3 charged in scheme to sell stolen ‘Hotel California’ lyrics

NEW YORK (AP) — A rock memorabilia vendor and two other men were billed Tuesday with scheming to offer allegedly ill-gotten, handwritten lyrics to the classic rock juggernaut “Hotel California” and other hits by the Eagles.

Prosecutors explained the trio lied to auction houses and consumers about the manuscripts’ fuzzy chain of origin, coaching the human being who provided the product about what to say. Meanwhile, the adult males attempted to thwart Eagles co-founder Don Henley’s endeavours to reclaim the objects, in accordance to prosecutors.

“They designed up stories about the origin of the paperwork and their ideal to possess them so they could flip a revenue,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg stated.

By way of their attorneys, rock auctioneer Edward Kosinski and co-defendants Glenn Horowitz and Craig Inciardi pleaded not guilty to conspiracy charges. Kosinski and Inciardi ended up also charged with prison possession of stolen property, and Horowitz was billed with attempted felony possession of stolen home and two counts of hindering prosecution. They have been released devoid of bail.

Their lawyers insist the guys are harmless.

“The DA’s workplace alleges criminality where by none exists and unfairly tarnishes the reputations of well-respected gurus,” protection lawyers Antonia Applications, Jonathan Bach and Stacey Richman said in a assertion vowing to “fight these unjustified rates vigorously.”

Apps, who signifies Kosinski, afterwards termed the costs “the weakest prison case I have viewed in my overall vocation,” characterizing it as a “civil dispute” around possession.

“Despite 6 yrs of investigating the situation, the DA hasn’t integrated a solitary factual allegation in the indictment displaying that my shopper did everything wrong,” she stated in a statement.

The trove of documents incorporated Henley’s notes and lyrics for “Hotel California” and two other singles from that eponymous, blockbuster album: “Life in the Rapidly Lane” and “New Kid In Town.” Prosecutors valued the product at around $1 million.

The writings are “irreplaceable items of musical history” and “an integral portion of the legacy Don Henley has established over the class of his 50-as well as-year vocation,” longtime Eagles manager Irving Azoff stated in a assertion.

He thanked prosecutors for bringing a circumstance that exposes “the reality about audio memorabilia product sales of remarkably particular, stolen things hidden guiding a facade of legitimacy.”

The chart-topping, Grammy-Award-winning solitary “Hotel California” is a touchstone of 1970s rock, with one of the era’s most unforgettable guitar solos capping a musical tale of becoming lured into a glitzy, mysterious hotel in which “you can look at out any time you like, but you can never depart.” Theories about its indicating abound Henley has reported it’s about excessive and a darkish side of the American desire.

The Grammy-successful album has marketed far more than 26 million copies considering that its release in 1976, producing it one of the greatest offering in heritage.

According to prosecutors and an indictment, Horowitz bought the files close to 2005 from a writer who labored on a hardly ever-released e-book about the Eagles in the late ’70s.

The writer, who is not identified in the indictment, gave a assortment of explanations to Horowitz in excess of the several years of where the documents arrived from.

In just one email involved in the indictment, the author claims Henley’s assistant sent them from the musician’s Malibu, California, dwelling following the author picked them out in another, the writer found them discarded in a dressing home backstage at an Eagles concert in a different, somebody who labored for the band gave them to him.

“It was about 35 many years back and my memory is foggy!” the writer stated in a 2012 email.

By then, Kosinski and Inciardi had purchased the documents from Horowitz Kosinski had outlined them for sale on his on the net auction web page and inquiries about their origins were looming.

In subsequent e-mails, Horowitz and Inciardi labored to have the writer’s “‘explanation’ shaped into a communication” — sooner or later, an April 2012 e mail declaring that he didn’t bear in mind who gave him the paperwork. Kosinski sent it to Henley’s lawyer, according to the indictment.

Later that thirty day period, Kosinski bought some “Hotel California” lyric sheets to Henley for $8,500, according to the indictment.

Inciardi and Kosinski then tried using to peddle a lot more of the Eagles documents to other opportunity purchasers as a result of Christie’s and Sotheby’s auction residences, even though also offering to sell some to Henley, in accordance to the indictment.

By 2017, with not only Henley’s legal professionals but the district attorney’s office environment inquiring issues, Horowitz questioned the writer whether or not he’d gotten the elements from a further founding Eagles member, Glenn Frey, the indictment claimed. Frey experienced died the calendar year prior to.

“Once you discover GF as the source of the tablet, you and I are out of this picture for good,” Horowitz wrote in a stick to-up e mail.

The author then provided a take note to that outcome, in accordance to the indictment.