Behind the Scenes with ICE

Melissa Klein of the New York Post ('Rogue's gallery -- the Queens warehouse that holds a fortune in stolen art') takes her readers behind the scenes in a nondescript Queens (New York) warehouse owned by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Here, locked in a climate-controlled storage unit, the ICE stores items seized in the New York area and retained there as potential evidence in smuggling or forgery cases. Other items are awaiting return to countries where they were stolen from museums or plundered from archeological digs. The store currently contains some 2,500 antiquities and art objects.

New York, as a capital of the art world, is a major center of the illicit art and antiquities trade, which has been estimated as a $6 billion a year business worldwide. Nationally, ICE agents logged 63 antiquity seizures in 2009 and 46 from Oct. 1, 2009, through last Thursday. [James McAndrew, the ICE senior special agent in charge of cultural property] said his group of seven agents scrutinize some 200 suspect pieces a day to determine their provenance, or ownership history, and whether they are legit. Fishy-looking shipments may catch the eye of customs officers who look for phony countries of origin such as "Babylon" or suspiciously low values declared on packages. Tipsters also alert McAndrew about particular shipments or smugglers.

Some of the back stories of the items currently stored in the museum are revealing.
In one case, officials in India told the ICE to watch for artifacts mislabeled as lawn furniture.

When a crate marked “garden table sets” arrived by ship in Newark, customs officers called McAndrew, who raced to the port along with a top official with India’s Consulate General in New York. The crate was opened to reveal hundreds of statues of Indian deities looted from temples and private homes. McAndrew said he had a sense of satisfaction mixed with dismay. “At least call it trinkets,” he said. “It was such a blatant ruse.” The 600 or so pieces, some dating to the 4th century, have been stored at the Queens warehouse for three years as an investigation went forward. McAndrew said the New York dealer who was to receive the stolen goods claimed ignorance and was never charged because agents couldn’t prove otherwise. The artifacts are soon to be returned to the Indian government.

The warehouse also held 79 vases, vessels, bowls and other ancient artifacts stolen from an Egyptian museum by a US Army helicopter pilot stationed in Cairo. Edward “Dutch” Johnson used his diplomatic status to ship the pieces out of the country and then sold them for $21,200 — some ending up in Manhattan galleries. He was arrested in 2008 and later pleaded guilty.

Among the hidden treasures in the warehouse is a rhyton (a griffin-shaped ceremonial drinking vessel) that dates to 700 BC.

The vessel was looted from an Iranian cave and hand carried to the US in 2000 by an Upper East Side art dealer who deliberately misidentified it as a Syrian object to fool authorities. He sold the silver vessel for $950,000. The dealer, Hicham Aboutaam of Phoenix Ancient Art, pleaded guilty in 2004 to falsifying a commercial invoice. Aboutaam paid a $5,000 fine and remains in business. The rhyton, seized from its buyer, sits unceremoniously in the warehouse until US-Iranian relations normalize. [McAndrew said] “This piece can’t go back,”

The warehouse also served as the temporary home of Iraqi loot, such as a statue of the ruler Entemena dating to c. 2400 BC taken from the Baghdad museum. The sculpture was recovered in a Syrian farm village and shipped to the Queens warehouse for authentication. The piece was apparently recovered because antiquities dealer Hicham Aboutaam was approached while visiting Lebanon and shown a picture of the statue to gauge his interest in buying it, but realising that it had been stolen and did not pursue the deal and may have informed authorities. This object was repatriated recently.

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UPDATE: I see the History Blog has a piece based on this article and gives some more explicit detail about the Iranian Western Cave rhyton case.

UPDATE UPDATE 9th December 2013,
The "garden furniture" case seems to be an early reference to Subhash Kapoor ....