6A
Thursday, September 14, 1995
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
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woker Yearbooks available for purchase
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All dorm residents may report to:
- McCollum (lobby), Sept. 18-22
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Man swindles insurance firm
The Associated Press
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A man collected $410,000 from his insurance company after reporting two Italian Renaissance paintings stolen from the bedroom of his California ranch house. But it turns out the artworks had never left the Vatican.
The only proof of ownership that Lucio Ambroseli had offered when he insured the works three weeks earlier were two amateur snapshots of the paintings hanging in the Vatican Art Museum, investigators said.
Now State Farm Fire and Casualty Co. wants its money back and Ambroselli has been charged with fraud.
Ambroselli, 57, was arrested last week after more than three years of investigation by the FBI and the Italian Arma de Carabinieri art theft unit.
The retired Alitalia employee is accused of swindling State Farm by claiming in 1992 that the paintings, an Iranian silk rug, a Russian icon and a jade Buddha were stolen. Police found the rug, icon and statue wrapped in sheets stuffed into a duffel bag when they searched his house on Friday.
"Can you imagine State Farm coming to your house and insuring your house without even having an appraiser look at it?" said art professor Phil Hitchcock of California State University at Sacramento. "They should have never insured those."
The insurance agent who visited Ambroselli's house in an upper class community in Loomis, 20 miles east of Sacramento, was shown two sealed wooden crates. Ambroselli said the paintings were inside, undergoing a chemical treatment to protect them from light and humidity, and could not be shown, a company representative said.
Photographs of the paintings, which Ambroselli said were Ghirlandaio's "Death of the Dragon" and Piero della Francesca's "Madonna Con Bambino" were affixed to the crates.
"If the agent had any questions about it, if he didn't feel that everything was in line before he issued the insurance, we would have taken whatever steps were needed to ensure it was genuine," State Farm representative Lonny Haskins said.
When the paintings were reported missing three weeks later, Haskins said they had suspicions but because they lacked concrete proof, they had to go ahead and pay the claim.
The company launched an investigation and two paintings identical to those in the photographs were found at the Vatican Art Museum, where they had hung for centuries.
The works, it turned out, were really "San Giorgio Che Occei II Drago," Paris Bordone's 1525 painting of St. George slaying the dragon, and "Madonna Della Pera," painted by Alessandro Buovicvio, known as Moretto da Brescia, in 1505.
Italian art fraud investigators said the photos that were used to fool State Farm may have been taken by Ambroselli himself at the museum. Big white blotches — reflections from the flash — cover the center of each photo.
State Farm requires customers to produce a price tag, appraisal or some other authentication for art they want insured, Haskins said. He didn't know why those procedures weren't followed in this case.
Ambroselli was freed on $900,000 bail Tuesday, and his U.S. and Italian passports were seized. He could get up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
He has no telephone listing and could not be reached for comment.
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