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December 10, 2015
|Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities Investigations
HSI Cleveland and HSI New York worked jointly to investigate Eric Prokopi, of Florida, who later pleaded guilty to engaging in a scheme to illegally import dinosaur fossils. According to court documents and statements made in Manhattan federal court, Prokopi owned and ran a business out of his Florida home and is a self-described commercial paleontologist.
November 17, 2015
|Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities Investigations
Representatives from the David Owsley Museum of Art at Ball State University transferred Monday a religious relic known as a Festival Bronze of Shiva and Parvati to the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).
October 14, 2015
|Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities Investigations
Charles Magovern, 67, of Boulder, Colorado, was sentenced in Wyoming federal court to one year supervised probation for smuggling paleontological specimens and aiding abetting. As part of an agreement made with the government, Magovern also returned all fossils under his control.
October 8, 2015
|Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities Investigations
The book titled “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life,” returned today was stolen from Mount Saint Vincent University Library in Bedford, Nova Scotia, Canada, by convicted antiquities smuggler John Mark Tillman, 51, of Fall River, Nova Scotia.
September 29, 2015
|Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities Investigations
The Centre Pomidou welcomed the 1911 Picasso painting “La Coiffeuse” home last week after a prolonged absence from the museum’s archives.
August 13, 2015
|Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities Investigations
|
Fourteen years after its reported theft from a Paris museum, a Pablo Picasso painting will be returned to France. The repatriation of “La Coiffeusse” follows an investigation led by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) as a part of Operation Toile.
July 24, 2015
|Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities Investigations
The ancient coins were originally detained in March 2014 during a routine inspection at the Port of Cincinnati cargo facility by CBP officers before the investigation was turned over to HSI. The intended recipient told investigators the coins were of Middle Eastern origin based on information received from an overseas seller.
July 1, 2015
|Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities Investigations
HSI special agents have tracked multiple false provenances provided by Subhash Kapoor, the owner of Art of the Past Gallery, who has been implicated in the HSI probe dubbed Operation Hidden Idol.
June 18, 2015
|Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities Investigations
The painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat, called “Hannibal, or “The Basquiat” as well as a Roman Togatus statue, were returned to Brazil at a repatriation ceremony at the United States Attorney’s Office in New York City.
April 22, 2015
|Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities Investigations
|
On Sept. 8, 2009, HSI New York recovered the nesting sarcophagus from a garage in Brooklyn, New York. One year later, on Sept. 24, 2010, following leads from the Brooklyn case, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers at the Detroit Metropolitan Airport seized a shipment of smuggled Egyptian goods, including a funerary boat model and figurines.
April 1, 2015
|Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities Investigations
Representatives from the Honolulu Museum of Art Wednesday transferred seven rare antiquities to the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) after an ongoing international smuggling probe by HSI determined the objects had likely been looted from India and brought to the U.S. illegally.
March 25, 2015
|Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities Investigations
David Philip Ryan, 50, of Miami pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to transport stolen firearms.
March 16, 2015
|Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities Investigations
More than 60 Iraqi cultural treasures illegally smuggled into the United States were returned to the Republic of Iraq Monday, following five separate investigations led by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). The objects were seized at the culmination of investigations led by HSI offices in New York; Baltimore, Maryland; Austin, Texas; and New Haven, Connecticut. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the Southern District of New York U.S. Attorney’s Office assisted in two of the investigations.
February 26, 2015
|Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities Investigations

Foster, along with HSI and Embassy Rome officials, visited several archeological sites in the Lazio Region. In a visit to Ceveteri, an ancient Etruscan archeological site that has been subjected to recent looting, the U.S. team observed a community effort to work with archaeologists to better excavate tombs before looters could remove the contents.

February 24, 2015
|Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities Investigations
During the course of two separate investigations, HSI New York seized two stolen cultural treasures from Christie’s auction house in New York. The TPC contacted HSI Rome to help locate a Lucanian red-figured bell krater (circa 420-400 B.C.) and other stolen artifacts. That tip led HSI New York special agents to Christie’s where they seized the stolen krater in July 2013.
January 22, 2015
|Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities Investigations
Over 5,000 looted artifacts valued at more than $50 million Euros were illicitly traded by Gianfranco Becchina, an Italian national and one of Italy’s most prolific traffickers of illicit cultural property. HSI became involved in one of the Becchina investigations after receiving a lead from Carabinieri TPC regarding looted objects being offered for sale by a New York auction house.
December 9, 2014
|Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities Investigations
Assistant Secretary Bersin signed the Customs Mutual Assistance Agreement (CMAA) on behalf of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), two DHS agencies responsible for enforcing U.S. customs laws.
December 9, 2014
|Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities Investigations
The repatriation ceremony at the Turkish Consulate in Manhattan was conducted by Andrew M. McLees, special agent in charge of HSI Newark; Robert E. Perez, director of CBP New York field operations, and Turkish Consul General Ertan Yalcin.
December 9, 2014
|Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities Investigations
On Monday, at a formal ceremony at Gyeongbok Palace, HSI Seoul Attaché Taekuk Cho was presented with the Korean President’s Award for his efforts related to the repatriation of the nine national treasures. This award is the highest honor bestowed upon an individual and the highest award given by the Korean government. Cho is only the fifth non-Korean national to receive this prestigious award in Korean history.
December 1, 2014
|Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities Investigations
Upon its Sept. 4 arrival in the United States from France, the Dinosaur Skull was seized by CBP. Federal authorities then filed a civil action to forfeit the dinosaur skull, alleging that it was stolen Mongolian property that was smuggled into the United States using false declarations. The allegations in the United States’ complaint went uncontested and the court ordered the forfeiture of the dinosaur skull.
November 17, 2014
|Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities Investigations
The pre-Columbian artifacts include three bowls and three goblets that are from the area near the Colombia-Ecuador border and are from between 800-1500AD. CBP officers in Miami seized the artifacts after they were identified during a routine air cargo inspection. The artifacts were later turned over to the HSI Bogota Attaché for repatriation.
October 21, 2014
|Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities Investigations
Items returned included two Colonial-era Cusco paintings, a funerary vessel from 100-1532 A.D., a Chancay statue from 1200-1450 A.D., a Lambayeque-style vessel from 800-1300 A.D., and Incan artifacts looted from ancient Peruvian graves.
August 3, 2014
|Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities Investigations
On Jan. 3, 2012, HSI New York and HSI Attaché Rome arrested Arnold Peter Weiss, 54, at the Waldorf Astoria hotel. At the time of his arrest, Weiss, a Rhode Island resident, believed himself to be in possession of two stolen dekadrachma from Agrigento, Sicily. Under Italian law, the removal of any artifacts discovered in the region after 1909 is prohibited by the country's cultural heritage and protection laws. Weiss, however, believed the stolen coins to be worth millions of dollars, and planned to trade them at a New York auction.
July 21, 2014
|Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities Investigations
A ceremony was held at ICE headquarters in Washington to commemorate the MOU signing, the first of its kind between a U.S. agency and an agency from the Republic of Korea. The MOU was signed by ICE Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Thomas S. Winkowski and CHA Administrator Sun-hwa Rha.
July 9, 2014
|Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities Investigations
The repatriation ceremony was conducted by James T. Hayes, special agent in charge of HSI New York; Preet Bharara, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York; and Od Och, ambassador, permanent representative of Mongolia to the United Nations.
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