Will investors give the brush off to fraudster’s art collection?

The large art collection of the imprisoned Manhattan lawyer and international playboy Marc Dreier is finally headed for the auction block this fall.

The trustee handling the liquidation of Mr. Dreier’s bankrupt law firm plans to sell more than 80 works of art from the 300-piece collection, according to plans filed earlier this month with the Southern District of New York U.S. Bankruptcy Court.

Pending court approval of the sale’s details at a Sept. 30 hearing, the auction is scheduled for Nov. 21 at Phillips de Pury & Co.

Up for grabs are five Andy Warhol screen prints, three Henri Matisse prints, three Frank Stella works, three David Hockney lithographs, two pieces by Damien Hirst, two by Jasper Johns and works by Roy Lichtenstein, Willem de Kooning and Ellsworth Kelly. The collection also includes old photographs of Audrey Hepburn, Al Pacino and Robert De Niro.

One of the Jasper Johns paintings was predicted to go for about $50,000, an Ellsworth Kelly was estimated to sell for $35,000, and four of the Matisse prints were appraised at $25,000 each while one was valued at about $30,000, according to the auctioneer’s estimates.

It’s turning into a big season for bankruptcy-driven art fairs: Sotheby’s is scheduled to auction off some 400 works from the former Lehman Brothers collection next week. That collection also includes works by Messers. Warhol and Hirst, among others.

Mr. Dreier, founding partner of 250-lawyer Manhattan law firm Dreier LLP, was arrested in December 2008 in Toronto for impersonating another executive while trying to swindle a multi-million dollar investment deal. He was nabbed by the FBI a few days later.

Mr. Dreier’s arrest exposed a $700 million fraud scheme he’d been running for four years, in which he forged promissory notes and closed fictional real estate deals, swindling hedge funds and clients.

Bankruptcy trustee Sheila Gowan, a partner with Diamond McCarthy, said she hopes that Mr. Dreier’s notoriety will create some buzz around the auction.

The Harvard-educated Mr. Dreier had been living large with homes in the Hamptons, condominiums in the West Indies, yachts, expensive sports cars and of course, the art collection.

He pled guilty in 2009 to securities fraud, conspiracy and money laundering, among other criminal charges. He was sentenced to a 20 years in prison, which he is currently serving in Minnesota.

[Crain’s New York Business is a sister publication of InvestmentNews]