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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Cherd, post: 24546809, member: 24754&quot;]I&#039;m not 100% sure about the specifics, but the stories that I&#039;ve read speculated that the coin was found (looted) from a historical battlefield site that was federally protected. If this is the case, then claiming &quot;cultural patrimony&quot; on the item has nothing to do with it. It would be like finding an extremely valuable relic in a National Park within the US and keeping it for yourself. The origin story and group to which the item was relevant wouldn&#039;t matter (coin, dinosaur fossil, Native American item, battlefield remnant), the government would come after you for that because it was illegal to have removed it from the park.</p><p><br /></p><p>I&#039;m not assuming the worst about Beale until the case runs its course, but it certainly seems silly to make an angel out of him. At the very least, he paid somebody to sign a document and then passed it off as proof of provenance (from which he profited). And at worst, he was aware that the coin was or may have been illegally looted and chose to profit from it anyway.</p><p><br /></p><p>And, going after one type of criminal (white collar) doesn&#039;t mean that we are not going after others (drug dealers). It would be nice if we had the resources to completely solve all problems on these fronts, but the bottom line is that people should be punished when they do something illegal.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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