Inside ICE: Volume 4, Issue 2

ICE Agents Seize Dinosaur Eggs and Diamonds

These fossilized dinosaur eggs are believed to be those of a predatory raptor that roamed the earth during the Cretaceous Period more than 65 million years ago.

Uncut diamonds seized by ICE.

ICE agents have recently investigated and made seizures in two high-interest cases.

Agents seized a nearly perfectly preserved nest of fossilized dinosaur eggs that was apparently smuggled out of China.

ICE was tipped off by a December USA Today article touting the upcoming sale of the eggs by Bohnams and Butterfields Auction House. Bohnams and Butterfields is cooperating fully with the ongoing investigation.

The USA Today story estimated the fossilized eggs’ value at more than $200,000, stating that the nest was unearthed in China’s Guangdon Province during the early 1980s and was ultimately purchased by an American collector in 2003.

In addition, the original shipping label on the nest declared its value to be $500. Experts now estimate its worth as much as $350,000. ICE agents say undervaluing imported goods is a common ploy used by smugglers attempting to avoid detection, since merchandise worth more than $2,500 is subject to formal importation procedures.

In another case, two men appeared in U.S. District Court in Tucson on last month for a detention and preliminary hearing on federal charges that they smuggled African diamonds into the United States and attempted to sell them to undercover agents for ICE posing as gem buyers.

The defendants, Maliki Mohamad Diane, 60, and Kouyate Saoud, 49, were arrested February 4 after ICE agents executed a search warrant for their motel room and recovered more than 11,000 carats of rough diamonds, along with an array of other precious and semi-precious stones. ICE received substantial assistance in the investigation from the Arizona Attorney General’s office.

Saoud, a national of Guinea, and Maliki Diane, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Sierra Leone who now resides in New Jersey, are charged with violating the Clean Diamond Trade Act, a 2003 law that prohibits the importation of diamonds into the United States unless the stones undergo strict certification procedures, known as the Kimberly Process, designed to control the trade of so-called "conflict diamonds."

The pair came under suspicion after Saoud told ICE undercover agents who approached him at one of the venues of the Tucson Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Showcase that he had uncut diamonds for sale.

If convicted of the charges, the men face a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, or both.

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