According to the warrants, Markell at one point told the agent that LACMA was "a stickler" for checking the background of pieces. But the dealer also suggested the museum had pursued objects it knew were looted in the past.
"They knew," Markell said of one artifact LACMA wanted that was taken out of Thailand after a law prohibiting exporting such items was passed there, according to the warrants. "Markell said that LACMA had found a loophole, but he was not clear on what that loophole was."
The 150 pages of warrants filed Thursday paint a picture of rampant fraud and theft.
The charges that follow could include receiving stolen property, import violations and tax fraud. In particular, the warrants show that authorities are building a case that the looted antiquities should be considered stolen property under American law. Thailand has claimed state ownership of all artifacts since 1961, and American law would recognize that claim if certain conditions are met, said Marcia Isaacson, a former New York federal prosecutor who won a pivotal antiquities conviction several years ago.
The investigation targets art allegedly stolen from Thailand, China, Myanmar and Native American archeological sites that ended up in museums across the Southland.
The contested objects are far less valuable than those returned by the Getty but they are far more numerous, and some of the alleged conduct by museum officials, contained in hours of tape-recorded meetings, appears equally troubling.
Many come from the ancient civilization of the Ban Chiang, which occupied northeastern Thailand from 1000 BC to AD 200. "The original location where Ban Chiang culture was discovered was named a World Heritage Site in 1992 and is considered the most important prehistoric settlement yet discovered in Southeast Asia," the warrants say.
The warrants allege that the Ban Chiang objects are probably looted because they were first excavated by archeologists in 1967, six years after Thailand banned the export of antiquities.
The Thai government never gave permission for the contested antiquities to leave the country. Moreover, importing such objects into the United States after 1979 was a violation of the U.S. National Stolen Property Act and the Archeological Resource Protection Act, the warrants state.
