PORTLAND, Ore. (ACNI) – For more than four years, law enforcement agencies pursued rogue auctioneer Robert W. Mathisen across the country, intent on extraditing him back to Oregon to face multiple felony charges. But Mathisen will never see his day in court or face the more than two dozen Oregon citizens – many of them elderly – whom he allegedly cheated by taking both their money and antiques they had consigned to his Portland auction company, Professional Auction Group. Mathisen, 63, died of a heart attack on the morning of Feb. 12 as he was being transported by Multnomah County sheriff’s deputies to board a flight back to Oregon for arraignment.

On Jan. 29, 2009, U.S. Marshals tracked down and arrested Mathisen in Buffalo, New York. He had been on the run since 2004 and was wanted for a laundry list of crimes including aggravated theft for failure to pay consignors after selling their property, cherry-picking and keeping valuables that should have been auctioned, and fraudulently borrowing thousands of dollars in cash from victims who never saw their money again.

Because he was a previously convicted felon (1994 conviction for racketeering, theft by deception), Mathisen was also wanted for “felon possession of a firearm,” since seven collectible guns were among the cache of goods he allegedly stole from consignors. Police estimated that, in all, Mathisen had fled the state of Oregon with an estimated $1.7 million worth of antiques, furniture, jewelry and other personal property stolen from consignors.

A turning point in the case came in 2006 when one of Mathisen’s three sons, Darryl – who claimed he had been bilked by his own father – came forward with information that led police to the Chicago suburb of Mundelein. It is believed that Mathisen and his wife, Ginger, had been living there and that during their time spent under the radar in Illinois, Robert Mathisen had consigned some of the ill-gotten gains to Direct Auction Galleries, an unsuspecting auction house in Chicago that has no involvement with the felony case.

The illicitly consigned items were to have been auctioned in a March 28, 2006 sale, with proceeds payable to Mathisen. According to police, Mathisen fabricated a tale about his ownership of the goods, telling Direct Auction Galleries he needed to dispose of the articles because his wife was suffering from cancer. In fact, Mathisen’s wife was not ill. 

While authorities moved in fast enough to prevent the stolen goods from being auctioned in Chicago, they weren’t fast enough to apprehend Mathisen, who, by then, had moved on with his wife, ultimately to New York state.

Mathisen’s fugitive life ended in the back seat of a police car as he was being transported to Buffalo Niagara International Airport. There he was to have boarded a flight back to Portland to be arraigned and presumably tried in a criminal court. Information was not immediately available to Auction Central News regarding the whereabouts of Ginger Mathisen, who had not been charged with any crimes as of the time this article was filed.

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