Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.
He's Aaron.
Hey Elizabeth, Hi, nice to see you. How are you pretty well?
I'm being pretty good, feeling it's nice. It's my favorite time of year, Autumn.
Okay, good for you.
What about you? How you doing?
It's spring? I love it nice. Do you know what's ridiculous?
Oh me?
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah I Doay, go ahead?
Oh man?
Do you know that there was once a knee injury that was worth about eleven point five billion dollars.
I've done that.
Yeah, there was a knee injury that was worth eleven eleven point five billion dollars.
Tell me more.
Okay, you see, a long time ago there was a high school wrestler. This kid was pretty good, but while he was in high school, he injured his knee. He didn't know what to do. But since he'd hurt his knee and he was feeling restless and he could no longer wrestle, he joined his high school's acting troop. He started performing, did school plays, eventually went off to Hollywood.
By then he changed his name from Thomas Mappither the Fourth to what you know him as now, Tom Cruise Godle career box office as a movie star is roughly eleven point five billion dollars worldwide. That was a world changing knee injury, Elizabeth.
It really was so exasperated. Look, I don't know what to tell you.
I recently became a Tom Cruise fan, and I used to hate the guy, couldn't watch any movies with him. And now I'm just like, I love that guy. He's so strange and intense. How could I not like him?
Right?
So there you go. That was my best impression of a Paul Harvey story, page two.
I can't stand Tom.
I know you can't. So I told you it's ridiculous.
I just that's ridiculous.
One knee injury started all of Yeah.
You know it's more ridiculous is that you're now a Tom Cruise.
I know I can't believe it either. I think I'm doing a bit just on myself.
Think so I think, well, you know, I'll run a bit into the ground. So I wait for you to run this one out. Do you know what else is ridiculous? No, thank you your love of Tom.
Cruise, my new found love of Tom Cruise.
Financial crime, that's art crime. This is ridiculous crime. A podcast about absurd and outrageous. Caper's heiss and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous. You damn right there it is. I talk a lot about art crime. You talk a lot a lot like a lot though crimes, and they've always been forgers. Really you do like the fake Yeah? I love them, can't get enough.
Why do you like the fake hers?
I just love it? I don't know. So today, though, I have an art crime from the other side of the aisle, so to.
Speak, somebody who destroys art.
No, this is on the auction house side.
Oh that other side.
Serious auction house, auction and adventure.
Is that the name of the Okay, I'm going to introduce her, he made that face.
I'm going to introduce a couple of characters in this, some heroes, some villains, some both. They contain multitudes, et cetera, et cetera, as do we all right, So let's begin with Adolph Alfred Tobman a Tobman. Yeah, he goes by Alfred Tobman.
I bet he does.
His is an incredible story.
Dolphie is a tough nickname.
Yeah. So he was born in nineteen twenty four in Pontiac, Michigan. You know, I always like to set the stage, give you an idea. Who this guy is. He invented the Pontiac car.
No, he didn't. He didn't he invented.
He's just from Pontiac. His parents were Jewish immigrants who came over from Poland. His dad was in real estate development, and his dad built the first synagogue in Pontiac.
Good for him.
Todman had a stutter, and he had difficulty reading and writing because of some dyslexia, and he was left handed but forced to use his right hand, which was so common in those days. Yes, but he had a broader vision, bigger than any hurdle put in his way was. He once said, quote, when I look at something, I have a sense not of what is, but of what could be.
Oh he's like Bobby Kennedy.
Yeah, he's basically Bobby Kennedy. So he started small. He took part time jobs selling shoes and working construction to put himself through the University of Michigan, and then he left college. He left University of Michigan while he was still a freshman to serve in World War Two. Oh goodness, So you know, signed right up. When he got back from the war, he studied art architecture at Lawrence Technical
University near Detroit, and he took night classes. He worked as a junior draftsman during the day at an architectural firm. But then he bounced out of college again and then he just headed right.
Into the working world, I feel you.
So he saw that the post war boom of the middle class was coming. Oh like, he got it. War's good business, and he had that larger vision.
That's not Bobby Kennedy thing.
Right, He's Bobby Kennedy. So he opened a real estate development company in nineteen fifty and he borrowed five thousand dollars to build and rent out a bridle shop in Detroit. That was the beginning of his empire.
Because real estate, it's like, these people are going to get married. They're coming back to the war, they're going to get married.
Here's this building. I'm going to put a bridle shop in it. I'm going to rent it. Read yeah, well so and it is. It's perfect. And so from there he's just making all this money on it. So he builds a shopping close in Flint, Michigan, and he put the stores. This was totally new at the time. So he put the stores in the back of the big lot,
and he put the parking spaces out front. Oh so instead of having a park on the street and it's taking up this whole thing, he buys this lot, puts everything in the back.
So he basically makes kind of a modern shopping modil. Well, yeah, we would recognize.
He sees that's exactly what he did. And he saw this like boom and car ownership and usage, and you know, people they're in their sweet rides with Finn they want a shop baby. Oh yeah, so he's like helps him out. Each venture that he had made more and more money, and his business expanded to just bigger projects all over the country. This is how he explained it. Quote. Suburban growth after the war allowed us to build large developments based on new road patterns and new freeways that came in.
We were able to duplicate a great degree what occurs in a downtown, all under one ownership and one control. Yeah, malls. So he's credited by everyone with a popularization of malls.
Oh really yeah, oh damn.
By nineteen fifty three, he owned a bunch of strip shopping centers like little strip malls. His developments the mall at Short Hills still that one is still one of the most profitable shopping centers in the country, still going damn. He designed the mall to have really wide entryways.
And welcoming and well he was a cathedral of commerce.
Well, he wanted to avoid what he called threshold resistance. Think of that term threshold resistance. He made the malls welcoming. He put waterfalls and like plants and stuff, skylight. Yeah, and his thinking was, quote, we want people to get in easily and get out easily. Getting out is just as important as getting in. That man drives a woman for shopping on Saturday and he has trouble getting out, so he can't see a football game. He'll say, don't
ever bring me back here again, hay Lions. So he pulled in big names in retail high end Nieman, Marcus saxofth Avenue, north Strom, Marshall Fields, East, San Laurent, Louis Buitan, Ralph Lauren. So the malls were posh. He was putting up the pash stuff. There's not that way, is I don't think so now? And so these are places to see and be seen to meet friends, take your family, get a meal, watch a movie, shot up, and so he kept putting that larger vision to work. He constantly
tinkered with layouts. He saw that women were actually the ones buying or men'swear than men, and so he started catering to the female customers. He put makeup counters on the first floor, yes, because he saw that that was the place where the most time is spent. Everyone had to go in and out, and cosmetics have the highest markup of all the retail items.
And they smell nice and feel good when you walk in. I remember as a kid, you always have to walk in generally through the making.
And like, let's face it, ladies be shopping rights anyway. So at one time Tobman owned and managed nineteen regional shopping centers in the United States. He was a self made billionaire and was on Forbes four hundred list of richest Americans for two decades.
And this guy's going to be a crimer at some point.
That's like, wow, a successful crimer.
Yeah, why did he turn He's got it all, He's.
Got it all. Well, you know, we always went a little bit more.
So.
There were critics of his of course, because you know the fact that Mal's chipped away at jobs and businesses, wrote it down on towns. Yeah, it's troubling, he'll say. And he sort of set the stage for Walmart to come in and like wreck shop of.
All the small home big box revolution.
Yeah. So this mollification was felt, especially in places like Detroit who were struggling to save their downtowns when the suburbs were luring everyone away. And then there's the whole paving of paradise for the creation of parking lots. So so long farmland, green space, Hello smog and traffic and over crowding. Todman, though not hearing it, he said that malls were the modern day equivalent of ancient marketplaces exotic bazaars.
Well he's not wrong.
I mean, that's exactly what they're modeled on. It's the Turkish bazaar for a modern car exactly.
So by the late nineteen fifties, he hooked up with Max Fisher, a Detroit financier. I know, and by hook up not in an intimate sense, but as a business part.
Yeah, he's actually a big business person. He was taken.
So Fisher hired Tobman's firm to build something to go hand in hand with all them parking lots. He was laying down speedway gas stations. Right. So here's Tom and building the America we know today, serious over consuming, spending, burning, selling, expanding, well stated America. That America, my America. This is America. So while he may have been building for the every man and woman, Tomman was living life with the swells. I mean, he's a billionaire, right, and he loved art.
Oh here we go, right, is a tingle. He collected old Masters, French impressionists, modern artists like Jackson Pollock, and every piece in his collection was a forgery. I'm just kidding now.
He just couldn't see very well and had no idea hot for forgeries.
I mean, I'm guessing some probably were, like you.
Know all they wanted to have a forgery collection.
That's not that's my goal.
That would be you.
He's a cultured fella, yes, right, So he was a board member on like a number of cultural organizations. He liked the finer things in life, and luckily he could afford them. It was these megadeals, like the one that he pulled off in nineteen seventy seven that made him a real Richie Rich because see in nineteen seventy seven, he went to a friend with an idea, let's put together a group to outbid a giant corporation on a piece of land. Who's the friend, Donald Brenn Probably haven't
heard of him, don't know that name. Fellow real estate developer. He was based out of Mission Viejo in southern California. Today, Bran ranks one twelve where the players dwell on the Forbes Billionaires list due to his net worth of sixteen point two billion dollars. Dang right, So what's the giant corporation they're going to go up against? Mobile Oil?
Ooh?
And what's the piece of land? The Irvine Ranch.
Wow.
So that may not mean much to you, So let me enlighten you and anyone within earshot. The Irvine Ranch is this enormous parcel that stretches nine miles along the Pacific coast and then twenty two miles inland, and it contains more than twenty percent of Orange County within this area. And Orange County is huge, by the way, on the seven hundred and ninety eight square miles. So inside Irving
Ranch are the city of Irvine. The University of California at Irvine, parts of Newport Beach, Laguna Beach, and Anaheim Unincorporated County land and little bits of Santa Ana and coast to Mason.
Wow.
So the Irvine Ranch was first cobbled together by James Irvine in eighteen sixty four, and he got the land from Mexican and Spanish land grant from California. Is right, yeah, exactly. So he dies in eighteen eighty six and his son, James Junior, inherits it. He's only nineteen years old. He James Junior and his friend Rode bicycles from San Francisco down to Orange County to inspect his inheritance. Like Penny Farthings, I guess no.
That's how outrageous. I mean, there's no infrastructure to help you. I mean you're just obviously sleeping on the side of the road.
El Camino Royale is what they're doing, is like they're just taking from mission to mission to get down now.
So even gave me pause, and I have all kinds of bad ideas.
So Junior takes the land from ranching to farming and builds an agricultural empire. He had tenant farmers They grew lima beans, black eyed peas, sugar beets, walnuts, avocados, strawberries, lemons, oranges, lots of citrus, lots of citrus. During the fifties and sixties, Orange County was the fastest growing county in the nation. It was What's up Disneyland.
It was the model of what you thought of California if you're outside of California.
So the Irvine Company had to decide what to do with the land sell or like, you know, develop it piece by piece in the name of urbanization, like keep it one parcel. So they went with the development of a master plan and in nineteen sixty an architect was hired to create a vision for this entire new community. There'd be houses and jobs and retail and schools and
parks and open spaces. There would still be agriculture because Irvine Ranch is still one of the nation's largest providers of avocados.
Oh yeah, that's some huge avocado regions. Yeah.
In nineteen sixty one, the Irvine Company sold nine hundred and ninety acres to the University of California system for one dollar. And this was for the purpose of creating a new campus, which became the University of California Irvine. The school was named in honor of the Irvine family, not the city of Irvine, because that city didn't even exist yet. Ah So the city of Irvine was officially incorporated in nineteen seventy one. That grew up around this campus.
I didn't know that late.
Doesn't that mean either. Nineteen seventy seven, Mobile Oil wanted that land, which is scary. It's some of the most valuable real estate you can imagine. So Taubman he got with his buddy bren and they put together a group to outbid Mobile. So they paid three hundred and thirty seven point four million dollars for the Irvine Ranch. That's the equivalent of one point seven billion today. And I
feel that's undervalued given what's on that land. So then six years later Taubman sold his interest to Brenn and made him self a tidy one hundred million dollars on the deal. And that's the equivalent of three hundred million on you know today, So in the period of six years he makes three hundred million bucks. He called the purchase of the Irvine Ranch the best deal since the Louisiana purchase. So Bren. He took over the Irvine Company
and has catapulted himself into super wealth with it. The Irvine Company owns more than one hundred and twenty million square feet of real estate. That's hotels, Marina's golf courses, five hundred and fifty office buildings, one hundred and twenty five compartment complex, is forty shopping centers, and he actually bren currently owns about ninety seven percent of the met Life building in Manhattan. So these guys like they all gathered together and they're all these sort of like self
made developers. Let's take a break. When we come back, I'll let you know what else Alfred Tobman bought with his incredible wealth. And here's a hint. I love drinking. The stuff aren't here and crime. Trust me, we'll get to it. Zarin, Hey, Hi, what are you doing here?
We were doing story time?
Yeah, we're doing story time. So Alfred Todman, rich guy, self made true American success story. He did that huge deal with the Irvine Ranch, and his worth skyrocketed and he just kept doing deals.
His timing was incredible, right, it is getting it in California.
At that moment, he sees like the retail boom in the fifties. He sees the car boom retail and like the.
Whole suburban family idea of like post war America. And then he goes, you know what Orange County is like the applethesis of that.
It's amazing, it's incredible. So in nineteen eighty two he bought load Eye, Zone A and w restaurants.
Yes, get back.
He didn't get the drinks, just the restaurant. Oh okay, hot diggity.
I love diet Roopier, dude, I love everything.
I love amw Like. We used to go, like you know people go to like a dairy queen. We would go tow.
That was the way I want. I want to Rootier Float. I wanted to rock be Yes absolutely love and I don't even go to lowd Eye. I would go to these o. I wasn't that far from it from my home town.
I love it so uh die Roopier, that's my new vice. I used to drink a lot of dit coke, but I stopped that years long years ago.
On you.
I've been like on a solid water in crystal light beverage regime for a while.
That's good because you know the sugars and dit coke if you heat them up, then turned into a bisco wood glue.
Right.
Well, that's why I was drinking it.
Before your body heats things up.
So yeah, but now I like the diet rooper. I like that for you A and W the iconic stuff. That's my little treat. If I'm good and obedient and respectful, I allow myself to die. Ruper keeps me on the straight and marror. So anyway, I don't do that, so Tom, I don't have him very often. Tom and he bought the ANW restaurant and they started in load. I stuck in Lodie again, shout out to another California Central intown. See, I can work California or the Central Valley into every show.
So anyway, the restaurants they weren't doing so hot, and he did a bit of restructuring and then he sold it in nineteen ninety four to Sagittarius Acquisitions. Made another Tidy Prophet right now though it's part of that Taco Bell Pizza Hut KFC long John Silver's Young Brands group, the.
One that Pepsi conglomerated then sold.
To Yum completely. So you know, he got in on the ground floor, repackaged, made more money. He bought a ton of stuff in the eighties. He bought department store chains like Woodward and Lothrop.
I've never heard of that.
Who knows. Between nineteen eighty three and nineteen eighty four, he was the majority owner of the USFL mis Chigan Panthers.
Oh, get back USFL baby.
Before he merged the team with the Oakland Invaders for the nineteen eighty five season.
Yeah, very short lived.
The team, as you know, with the rest of the USFL, folded after the eighty five season. But I suppose it was fun.
We'll last it was. That was nuts. A lot of great NFL players were actually in the USFL.
Yeah, I know nothing about that.
Oh yeah, herschel Walker was in there. I think Doug Flutie was in there.
I mean like a bunch of Yeah, a bunch of players who had been big Heisman candidates in the early eighties went to the USFL because they were paying more and the NFL was in like a period where they were not.
That's what we had. The strikes eighty four strike.
Anywhere interesting, I'm curious. Well, thank you for the aluintment eighty three nineteen eighty three Alfred. He made a super large purchase. It was one that gets us talking about art and crime today.
So we're here, Yes, we've come, We've arrived.
Tamman. He bought Southeby's auction house. WHOA just bought the whole thing?
Wow.
It was founded. Southeby's founded in seventeen forty four in London by a bookseller named Samuel Baker. You know I love booksellers, Yes, and I love biblio Dix.
Yes, you even love Sotheby's.
Well, I don't know. I don't really.
I feel like I was on a run.
It was good. Let's pretend so you know what was sold at auction In the early days of the library, Napoleon took with him into exile.
Oh damn his elbow Library.
In seventeen sixty seven, the business became known as Baker and Lee after George Lee became a partner, and then it was renamed Lee and Southeby in seventeen seventy eight after Baker died and then Lee's nephew John Sotheby inherited his uncle share it went through a shuffle of names. Lee, Southeby and Wilkinson, Southeby, Wilkinson and Hodge, Sotheby and Company
Messrs Southeby. That's when they're trying to get fancy, Sotheby and Wilkinson, Southerby, Macavon Way and Southeby's in company always Southby. I wonder why they Soytheby.
I guess so. I like Boonham and Bottom.
That's good.
That's a good under the houses.
Okay, I just think in general this sounds good under this Southeby family. The business branched out from books to prints, metals, coins. They didn't get into fine art until the sale of a Franz Hall's painting in nineteen thirteen. Oh wow, crazy, I thought it would have been much earlier.
They show up like just around Cubism.
Yeah. Today though they're synonymous with fine art.
Yeah, that's their thing.
Yeah. They in nineteen seventy seven is when they became a UK public company, and then in nineteen eighty, you know, the economy wasn't so hot. No sales, sales are tanking. They moved their North American headquarters from Madison Avenue it was like a high flying one, to a former cigar factory on York Avenue and then they closed the Madison Avenue galleries, they sold their Los Angeles galleries, moved all West Coast auctions to New York. So they're just consolidating.
They're really struggling. And they were down to just twenty million dollars in assets for this huge thing. So it's poor babies, only twenty minutes. Oh, so they needed to sell. People came calling. There was a pair of businessmen who offered to buy Southeby's for one hundred million dollars, but management thought they were vulgar. So then enter Alfred Todman. He smelled blood in the water, so he made his move. So remember his pal Max Fisher, Yes, the Detroit financier.
So they teamed up, and they also teamed up with a third guy, a guy called Hank the Deuce. They straight up bought and privatized Southeby's.
Now there was Hank the Deuce like a junior, and it was like Hank the two who.
In the wide world of sports is Hank the Deuce?
Who is Hank the Deuce?
Elizabeth Henry Ford the Second, Oh, the son of Edsel, grandson of Henry the o. G Oh wow, so together shout out for big shout out. So the three captains of industry, they sweet talked the Southeby's folks into a deal.
Wow.
And they loved how the men really appreciated and understood art. And they also loved how the men and offered them one hundred and twenty five million dollars for the joint beating out the vulgar guys offers. Love that, love that
so much so. In nineteen eighty eight, Todman took Southeby's public listed the company's shares on the New York Stock Exchange, making Setheby's the oldest publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol BID the ID okay, So he he broadened out the clientele of the auction house. They went from dealing with just art dealers to luring in the wealthy. Before Sotheby's was all understated and stayed and the new one was flashy. They had marketing campaigns.
Oh yeah, he directed this like mass mailing of catalogs. They held popular sales.
Yeah, they started doing the drops. When they'd had their auctions. They put out like that whole show, right.
Glossy glossy catalogs. In nineteen ninety six, they caused this huge stir because they hosted the estate sale of Jacqueline Kennedy O NASAs. That was like a big to do. And it wasn't just the outward facing aspects of the business that changed. He started offering financing to customers. Really yeah. They sold insurance, They offered art education programs. They gave concessions to consignment sellers. They threw big parties for clients.
They gave sellers guarantees for minimums regardless of sale prices.
Really yeah.
They even had a storage service like high end public storage posh pods like I bet their storage had adequate lighting and didn't feel like a training exercise for serial killers. Oh yeah, because have you ever been in a self storage facility that didn't feel like gut bustingly creepy.
Yeah.
The thing is it's weird, though, is I always think about people go into those feeling that way, and then I'm there and then they project that onto me, So there I am having the exact same thought they're having it. But then I get to be the villain, So I don't feel as bad anymore because now I know they're scared of me, so it's.
Really not that bad for me. But I feel the way you do, and I'm like, oh.
Man, so flickering like a weird hum coming from some.
Weird bug circling the light.
You've never like black marks along the wall, dawdy wheels have hit it. But it just looks like this was someone dragged.
Drag Yeah, like bodies were dragged.
Okay, yeah, we're on the same page.
Are you fail me?
Anyway? Southeby's they started offering like basically an entire lifestyle, how to be rich and cultured. Gone was the downsizing. He opened branches in Russia, Monte Carlo, Hong Kong, and they went beyond old masters. He introduced lines in like Victorian painting, Scandinavian art, rock and roll, memorabilly.
A lot of antiques and re member billion say. That was a big growth, and then.
These like looks New York City headquarters he set up. And so by nineteen eighty nine, sales for Southeby's totaled two point nine billion dollars. Dang rival auction house Christie's, had sales not too far behind a two point one billion. Oh really, yeah, So for both of the companies, profit margins were slim and expenses were enormous though. So they're pulling in all this money, but don't forget, they're.
Just like spending a lot for all these shows and all this stuff that they're doing, and they're basically grocery stores I imagine where they have a very slim.
Off at margin.
Totally, totally. So let's let's go to nineteen ninety four. Let's let's do it.
I remember nineteen ninety.
Three, me too, Tomman. He was busy that year. He heard that eighty one year old civil rights icon Rosa Parks.
Oh, yes, my friend had stole her fork.
He'd been she'd been robbed and beaten at her house in Detroit. Was that your friend?
No? I did I did not. I didn't know you were going with that.
Here, I'm setting up my friend Sarah.
He was a waiter at the House of Blues and then she came in and he loved her. He was a Black studies major. He thought she was like a the icon's icon, right, he thought, like everything she did with the INAACP office, it was amazing, huge fan at they're a good marshall. So he steals her fork, and he comes back and he's like, I got Rosa Parks Park. I'm like, all of your love for her, this is what you think. I'm going to steal her personal property. He's like, no, it was a house of bluespork.
She just used it. I stole from my work.
I'm like, well, that's fair anyway. So she said.
Weird, I said fair, Okay, it was not him anyway.
So she's at her home in Detroit and your friend busts in and Rob's beezer top and Alfred Toman hears about this. So this good guy son of Pontiac, Michigan, he's outraged as he moved Rosa Parks into the river Front towers. And you know who else lived there? Aretha Franklin.
Oh yes, yeah, love this.
Nancy Kerrigan, okay whatever. Nineteen ninety four was the year she got into the old Blama girl harding. She got need right, and this so this began. This began a friendship between the two not talking about and Nancy Kerrigan. So Tom and and Parks they become friends. In two thousand, he arranged for Parks to fly in a private plane to Montgomery, Alabama for the opening of the Troy University Rosa Parks Museum.
I love this guy, he's good people.
Let's go back to nineteen ninety four. What else happened in nineteen ninety four?
The w Tank clam was on tour.
No, he appointed Diana Brooks Deedie Brooks, President and CEO of Sotheby's and this would be a hinge point for the company. Oh yeah, So it's during this time time that a series of closed door meetings take place. I love those Toadman meets with Sir Anthony Tenant, chairman of Christie's. Oh so, that joint was founded in seventeen sixty six, twenty years after Southey Bees. So they're like the young upstarts. So what happens at these secret meetings Toabmen and Tenant?
They ordered the company's CEOs, Diana Brooks and Christopher Daviage, to end competition between the two houses. They agreed that they're no longer going to give discounts to clients. They're gonna, you know, fix commissions, ladies and germs. We call that price fixing.
I was just a going to say, I think I know what that's called. That's price fixing.
Price fixing.
So if those people owned just farms that sold seeds, that's price price fixing.
So Brooks and Davage they come up with this plan that they're gonna they're gonna charge sellers the same amount and non negotiable fees. So this is erasing competition altogether, and it's a good way to attract consignments. The most important part of the plan, though, was to keep a lid on it.
Yeah, you got to keep that quiet.
They didn't want anyone to know what they were cooking.
If you're running a monopoly, you don't let people know.
You don't advertise it. So soon Southeby's raised the buyer commission from ten percent to fifteen percent on the first fifty thousand dollars of the final purchase price. Okay, six weeks later, Christie's does the same. What a coincidence, So.
They've raised the commission prices, so everybody who's working to get their beek wet.
Essentially exactly exactly. So in nineteen ninety five, Christie's went first on the collusion train, and they instituted a sliding scale for fees. Not too long after that, Southeby's does the same same scale, people start to notice. Some of the people that noticed worked for the US Department of Justice. Oh yeah, So nineteen ninety seven, an investigation began. Prosecutors would eventually determine that sellers were cheated for as much
as four hundred million dollars in commissions. Wow. The Justice departments pro went public with a big announcement. Christie's had agreed to co oper in exchange for conditional immunity from criminal prosecution. Christie's did pikes. So Christie's CEO, Christopher Davidge, he confirmed that they had participated in anti competitive practices and price fixing. He's like, yeah, we did it.
So wait, are they just trying to snitch first?
Yes, okay, yes, so some of these they start to panic.
Yeah, of course they should. They're holding the bag. Yeah.
Diana Brooks CEO, and Tubman both resigned as he resigns his chair, she resigns the CEO. Talbman, though stuck around as the company's controlling shareholder. Okay, so of course he said he had no idea what was going on. Oh yes, but you know, he said, I know who did. Though. CEO Diana Brooks lays it all.
At her feet he's driving the bush totally.
So friends, friends of Tubman, they thought that he'd been pulled into something way above his head. He's a good dude and he knows real estate development. But the art world it's wild, full of sharks, no goodnicks. I do believe that Taubman could hold his own in pretty much any scenario.
Though, nds like a man amongst men.
I guess, I guess he's the one who knows. So after a four year investigation, there was a confession. Diana Brooks confirmed that there had been a price fixing scheme with her counterpart at Christie's, all of it engineered by Tubman, the chairman and the chairman of Christie's, Sir Anthony tennant So Christie's CEO, Christopher Davidge. He also confessed and sold his boss up the river.
Oh nice.
So prosecutors offered to reduce Brooks's punishment if she pled guilty and implicated Taubman. She agrees. So as promised, we have art and we have crime. Let's take a break. When we come back, we'll see how Alfred Taubman fared in the legal system.
I'm wondering how he dodges.
This zaren Hey. Hey over here. When we left off, Southeby's chairman al Taubman and CEO Diana Brooks had colluded with former chairman of Christie's, Sir Anthony Tennant, to fix commission rates charged to buyers and sellers. This was, according to the FEDS, a violation of the Sherman Anti Trust Act of eighteen ninety. Yeah, you know, and that was put in exactly, they want a safeguard against secret agreements to set prices that you know, just wouldn't cut it
in a competitive market. And the thought was that this would prevent monopolies, as you said, and then save customers from inflated costs.
It's basically trust busting, is the old Roosevelt exactly.
So Brooks she cooperates with the government, but it didn't keep her out of jail. So she gets convicted and fined three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. She's ordered to serve one thousand hours of community service, and she gets sentenced to three years probation. So I mean, she gets out of jail, but she doesn't get out of punishment.
Yeah.
So she spent the first six months in home detention and her term ended in you know, end of two thousand and two. Talbman admitted to meeting with Tenant, you know, the Christie's guys, like sure, but he said there was no agreement, no collusion. He said that Brooks lied in order to get a reduced sentence.
And there's no recordings or receipts, and the only other person who's backing her is David.
There's there's there are schedules and diaries that show all the meetings, but there's no recording.
Okay, yeah, it just says this person was in the room or exactly.
And the Feds really come on twelve times like why are they meeting? And so that's one of the like the arguments that they had. Talbvin had friends in high places and that's what happens when you're rich.
Oh yes, the right.
So a character witness called to testify to his good character was a US Court of Appeals judge who was a close friend.
Do I know this name?
No?
No?
And so the trial it went on for sixteen days. In the end, he was convicted on the charges of anti trust violations. His attorney said, quote, we're of course very disappointed in the verdict and we'll review all of our options and decide what we will do next.
That is the most lawyer answer ever.
Completely So. Christopher Tennyson, who was a longtime personal spokesman for Tbmans, said quote, we're all stunned. This is an ordeal. It's been two years for him, and unfortunately it continues. So he gets fined seven point five million dollars shazam. Oh wow. He was also sentenced to a year and a day in prison.
But I say, oh wow, to me, that would be a lot. To him, that's not that much money, right.
It's like pocket change. Yeah. He's seventy seven years old at the time.
That's what I was wondering. How old is he?
Diabetic?
He's worried about legacy, imagine completely.
So the legal drama wasn't just coming from the Feds. He also had suits filed by shareholders. Oh yeah, company stock tumbled of course when word gets out about the price fixing. He's settled those suits to the tune of thirty million dollars.
Oh that's lesson, I thought.
Yeah, and then remember Christie's is wrapped up in this too, so Talbman's counterpart tenant. He's also indicted but he's a British citizen and the UK does an extradite for civil matters and as such he never stood trial. Wow, so Christie's and Sotheby's there fined five hundred and twelve million dollars to settle civil claims outside of the shareholders. Talbman paid one hundred and fifty six million dollars of Southeby's share out of his own pocket.
See I knew it.
Yeah, Southeby's has find another forty five million on top of that.
They're just throwing numbers. Now.
Yeah, they're just like, no more money, more money, you pay more. William Ruprict, president of Southeby's at the time, issued a statement quote, while we feel for mister Taubman and his family, it is time for the company to move on. Oh yeah, cold blooded, Oh so Taubman. He did ten months of his ticket at the Federal Medical Center in Rochester, Minnesota, and he was released in two
thousand and three. Throughout it all, he claimed his innocence quote, I lost a chunk of my life, my good name, and around twenty seven pounds.
When he got out, such a greatest generation.
He had to report to a halfway house to complete a sentence. Zaren closure eyes, I was wondering. I know, I want you to picture it. It's June of two thousand and three. Twenty one Questions by fifty Cent featuring Nate Dog is at the top of the charts. Two Fast, Too Furious is out in theaters.
Love It.
Amelia Vega of the Dominican Republic just won the Miss Universe contest in Panama City, Panama. Sammy Sosa of Baseball's Chicago Cubs is ejected from a game after he's found to have used a cork bat whatever. Martha Stewart's indicted Metallica's Saint Anger album is released. Syndicated comic Strip Garfield celebrates his twenty fifth anniversary. The largest hailstone ever recorded falls in Aurora, Nebraska. Ou Zaren, you are living your
best life. That's what's happening. So you're a caterer working at an event at a large estate in Palm Beach, Florida. Okay, and you also happen to be a psychic who can see the future. Yeah, like this, So you heard that the owner of the house, al Taubman, just got out of jail. One of the valet parking guys told you that the dude had been checking out all of his houses up and down the East Coast since getting out from Southampton, New York, to his place in Manhattan, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan,
and then finally here in Palm Beach. So he got in two nights ago, was what you heard. Guests are coming in decked out in designer suits and dresses, facelifts for days. So you walk around the party with a tray of bouschetta. Gentle music tinkles in the background, and the guest chatter and chuckle. You hear talk of tennis games, golf caddies, traffic jams on private jet runways. Since you read pretty much every magazine you can get your hands on,
you recognize a lot of these folks. You swap out trays and pick up one laden with little toast top with obscene amounts of caviar. You offer one to a gentleman. He turns and thanks you. You recognize him as Barry Diller, billionaire, founder of Fox Broadcasting Company, USA Network and member of the Television Hall of Fame. Yeah, his wife, fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg, declines your offer. Of caviare you. You close your eyes and you see that Diller will, almost
two decades later, be accused of insider trading. Birds of a feather You figure right here and see it. You circle around the room and pass none other than Disney CEO Michael Eisner Abe Big Mike. He is telling someone about his son berex aspirations to be a full length film director. He's apparently trying to get a project called Sahara off the ground. Said his son is in talks
with Matthew McConaughey, Penelope Cruz, and William H. Macy. Since you can see the future, you know that Sahara will be thought to be one of the biggest financial failures in Hollywood history.
Got a fun movie on a plane?
Yeah, but you keep that to yourself and you move on. The cavier tray has emptied see. You head back to the kitchen and pick up a plate of figs draped with purstudo and drizzled with honey. You make your way out to the broad outdoor seating area and head for the first person you see, an elderly man perched on an overstuffed chair. As you approach, you see that it's Henry Kissinger. Whoa, You veer away and head in the opposite direction. No epicurean delights for war criminals, You say
to yourself. You feel a tap on your shoulder. A man asks if you have any ketchup to put on the orders. You turn to face him, and there he is Donald Trump. You close your eyes to see the future and drop your tray with a clatter. No way, you gasp. You're quickly ushered away and out of Alfred Toubin's Welcome Back to Highish Society party of his time inside. Tbman said, I'm out and I'm not bitter. I believe in the system. It's still the greatest system in the world.
It's a hard thing to say, but I still don't know what I did. Supposedly I wouldn't break the law for anything in the world. I never have, and people that know me believe me. Okay, So apparently he used to be a real bruiser, total fighter, like very aggressive, and after he got out he was like kinder, softer, gentler, and he didn't just survive prison. In two thousand and three, his company Tubman Centers survived a hostile takeover bid by a property group the largest mall owner in the nation.
Simon Property Group and Westfield America that Westfield was one they wanted to take him over. Nope, didn't have it. Two thousand and five he sold his controlling interest in Southeby's for stock and one hundred and sixty eight million dollars in cash not hurting, and with that, after twenty two years, he was no longer principal owner of Southeby's. Before, throughout and after the scandal, he stayed generous. He funded
research facilities for universities, healthcare facilities, libraries. He pledged one hundred million dollars to the University of Michigan's a Alfred Taubman Medical Research Institute. He served as president of the Detroit Arts Commission. He paid for public policy programs at Harvard Brown University of Michigan. He was a supporter of stem cell research. He helped the Detroit Institut to the Arts reconfigure traffic flow in the museum by sharing his
knowledge of how shoppers made their way through malls. So like no clocks, no windows, I guess. In his late eighties he got super into supporting adult literacy, and he gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to a program called Reading Works. Free Press editor and publisher and chairman of Reading Works Paul Anger said, quote, Aside from his support, which was substantial, I never stopped marveling at his energy and his concern that others might live a better life.
He never stopped looking for ways to make the community better, to make lives better, to give back and zaren Like any good criminal, he wrote a book. In two thousand and seven, he released his autobiography, Threshold Resistance, The Extraordinary Career of a Luxury Retailing Pioneer.
It's a good title, it's.
Great, and here's part of the synopsis. Despite the twists and turns, Taubman's life and business philosophy can be summed up in one evocative phrase, threshold Resistance. Understanding and defeating that force. Breaking down the barriers between art and commerce, between shoppers and merchandise, between high culture and popular taste has been his life's work.
Totally make it easier for them to say yes and harder for them to say exactly so.
He died at the age of ninety one of a heart attack at his home in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, and twenty fifteen, Governor Rick Snyder said at the time, quote, his greatest legacy will be how he used his fortune to help people in Michigan and beyond. He will be long remembered not just for his retail genius, but for the lives he touched through his kindness.
Nice.
This is a man who did ten months in the clink, well, you.
Know, but for what he did for Rosa Parks, He's always going to have an honor role in my.
Head, exactly. So he's fascinating to me. This is my ridiculous takeaway. Thanks for asking me. He's fascinating to me because he's such a good person and he's so driven and forward thinking. And I feel like he didn't There's no way I can see him getting duped on anything. So I think he knew damn well that he was doing but didn't see that it was so bad.
Yeah, I don't think he judged how greedy it would appear.
Well, And it made me wonder about other deals that maybe no one ever found out about this.
I think that's true.
But anyway, he's good people. Yes, at the end of the day.
Well, so my ridiculous takeaway. Once again, thanks for Elizabeth. I did that is when I was a waiter working and a psychic, and I looked into the eyes of Hendry Kissinger for a moment. The thing that struck me was I could see that he was never going to die. I mean, he's the undead, He's the undying. The man is just darkness inside and out.
So scared the heck of man. I've never forgotten it. Elizabeth.
Yeah, I'm sorry to put you in that position.
I can't believe he brought me back there. I was good, that was fun.
Thank you so much. That's all I have for today. You can find us online at ridiculous Crime dot com not dot org. We're also at ridiculous Crime on both Twitter and Instagram. I will never stop calling it Twitter. I'm not there. What do I email ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com, leave a talkback on the iHeart app reach outo. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zarah Brunette, produced and edited by chief malrat Dave Cousten.
Research is by disgraced Edwardian art authenticator Marissa Brown and freelance semipro renegade auctioneer Andrea's Song Sharpened Tear. The theme song is by catering staff smoking pre rolls behind the poolhouse Thomas Lee and Travis Dutton. Post wardrobe is provided by Bye five hundred. Executive producers are Ben Southby and Noel Christy.
Dus Qui Say It one More Times.
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio four more podcasts My heart Radio visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.