Little glamour surrounds alleged smuggler

It all started when Robert Olson took a trip in the 1970s to Thailand, where he said he picked up an ancient bronze ring and was required to buy it after it broke in his hand.

After learning that collectors and curators back home in Los Angeles were interested in such objects, he made acquiring them his life's work, buying ancient pottery, huge marble sculptures and lacquered Buddhas from Thai middlemen (including, he says, an uncle of the Thai king). He sold them to people who sold them to museums, movie stars and dignitaries.

"I once had a Buddha that weighed 5,000 pounds," Olson boasted. "I got stuff no one else got."

Olson says he never made a lot of money in the trade but enjoyed "turning things around" for a small profit that allowed him to get by. His small apartment, strewn with children's toys, books and unopened mail, does not speak of wealth.

Olson admits that he knew most of the items he was buying had been illegally excavated and that taking them out of Thailand would violate that country's laws. But he emphatically denied being a smuggler.

He said he played no direct role in the shipments and claimed that U.S. customs officials told him repeatedly they were not illegal under American law.

On Jan. 24, however, more than a dozen federal agents appeared at Olson's door at 7:30 a.m. They handed him a detailed search warrant that outlined a five-year undercover operation by "Tom Hoyt," a man Olson believed to be a computer executive and trusted client. Although he has not been charged with a crime, Olson is referred to throughout the warrants as "the smuggler."

The warrants suggest that Olson broke the law by importing goods he knew to be stolen and making false declarations on U.S. customs forms.

That same morning, more than 500 federal agents served similar warrants on 13 locations, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Pasadena's Pacific Asia Museum, the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art in Santa Ana, the Mingei International Museum in San Diego and a private collector's museum in Chicago.

All five of the museums are alleged to have accepted gifts of looted artifacts from donors who in some cases claimed inflated tax write-offs. Many of these objects, according to the warrants, can be traced to Olson.