Ivory Dealers Plead Guilty

The NY Times is reporting that NY City jewelers plead guilty to marketing illegal ivory, valued at more than $2 million and weighing over a ton.  As appraisers we have to be careful when dealing with protected property.

The NY Times reports

Prosecutors said the ivory seized in Manhattan came from two shops: Raja Jewels, at 7 West 45th Street, and New York Jewelry Mart, at 26 West 46th Street.

Mukesh Gupta, owner of Raja Jewels, pleaded guilty before Judge Larry Stephen of Manhattan Criminal Court to one count of illegal commercialization of wildlife; his company pleaded guilty to two counts.

The other businessman, Johnson Jung-Chien Lu, pleaded guilty to one count of the same charge, as did his store, New York Jewelry Mart.

Under state law, ivory dealers must have a license from the State Department of Environmental Conservation and be able to show that their ivory was from before the ban and was legally obtained.

But the law treats illegal ivory sales as a relatively minor felony, prosecutors said. As a result, neither man will receive a prison sentence. Under plea agreements, both agreed to pay fines and forfeit the ivory, some of which law enforcement officials said they would retain for training purposes.

That training could be useful, given that ivory smuggling is persistent in New York.

In 2008, six people were charged by federal prosecutors with smuggling multiple shipments of hundreds of thousands of dollars of African elephant ivory past customs agents at Kennedy International Airport in elaborately disguised packages.

Prosecutors said they were still investigating how Raja Jewels and New York Jewelry Mart obtained the ivory objects.

Source: The NIIY Times