A Less than Artful Brush With the Law

Mark Goodwin hated his boss. According to Goodwin, the man treated him badly, embarrassed him often and sometimes cheated his customers.

To top it off, Goodwin said, his boss – controversial lawyer Phil Wasserman – refused to pay him $8,000 he was owed. So Goodwin stole a painting from Wasserman and gave it to a friend to sell.

That’s how Goodwin, 28, ran afoul of the law. Agents from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement arrested him. They wanted him to wear a hidden microphone and get Wasserman to talk about any illegal ventures.

Goodwin agreed, but the Seminole lawyer said nothing that led to criminal charges. “Phil’s very intelligent,” Goodwin testified last year. “Just played really dumb.”

Goodwin’s friend, 29-year-old Steven Barrett, didn’t fare so well. Based in part on Goodwin’s testimony, FDLE agents arrested the Madeira Beach resident for theft and dealing in stolen property – namely, artwork swiped from Wasserman’s collection.

On Wednesday Barrett pleaded guilty to dealing in stolen property. Under a plea agreement defense attorney Bjorn Brunvand worked out, prosecutors dropped all other charges and Circuit Judge Nelly Khouzam withheld a formal finding of guilt.

Khouzam sentenced Barrett to two years of probation. Instead of reporting in person, he can mail in probation reports from his new home in Georgia. Restitution will be paid from the $5,000 Barrett put up for bail.

“The case wasn’t real strong – that’s why he got the deal he did,” Assistant Statewide Prosecutor John Moser said. Part of the problem, Moser said, was the victim – Wasserman.

“There were some issues there as far as his dealings,” Moser said. He would not elaborate on Goodwin’s statements about Wasserman being targeted by the FDLE.

Wasserman couldn’t be reached for comment Wednesday.

With his long hair and cowboy boots, Wasserman is known as a colorful figure in the courtrooms around Tampa Bay. He has a weekly radio show on WQYK-1010 AM called “Contempt of Court.” Last year he was convicted of contempt and briefly jailed. The case is on appeal.

In the 1980s Wasserman ran a chain of retail art galleries in Beverly Hills, New Orleans, Atlanta and Tampa. But the chain went bankrupt in 1988, and Wasserman followed suit the next year.

Goodwin was working as Wasserman’s personal trainer at a gym in 1992 when the lawyer persuaded Goodwin to go to work for him selling art, Goodwin said during pretrial testimony last year. He came to regret the move.

Goodwin testified that Wasserman sometimes sold the same piece of art more than once – one for $36,000 – and let his employees deal with the consequences.

“Basically if you worked for Phil you were trying to cover Phil’s ass,” Goodwin testified. “He would never answer the phone. He had people calling and screaming where is their artwork and everything else.”

Goodwin said Wasserman sent him to meet people in parking lots and hotel rooms from Las Vegas to Miami, making art deals for cash. He described a Miami parking-lot art deal this way: “Someone took it out of their trunk, put it in my trunk and I drove back.”

Wasserman stockpiled art in an empty office in Seminole. While Goodwin worked there, his friend Barrett often stopped by and saw the collection.

Goodwin said he once found that Barrett – whose taste in art ran to posters of motorcycles – had piled on his bed paintings and prints taken from Wasserman’s collection. So when Goodwin stole a painting from Wasserman, he turned to Barrett to fence the work.

FDLE agents began investigating Barrett two years ago because of information he held paintings stolen from the Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota. However, Moser said Barrett was not charged in connection with any Ringling paintings.

Barrett had received a large settlement after an accident and did not need a job, Moser said. So Barrett and another man, William Johnson, “were living in the fast lane with too much time on their hands,” Moser said. They began dealing in stolen art “for the allure of doing it – the intrigue of seeing if you can beat the system.”

Arrested by the FDLE, Johnson confessed. Last year he pleaded guilty to grand theft and dealing in stolen property and was sentenced to three years’ probation and 120 hours of community service.

Goodwin has agreed to plead guilty too and be sentenced to probation. He never got any money for the oil painting he stole from the boss he despised.

“I got nothing out of this but a headache,” he said.

St. Petersburg Times – St. Petersburg, Fla.
Author: Craig Pittman