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February 21, 2023
|Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities Investigations
The artifacts included 64 relief carved stone heads, a bronze inscribed bowl, a stone Funerary Stele from around the 1st century BCE, and 11 pages from an 8th century Quran.
September 29, 2022
|Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities Investigations
A painting stolen from the University of Arizona Museum of Art 37 years ago has been brought back home due in large part by the careful and meticulous planning by special agents with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) in coordination with university police.
August 26, 2022
|Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities Investigations
The Durga Stele was returned during a repatriation ceremony Aug 24 attended by Nepal’s Acting Consul General, Bishnu Gautam, and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) New York Acting Deputy Special Agent in Charge Mike Alfonso.
August 9, 2022
|Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities Investigations
On Aug. 8, Damian Williams, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Ricky J. Patel, acting special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) New York, announced the return of 30 antiquities to the Kingdom of Cambodia, which were stolen as part of an organized looting network and sold by antiquities dealer, Douglas Latchford.
April 15, 2022
|Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities Investigations
ICE's HSI Detroit repatriated two ammonite fossils to Madagascar April 4.
March 2, 2022
|Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities Investigations
The artifacts were transferred from HSI to Honorable Phillippe Etienne, Ambassador of France to the United States, during a repatriation ceremony at the French Embassy in Washington, D.C. Among the repatriated artifacts were a gold coin (3rd century) and five gold ingots (18th century), recovered from the ocean floor where they had remained for centuries, and a human skull (18th century) that was stolen from Paris’ catacombs.
February 25, 2022
|Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities Investigations
There were 28 suspected Pre-Columbian stones and one piece of wooden art identified after a CBP inspection of an incoming ferry boat. Experts from the Puerto Rico Archeological Department indicated that some of the artifacts belonged to the Taino Indian culture and were considered archaeological objects.
January 20, 2022
|Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities Investigations
One of the artifacts is a partial cuneiform stone tablet. Experts say it is thousands of years old and may have left the country during looting at the start of the 20th century.
November 22, 2021
|Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities Investigations
Among the repatriated artifacts were six large funerary urns (circa 900-1700 A.D.); a comb-impressed red slip double cup vessel (circa 800-1500 A.D.); a high-necked polychrome pot (circa 1100-1400 A.D.); and 913 ground and flax stones and axe heads from the Neolithic Period.   
September 24, 2021
|Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities Investigations
The “Gilgamesh Dream Tablet,” originated in what is now modern-day Iraq and entered the United States in violation of federal law. An international auction house (the “Auction House”) later sold the tablet to Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. (“Hobby Lobby”), an arts-and-crafts retailer based in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, for display at the Museum of the Bible.
June 29, 2021
|Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities Investigations
In May 2017, the Ministry of Culture notified HSI Bangkok that two stolen sandstone lintels, from Khmer era sanctuaries, were exhibited at the San Francisco Asian Art Museum. A lintel is an architectural support and artistic element of a structure which is placed over a doorway or window. The artifacts were stolen from northeastern Thailand sometime during the late 1950s or early 1960s. 
May 26, 2021
|Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities Investigations
The return of the lintels to Thailand marks the culmination of a three-year probe by HSI Bangkok, HSI San Francisco, and subsequent prosecution by the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Calif., that resulted in the City of San Francisco’s forfeiture of the sacred artifacts that had been on exhibit at the city’s Asian Art Museum.
April 15, 2021
|Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities Investigations
The pieces include stone arrowheads, knife blades and tools that were illegally imported into the United States from Mexico and offered for sale. The pre-Hispanic period refers to the time before the Spanish conquests in the Western Hemisphere.
March 9, 2021
|Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities Investigations
The HSI Phoenix case began Oct. 8, 2013, when special agents were contacted by a representative of the Chandler Historical Society regarding multiple suspected pre-Columbian Chinesco-Western pottery figures with origins as far back as 100 B.C., which were in the possession of the City of Chandler Museum. HSI special agents promptly met with the museum’s director who turned over 10 Shaft Tomb artifacts for further review and investigation. Through an archeological expert analysis, the authenticity of these artifacts was confirmed as being more than 1,500 years old and originating from Mexico.
February 19, 2021
|Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities Investigations
A Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) probe and Customs and Border Protection seizure resulted in the transfer of 51 Greek Hellenistic and early Islamic coins to the University of Washington Libraries in a ceremony hosted on the UW campus, Thursday.
February 10, 2021
|Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities Investigations
The Thai lintels are two 1,500-pound hand-carved decorative relics which, according to court documents, were originally part of ancient religious temples in Thailand and are prime examples of the decorative lintel and material art traditions of Southeast Asian art.
October 30, 2020
|Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities Investigations
The repatriation Thursday highlights the unique relationship between HSI and Italy, particularly with the in investigating and repatriating cultural property. To date, HSI’s attaché office in Rome has conducted more than 60 investigations in coordination with Comando Carabinieri Tutela Patrimonio Culturale.
September 3, 2020
|Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities Investigations

HSI Dallas was able to locate the painting after receiving a tip from the HSI Attaché Office in Rome, Italy, in 2019. Based on that tip, HSI tracked the painting to a private art collector in the Dallas-area who had purchased the painting in 2015 from a dealer who was unaware that it was stolen.

July 24, 2020
|Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities Investigations

Mohamad Yassin Alcharihi, 53, was named in an indictment that charges him with one count of entry of goods into the United States falsely classified as to quality and value.

July 6, 2020
|Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities Investigations

Following an investigation by ICE’s HSI New York’s CPAA unit with assistance from U.S. CBP, Ashraf Omar Eldarir, a U.S. citizen, is being charged with smuggling Egyptian cultural property into the United States.

May 18, 2020
|Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities Investigations

Pursuant to ongoing Cultural Property, Arts & Antiquities investigations by ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) New York, a civil complaint was filed Monday to forfeit a rare cuneiform tablet bearing a portion of the epic of Gilgamesh, a Sumerian epic poem considered one the world’s oldest works of literature.

April 9, 2020
|Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities Investigations

The first item is an 11th Century sandstone Khmer statue torso of the Khleang style wearing a Khmer sampot, a traditional garment of Cambodia. The second item, dated between the early 10th to late 10th century, is a large gray sandstone Khmer statue torso of an unidentified deity.

January 22, 2020
|Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities Investigations

Following a lengthy investigation by HSI, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Delaware, and the Italian Carabinieri Command for Protection of Cultural Heritage, investigators determined that, sometime in or around 1875, the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana in Venice, Italy acquired a copy of the Columbus Letter-Plannck I, described above. At an unknown time between 1985 and 1988, the Columbus Letter-Plannck I was stolen from the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana.

January 15, 2020
|Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities Investigations

The stone projectile points, used primarily for hunting, were unearthed by Harrie M. Wheeler, a noted Rhode Island collector and amateur archeologist, during excavations that he conducted between 1928 and 1950 in East Greenwich, Rhode Island.

November 25, 2019
|Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities Investigations

In June 2019, HSI was contacted by the son of a former U.S. soldier who had legally purchased two Fernando Amorsolo paintings while stationed in the Philippines near the end of World War II.

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Updated: 03/10/2023