* Mongolia says skeleton stolen from Gobi Desert
* Charges say Prokopi made huge profits selling bones
* 70-million-year-old skeleton sold for $1.05 million
By Barbara Goldberg
Oct 17 (Reuters) – A Florida man described as “a one-man
black market in prehistoric fossils” was arrested on Wednesday
on charges of smuggling dinosaur skeletons from Mongolia,
authorities said.
The arrest of Eric Prokopi, 38, of Gainesville, Florida,
comes amid an international custody battle over a Tyrannosaurus
bataar skeleton seized by the U.S. government shortly after it
was auctioned in Manhattan in May for $1.05 million.
“Our recent seizure of the Tyrannosaurus bataar skeleton
from Eric Prokopi was merely the tip of the iceberg,” Preet
Bharara, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New
York, said in a statement.
“Our investigation uncovered a one-man black market in
prehistoric fossils,” he said.
The dinosaur seizure and subsequent charges against Prokopi
were sparked by Mongolia’s claim that the 70-million-year-old
skeleton was stolen from the Gobi Desert and should be returned.
Mongolian law prohibits the removal of dinosaur remains for
private gain.
Prokopi, a commercial paleontologist who sells coral,
fossils and other natural treasures through his home-based
business at
http://www.everything-earth.com
, is accused of smuggling
dinosaur bones out of Mongolia and China from 2007 and selling
them to auction houses and individuals for enormous profit.
The charges against him are punishable by up to 35 years
in prison.
According to the criminal complaint, the evidence against
Prokopi includes a photograph taken by a Mongolian citizen that
shows Prokopi “physically taking bones out of the ground” at an
excavation site in Mongolia.
OTHER SKELETONS
In addition to the bataar skeleton, the complain accuses
Prokopi of smuggling other prehistoric bones, including:
– A Saurolophus angustirostris, a duckbilled herbivore also
known as a hadrosaur that lived about 68 million years ago in
what is today Mongolia. The fossil was sold for about $75,000 in
May 2012 to a California gallery, which described it on its
website as a “superb crested hadrosaur skeleton… nearly 40
feet (12 meters) long, making it as large as a modern bus.”
– A Microraptor, a small flying dinosaur that cruised the
skies about 65 million years ago over what today is China. The
skeleton was fraudulently described on shipping documents as a
“sample of craft rock” valued at $100 but the sender in a
subsequent email warned Prokopi, “Selling fossils like this is
not allowed in China,” the criminal complaint said.
– A Gallimimus and an Oviraptor – smaller dinosaurs that
lived about 65 million years ago. According to the criminal
complaint, in an email to a trader in 2010, Prokopi said the
Gallimimus was found near the Bugin Tsav region of Mongolia.
The complaint said Prokopi often undervalued the contents of
shipments in shipping documents and mislabeled them as “fossil
specimens” from Japan.
According to the complaint, Prokopi told the auction house
that handled the sale of the bataar – a smaller Asian cousin of
the Tyrannosaurus Rex – that efforts by Mongolian President
Tsakhia Elbegdorj to prevent the sale would simply make stopping
the trade in fossils even more difficult.
“If he only wants to take the skeleton and try to put an end
to the black market, he will have a fight and will only drive
the black market deeper underground,” Prokopi wrote in an email
quoted in the criminal complaint.
Robert Painter, a Houston-based lawyer representing the
Mongolian government, said that after Prokopi’s arrest,
Elbegdorj had commended U.S. authorities for their efforts to
stop the theft of cultural treasures.
“The two governments’ continued cooperation in investigating
this important matter will have a chilling effect on the global
market for illegally obtained fossils,” he said.
