Army Pilot Charged With Egyptian Antiquities Theft

An Army helicopter pilot is facing charges that he sold dozens of stolen Egyptian antiquities, some of which ended up in galleries in Manhattan.

The artifacts come from a 370-piece collection — all more than 5,000 years old — that had been stolen from a museum near Cairo in 2002, according to a criminal complaint unsealed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Investigators have recovered some of those pieces and say they have traced them to an 80-piece collection that an Army chief warrant officer, Edward "Dutch" Johnson, had sold back in 2003. Yesterday, the warrant officer was charged with selling stolen goods.

The court filing does not offer an explanation for how Warrant Officer Johnson ended up with the artifacts but indicates that he was deployed to Cairo at the same time as the museum theft. The defendant was arrested yesterday in Enterprise, Ala. A lawyer from the federal defender's office in Montgomery, Ala., who is assigned to the case did not return a call for comment.

Prosecutors say Warrant Officer Johnson, 44, sold the pieces to a dealer in Texas for about $20,000. The provenance Warrant Officer Johnson offered, according to the complaint, is that his grandfather had acquired the artifacts more than 60 years ago while working in Egypt. The Texas art dealer, in turn, sold them to galleries in New York and in Europe. About 10 pieces ended up in three galleries in Manhattan. Many of the artifacts appear to be vessels of various design.

The Texas art dealer is not identified in court documents, but prosecutors say the dealer had at one point been one associated with Sotheby's online venture, which the auction house has discontinued.