A Los Angeles gallery owner was sold a pair of fake Andy Warhol paintings by a man whose wife mysteriously disappeared on New Year’s Day describes him as a persuasive fluent speaker who cannot be trusted.
Ron Rivlin told The Daily Beast: “He knows how to play with the legal system, he knows how to play with everyone and everything. “He is very calculating…The fact of the matter is that he tricked me.”
Brian WalsheThe 46-year-old, was arrested Monday and is being released on $500,000 bail after Massachusetts police said he intentionally misled them during their investigation into the May 1 unexplained disappearance. 1 of the 39-year-old real estate executive Ana Walshe. The couple, who live in the Boston suburb of Cohasset, have been married for about seven years and have three sons, ages 2 to 6.
Rivlin, former talent manager and music industry representative who founded LA’s Revolver Gallery in 2012 and is now one of the nation’s leading dealers of Warhol artwork, Walshe described Monday, who is currently charged with attempting to cause “obvious delays” to investigators when they searched for his wife, was “very two-faced.” In Rivlin’s case, he said Brian was initially “charming, articulate, transparent, and professional,” then completed 180 degrees after he faked the teamfight and was “untouchable” until I spoke to Ana at work, and then the FBI.”
In the end, Rivlin said Walshe, who has been under house arrest for the past seven months pending sentencing in the Warhol case, said a great game.
“I have bought over a thousand Warhols and this is the only time I have,” continued Rivlin. “He’s really good. He has a personality until he gets what he wants, and then he slams the door in your face.”
Rivlin got involved with Walshes in 2016, when he heard from an acquaintance that two oil paintings from Warhol’s “Shadows” abstract series were being offered for sale on eBay for $80,000.
Brian got the paintings posted on Ana’s eBay seller account from a college friend after convincing him he could buy them for a good price. Court records show. The photos posted on the eBay listing are genuine works, fully authenticated by Warhol property. But what Brian delivered to Rivlin’s assistant, who Rivlin said flew to Boston from LA to finalize the deal, was fake, as Brian confessed in a guilty plea last year.
When Rivlin realized Brian was trying to trick him, he said he immediately jumped into action to get his money back. However, it was an uphill battle from the start, Rivlin recalls.
Because Brian refused to answer any of Rivlin’s phone calls, he tracked down Ana, who was then working at the front desk of a luxury hotel in Boston. Rivlin said he told her that if Brian didn’t call him back, he would keep calling her at work until he got some sort of answer. Rivlin also contacted Brian’s mother, whose name is on Brian and Ana’s deed. After the mother hung up Rivlin, he said her lawyer responded with a text message that she did not want to be involved.
The next day, Rivlin received an email from Brian that offered a bunch of excuses but nothing else. He stated in the text that he doesn’t carry a phone, that the different time zones between Boston and LA make calling difficult, that he sees Rivlin as “a fair and honest businessman.” and that he “wants to return your $80,000 as soon as possible,” according to a 2018 complaint accusing Brian of wire fraud.
Brian wrote: “Once you receive the money, send me ‘darkness’. “I need to investigate what happened to my side of this transaction… I don’t want you to suffer financial loss because of this transaction. Especially if it’s my fault.”
Weeks passed, and Brian continued to string Rivlin. In an email included in the criminal complaint against Brian, he stated, “They set up the line yesterday when the withdrawal system went down.” Eventually, Brian transferred $15,000 to Rivlin, followed by another $15,000 about a week later.
Then the radio went silent.
“I talked to [Ana] maybe once or twice after that because they were supposed to refund me and pay me back, and then that started to fall apart,” Rivlin told The Daily Beast. “The first is, ‘We’ll give you your money back.’ Then, ‘We’ll pay.’ Then the payments stopped… He paid $30,000 out of $80,000 [he owed] and then he was silent again.
Although Brian Walshe has not been charged with his wife’s disappearance, the latest accusations against him also focus on his seemingly questionable relationship with the truth—and like Rivlin, the Investigators said they could not get straight answers to their questions.
Ana Walshe commutes weekly to Washington, DC, stays in a $2.4 million townhouse the couple owns and spends weekends at home with her family, authorities said. She was scheduled to return to DC on January 3, but pushed the plan forward two days to handle the emergency at one of the buildings she manages, according to Cohasset Sheriff William Quigley .
Brian said he was asleep when Ana booked a carpool service to take her to Logan Airport the morning after the New Year’s Eve celebration at their home, where Brian had been housed for the past seven months pending his arrest. federal fraud charges.
But Ana never made it to the airport, and prosecutors said Monday they believe she may not have even gotten into a car. And while Brian told police he spent New Year’s Day running errands to Whole Foods and CVS for his ailing mother, video reviewed by investigators shows these visits. “didn’t happen,” declare an affidavit of probable cause issued by Cohasset Police Det. Harrison W. Schmidt.
The next day, the affidavit stated, Brian told investigators he only left the house to take his eldest son out for ice cream. However, he instead went to a nearby Home Depot, where he was seen on security video making “cash purchases” while wearing a “black surgical mask”. [and] blue surgical gloves,” according to the affidavit. At Monday’s trial, prosecutors said he purchased items including rags, oilcloths, duct tape, buckets and rags, in violation of the terms of home detention in the process.
Furthermore, they told the judge, crime scene investigators discovered bloodstains and a bloody knife in the basement of the Walshe home in Cohasset during a search after Ana went missing.
Brian, according to police, was initially cooperative. He then began stoning detectives as the investigation continued, leading to new obstruction charges.
“It was with great sadness that Ana was missing,” Rivlin told The Daily Beast. “As a parent of young children, it is very difficult for me to handle this and I hope that she will be found and reunited with her family. Immediately after the transaction, she seemed shocked and forced Brian to call me. They were newlyweds at the time, and when I talked to her, I got the feeling that she wasn’t involved in the crime.”
Walshe ended up selling the actual “Shadow” paintings—without telling the person you actually owned them—and “giving information” to the government to allow it to “track the paintings to their location.” them today” and “make decisions regarding confiscation,” according to a memorandum filed with the court by defense attorneys. However, according to Rivlin, who claims to know where the genuine Warhols end up, the works have been sold overseas and are therefore out of reach of US authorities.
“The irony in all of this is that there was a period where he could have given me my money back but he didn’t,” Rivlin said Monday. “He started giving me back my money, and I told him that if he gave it all back then I wouldn’t pursue it. He took the opportunity, and I delivered on my promise. And I did the investigation myself, so I helped the FBI with everything to make it more accountable.”
Rivlin has yet to see Brian Walshe owe him $50,000 and said his attorney told him not to expect it. This, Rivlin said, “is talking about [Walshe’s] great ability to coerce people.
“I couldn’t take him down,” said Rivlin. “Lawyers, courts, all sorts of things that he still doesn’t deal with voluntarily. He never apologized.”
