Dealers, Collectors Targets of Inquiry on Art Smuggling

A federal grand jury is investigating suspected smuggling of pre-Columbian Peruvian artifacts into Southern California, federal prosecutors disclosed in court Wednesday.

The investigation involves the activities of dealers and collectors on three continents, and focuses on the haul from a series of eight raids last March on individuals and businesses from San Luis Obispo to Los Angeles that yielded 1,137 suspected contraband art objects from 11 South and Central American countries.

Authorities refused to discuss the inquiry, beyond what was revealed in federal court Wednesday as three of the collectors, including a former chief conservationist for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, sought unsuccessfully to force return of hundreds of art objects.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Spurgeon Smith told U.S. District Judge Terry J. Hatter Jr. that a grand jury needs to retain some 289 pieces. All but one are believed by government experts to be from Peru and crafted before Europeans came to the Western Hemisphere.

Smith declined to comment when asked if any of the objects might have come from an area in northern Peru that yielded a sensational cache of artifacts from a burial site said to be the most significant ever found in the Americas. Experts from the National Geographic Society, who Tuesday described the find as the equivalent of a “Peruvian King Tut,” also decried widespread looting of the site before it was secured by the government for professional examination.

Lawyers for Benjamin Johnson, the former museum official, attempted to show that U.S. Customs Service agents on March 30 had seized a 20-year-old fist-sized object made by American Indians for sale to tourists and mistaken it for a valuable Peruvian treasure.

Hatter, without deciding the provenance of the piece, gave prosecutors a Sept. 30 deadline to either subpoena the art objects through the grand jury or return them to the owners.

Authorities seized artifacts from the following persons:

* Johnson of Santa Monica. More than 400 pieces were taken, and the government announced Wednesday that it will return all but 101. Johnson’s lawyers insisted all the objects were legally in his possession, and said government agents have destroyed his livelihood as an art broker.

* David and Jackie Swetman of San Luis Obispo, described by their lawyer as professional art restorers. The government announced it will keep 176 objects seized from them.

Will Retain 9 Objects

* Larry Wendt, owner of a Santa Monica gallery, Arte Primitivo. Prosecutors said they will keep nine art objects taken from Wendt.

* Charles E. Craig Jr., a Santa Barbara collector. Customs agents used a truck to take away an unknown number of artifacts from his home. Additional art objects on loan from Craig to the Santa Barbara Museum of Art for an exhibition were also seized, a museum spokesman said. Craig originally had joined the others in seeking to force return of his collection, but his lawyers were not present Wednesday.

In addition, a lawyer for George Gelsbach of Encino, described as a collector and investor, said the government has seized many of his client’s business records.

The prosecutor, Smith, said all other material would be returned to the owners. Johnson’s lawyer, Terry Bird, said among those items are North American Indian artifacts and others he claimed should not have been mistaken for pre-Columbian treasures.