This once mighty money man is hitting the skids hard.
Debt-riddled ex-billionaire Philip Falcone has taken to hawking his home furnishings for chump change, just three years after cashing in with a record $77 million sale of his massive, ultra swanky Manhattan townhouse on 14-16 East 67th St.
The cash-strapped former hedge fund honcho — worth $2 billion before his financial faceplant — owes an estimated $100 million, and he turned to an auction house last month for a fire sale of items from his luxury living space at 22 East 67th Street.
That property, a second home he owns just three doors down from the long gone townhouse, itself just went into contract for sale for $27 million — $13 million less than previously listed.
And now everything inside must go.
But not for as much as Falcone originally paid or hoped to get when he first offered his stuff for sale.
The biggest ticket item on the block was a custom-built, white lacquer Steinway grand piano with a sterling silver frame that Falcone purchased for $180,000 in 2006 yet hardly ever played, according to its new owner, Ronen Segev, who purchased the instrument for $50,000 at Auctions at Showplace in Manhattan on Feb. 20.
“I played the piano myself and it had a very full and vibrant sound,” said Segev, who buys and sells Steinways through his company, Park Avenue Pianos.
“It’s the kind of piano you can see in a concert hall. But it felt like it had barely been played. It looked like it was straight from the showroom brand new. My impression is that it was more of a showpiece than an instrument that was utilized.”
He’s now offering the Steinway for $118,000.
Segev also snapped up a huge piece of art, a neoclassical French creation by painter Merry-Joseph Blondel and his partner Joseph Dufour, who did a series of wallpaper designs in the early 1800s depicting the Greek mythological figures Psyche and Venus.
The 7-foot-by-6-foot work — which Falcone and his wife, Lisa Maria, featured as the centerpiece of their sumptuous living room, right across from where the piano sat — fetched $7,500, a steal considering its list price was $23,500, Segev said.
“That one I’m keeping,” he said.
“It’s a special artifact. There was a team in France that was creating these pieces for royalty. I did see overseas that other pieces from the original series were selling for 50,000 to 60,000 pounds ($67,000-$80,000). Just the frame itself is worth more than what I paid.”
Also sold to an anonymous buyer on Feb. 20 was a pair of Italian baroque floor lamps from the Falcone living room that were listed for $7,300 but got just $1,500 at auction, and a contemporary red leather sofa from the couple’s study that was offered for $6,400 and went for $3,750.
Despite the proceeds, Falcone’s effort to satisfy his creditors have not impressed a judge overseeing his affairs.
“Mr. Falcone has made it his mission not to pay this money,” said Arthur Engoron, the New York State Supreme Court judge handling his financial mess in a hearing last March.
The judge noted that Falcone faces a $74 million claim from Melody Business Finance, which lent him millions to buy his homes, an IRS lien and a lawsuit by New York State, which claims he owes $12 million in back taxes.
Falcone told the judge he’d skipped mortgage payments and failed to pay private school tuition bills for his twin 16-year-old daughters.
Engoron froze his assets because Falcone — a big short winner who snagged $1.7 billion by betting against mortgage securities prior to the financial crash of 2008 — also allegedly stiffed his lawyers out of $13.7 million after they helped him fight the SEC over fraud allegations.
He eventually settled with the financial watchdog, which had accused him of borrowing $100 million from his hedge fund, the defunct Harbinger Capital, to pay personal taxes. Falcone admitted no wrongdoing but forked over an $18 million fine and agreed to a five-year ban from trading securities.
Meanwhile, he and his wife have made news for all the wrong reasons.
Lisa Maria, an actress and film producer of Puerto Rican descent who grew up in Spanish Harlem, was accused of using the n-word and calling her chef Brian Villanueva’s black girlfriend a “chocolate-covered marshmallow.”
A gay house manager claimed the couple sexually harassed him and made him work from a room where they had kept their pet pig, Wilbur.
A female manager who kept house for three years at the couple’s 14-16 East 67th home alleged that the wife was a demanding taskmaster and told The Post, “Her day of judgment is coming.”
In 2012, Lisa Maria was charged with driving while impaired after allegedly rear-ending another vehicle in the Hamptons. (The Falcones’ sprawling estate in Sagaponack reportedly hit the market in 2021, with an asking price of $27.9 million.)
Two years after Lisa Maria was busted, she and Philip outraged neighbors on Halloween with a gory display outside their Manhattan home on 14-16 East 67th Street that featured a decapitated corpse and a gnome-like creature holding a dead baby.
When reached by The Post, Falcone said that unloading his stuff had nothing to do with raising money to pay debts.
“That’s insane,” he said. “I didn’t know the selling of my couch would make news. It’s so retarded. I mean Jesus Christ. I sold it because I moved. It didn’t fit with what we have now.”
He added: “I’m doing well. I have a public company, Madison Technologies. It’s got a $150 million market cap.”
Falcone expressed optimism about a civil lawsuit he filed in 2017 in Manhattan Supreme Court, which alleges that Apollo Global Management LLC defrauded Harbinger Capital Partners, his defunct hedge fund. It seeks $2 billion, plus damages.
“It’s a $5 billion lawsuit,” he said. “Do you think that’s worth nothing?”
