He sold luxury watches on Rodeo Drive. The FBI says he scammed customers out of $3 million

He sold luxury watches on Rodeo Drive. The FBI says he scammed customers out of $3 million

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/11/15/us/anthony-farrer-timepiece-gentleman-fbi-arrest-cec/index.html

By Faith Karimi, CNN
Updated 7:45 PM EST, Wed November 15, 2023

Anthony Farrer owned a luxury watch consignment business, The Timepiece Gentleman, in Beverly Hills. He sold watches worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

CNN — Anthony Farrer’s lifestyle was as flashy as the luxury wristwatches he sold in Beverly Hills. … His watch consignment business, The Timepiece Gentleman, had a storefront on the city’s fabled Rodeo Drive. His red Lamborghini and his Ducati motorcycles sat outside his lavish rental in Santa Monica. He made frequent gambling trips to Las Vegas, where he spent tens of thousands of dollars.

Farrer, 35, collected Patek Philippes, Rolexes and other pricey timepieces and sold them to collectors. The typical agreement with his clients netted him a 5% commission on every sale, according to a federal criminal complaint obtained by CNN. … Business was thriving, or so his clients thought. Farrer displayed watches worth up to $430,000 on social media, where his 300,000 followers on Instagram and YouTube marveled at his haul.

But it all came crashing down when FBI agents arrested him last week for allegedly scamming customers out of $3 million by selling their fancy watches and pocketing the proceeds. He’s facing charges of wire fraud in what federal documents describe as a “luxury watch Ponzi-type scheme” that occurred between late last year and this summer.

“Multiple victims contacted law enforcement to report that they wired funds to Farrer for the purchase of a watch, or mailed him a watch to consign for sale, but were never paid for the watch or never received their watch back,” the US Attorney’s Office of the Central District of California said in a statement. “To date, law enforcement estimates that victim losses currently total approximately $3 million.”

Farrer’s attorney, Erica Choi, did not respond to CNN’s requests for comment.

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