McEnroe Helps Nab Art Dealer

A prominent art dealer arrested today and accused of running a sort of art-world Ponzi scheme made one crucial mistake—he got John McEnroe mad again. The tennis great with the legendary temper triggered the investigation after being duped out of $2 million by Lawrence Salander, the New York Daily News reports. After McEnroe filed a civil suit against Salander in 2007, prosecutors contacted him and began their inquiry.

Salander, accused of swindling $88 million from investors, had a complicated system in which he would sell interests of paintings to buyers. He often double-sold the interests, said DA Robert Morgenthau. "Why sell it once when you can sell it three times?" McEnroe sued when he tried to collect a painting from an auction house, only to discover that someone else had a lien on it. Another celeb to sue: Robert DeNiro.
(More art stories.)