What Do Dinosaur Fossils, Fish Bladders and Guns Have in Common?
Inside the strange caseload of Immigration and Customs Enforcement
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents spend most of their time battling drug traffickers and tracking down human smugglers, but their jobs don’t stop there. On a daily basis, the men and women of ICE encounter some pretty weird stuff: ancient human skulls from Peru and a 3,000-year-old Egyptian sarcophagus, not to mention illegal cheeses and tainted snow peas.
Earlier this month, a Wyoming man pleaded guilty in a case involving the smuggling of dinosaur fossils into the country. He wasn’t the first.
Here are some of the more recent—and strange—cases from the files of ICE, the largest investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security.
WHAT: Dinosaur fossils
WHERE: Wyoming and Florida
A “fossil retailer” in Cheyenne will be formally sentenced in March for conspiracy to smuggle dinosaur and other fossilized bones, worth an estimated $2.5 million dollars, into the U.S. from China and Mongolia.
Among the fossils recovered: skulls of a 70-million-year-old Tarbosaurus Bataar (a species of the Tyrannosaurus) with an estimated value of $625,000 apiece, and fossils from a Protoceratops (a horned dinosaur the size of a sheep, which was a precursor of the more well-known Triceratops) worth about $100,000.
The probe began in June 2012, when investigators were tipped off that John Rolater, the aforementioned ”fossil retailer” who ran two stores in Wyoming and Colorado, was selling a T. Bataar skull at his store in Jackson with a placard saying the piece came from Mongolia’s Gobi Desert. That set in motion an undercover investigation that traced the skull to Mongolia where it was excavated in in the mid-1990s and smuggled out of the country. Officials say it was shipped to Rolater in August 2010 from Japan.
About a year earlier, a fossil dealer in Florida was arrested for selling among other things, the nearly-complete skeleton of a T. Bataar. It fetched more than $1 million at auction in New York before ICE agents seized it and numerous other dinosaur fossils that were said to have been smuggled in from Mongolia between 2005 and 2012. The government accused Eric Prokopi of smuggling bones into the country from Mongolia via the U.K. and assembling them into a skeleton.
The skeleton was returned to the government of Mongolia in a ceremony in May last year.
WHAT: Fish bladders
WHERE: Calexico Port of Entry, Mexico-California Border
When U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers stopped a California man at the Calexico port of entry on his way back from Mexico last April, they smelled something fishy in his minivan. Literally. Anthony Sanchez Bueno, the 34-year-old driver of the vehicle, was transporting several coolers filled with fresh fish fillets. Now, there’s nothing necessarily illegal about that. But when they took a closer look, underneath the layers of fish, the officers found 170 bladders that they later determined to be from an endangered fish called the Totoaba.
The officers arrested the driver and later busted a Sacramento businessman who received the bladders in the parking lot of a Jack-in-the Box.
The Totoaba—which can weigh up to 220 pounds—live almost exclusively in Mexico’s Sea of Cortez (also known as the Gulf of California) and has been on the Endangered Species list since 1979. According to the Department of Justice, the Totoaba’s bladder, which is high in collagen, is in great demand on the black market in China where some believe it can “boost fertility and improve circulation and skin vitality.” It is also an ingredient in an ancient Chinese soup recipe.
The bladders, which are removed and dried, sell for as much as $10,000 each.
In total last year, seven people were arrested in a separate case for trying to smuggle Totoaba bladders across the Mexico border.
Though few items can beat dinosaur fossils or dessicated fish bladders for sheer inventiveness in the world of international smuggling, two recent ICE cases stand out for being less weird, but more sinister.
WHAT: Thermal imaging scopes
WHERE: Wyoming
A Russian man was sentenced last week to nearly five months in federal prison on charges of conspiracy to illegally export American-made, military-grade thermal imaging scopes from the U.S. to Russia.
Roman Georgiyevich Kvinikadze, 32, was arrested after an undercover operation that stretched from Wyoming to Las Vegas, where he tried to buy the equipment.
“The U.S. export laws and restrictions help ensure that our own weapons and technologies won’t be used against us or against our military members fighting overseas,” said an ICE official in a statement announcing the conviction.
American Technologies Network, which manufactures the Thermal Imaging Weapon Sights the Russian tried to buy, describes it as “the most advanced night vision technology.” The scopes sell for about $5,000 apiece.
WHAT: Gun parts
WHERE: Washington and California
Two Thai brothers, Nares Lekhakul and his older sibling, Naris, were sentenced on Friday to up to three years in prison for smuggling gun parts from the U.S. to Thailand. Officials say they illegally sent more than 240 shipments of restricted firearms components, including assault weapons parts and shotgun magazines, to Thailand.
Prosecutors say the duo—with the help of several accomplices—used a variety of fake names for invoices and meticulously packed the parts to avoid detection by X-ray scanners. They also disguised the shipments by labeling the packages as ”hobby parts” or “glow in the dark marker sets.”
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents spend most of their time battling drug traffickers and tracking down human smugglers, but their jobs don’t stop there. On a daily basis, the men and women of ICE encounter some pretty weird stuff: ancient human skulls from Peru and a 3,000-year-old Egyptian sarcophagus, not to mention illegal cheeses and tainted snow peas.
Earlier this month, a Wyoming man pleaded guilty in a case involving the smuggling of dinosaur fossils into the country. He wasn’t the first.
Here are some of the more recent—and strange—cases from the files of ICE, the largest investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security.
WHAT: Dinosaur fossils
WHERE: Wyoming and Florida
A “fossil retailer” in Cheyenne will be formally sentenced in March for conspiracy to smuggle dinosaur and other fossilized bones, worth an estimated $2.5 million dollars, into the U.S. from China and Mongolia.
Among the fossils recovered: skulls of a 70-million-year-old Tarbosaurus Bataar (a species of the Tyrannosaurus) with an estimated value of $625,000 apiece, and fossils from a Protoceratops (a horned dinosaur the size of a sheep, which was a precursor of the more well-known Triceratops) worth about $100,000.
The probe began in June 2012, when investigators were tipped off that John Rolater, the aforementioned ”fossil retailer” who ran two stores in Wyoming and Colorado, was selling a T. Bataar skull at his store in Jackson with a placard saying the piece came from Mongolia’s Gobi Desert. That set in motion an undercover investigation that traced the skull to Mongolia where it was excavated in in the mid-1990s and smuggled out of the country. Officials say it was shipped to Rolater in August 2010 from Japan.
About a year earlier, a fossil dealer in Florida was arrested for selling among other things, the nearly-complete skeleton of a T. Bataar. It fetched more than $1 million at auction in New York before ICE agents seized it and numerous other dinosaur fossils that were said to have been smuggled in from Mongolia between 2005 and 2012. The government accused Eric Prokopi of smuggling bones into the country from Mongolia via the U.K. and assembling them into a skeleton.
The skeleton was returned to the government of Mongolia in a ceremony in May last year.
WHAT: Fish bladders
WHERE: Calexico Port of Entry, Mexico-California Border
When U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers stopped a California man at the Calexico port of entry on his way back from Mexico last April, they smelled something fishy in his minivan. Literally. Anthony Sanchez Bueno, the 34-year-old driver of the vehicle, was transporting several coolers filled with fresh fish fillets. Now, there’s nothing necessarily illegal about that. But when they took a closer look, underneath the layers of fish, the officers found 170 bladders that they later determined to be from an endangered fish called the Totoaba.
The officers arrested the driver and later busted a Sacramento businessman who received the bladders in the parking lot of a Jack-in-the Box.
The Totoaba—which can weigh up to 220 pounds—live almost exclusively in Mexico’s Sea of Cortez (also known as the Gulf of California) and has been on the Endangered Species list since 1979. According to the Department of Justice, the Totoaba’s bladder, which is high in collagen, is in great demand on the black market in China where some believe it can “boost fertility and improve circulation and skin vitality.” It is also an ingredient in an ancient Chinese soup recipe.
The bladders, which are removed and dried, sell for as much as $10,000 each.
In total last year, seven people were arrested in a separate case for trying to smuggle Totoaba bladders across the Mexico border.
Though few items can beat dinosaur fossils or dessicated fish bladders for sheer inventiveness in the world of international smuggling, two recent ICE cases stand out for being less weird, but more sinister.
WHAT: Thermal imaging scopes
WHERE: Wyoming
A Russian man was sentenced last week to nearly five months in federal prison on charges of conspiracy to illegally export American-made, military-grade thermal imaging scopes from the U.S. to Russia.
Roman Georgiyevich Kvinikadze, 32, was arrested after an undercover operation that stretched from Wyoming to Las Vegas, where he tried to buy the equipment.
“The U.S. export laws and restrictions help ensure that our own weapons and technologies won’t be used against us or against our military members fighting overseas,” said an ICE official in a statement announcing the conviction.
American Technologies Network, which manufactures the Thermal Imaging Weapon Sights the Russian tried to buy, describes it as “the most advanced night vision technology.” The scopes sell for about $5,000 apiece.
WHAT: Gun parts
WHERE: Washington and California
Two Thai brothers, Nares Lekhakul and his older sibling, Naris, were sentenced on Friday to up to three years in prison for smuggling gun parts from the U.S. to Thailand. Officials say they illegally sent more than 240 shipments of restricted firearms components, including assault weapons parts and shotgun magazines, to Thailand.
Prosecutors say the duo—with the help of several accomplices—used a variety of fake names for invoices and meticulously packed the parts to avoid detection by X-ray scanners. They also disguised the shipments by labeling the packages as ”hobby parts” or “glow in the dark marker sets.”
Comments
Post a Comment