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Thanks to Ovanessian's quick work, Anderson got his paintings back within two weeks. Others who'd placed paintings on consignment with the Wandlasses weren't so lucky.
According to bankruptcy filings, one gallery in New York spent a fortune in legal fees attempting to reclaim a painting. "We are out of pocket $160,000 on the Hoffman painting you stole, plus almost $75,000 in legal fees because of your prolonged efforts to avoid being served," Gordon Avard, controller at the gallery, wrote to Nancy Wandlass in February 2007. "We've chased you almost four years. [But] I can wait a little longer to get paid in full." East Coast collector Neil Weisman was poised to settle for a $50,000 payment in lieu of $2 million he had been owed, according to bankruptcy records
It wasn't just high-flying collectors and dealers who considered themselves victims of Wandlass' way of doing business. For 26 years, Krauth Brand worked as studio assistant to the famed abstract painter Sam Francis. When Francis moved from L.A. to Inverness, Brand and his wife, Theresa, moved with him to manage his property and gallery there. In 1994, when Francis was dying of cancer, he gave Brand a painting, which was recently valued at around $200,000.
Not long ago, the Brands placed the painting with Wandlass to sell on consignment. She sold it for $163,000, but didn't pay the Brands, Theresa Brand said. Eventually, they obtained $10,000 from Wandlass after prosecutor Ring pressed her to pay restitution to some of her victims as part of her plea deal.
Theresa Brand, 62, works as a bookkeeper; her 67-year-old husband now works at a framing shop. Lacking significant savings for retirement, they plan to continue working into the foreseeable future. "We went to all the bankruptcy hearings, and she was always talking about the big score that she had coming," she said. "She always showed up to court with Louis Vuitton purses and all this stuff, and it just killed me."
