National Stolen Property Act
[3][4] Congress first passed the Act in 1934 to respond to thieves and fences who increasingly exploited channels of interstate commerce to avoid state law enforcement; since then, the Act has been amended multiple times and found applications in many other contexts, including the looting and smuggling of unprovenanced artifacts.
[2] For example, "money" is defined to include not just the legal tender of the U.S. or any foreign country, but also any counterfeit; "security" receives an expansive definition that also includes, among other things, not just "any instrument commonly known as a 'security,'" but also any forged representation thereof; and "value" is defined as the greatest of the aggregate face, par, or market value of all goods, securities, and money identified in a single indictment.
In general, the punishment for any transportation offense involving a pre-retail medical product, as defined in 18 U.S.C.
But the punishment for the transportation of veterans' memorial objects collectively worth less than $1,000 shall be limited to a fine or imprisonment up to one year.
But the punishment for the receipt, possession, concealment, sale, or disposal of veterans' memorial objects collectively worth less than $1,000 shall be limited to a fine or imprisonment up to one year.
[7] Fifteen years later, in 1934, Congress expanded the predecessor statute by passing the National Stolen Property Act,[8] with similar intent:[9] in order to detect and punish "[g]angsters who now convey stolen property, except vehicles, across the State line, with that immemorial gesture of derision," Congress decided to no longer limit the provisions of the predecessor statute to motor vehicles;[10] rather, the new Act applied to everything from forged securities to run-of-the-mill goods.
[12] Second, the requirement that the stolen properties formed part of interstate commerce was replaced with the bright-line test of whether they had crossed a state or U.S.
[11] In opting for this bright-line test, Congress intended to eliminate the defense that the stolen properties had left interstate commerce by "coming to rest" or by the passage of time.
[15] Adjusting the monetary threshold of $5,000 for inflation, the Manual also establishes a general rule of limiting federal prosecution to offenses involving more than $60,000, absent other noteworthy circumstances.
Courts have interpreted the phrase "goods, wares, and merchandise" broadly, holding that it encompasses all personal properties or chattels as long as they are ordinarily subjects of commerce[16] and have some "tangible existence" (as opposed to intangible properties like digitally stored information).
[19] For the purpose of the monetary threshold, the value of a property can be established by its market value either when stolen or at any point while being concealed.
§§ 2314 or 2315 is triggered, the Department can not only press criminal charges against the suspects but also compel the civil forfeiture of the artifacts at issue pursuant to 18 U.S.C.
Frederick Schultz, a prominent art dealer, conspired with several others to smuggle sculptures and other antiques out of Egypt and sell them in the U.S.; as part of the conspiracy, Schultz and his co-conspirators coated some of the antiques in plastic to look like cheap souvenirs and fabricated the "Thomas Alcock Collection" to assign a false provenance to them.
[23] Eric Prokopi, a Florida businessman and self-proclaimed "commercial paleontologist," imported the fossilized remains of a Tyrannosaurus bataar from Mongolia into the U.S., allegedly having mislabelled the shipments to clear the customs.
[30] Before the transaction closed, however, the affair caught public attention, and President Tsakhia Elbegdorj of Mongolia intervened.
[33] Following the guilty plea and the forfeiture, Prokopi furnished U.S. law enforcement with a trove of information regarding the global black market for fossil trade.
[34] To some extent, his cooperation jumpstarted the policing of the fossil trade in the U.S., which was seriously lagging behind, and eventually contributed to the repatriation of this specimen and many others.
