Man Who Tried to Smuggle 600 Looted Ancient Egyptian Artifacts in Three Checked Suitcases Is Going to Prison

Ashraf Omar Eldarir failed to declare the stolen goods when he entered the United States through New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport in 2020

Sonja Anderson | Daily Correspondent

September 8, 2025

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A man who attempted to smuggle hundreds of ancient Egyptian artifacts into the United States has been sentenced to six months in prison. Ashraf Omar Eldarir, 52, was caught with looted objects in his luggage at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport in 2020, and he pled guilty to four counts of smuggling earlier this year.

Eldarir had been running a “smuggling network,” according to a statement from the United States attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York. Investigators recovered 600 artifacts from its web, including the 590 he brought into the airport inside three large suitcases on January 22, 2020.

Valued at about $82,000, Eldarir’s haul included gold funerary amulets, wooden sculptures from tombs and linen garments dating to about 1900 B.C.E., during Egypt’s Middle Kingdom period.

“The defendant looted Egypt’s cultural treasures and lied to U.S. Customs about them as part of a web of deception he spun to illegally fill his pockets with cash,” says Joseph Nocella Jr., U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, in the statement. “Those who steal cultural treasures of other countries and smuggle them into the United States should know that they will be held accountable for their crimes.”

The artifacts were “so fresh out of the ground that prosecutors said that they still smelled of soil,” reports USA Today’s Michael Loria. On Eldarir’s cell phone, investigators found videos made by tomb robbers in Egypt showing looted artifacts “as if it were K-Mart and here’s your pick to choose from,” said William Campos, the assistant U.S. attorney, in court.

Eldarir had been smuggling artifacts from Egypt and selling them to private customers since 2011, netting “tens of thousands of dollars,” per the sentencing letter. He fabricated and forged proof of artifacts’ provenances, and he alleged that the items belonged to his grandfather’s collection. Photoshopped images of objects with Eldarir’s ancestor were found among his “forgery toolkit.”

Smugglers have been faking documents of origin “ever since museums and auction houses began to ask for provenance information,” art crime expert Erin L. Thompson tells Hyperallergic’s Maya Pontone. “The question is why the people who are supposed to check this paperwork are fooled over and over again by these obvious forgeries. … The answer is that they want to be fooled.”

Other artifacts Eldarir successfully sold prior to the airport bust are detailed in the sentencing letter. He took countless flights from Cairo to New York during his decade of crime. In 2018, he ferried in a woman’s sarcophagus lid, a bearded mask and another larger mask, which he sold for $3,750, $1,500 and $800, respectively. These pieces were purchased by “unwitting buyers,” per the sentencing letter.

In 2019, Eldarir smuggled a polychrome relief depicting a person beside an upright snake, which he sold for nearly $4,000. Later that year, he brought in two ancient Roman artifacts made of limestone, which he sold for $1,000 and $1,200.

“This is a serious crime that was going on in a pretty blatant way,” said Judge Rachel P. Kovner at Eldarir’s sentencing, per USA Today. “Cell phone evidence indicates they were fresh from the ground; he was marking which ones he wanted, which ones not with an ‘X’; and making up the provenance.”

In total, Eldarir sold about 500 objects between 2011 and 2019, netting more than $600,000. The attorney’s office suggested “imprisonment of at least 36 months,” but Kovner was more lenient: She sentenced Eldarir to six months in federal prison and did not levy a fine, as his assets had already been seized by the government of Egypt.

Eldarir is a medical doctor who is licensed in Egypt. However, he decided illegal smuggling was “more financially lucrative,” writes the attorney’s office. In court, Eldarir apologized to his wife and his mother, who died soon after Eldarir was caught, reports USA Today. He said, “I ask her soul for forgiveness because she couldn’t bear the news.”

Grave robbing has been occurring in Egypt for thousands of years. As Smithsonian magazine’s Sara Novak reported in 2024, looting was most prevalent in the First and Second Intermediate Periods. Ancient Egyptians buried members of the elite with riches, which they believed would accompany the deceased into the afterlife. Gold sarcophagi, jewelry and fine art were all sealed into sacred tombs.

Today, U.S. border authorities regularly encounter smugglers. Just this year, agents have recovered 558 objects, reports USA Today. Those artifacts came from the United Arab Emirates, Cyprus, Denmark, Hong Kong, Morocco, Spain, Pakistan and the United Kingdom. Earlier this year, the Manhattan district attorney’s office announced that it had returned 11 antiquities to Egypt—part of a trove of 135 recovered items valued at more than $58 million.

The tragedy of a trafficked artifact is “about the complete and almost irreversible loss of our history,” forensic archeologist Christos Tsirogiannis tells USA Today. “It doesn’t matter if the object's made with gold, platinum or filled with diamonds. This fascinating, unique object will have nothing to tell us about who we are and who we came from and what that means for our civilization.”

Sonja Anderson | Read More

Sonja Anderson is a writer and reporter based in Chicago.