Violin dealer under arrest over £100m Stradivarius ‘fiddle’

A GERMAN businessman who conned banks and individuals out of £100 million in a giant “fiddle” is under arrest and set to go on trial in the summer.

Dietmar Machold bought and sold what he said were rare Stradivarius violins – the Rolls-Royces of the musical world. But while some of them were genuine, most were not. The genuine ones were often not his to sell in the first place.

The Bremen Sparkasse bank in Germany was one of the institutions conned by Machold. The bank gave him a loan of £5m in return for two violins made, he said, in the workshop of the Italian master.

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An English violin expert was called in to give his verdict long after the money had changed hands.

“The bankers were completely shocked,” said Leeds-born Roger Hargrave, 64, who worked as manager of Machold’s Bremen musical instrument restoring workshop before branching out on his own. “ They were extremely embarrassed to have fallen for such a scam.”

The two violins were worth around £2,000 each.

Creditors include six German and Austrian banks and individuals from Australia, America, Belgium, Holland and several other countries who are all seeking compensation. Authorities have warned they will be lucky to receive a penny as his empire has collapsed into debt.

Machold, 62, came from a family that had been in the musical instrument business for five generations. In 46 criminal complaints lodged against him, authorities say his life was one gigantic gambling game, where he used profits from one sale to pay off a pressing debt and became increasingly mired in deception.

One bank that grew suspicious of him brought in a wood expert who determined that violins it held as collateral to the tune of £10m were in fact made from trees that grew a century after Stradivarius died.

Machold had, at one time, offices in Chicago, New York, Tokyo, Seoul, Zurich, Vienna and Bremen. He had a fleet of luxury cars, including a yellow Rolls-Royce, lived in a sumptuous castle on the outskirts of Vienna and welcomed the great and good of society into his home. He was even named an honorary professor by Austria – perhaps the greatest honour the country can bestow.

Now the legitimate owners of 200 rare stringed instruments have been told by investigators they have no idea as to their whereabouts

Machold has admitted while in custody that Stradivarius instruments that he did own were sometimes sold, or used as collateral for loans, several times over.

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“I duplicated certificates for violins when I needed one,” Machold admitted to police.

Bankruptcy administrator Jörg Beirer, said Machold “knew how to use an extremely flattering portrayal of himself, complete with castle, camera and clock collections, expensive cars, companies scattered around the globe and a network of experts, to affect something that he isn’t and doesn’t have”.