Support Help Desk
FAR Art Gallery Search
Protect your art with FAR registration


FAR Newsletter Sign-Up
Email
Art For Sale

Fine Art Registry Forum Post from Viper

by Fine Art Registry®


The following article came to us through a posting in the Fine Art Registry Forum. The message is so significant that we thought we would publish it in article form so all of our members and readership can have ready access to it. We sincerely appreciate the author's contribution.

Now if Park West had been even close to an honest enterprise and their kickbacks to the Cruise lines had not been up to 40% (or if the Cursed ships had agreed to refund their share when people complained also), then this would not have exploded into massive lawsuits and they would still have a chance to stay in business. That chance is gone.

PW and the cruise ships with a change to a more honest/modest operation, yes with far less profits, would still be an ongoing operation and could have solved the problem a couple of years ago and were given the chance to come clean and do the right thing. They chose not to. They chose in the end to kill their business instead of reforming it.

For around 20 million they may have been able to have kept a lid on it... just by doing the right thing for the complaints they received... Of course the art work (LOL) would not bring a fraction of what people had paid for the "ship Shit" as PW calls it in private and its PW phony appraisal value which makes refunds much, much more expensive than if the appraisals and prices had not been inflated to up to more than 50 times actual value! That's what makes doing the right thing a problem!

Now they will end up with 20 million in legal fees and 2 billion of exposure or more, lots of lost revenue far exceeding 20 million by a huge multiple and likely (99.9999% chance) out of business with the principles having leans on every personal asset that can be found and more than likely criminal action when that happens.

If the art work they sold had any real value, then the refund price paid out would have resulted in minimal losses since they could resell it at close to the price paid.... sadly not the case. Much of the art they sold s/b now worth 50%-300% more than what was paid by their own marketing B/S they used when they and the Cruise ships prayed on their victims and thus the refund expense would be more than covered by the value of the art they would get back! Sadly the touted investment value was all BULL and w/o that BULL their sales would have been much lower.

You don't pay $50K for a print you like, when you can get it for $5K off a cruise ship unless PW misinforms that its worth $70K and PW has been portrayed as a credible honest business by it's long term presence on most of the cruise ships and their salesman marketing that relationship and the trust it brings to the transaction.

And of course if a fellow cruiser tries to warn the marks on board by printing out the lawsuit claims. You have Royal Caribbean throwing that person off the ship in a foreign port to protect their 40% of the booty! Does not get much worse than that!

But every aspect of the way they set the business(es) up was to try to protect themselves from their questionable business practices, which of course tells you they knew want they were doing (not an accident) and believed they could get away with it forever, given the way they conducted/set up their business. It's a criminal conspiracy/RICO as evidenced just by the structure they set up and legal defenses taken in my humble opinion.

The biggest CON in the end is the one they did to themselves and by their own lawyers who recommended a course of action that while enriching their lawyers, will kill Park West Gallery in the end. It's already a dead man walking. Wonder if their own lawyers would take as payment PW artwork (Ha, Ha) at its PW appraised value...LOL.... not even at 50% or 20% or 10%, I'll bet lol....

They tried to structure a business(es) in a manner to protect them from the wrongs they might do (and then did) and accordingly, that also removed the fear of what happens when you don’t maintain a moral compass. It's a self fulfilling prophecy. Plan for a business to do wrong and it will and they did.

Again if there had been any truth in their marketing and appraised values... they could have easily made refunds at minimal cost even turned a profit. But their claims about their products and the value of their products was simply very hot air with no basis in reality. That's Fraud at the least.

--THE VIPER

— by Fine Art Registry®  |  February 8, 2010

Discuss on FAR® Forum   |   Print   |  

AddThis Social Bookmark Button     AddThis Feed Button



back to top

The views and opinions of individual authors/contributors expressed on the FAR® web site do not necessarily state or reflect those views and/or opinions of Fine Art Registry® or its agents or subsidiaries.
Fine Art Registry®, FAR® and the Fine Art Registry Logo are registered trademarks of Global Fine Art Registry, LLC. Helping Bring Order to the World of Art™ is a trademark of Global Fine Art Registry, LLC.

Copyright © 2003-2010 Global Fine Art Registry, LLC. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without express permission.