An Egyptian former physician has been sentenced to six months in a US federal prison for smuggling ancient artefacts into the country. Ashraf Omar Eldarir was convicted in New York after authorities uncovered a long-running smuggling scheme that channelled hundreds of looted objects from Egypt into the international art market.
Eldarir was stopped at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport in January 2020, when customs officers opened his luggage and found 590 ancient artefacts concealed in bubble wrap and foam. Authorities said that the packages, when opened, released the smell of wet earth and spilled sand, suggesting the objects had been very recently excavated. Among the artefacts were gold funerary amulets and wooden tomb models dressed in linen, dating to around 1900BC.
Eldarir pleaded guilty earlier this year to four counts of smuggling. On 27 August, Judge Rachel P. Kovner handed down the six-month sentence in Brooklyn federal court. More than 600 artefacts have now been seized as part of the investigation and will be repatriated to Egypt, according to the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York.
According to prosecutors, Eldarir’s pivot from licensed physician to antiquities smuggler began during the Egyptian revolution in 2011, when widespread looting created opportunities for traffickers to amass a fresh supply of heritage objects. “Robbers sent him videos of the objects from the grave sites, as if it were Kmart and ‘here’s your pick to choose from’”, William Campos, the assistant US attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement.
Investigators described a network of contacts in Egypt that supplied Eldarir with freshly looted artefacts. “This is not some case of Jean Valjean stealing a loaf of bread,” Campos said in court, according to USA Today. “This is the case of a longtime trafficker.”
Eldarir regularly travelled between Cairo and New York, supplying objects to dealers and auction houses. Among his outlets was Palmyra Heritage, run by the antiquities dealer Morris Khouli. Khouli himself pleaded guilty in 2012 to smuggling Egyptian cultural property, including a Greco-Roman sarcophagus and a nesting coffin set, after a Homeland Security investigation revealed he used false shipping labels and fabricated customs paperwork to move objects through Dubai into the US.
Eldarir’s case shows the vulnerability of the global antiquities trade and underscores the need for rigorous due diligence. According to The National, the British Museum acquired an ancient shabti or figurine from Eldarir, who claimed it had belonged to his grandfather. A spokesperson for the British Museum told The National its acquisition policy was tightened in 2024 to ensure that objects are purchased only after “satisfactory due diligence and all reasonable enquiries”.
Prosecutors had sought a far harsher penalty, arguing that Eldarir’s activities were deliberate, sustained and profitable. They asked the court to impose a three-year sentence and a $10,000 fine, describing the defendant as a seasoned trafficker who had shown little remorse. Judge Kovner ultimately handed down a lighter six-month sentence, citing Eldarir’s guilty plea. The outcome contrasts sharply with the punishments in other art crime cases. Last year, for instance, the American forger Earl Marshawn Washington—who sold fake Renaissance woodblock prints under the alias River Seine—was sentenced to more than four years in prison and was ordered to pay over $200,000 in restitution.
