Convicted Picasso thief Mark Lugo, accused of stealing Leger painting from Carlyle & Chambers hotels, faces court appearance
A wine steward with a taste for fine art faces arraignment in Manhattan Friday on charges he snatched valuable paintings from two midtown hotels.
Among the stolen works found on the walls of Mark Lugo’s Hoboken, N.J., apartment was a $350,000 Fernand Leger painting from the lobby of the Carlyle Hotel, authorities said.
Lugo, 31, who served time in California for stealing a Picasso sketch from a San Francisco gallery in July, faces grand larceny charges in New York in the Carlyle case and for allegedly making off with five artworks from the Chambers Hotel.
“They don’t think he intended to sell them. He wanted to display them,” a source close to the case said of Lugo, who has worked as a restaurant wine steward in Manhattan.