Conviction of Calif. man on phony art resonates in Mass.

Bad memories came rushing back to Dr. Edward Nardell yesterday when he learned that his old friend Vilas Likhite had been convicted of attempted grand theft by a Los Angeles jury Friday.

Likhite, a California man, described by Los Angeles police as a former Harvard professor, physician, and Massachusetts resident, was found guilty of selling a phony Mary Cassatt impressionist painting to two Los Angeles police detectives posing as Korean businessmen in 2004.

Nardell said the charges sound all too familiar.

In 1986, Nardell, a Cambridge Hospital physician, met Likhite at an auction on Cape Cod. The two men became friends, Nardell said, rummaging through estate sales, watching the Red Sox lose the 1986 World Series to the New York Mets, and, ultimately, making deals for paintings.

''He offered us a choice of drawings by Brancusi and Modigliani," Nardell recalled in an interview yesterday. ''He sold us three for $12,000. He said, 'These are worth many times that and because you're friends, hold on to them and you can put your kids through college."'

Nardell, an art lover and amateur collector, said he felt lucky to have met Likhite, who told Nardell and his wife that he had left medicine after inheriting millions of dollars worth of art from his father, a former aide to an Indian maharajah.

''He told me his father was a physician to this maharajah who had developed an interest in European art and he gives me this 'India Today,' like a Time magazine thing, and it was all about this maharajah who had met Brancusi," Nardell said. ''The whole thing was a little too unbelievable except for the fact that I knew he was a physician and I knew people who knew him."

Nardell said Likhite referred former patients to Nardell and he was able to pick out obscure artists' work at estate sales. Likhite even dropped the name of Fidelity Investments chairman and local billionaire Edward ''Ned" Johnson, saying he worked for him as an art consultant, Nardell said.

''He gave the impression that he had an eye for paintings . . . and there were these little gems to be picked up all the time," Nardell said. But about six months after meeting Likhite, Nardell became suspicious when he met a friend of a friend at a Christmas party. The mutual acquaintance worked for Fidelity and had never heard of Likhite.

The plot unraveled quickly, Nardell said. First, Nardell visited an art conservator and supposed friend of Likhite's at the Fogg Museum to have art belonging to Likhite appraised. She didn't know who Likhite was either, Nardell said, and she said the works were not authentic. Next, he called Johnson and learned that while he did know Likhite, he did not employ Likhite as an art consultant.

Nardell demanded his money back and severed the friendship. Likhite returned the money, but Nardell still went to the police. He would soon discover that there had been other victims.

Nardell said he testified against Likhite in 1989 at a Middlesex County art fraud trial. The Globe reported in August 1989 that Likhite was tried on charges of selling phony paintings and drawings to two men he had befriended -- one a physician, the other an investment banker.

Former Middlesex assistant district attorney Crispin Birnbaum said Likhite was found guilty and given a 4- to 5-year suspended sentence, and ordered to pay restitution. Likhite, whose medical license was revoked for gross misconduct in 1989, moved to Orange County following the conviction, according to the Los Angeles Police Department. He was also the subject of a federal civil case alleging sales of fake art in 1985, LA police said.

Likhite's lawyer could not be located yesterday. But his brother, Vinay Likhite, 73, said he is saddened by what has happened to his 67-year-old brother, who he said is on dialysis. Vinay Likhite said his brother was a longtime Massachusetts resident who lived in Arlington and Belmont and was on the faculty at Harvard. Harvard spokesman Don Gibbons said the school's faculty database does not go back far enough to confirm or deny this contention. ''We are trying to figure out how with everything going for him he ended up like this," Likhite said. ''We are equally astonished and dumbfounded."

Vinay Likhite said he was subpoenaed to testify at his brother's trial in California. ''They asked where I was born, raised, and what did my father do," he said. ''The question was, 'Did the maharajah send him to Europe to buy art for him?' . . . No, my father didn't do that. My father was what amounts to secretary of agriculture."

Vinay Likhite said his brother contends he is innocent. ''He has insisted that he has not done anything wrong, and he firmly believes, as his lawyers told me, that everything he has been saying is true," Likhite said.

Suzanne Smalley can be reached at ssmalley@globe.com.