Fran and Susan Hoffinger are sisters who practice law at the same Manhattan firm started by their father, Jack: Hoffinger Stern & Ross. Susan defends white collar criminals (staple Law & Order stuff like money laundering, CEOs investigated for fraud, hedge fund managers charged with sexual abuse). She earned her street cred with eight years as an Assistant District Attorney. Fran represents white-collar clients too, but usually more related to Family Law (domestic disputes, trade secrets, Madoff-like bankruptcy liquidation, custody battles). She comes out of Legal Aid.
Together, the sisters have recently been in the public eye at the side of their client Vilma Bautista, 74, former personal secretary to Imelda Marcos. Bautista is accused of stealing and trying to sell a handful of Monet masterpieces that hung on the walls of the Marcos’ Upper East Side townhouse in the 1980s. The Philippines government claimed the paintings (and everything else in the house) in 1986, but the art disappeared–as if into the mist at Giverny. Two years ago, Bautista (with their help of her two nephews) successfully sold “Le Bassin aux Nymphéas” (1899) for $32 million. Now conspiracy and tax-fraud charges (she didn’t report the sale) say she could face 25 years. Odds are the Hoffinger sisters will get an acquittal, though, using their own kind of art. The family is well-acquainted with art world perversions. In 1988, Papa Jack got minimalist sculptor Carl Andre acquitted of pushing his wife to her death from the window of their 34th-floor apartment.
