Helly Nahmad's sentence

Painting by 7th grader combining Felix the cat with Warhol's Marilyn Monroe. Borrowed from this art teacher-help site

Helly Nahmad is a 35 year old art dealer in NYC. He comes from what has been billed as the wealthiest family in Monaco, learning the art business from his father David, who regularly bids up prices at Christies and Sotheby's. The big auction houses love this uber-rich family, even if it does periodically cause the feds to look into price-fixing.

Nahmad, pictured with Victoria's Secret model Miranda Kerr. Photo from The Daily Mail

Today Nahmad faces charges of racketeering, gambling, money laundering, and conspiracy all tied to a sports-betting enterprise and the Russian mob. As I read about his fraudulent selling/trading in high-stakes art, I was reminded of the recent Pulitzer Prize winner, The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt, in which a painting is used as gang-land currency. The mobsters in that book do not all get off the hook easily.

Prosecutors with the US attorney's office recommend a year to 18 months for playboy Nahmad, who is a first-time offender, but a really big one. Here's the deal that Nahmad's attorneys are proposing today:

1. No prison.
2. Nahmad will instead put 100K per year towards a program in a Bronx homeless shelter to bring kids to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. *

*Nahmad professes to be qualified for this project by saying in a letter to the judge: " I do not have a great education in other subjects, but I really do know a lot about art, and I think I could really teach young people in a good way and hopefully introduce them to a world they might otherwise never visit."

Okay, deals are cut all the time between wealthy offenders and the court. I really wonder what is right, though. This feels somehow wrong. Introducing kids to art is praise-worthy, but what exactly is this "world they might never visit?" Nahmad's art world is a dirty place, one in which artists aren't rewarded really at all. Nahmad's family has feathered its own nest in that world for decades, and I wouldn't want a child of mine learning from him no matter how desperately homeless I might be.

Photo from Cascadia Courier

Nahmad may well be successful in his plea to avoid jail today. If so, I hope he is required to personally put in time with whole big crowds of rowdy 13 year olds in a genteel museum setting, every day for hours. It takes a trained professional to do this well, and it has to be one who loves kids. Helly, is that you? Be careful what you wish for.

Update: The judge didn't buy it and Nahmad goes to jail for a year and a day.