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Alberto W. Vilar, a money manager with a love of opera, who used his wealth to become a prominent patron of the arts, but fell out of favor when he didn’t keep his word and eventually went to jail for defrauding clients, died at his home Saturday. Queens. He was 80 years old.
His sister and sole survivor, Carole Vilar Williams, said the cause was a heart attack.
Mr. Vilar built his fortune, once estimated at around $1 billion by Forbes magazine, through Amerindo Investment Advisors, a company he co-founded with a focus on biotech and technology stocks. He used these wealth to engage in a series of generosity in the 1990s and early 2000s, donating – or committing to donating – more than $200 million to arts organizations.
For his commitment of $25 million to the Metropolitan Opera’s donation in 1998, Mr. Vilar’s name was added to the third-level Grand Tier. (He also had a seat on the Met’s board of directors.) For his $18 million commitment Royal Opera House In 1999 the Floral Hall became Vilar Floral Hall in London. for him 50 million dollars In 2001 committed to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, the center planned to fund annual visits by the Kirov Ballet and Opera and establish the Vilar Institute of Arts Management.
“He wasn’t—how should I say?—silent about giving,” Beverly Sills, former head of the Met and soprano, told The New York Times in 2005.. “I think that was the result for other members of the board, the fact that he wanted more attention.”
However, Mr. Vilar defended his inclination to exchange donations for naming rights. Describes The Times in 2000: “When your name is on a building, it reads ‘Here’s a world-class person paying and they chose us’. Isn’t that a message?”
However, his time as a modern Medici only lasted as long as the tech market continued to explode. In 1999, the Amerindo Technology Fund reported a return of 249 percent. However, the fund’s return fell 64.8 percent in 2000, 50.8 percent in 2001 and 31 percent in 2002. One began failing to pay their commitments in 1998, such as the Met, others the Washington and Los Angeles Operas, and others. To the Chicago Lyric Opera.
Frustrated by the fact that the checks never came, many of his buyers earned his name from places of honor; this was a rare and humiliating event in the polite world of artistic philanthropy. The foot-high metal letters on a wall in the Met’s Grand Tier were gone. In the Grand Tier restaurant, the menu covers with his name were thrown away. “Vilar” was taken from the Flower Hall in Covent Garden. He paid only part of the donation he had promised to the Kennedy Center.
For Mr. Vilar, it all came to an end in May 2005. arrested and then charged About federal fraud and money laundering charges focused on the misuse of millions of dollars invested in Amerindo by several customers. According to the indictment, Mr Vilar told a client, Lily Cates, in 2002 that $5 million would be invested in a government-backed fund aimed at attracting venture capital to small businesses.
However, he never got government approval for the fund and deposited Ms. Cates’ money into a brokerage account at an Amerindo institution in Panama. Soon, $1 million was transferred to Mr. Vilar’s account at Chase Manhattan Bank. He quickly used the money to fulfill promises he made to Washington & Jefferson College in Pennsylvania and the American Academy in Berlin, from which he graduated, and to pay the bills for a caterer and dishwasher repair service.
Another $3.1 million was transferred from his Panama account to a financial institution in Luxembourg. The complaint said Mr Vilar transferred Ms. Cates’ recent investment to her personal and offshore accounts.
Before his trial began in 2008, Mr. Vilar said the government could not prove his case.
“He made millions with the company and I had full authority to invest his money.” told The Times, referring to Miss Cates, mother of actress Phoebe Cates. He later said he had “a bee about something on his hood” and asked for his money back.
“Then what I know,” he added, “is he complains that we stole his money.”
Prosecutors argued that Amerindo gambled with clients’ money in volatile technology stocks, rather than the safe investments they had been promised. The jury found Mr Vilar guilty of all 12 charges he faced. He convicted Gary A. Tanaka, his former partner in Amerindo, on three counts.
In 2010, US District Court Judge Richard Sullivan in Manhattan sentenced Mr. Vilar to nine years in prison.
Albert William Vilar Jr. was born on October 4, 1940, in East Orange, NJ (not Havana, as he sometimes claims). Albert Sr. was a Cuban-born executive of a candy company with offices in Manhattan and Puerto Rico. His mother, Margaret (Walsh) Vilar, was a housewife.
Mr. Vilar told The New Yorker that he and his family moved to Puerto Rico in 2006 when he was 7 years old and attended elementary and high school there. He denied claims that he lived in Cuba and that his family fled after Fidel Castro came to power.
Albert Jr. (who added an ‘o’ to his name throughout his business career) adored classical music as a child, but says his dreams of becoming a conductor were discouraged by his father. He studied economics at Washington & Jefferson. After two years in the military, he worked for Citibank and the Boston Company, an investment management firm, and then as a money manager in Kuwait.
He and Mr. Tanaka founded Amerindo in the 1980s. At its peak, the firm managed $10 billion for a wide range of clients.
Mr. Vilar’s wealth has provided him with an affluent lifestyle. He owned several homes, including a 25th-floor luxury duplex condominium in the United Nations Plaza overlooking the East River. There was a Steinway baby grand piano, a bronze statue of Mozart the boy with the violin, miniature replicas of the crystal chandeliers hanging above the Met’s dining table, and frescoes that were replicas of rococo paintings in Salzburg’s Mozarteum concert hall. He said he plans to build a 70-seat auditorium for musical performances downstairs.
Mr Vilar was proud of his front row seat on the Met – A101. And he distributed a significant amount of money. While his funds are still generating great returns, he donated $11.8 million to the Met between 1990 and 2002, largely through “Cosi fan tutte”, “Fidelio”, “La Traviata”, “Le Nozze di Figaro” and “La Cenerentola”. “
He lost his appeal against his conviction in 2013. The following year, Judge Sullivan added another year to his sentence, saying that Mr. Vilar and Mr. Tanaka took action to avoid reimbursement of the victims of their crimes.
Mr Vilar was living on Social Security from his Queens apartment after he was released from prison in 2018. His sister said he wrote his autobiography.
His lawyer, Vivian Shevitz, said Mr Vilar hoped the government would release his frozen Amerindo money so he could receive a pension.
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