3 charged in scheme to sell stolen ‘Hotel California’ lyrics | Associated Press National

NEW YORK (AP) — A rock memorabilia supplier and two other adult men ended up billed Tuesday with scheming to provide allegedly sick-gotten, handwritten lyrics to the typical rock juggernaut “Hotel California” and other hits by the Eagles.

Prosecutors reported the trio lied to auction homes and purchasers about the manuscripts’ fuzzy chain of origin, coaching the man or woman who supplied the product about what to say. In the meantime, the guys attempted to thwart Eagles co-founder Don Henley’s attempts to reclaim the items, in accordance to prosecutors.

“They manufactured up tales about the origin of the paperwork and their ideal to possess them so they could flip a income,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg claimed.

Via their legal professionals, rock auctioneer Edward Kosinski and co-defendants Glenn Horowitz and Craig Inciardi pleaded not guilty to conspiracy rates. Kosinski and Inciardi had been also billed with felony possession of stolen home, and Horowitz was charged with tried prison possession of stolen property and two counts of hindering prosecution. They ended up launched with no bail.

Their lawyers insist the adult males are harmless.

“The DA’s business office alleges criminality wherever none exists and unfairly tarnishes the reputations of well-respected specialists,” protection lawyers Antonia Apps, Jonathan Bach and Stacey Richman mentioned in a assertion vowing to “fight these unjustified charges vigorously.”

Apps, who represents Kosinski, afterwards identified as the charges “the weakest felony situation I have witnessed in my entire career,” characterizing it as a “civil dispute” about ownership.

“Despite 6 a long time of investigating the situation, the DA hasn’t integrated a one factual allegation in the indictment demonstrating that my client did nearly anything wrong,” she stated in a statement.

The trove of paperwork involved Henley’s notes and lyrics for “Hotel California” and two other singles from that eponymous, blockbuster album: “Life in the Quickly Lane” and “New Kid In Town.” Prosecutors valued the substance at about $1 million.

The writings are “irreplaceable parts of musical history” and “an integral element of the legacy Don Henley has established more than the study course of his 50-plus-12 months profession,” longtime Eagles supervisor Irving Azoff claimed in a assertion.

He thanked prosecutors for bringing a case that exposes “the real truth about music memorabilia product sales of really private, stolen merchandise hidden at the rear of a facade of legitimacy.”

The chart-topping, Grammy-Award-profitable single “Hotel California” is a touchstone of 1970s rock, with a single of the era’s most unforgettable guitar solos capping a musical tale of being lured into a glitzy, mysterious lodge where “you can verify out any time you like, but you can never go away.” Theories about its meaning abound Henley has mentioned it is about extra and a dark facet of the American aspiration.

The Grammy-successful album has marketed extra than 26 million copies due to the fact its launch in 1976, creating it just one of the ideal promoting in history.

According to prosecutors and an indictment, Horowitz acquired the documents all over 2005 from a writer who worked on a by no means-released book about the Eagles in the late ’70s.

The author, who is not discovered in the indictment, gave a assortment of explanations to Horowitz above the several years of where the paperwork came from.

In a single e mail incorporated in the indictment, the writer says Henley’s assistant sent them from the musician’s Malibu, California, residence immediately after the writer picked them out in yet another, the author uncovered them discarded in a dressing room backstage at an Eagles live performance in one more, an individual who labored for the band gave them to him.

“It was about 35 yrs in the past and my memory is foggy!” the author explained in a 2012 e mail.

By then, Kosinski and Inciardi had purchased the paperwork from Horowitz Kosinski experienced stated them for sale on his on-line auction web page and inquiries about their origins were being looming.

In subsequent e-mail, Horowitz and Inciardi labored to have the writer’s “‘explanation’ shaped into a communication” — at some point, an April 2012 e-mail stating that he didn’t remember who gave him the files. Kosinski sent it to Henley’s law firm, in accordance to the indictment.

Later that month, Kosinski bought some “Hotel California” lyric sheets to Henley for $8,500, in accordance to the indictment.

Inciardi and Kosinski then attempted to peddle more of the Eagles paperwork to other probable customers via Christie’s and Sotheby’s auction properties, when also presenting to sell some to Henley, according to the indictment.

By 2017, with not only Henley’s lawyers but the district attorney’s business office asking concerns, Horowitz requested the author no matter if he’d gotten the components from another founding Eagles member, Glenn Frey, the indictment mentioned. Frey experienced died the calendar year right before.

“Once you detect GF as the supply of the tablet, you and I are out of this image for very good,” Horowitz wrote in a observe-up electronic mail.

The writer then presented a be aware to that outcome, according to the indictment.