Thaindian News

Veteran Hollywood actor Robert De Niro has been cheated out of more $1 million in an art scam that saw more than $88 million stolen from former number one tennis champion John McEnroe, Bank of America and others.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s (DA) office said Tuesday that art dealer Lawrence Salander, 59, who has already been indicted over the earlier thefts, will face additional charges including selling paintings by De Niro’s late father, Robert De Niro Sr.

It is alleged by the DA that Salander and other dealers at his New York gallery sold the works by Robert De Niro Sr., an abstract expressionist painter and sculptor who died of cancer in 1993 aged 71, and did not pay out the majority of the sales to his estate

The DAs office says that as a result, De Niro Sr.’s estate lost more than $1 million.

Others included in the scam include the Lachaise Foundation, who consigned the works of French-American sculptor Gaston Lachaise, as well as the estate of Elie Nadelman, an American sculptor who died in 1946.

De Niro, who has won two Academy Awards in a career spanning more than 40 years, has held numerous exhibitions of his father’s works around the world and said he keeps many of his works at home.

Perhaps best-known for his appearance in the 1974 motion picture epic The Godfather Part II, De Niro is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential actors of all time.