[MSN] Newport artist gets jail for stealing Picasso sketch. Michael Jon Schofield pleads guilty to scam involving 'Le Couple.'

[MSN]

Newport artist gets jail for stealing Picasso sketch
Michael Jon Schofield pleads guilty to scam involving 'Le Couple.'
By NIYAZ PIRANI and JON CASSIDY
The Orange County Register

NEWPORT BEACH – A Newport Beach artist pleaded guilty to stealing a Picasso sketch and was sentenced to 300 days in jail Tuesday.

Michael Jon Schofield, 60, pleaded guilty to two felony counts of grand theft and one felony count for writing a bad check.

Schofield promised an unnamed Newport Beach resident that he would sell an original Picasso sketch, "Le Couple," valued at $200,000, in exchange for 5 percent commission.

Schofield pretended that the sketch was his, using it as collateral for a $40,000 loan from Jeffrey Stokes of Newport Beach last May. Schofield told Stokes he was starting a cable television show about art sales and needed the money for the launch, officials said.

Schofield then stole the sketch back from Stokes in August while helping him move his art collection, officials said. In December, Schofield gave Stokes a bad $5,000 check to pay down the loan.

Schofield was also convicted of taking $1,850 from a man who gave him a painting to drop off for repairs.

Private art dealer Lawrence Cantor of Lawrence J. Cantor & Company in Los Angeles said last month that he remembered a different Schofield than the one who was recently arrested. The two worked together, Cantor in a publishing firm and Schofield as an artist, in the 1980s.

"I can't imagine that he would be doing this stuff, he was always very successful," Cantor said of Schofield's popular landscape paintings. "He was very highly sought after and we did very well with his artwork. He was always a good man. This is terrible."

Schofield also has misdemeanor convictions for forgery and unlawfully taking a vehicle.

Contact the writer: jcassidy at ocregister.com or 714-445-6694

http://www.ocregister.com