Ex-wife sells judgment against scofflaw sheik

updated 1:13 p.m. ET Nov. 8, 2004

LOS ANGELES - For sale: One ex-wife’s $250 million divorce judgment. All the buyer has to do is figure out how to collect from the Saudi royal family.

After battling for more than 20 years to collect the court-ordered judgment, Diana Bilinelli said she has decided to sell it — at a substantial discount — on the chance that others may have better means to track it down.

“It’s a dandy investment opportunity,” said her lawyer, Helen Dorroh-White.

Bilinelli’s late ex-husband, Sheik Mohammed al-Fassi, gained national attention and the wrath of his Beverly Hills neighbors in the 1970s when he painted his mansion — and the genitals on the classic Italian nude statues in his yard — in garish colors.

When an arsonist set the mansion ablaze while he and Bilinelli were out of town in 1980, neighbors chanted “Burn, burn, burn.”

Soon after that, Bilinelli and al-Fassi split over his plans to take more wives, and in 1983 a Los Angeles judge awarded her half his assets, including two Boeing 707 airliners, 36 cars, a yacht, 26 horses, a private zoo and homes in Spain, London and Miami Beach.

Al-Fassi died in Cairo of an infected hernia in 2002 at the age of 50 after claiming he had transferred all of his holdings to relatives, including Saudi King Fahd and his brother Prince Turki.

A court has ruled that Turki is liable for al-Fassi’s debt, but Bilinelli’s attorneys said they have been unable to find his assets.

“Putting the judgment up for sale is the Last Chance Saloon for us,” Dorroh-White said. “It’s the only thing we haven’t tried.”

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