It’s appropriate John Blumatte was an art academy bookkeeper – the accused fraudster is suspected of being an artful dodger with his own name.
Blumatte is the real name of a man busted Monday on grand larceny charges, allegedly for bilking tens of thousands from the New York Academy of Art, say law-enforcement sources and private investigator Beau Dietl.
He worked two years at the academy under the name Robert J. Angona – an identity Blumatte allegedly stole from a Queens man with a record of fraud, forgery and failing to make child-support payments.
No one at the academy was troubled when Blumatte refused to provide a Social Security number when he was hired in 2002, Dietl said. The academy agreed instead to pay Blumatte’s $85,000 salary to a consulting firm he and his wife controlled.
It should have been easy to learn Angona wasn’t Blumatte’s real identity, said Bill Smith, one of Dietl’s investigators.
“Any due diligence would have found it,” Smith said.
Dietl’s investigation was funded by Stuart Pivar, an arts benefactor who founded the academy with Andy Warhol in 1982. Though not involved in the academy’s daily business, he has repeatedly challenged its management.
In a statement, Pivar called upon the state Board of Regents to replace the academy’s board. “More crimes involving senior administrators will soon come to light,” he said.
A spokesman for the academy – which awarded 55 master’s degrees last year and is a favorite charity of Prince Charles – said Pivar’s criticism “must be judged in light of his sour view of the academy and its administration.”
But spokesman Gerald McKelvey admitted Blumatte “duped” the academy’s board.
In the guise of Angona, Blumatte presented himself as a certified public accountant, McKelvey said. He began working for the academy part-time in early 2002, and was later promoted to a full-time job.
McKelvey said some academy trustees became suspicious after Blumatte instituted a new accounting system no one understood.
But Dietl – whose investigators got one of Blumatte’s fingerprints from a restaurant glass – said Blumatte shouldn’t have gotten the job in the first place.