When Matthew Bogdanos got a tip about a looted mummy coffin whose corpse had been dumped in the Nile, he approached the coffin’s buyer—the Metropolitan Museum of Art—with few of the courtesies traditionally accorded New York’s premier cultural institution. Bogdanos, a 64-year-old prosecutor in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, is chief of its Antiquities Trafficking Unit. The only one of its kind in the world, his squad of prosecutors, criminal investigators, and art specialists polices the loftiest reaches of New York’s art market— a genteel club of museums, collectors, and auction houses that buy and sell the relics of ancient civilizations.
People in Manhattan’s antiquities trade tend to carry themselves with an air of refinement. Bogdanos does not. He’s a retired Marine colonel and amateur middleweight boxer who likes to drive opponents “into the corner and beat the living shit out of them,” his trainer told me.
In the case of the Met’s mummy coffin, Bog danos got off the phone with a smuggler turned informant in Dubai and, by day’s end, had opened a grand-jury investigation in Manhattan. He subpoenaed the emails, texts, and handwritten notes of every Met employee involved in the coffin’s purchase.
この記事は The Atlantic の December 2021 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
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この記事は The Atlantic の December 2021 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です? サインイン
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