Orlando Whitfield was a student when he became best friends with Inigo Philbrick, ‘the art world’s Bernie Madoff’. He talks about how their decade of hustling would lead one to a breakdown – and the other to jail

• ‘The day we tried to bag a Banksy’: read an extract from Whitfield’s explosive exposé

Orlando Whitfield is a youngish man, shy, with a reddish beard. His hands are aggressively tattooed, as if they’d been laid, backs down, on wet newspaper. The ink is a form of armour, he says, like his pranking brand of humour (for a while his iCloud hotspot was “Lord Lucan’s iPhone”). But he’s earnest, too, quick to draw on a literary quotation. Today he has arrived at lunch apologetic and soaked through, having been caught on his bike in a downpour.

We’ve met at the Academy Club – his choice – an old-timers’ haunt in Soho, London, with black oilcloths on tables and stained wainscotting. “Hogarth’s dining room,” he calls it. We’re here to discuss his former best friend Inigo Philbrick , the London-based American art dealer who swindled friends, business associates, investors and collectors out of millions of dollars before going on the run in 2019. Philbrick, 36, was jailed in 2020. In 2022 he was sentenced to seven years for wire fraud and ordered to forfeit $86m (£68m). A stunned art world is still puzzling over how he pulled off this heist. The maître d’ brings a fan heater to dry Whitfield’s jeans.

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Man jailed for eight and a half years after incident in which Greater Manchester police received anxious call from daughter

Police have released dramatic footage of a car being stolen with a blind person with dementia inside the vehicle.

David Stephenson, 51, was jailed last week for eight years and six months after being found guilty of kidnap, theft of a motor vehicle, dangerous driving and driving without a licence.

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Someone got caught trying to smuggle 322 pounds of gold (that’s about 1/4 of a cubic foot) out of Hong Kong. It was disguised as machine parts:

On March 27, customs officials x-rayed two air compressors and discovered that they contained gold that had been “concealed in the integral parts” of the compressors. Those gold parts had also been painted silver to match the other components in an attempt to throw customs off the trail.

At least 2,000 items from the British Museum were reported missing, stolen or damaged last year, and it now faces a massive overhaul. But it’s not the only institution that finds it hard to keep hold of its collections – and when that happens, who do they call? Meet the art detectives

Surrounded by so many treasures, who would notice if a handful went missing? For many years, nobody did. A Hellenistic gem. A Roman ring. The losses have silently mounted up. To anyone behind such thefts, it must seem like an undetectable and, perhaps, even a victimless crime. After all, nobody had noticed any items were gone. Until, one day, they did.

On 16 August 2023, the British Museum made an announcement . Items from the museum’s collection were “missing, stolen or damaged”, it said, adding: “A member of staff has been dismissed.” The scale of any crime was unclear, but a brief description of the missing items hinted at the significance of the discovery, referencing “gold jewellery and gems of semi-precious stones and glass dating from the 15th century BC to the 19th century AD”. Museum chair George Osborne appeared keen to move on quickly, describing the “decisive action” the institution had taken and concluding: “We’re determined to right the wrongs and use the experience to build a stronger museum.”

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Nicholas Panayiotou and Eleanar Attard among gang who planned to smuggle 58kg of the drug into the UK

Members of a gang, including two former winners of a Channel 4 cooking programme, have been convicted after their plan to import large amounts of cannabis was uncovered.

Nicholas Panayiotou, Eleanar Attard, Constantinos Zavros, Luke Wileman and Koby Haik planned to smuggle 58kg of cannabis into the UK from the US, but were foiled after a theft at a London airport, the Metropolitan police said.

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Four women and two girls were injured in attack on memorial service near Euston station in 2023

Four men have been jailed after being found guilty of a “truly horrific” drive-by shooting outside a London church that injured four women and two girls.

The attack on a memorial service at St Aloysius church near Euston station in January 2023, in which a sawn-off shotgun was used, was part of a feud between gangs, Kingston crown court was told.

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Friends called police to raise concerns about Kamonnan Thiamphanit on evening before officers found body

Scotland Yard has referred itself to the police complaints watchdog after a woman was found dead at a house near Hyde Park the morning after it received several reports from friends concerned about her welfare.

A murder investigation was launched after police forced entry to a property in Stanhope Place, near Marble Arch, central London, at about 8.30am on Monday and found the body of Kamonnan Thiamphanit.

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Judge says Michael Davis showed ‘callous indifference’ to baby Ollie’s suffering, as mother Kayleigh Driver jailed for seven years

A man has been sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 22 years for murdering his four-week-old son, who was left to die from a broken neck in 2017.

Michael Davis, 29, was found guilty last month of murdering his newborn son Ollie Davis, after a six-year investigation into the case.

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Mobile units will be deployed on high streets to identify wanted people – including repeat offenders

The government is investing more than £55m in expanding facial recognition systems – including vans that will scan crowded high streets – as part of a renewed crackdown on shoplifting.

The scheme was announced alongside plans for tougher punishments for serial or abusive shoplifters in England and Wales, including being forced to wear a tag to ensure they do not revisit the scene of their crime, under a new standalone criminal offence of assaulting a retail worker.

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