Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance, Jr. today announced the return of 200 antiquities valued at an estimated $10 million to the people of Italy during a repatriation ceremony attended by Italy Consul General Fabrizio Di Michele, Italian Carabinieri Tutela Patrimonio Culturale (“TPC”) Brigadier General Roberto Riccardi, and U.S. Homeland Security Investigations (“HSI”) Deputy Special Agent in Charge Erik Rosenblatt.

Pictured (from left to right): Pithos with Odysseus, Head of a Kore, and Baltimore Painter Krater  [Credit: Manhattan District Attorney's Office]

“For years, prestigious museums and private collectors across the United States prominently displayed these Italian historical treasures even though their very presence in America constituted evidence of cultural heritage crimes,” District Attorney Vance. “The repatriation of this dazzling collection of ancient art begins to address some of the damage done by traffickers and shows the need for all collectors and gallery owners performing due diligence and ensuring pieces they purchased were lawfully acquired. I am honored to return these 200 pieces to the people of Italy – our largest such transfer of antiquities to this illustrious nation. I thank my Office’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit and our partners at Homeland Security Investigations for their superb efforts that have resulted in more than 700 treasures being returned to 14 countries since August 2020.”

“The organized looters and smugglers of illicit artifacts and antiquities are indifferent to what ‘priceless’ means, and continue to plunder and exploit the world’s cultural heritage for profit,” said HSI New York Deputy Special Agent in Charge Erik Rosenblatt. “The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and Homeland Security Investigations lead the global fight against transnational criminal organizations who are clearly wrong to believe they can operate with impunity in New York. Today, we have the privilege to send home 200 pieces of stolen history to the government of Italy, and we will continue to use this momentum to hold traffickers accountable and dismantle these depraved organizations driven by greed.”

“It is a source of great satisfaction to see years of bilateral cooperation between the Italian and American authorities, and notably between the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, the Homeland Security Investigations, and the Carabinieri, resulting in the return to Italy of hundreds of precious antiquities, dating back as early as to 2500 years B.C.E.,” said Italy’s Consul General Fabrizio Di Michele. “We have selected some of these artefacts for a special exhibit at the Consulate Generale and at the Italian Cultural Institute, in order to make some of these masterpieces, stolen or looted in Italy in the past, available to New York’s public before their handover to our Ministry of Culture.”

Among the items returned today, 150 were seized pursuant to the investigation of Italy native and former New York City resident EDOARDO ALMAGIÀ.

For several years, the Manhattan D.A.’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit, along with law enforcement partners at HSI, investigated ALMAGIÀ for trafficking ancient art from Italy, which he subsequently sold out of his gallery and apartment in New York. Like most traffickers, ALMAGIÀ used different tombaroli(tomb raiders) to loot and smuggle artifacts from different areas of Italy, including the country’s southern and central regions, Sicily, and Sardinia. ALMAGIÀ subsequently utilized a “network of scholars, directors, and curators of the most important international museums” to place stolen objects, according to an expert’s findings adopted by an Italian court. To date, the D.A.’s Office and HSI have executed 18 seizures of 160 antiquities trafficked by ALMAGIÀ. This total includes 10 pieces seized earlier this month from ancient art collector MICHAEL STEINHARDT, which will be repatriated to Italy at a later date.

According to court documents filed in the criminal grand jury investigation of STEINHARDT, ALMAGIÀ kept a ledger labeled the “Green Book,” in which he listed many of the antiquities he sold, the price he paid the tombarolofor each antiquity, the price for which he sold it, and occasionally, to whom he sold the antiquity. The complete ledger contains entries for almost 1,700 looted antiquities that ALMAGIÀpurchased from tombaroliin Italy and then sold in the United States.Available evidence reveals ALMAGIÀexpressed surprising candor with his clientele about his black-market supply of looted antiquities. For example, in order to inform them of objects that he would soon be able to offer for sale, he provided clients with details of ongoing clandestine and illegal excavations.

Based on this criminal activity, Italian prosecutors brought charges against ALMAGIÀ in Italy in 2006 for knowingly committing crimes against the cultural heritage of Italy. The indictment included charges of receiving stolen goods, illegally exporting goods, and participating in a criminal conspiracy to traffic such goods. Ultimately, however, the charges were dropped because of the running of the statute of limitations. Nonetheless, in 2013, the presiding judge of the Tribunale Ordinario di Roma ordered the confiscation of ALMAGIÀ’s antiquities that had already been seized in New York and Naples, as well as those of ALMAGIÀ’s antiquities that had yet to be located.The presiding judge described ALMAGIÀ as “contribut[ing] to what was one of the greatest sacks of Italian cultural heritage, based on sheer amount of stolen goods,” and added that he and his co-conspirators have “torn pages from the book of Italian history.” ALMAGIÀ remains at large in Italy.

The items returned today included:

- Ninety-six pieces with an estimated value of $1.8 million seized from the Fordham Museum of Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Art on May 28, 2021. Among these items are 26 works of ancient pottery ranging from Apulian Volute-Kraters (large, open-mouthed containers used to dilute wine with water during banquets and symposia) to tall, ancient Roman jars known as Amphora. Highlights include a Baltimore Painter Krater, dating to 330 B.C.E. and valued at $100,000, and a 5thCentury B.C.E. Hydria valued at $150,000. All but two of the pieces seized from Fordham were trafficked by ALMAGIÀ.

- A Head of a Maiden, dating to 4th Century B.C.E. and valued at $100,000, seized from the New York-based Merrin Gallery on June 28, 2021. Convicted Italian antiquities trafficker GIACOMO MEDICI possessed this terracotta goddess before it surfaced at the gallery in 1997.

- A Pithos with Ulysses, dating to 7th Century B.C.E. and valued at $200,000, seized from the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles on April 2, 2021. A pithos was a large ceramic vessel that the Etruscans used for storing grain, oil, and wine, and even burying dead. This item and six others seized from the Getty Museum were trafficked by ALMAGIÀ.

Source: Manhattan District Attorney's Office [December 16, 2021]