TAMPA, Fla. \u2014\u00a0Homeland Security Investigations agents in Tampa are analyzing more than 12,000 ancient items seized by Customs and Border Protection in what officials say may be the largest seizure of antiquities in the agency\u2019s history.<\/p>\n
The items include vintage vases, age-old pottery and archaic coins, according to Homeland Security officials. Some of the pieces date back more than 4,000 years.<\/p>\n
While they wouldn\u2019t get specific, Homeland Security officials say the items came from the eastern Mediterranean before being intercepted in the Tampa Bay area.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of times they\u2019ll find illegal narcotics, or counterfeit merchandise, whatever the contraband may be,\u201d said John Yancey, acting special agent in charge of HSI Tampa. \u201cIn this particular case, they found what they believe to be possibly stolen artifacts.\u201d<\/p>\n
The antiquities are now being authenticated, tagged and preserved by a mix of in-house and academic partners, officials said. Investigators are also working to trace where the items came from.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we\u2019re interested in is how did the person who has custody of it at this time, how did they come into custody of it?\u201d Yancey said. \u201cWe\u2019ve seen, in other cases a lot of times, ISIS is actually involved in this, they hire people that perpetrate that crime of acquiring or stealing these items on the black market, ultimately to receive that funding.\u201d<\/p>\n
Officials, though, said it is unclear whether the items seized in this case have any ties to terrorism.<\/p>\n
The items are likely worth millions of dollars, officials said, but Homeland Security described them as priceless because of their cultural significance.<\/p>\n
Officials said the ultimate goal is to repatriate the items to the cultures that created them.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is one of the few crimes we work that we\u2019re able to identify, locate and recover precious artifacts like you see here today, and return them to their rightful owner,\u201d Yancey said. \u201cIt\u2019s a wrong that\u2019s made right. That\u2019s a good feeling at the end of the day.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA, Fla. \u2014\u00a0Homeland Security Investigations agents in Tampa are analyzing more than 12,000 ancient items seized by Customs…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":319818,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[4323,274,63156,115,139,135,137,136,278,835,63157],"class_list":["post-319817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-andy-cole","tag-app-top-stories","tag-app-watchdog-investigations","tag-news","tag-orlando","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news","tag-top-stories","tag-vod","tag-watchdog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319817\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/319818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}