Aldarir Sentenced for Multiple Counts of Smuggling

 

Ancient Egyptian artifact stolen and sold by Eldarir in 2019.

BROOKLYN, NY: A federal judge sentenced Egyptian doctor Ashraf Omar Eldarir to six months in prison for smuggling nearly 600 Egyptian antiquities through JFK. He used fake provenance to funnel gold funerary amulets, wooden tomb models, an ancient Egyptian polychrome relief, an ancient Roman limestone stele, and an ancient Roman limestone head.

The false provenances included “multiple documents, including what appeared to be decades-old Egyptian blank pages with watermarks, decades-old Egyptian loose stamps, and multiple black-and-white old-looking photographs purporting to depict an ancestor of the defendant displaying several of the artifacts in his office from long ago,” stated court documents, which noted forensic examiners determined the documents were forgeries and the photographs had been photoshopped and aged.

Robbers sent Eldarir videos of the objects from the grave sites "as if it were K-Mart and here’s your pick to choose from," William Campos, the assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in court.

Read more here: Man packed luggage with hundreds of looted ancient artifacts, feds say