A person was sentenced to 6 months in jail for trafficking practically 600 Egyptian antiquities by means of John F. Kennedy Worldwide Airport (JFK), together with a aid with a Ptolemaic-era cartouche, an entire gold funerary amulet set, and picket sculptures relationship again to roughly 1900 BCE, federal prosecutors introduced final week.
A picket sculpture that Eldarir tried to smuggle from Egypt
Ashraf Omar Eldarir, a 52-year-old Brooklyn resident, pleaded responsible to 4 counts of smuggling earlier this yr, in accordance with america Legal professional’s Workplace for the Jap District of New York. On every event, he used pretend provenances to hide the trafficked artifacts’ illicit historical past and subsequently promote the objects to a number of distinguished US-based public sale homes.
A licensed doctor in Egypt, Eldarir was first arrested in January 2020 for making an attempt to smuggle 590 bubble-wrapped uncommon artifacts by means of Customs and Border Safety (CBP) at JFK. Upon looking his baggage, customs officers famous that the suitcases have been stuffed with “loose sand or dirt” and a few of the objects “smelled of wet earth” — tell-tale indicators of current illicit excavation, in accordance with court docket filings.
The lot, which included a big Egyptian stone face, a pair of Osiris headpieces, and a Greco-Roman terracotta headless torso, was later appraised at $82,000, the court docket papers say.
“When asked about the various pieces of stone, wood, and ceramic pieces, Eldarir stated that they were items to decorate his two-bedroom apartment,” a February 2020 court docket submitting learn.
Authorities additionally discovered supplies Eldarir allegedly used to falsify the objects’ provenance, together with “decades-old” Egyptian watermarked stationery and free stamps and a number of doctored “old-looking photographs purporting to depict an ancestor of the defendant displaying several of the artifacts in his office from long ago,” an August 2025 court docket submitting learn.
Two artifacts that Eldarir had in his baggage, which have been stuffed with sand and dust from current unlawful excavations
Artwork crime professor and Hyperallergic contributor Erin L. Thompson commented that antiquities smugglers have been implementing fraudulent provenance schemes “ever since museums and auction houses began to ask for provenance information.”
“The question is why the people who are supposed to check this paperwork are fooled over and over again by these obvious forgeries,” Thompson mentioned, pointing to a different high-profile case wherein the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork acquired a looted historic gilded coffin for roughly $4 million.
“The answer is that they want to be fooled,” Thompson mentioned.
A limestone bust that was among the many illicitly trafficked artifacts
Investigators have been in the end in a position to untangle Eldarir’s smuggling internet utilizing geotagged and timestamped photographic proof in his cellphone. Additionally they consulted with an Egyptologist on the British Museum, which holds its personal assortment of contested objects, to find out that his illicit antiquities dealings dated again so far as roughly December 2011 and spanned greater than 500 Egyptian relics. Public sale homes supplied lots of these things, mentioned the August 2025 court docket submitting, “similarly (and fraudulently) purporting to reflect that they came from the same pre-1948 family collection of Egyptian antiquities,” earlier than it turned unlawful to take away Egyptian antiquities.
“Auction houses and dealers would have many fewer antiquities to sell if they spotted all the fake artifacts and fake paperwork they’re offered — it’s in their financial interest to be fooled,” Thompson mentioned. “This allows them to blame the smuggler when they’re caught.”
A limestone aid
One among 590 artifacts that Eldarir had in his suitcases
