[edited] The New York DA, Cyrus Vance Jr, is a long-time cultural property crusader. The mantra of the anti-collecting crowd is that most antiquities are looted and those that aren't looted are fake. Sadigh has been a known quantity and a topic of discussion for decades. Why now? What effect might the publicity surrounding forgery on this scale have on the legitimate antiquities trade? Note how the twin themes of looting and forgery were skillfully intertwined in the case of Dr. Arnold-Peter Weiss, prosecuted by Mr. Vance nearly a decade ago: https://online.wsj.com/articles/ancient-greek-coins-are-returned-1407200215 https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/05/nyregion/ancient-coins-returned-to-greece-ending-us-ordeal.html According to Wikipedia, Mr. Vance is set to retire by the end of this year.
Lots more pics on the Daily Mail https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...ent-artifacts-decades-busted-prosecutors.html
No jail time recommended for Sadigh after guilty plea: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/13/arts/design/fake-antiquities-mehrdad-sadigh.html Antiquities Dealer Admits Mass-Producing Fakes He Sold for Years The owner of a longtime Manhattan gallery said in court that while some customers thought they were buying ancient items, they were actually modern knockoffs, just made to look old. By Colin Moynihan Oct. 13, 2021, 11:26 a.m. ET For decades customers interested in all manner of rarities — ancient coins, sarcophagus masks, prehistoric fossils — went to Mehrdad Sadigh’s gallery near the Empire State Building in Manhattan. The items came with certificates of authenticity, and the gallery’s website was filled with accolades from customers who appreciated the gracious touch he brought to his business. “Everything I have acquired from you over the years has more than exceeded my expectations,” one testimonial read. But Mr. Sadigh acknowledged Tuesday during a sentencing hearing that much about his antiquities business was an elaborate scam. “Over the course of three decades I have sold thousands of fraudulent antiquities to countless unsuspecting collectors,” he said, according to the statement he read in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, adding, “I can only say that I was driven by financial greed.” Many of the objects he was selling were not centuries-old artifacts unearthed overseas and imported to New York, investigators had said, but were, rather, phony specimens, mass-produced in a warren of offices just behind his showroom. Mr. Sadigh pleaded guilty to seven felony counts that included charges of forgery and grand larceny. In a sentencing memorandum filed with the court the district attorney’s office asked that Mr. Sadigh, who has no previous record of arrests, be sentenced to five years’ probation and banned from ever again being involved in the sale of antiquities, “both genuine and fake.” [More at link] No mention of any restitution required, either.
Seems a bit lenient, doesn't it? But then again, everyone knew about Sadigh for decades, and the DA's office never went after him at all until now.
Just TERRIBLE! He probably reaped hundreds of thousands…millions?….from his faking. They should confiscate his sales records and notify the purchasers.
I'm imagining family/friends busy in his workshops, cranking out fakes under a new business name. How do seven felonies result in zero time behind bars, no restitution, no fines, etc?
Remember, the real "criminals" in the view of the Antiquities Trafficking Unit are collectors. They likely see fakesters like Sadigh as useful idiots who can be used to promote the idea that the antiquities marketplace is flooded with fakes.
They probably also view his fraud as beneficial, in the sense that -- in their opinion -- for every fake antiquity he manufactured and sold, one less genuine antiquity was looted to satisfy the insatiable demand of Western consumers for other countries' treasures.
Curious indeed that although Sadigh has been a known quantity for decades, his prosecution comes only weeks before Mr. Vance's retirement.
Here's an article with a bit more information. What I found interesting was this: He staved off suspicion for decades by hiring a company to bury customers' complaints about bogus antiques, removing negative reviews from Google searches, and getting others to rave about his store and products in fake reviews. IMHO it just shows that we need to do our research when it comes to these kinds of artifacts (including coins). My suspicion remains that he also stayed under the radar for so long through bribes. Admittedly I'm completely jumping to conclusions here, but it would also make sense that those he did bribe wouldn't want more details uncovered through a lengthy criminal trial. Therefore, it made best sense to all those involved to just send Sadigh into retirement. One frustrating thing is you now have thousands of antiques sold by him that will inevitably circle through the market. Most buyers likely remain clueless that their precious artifacts are fake. For the next few hundred years, collectors and galleries of these antiques will need to painstakingly remove these fakes from the market piece-by-piece.
That is a failure in justice. I can't believe you get convinced of seven felonies and get off with a slap on the wrist, and zero actual impact on your life. Insane.
The cultural property police and fanatics have a way of getting everything wrong that they do. This should have been jail time, restitution, contacting all former customers for refunding what money they could and then destroying every fake they made. England has their laws right and more countries should copy them.
Imagine, instead of antiquities he had faked dollar bills. The state would not have shown so much leniency, I think. As for the victims of this crime, it is possible that there is a serves-them-right kind of attitude involved. When I was a victim of a burglary in London in which some of my coins were stolen, I experienced the same thing. Some of the coins had been offered for sale at a London coin store. The prospective sellers raised the owner's suspicious, because they were black and he said that he never had a black customer in 30 years. I know this is very politically incorrect, but as it turns out his suspicion was right. They tried to sell some of my coins that had been stolen just 1 or 2 days earlier. In court, however, the defence lawyer managed to turn the mood against me, by indicating that it was morally questionable to own historical coins in the first place. She even attacked my credibility. After the judge had addressed me as "Doctor ..." , she asked if I was a medical doctor. When I said that I wasn't (Phd in Economics), she turned to the jury and said that I wasn't a real doctor then. It was a very humiliating experience, especially since the two defendants sat their smirking and going free (because of a formal mistake by the police).