Army Pilot Nabbed for Selling Stolen Artifacts

An Army helicopter pilot has been charged with selling dozens of ancient Egyptian artifacts to a Texas art dealer.

The *New York Times *reports that the pilot, Chief Warrant Officer Edward George Johnson, "was charged with one count of wire fraud and one count of transportation of stolen property, according to a federal complaint unsealed in United States District Court in Manhattan. He could be sentenced to as much as 15 years in prison if he is convicted."

The items he is accused of selling — mostly pottery dating to 3000 B.C. or earlier — were stolen from the Ma’adi Museum near Cairo in September
2002, the complaint said...

*Mr. Johnson, who is known as Dutch, was deployed to Cairo with the Army from February to
October 2002. He flew attack and scout helicopters. *

In January
2003, the authorities said, Mr. Johnson contacted an art dealer in
Texas and offered to sell him a collection of Egyptian antiquities. He told the dealer that the artifacts had been acquired by his grandfather, who had worked for a mineral company in Egypt in the 1930s and ’40s, the authorities said.

During a two-week period in the spring of 2003, the dealer sent Mr. Johnson four checks totaling about
$20,000 for the artifacts, the complaint said. The dealer, whose name was not released by the authorities, sold them on consignment to galleries and private collectors in New York, London, Zurich and
Montreal.

"The dealer is cooperating with the government to some extent," the Times adds. And the big auction houses might also be involved in the case, at least tangentially. Prosecutors tell the New York Sun that "the dealer had at one point been one associated with Sotheby's online venture, which the auction house has discontinued." According to Bloomberg News, "the dealer tried to market the collection in 2005 through rival
Christie's International."

(Photo: NYDN)