The story of this multi-million dollar scammer and his reality star wife is better than any TV show.

After being locked up for defrauding his clients out of $130 million, you'd think Inigo Philbrick would be feeling a little more remorseful.

However, in an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald, the "serial swindler" seemed nonchalant about the unravelling of his life and his stay in a prison that once held Jeffrey Epstein.

Born in East London, Philbrick had risen through the ranks of the London art scene. At just 24, he opened a gallery in Mayfair, Modern Collections, which would later become the Inigo Philbrick Gallery. He even opened a second location in Miami in 2018.

But what started out earnestly, or at least Philbrick says so, became the largest art fraud case in United States history, running from 2016 to 2019.

Inigo Philbrick. Image: Instagram.

Philbrick says his biggest mistake was hiring British art expert Robert Newland to manage his finances in 2012.

"I was tremendously successful, and my mistake was listening to a guy who told me I could be that and more," he said. "That's an innocent mistake followed by mistakes that were not innocent."

While Philbrick paints Newland as the mastermind of the scheme, Newland only received a 20-month prison sentence compared to Philbrick's seven years.

In terms of what he did to deserve that lengthy sentence for a white-collar crime, he was accused of defrauding clients by selling and reselling shares in famous artworks such as Jean-Michel Basquiat's 'Humidity' and a Stingel portrait of Pablo Picasso.

At one point he posed as a false buyer to dupe his partner, to whom he was in debt, and forged a sales contract from Christie's.

When his debts caught up with him, Philbrick simply disappeared, moving to Vanuatu with his reality TV girlfriend, Made In Chelsea's Victoria Baker-Harber.

It took a team of US federal agents to go to the island country and descend on the couple's sunny pandemic paradise to bring him back to the US to face charges.

Inigo Philbrick and Victoria Baker-Harber. Image: Instagram.

As blasé as ever, Philbrick said that he never intended to be an international outlaw.

"It never in a million years occurred to me that I would be said to be on the run," Philbrick told the Sydney Morning Herald.

"If I wanted to hide and was trying to not get extradited, we'd have gone to Russia, we'd have gone to Iran."

He has the same breezy perspective about his crimes now, even after doing jail time for them.

"I'd feel a lot more guilt if I had been drink-driving or if I'd been selling drugs and someone had died," he said.

Since his house of cards fell down, Philbrick hasn't shied away from what he's done or cloaked it in apologies.

When asked by the judge why he did it, Philbrick said, "For the money, your honour".

Upon extradition, Philbrick went from the indulgent lifestyle of the rich and famous (private jets and high-class vacations), to a six-by-eight cell shared with some of the United States' most notorious criminals.

He was supposed to spend seven years there but was released, wearing an ankle bracelet, in early 2024.

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Upon his release, he was living in a cookie-cutter New England suburb with Baker-Harber, able to mix out in the community (but his travels had to be approved by the Federal Bureau of Prisons).

His time in Metropolitan Correctional Center prison wasn't cushy, despite the white-collar nature of his crime and Philbrick's caviar tastes.

His cellmates included former police officer turned serial murderer Nicholas Tartaglione (who had previously shared with Jeffrey Epstein), and Keith Raniere, a leader of a sex cult.

He said it's surprising "just how casual the violence is".

Adding, "I saw stabbings, officers assaulted by inmates, inmates assaulted by officers."

However, Philbrick's prison experience wasn't all bad. Hilariously, Baker-Harber's mother Anna would send him Country Life magazines to share with Colombian cocaine bosses, who were simultaneously building luxurious abodes back home.

Despite his downfall, Philbrick has managed to hold on to his partner, Baker-Harber, who he met in 2016 on a yacht in the Mediterranean.

He ditched his then-girlfriend for Baker-Harber, who was known for her sharp-tongued, snooty quips on hit Channel 4 reality TV series Made In Chelsea.

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A post shared by VICTORIA BAKER-HARBER (@victoriabh)

Baker-Harber had grown up in Belgravia amongst London's elite, the daughter of an Olympian turned lawyer and interior designer, attending boarding school and wearing designer clothing.

She took a 'through thick and thin' approach to Philbrick, saying, "There's no way I was going to get up and let him go through whatever shit was going to come his way on his own. I just wouldn't do that.

"He's the love of my life."

She maintains that she was unaware of Philbrick's scheme.

Baker-Harber became pregnant in early 2020, just five months before their island getaway came to a crashing halt. She has now had the child, a daughter, Gaia Grace, five, who was born while Philbrick was in prison.

Philbrick said he was more concerned with his girlfriend and future child than the charges at hand.

"My life, my heart, my worry, was all with Victoria in Vanuatu," he said.

"It's a miracle I didn't lose the baby because my ­stomach was just turned inside-out," Baker-Harber said. "I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep."

When the pair reunited after his prison stay, Baker-Harber shared their first family portrait on Instagram, writing, "A long stretch, but here we are!"

In April 2025, the couple announced they were expecting another daughter, who was born the following month in May, and named Astra August Philbrick.

After his release from prison, the pair confirmed they were writing a book about their lives and working on a documentary with BBC.

"It is a love-conquers-all story," Baker-Harber said at the time, adding that she wanted Margot Robbie to play her, while Timothée Chalamet could be a good Philbrick.

That documentary was released in late 2025, however, Baker-Harber and Philbrick star in an interview-style capacity. They talked in excess of 14 hours for the two-part, two-hour BBC documentary, The Great Art Fraud. It's just been released to watch on the ABC in Australia.

In the documentary, Philbrick talks about money "literally shooting out of the ground around me" during the art scheme.

Baker-Harber said her charmed life meant she thought nothing of his rapidly increasing wealth.

"I never really thought to myself, where is all of this money coming from? In a way, because it wasn't really out of the norm for me, because I've had wealthy boyfriends before in the past … shopping, boats, planes," she told The Guardian. She also downplayed the criminal nature of his enterprise.

"You could say he's a criminal, but who hasn't done something illegal?"

He might be disgraced, but Philbrick fancies himself a phoenix when it comes to the art world.

"Once you're in, you're never ­really out," he told SMH.

"That's why I think there probably is a second act for me in that space. What does that look like? I don't know."

He added in the documentary, "The ambition is to get back to doing what I was doing. I was a great art dealer."

In the meantime, Philbrick will pay 15 per cent of his wages per month back to the $130 million AUD he owes.

Feature image: Getty/Instagram/@victoriabh

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