run. Michel Cohen, a popular and charming New York art dealer was originally from France. A high school drop-out from a poor background, Cohen was a self-invented man who went on to become a rich and successful art dealer, with homes in Malibu and New York. Throughout the 1990s, he sold paintings by artists such as Picasso, Monet and Chagall to America’s wealthiest elite. Cohen was living the high life until he began trading recklessly in the stock market and ran up considerable debts. In an attempt to recoup his losses, he swindled private collectors, auction houses and other art dealers out of more than $50 million. When his swindles were discovered, he fled the USA with his wife and two small children and went on the run. In 2003, he was found by Interpol in Brazil and was imprisoned in Rio de Janeiro, but seven months later, whilst awaiting extradition to the USA, he escaped from prison and vanished off the face of the earth. Sixteen years later, filmmaker Vanessa Engle has managed to track him down and persuade him to tell his extraordinary story - a highly entertaining crime caper that is also a rich exploration of greed, motive and morality.

Make a donation

Buy a brother a hot coffee? Or a cold beer?

Hope you're finding these documentaries fascinating and eye-opening. It's just me, working hard behind the scenes to bring you this enriching content.

Running and maintaining a website like this takes time and resources. That's why I'm reaching out to you. If you appreciate what I do and would like to support my efforts, would you consider "buying me a coffee"?

Donation addresses

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

patreon.com

BTC: bc1q8ldskxh4x9qnddhcrgcun8rtvddeldm2a07r2v

ETH: 0x5CCAAA1afc5c5D814129d99277dDb5A979672116

With your donation through , you can show your appreciation and help me keep this project going. Every contribution, no matter how small, makes a significant impact. It goes directly towards covering server costs.

You might also like

JFK: 24 Hours that Changed the World

Explores the last 24 hours in President Kennedy's life through original footage and oral history, from his arrival into Dallas to his body being taken by Air Force One to Washington DC. The programme also examines the chaos and grief that swept a nation, and the subsequent arrest and murder of apparent sole gunman Lee Harvey Oswald.

2023 • People

Work in Progress: Why do we even work

Explores the different ways in which companies can give meaning to work. In short, why do some of us like to go to work? Why should I get up five days a week to go to work? And why should I join one company rather than another?

2021 • People

This Will Revolutionize Education

Many technologies have promised to revolutionize education, but so far none has. With that in mind, what could revolutionize education?

People

The God Delusion

In the first episode, Dawkins examines the unproven beliefs held as facts by many religions and the extremes to which some followers take them. He argues that faith is not a way of understanding the world but is fundamentally opposed to modern science, which tests hypotheses and builds theories to describe the world. Dawkins visits the United States to interview Pastor Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, and travels to Jerusalem to interview Yousef al-Khattab, an American-born Jew who settled in Israel before converting to Islam. He uses Bertrand Russell's celestial teapot analogy to respond to charges that scientific understanding does not entitle one to reject religion.

S1E1The Root of All Evil • 2006 • People

The Lost Territories

The third episode opens on a world of drug trafficking that has been fragmented by the efforts of the police. Dealers have now changed; invisibility is their chief weapon. The trade has shifted to areas beyond law-and-order, like war zones in Afghanistan or areas with guerilla activity like Colombia. Designer drugs, which are easy to manufacture and conceal, play a key role in the transformation of the traffic. In Mexico, the cartels have dragged the whole country into a merciless spiral of violence – wherever one looks, the toll of the war on drugs makes for grim reading. Synthetic drugs, which are easy to manufacture and conceal, herald the fourth generation to come: traffickers in white coats. This poses the question: Is it time to legalize drugs, radically changing the current situation and perhaps the way we perceive them?

S1E3The Story of Drug Trafficking • 2020 • People

The Innovation of Loneliness

What is the connection between Social Networks and Being Lonely? Quoting the words of Sherry Turkle from her TED talk - Connected, But Alone.

2013 • People