SALT LAKE CITY – A Southwest antiquities dealer who was forced to surrender five truckloads of Native American relics is expected to settle charges of digging up a grave and plundering artifacts from federal lands.
The U.S. attorney’s office says Vern Crites had been expected take a plea deal Tuesday at federal court in Salt Lake City. But a snowstorm forced the hearing to be canceled.
Crites’ attorney revealed in court papers months ago that a deal was in the works.
The 75-year-old dealer was described in government affidavits as a “price setter” for antiquities because of his influence over the market.
Federal agents say he had an astonishing collection confiscated from his Durango home in January.
Crites was charged in a government sting operation that spanned Colorado, New Mexico and Utah.
In addition, another Durango, man has pleaded guilty to removing an ancient human skull, pottery and a stone knife from federal land in the Four Corners of southern Utah.
Richard Bourret pleaded guilty Tuesday in federal court in Salt Lake City to a felony charge of unauthorized excavation.
U.S. District Court Judge Dee Benson scheduled sentencing for Feb. 1.
Sixty-one-year-old Bourret faces a maximum of two years in prison, but prosecutors plan to recommend leniency as part of a deal that’ll drop two other charges.
Crites and Bourret are expected to be ordered at sentencing to pay for damage at the San Juan County, Utah, dig site.
The Four Corners once was the center of ancestral Puebloan culture, and it is a treasure trove of archaeological artifacts, Mark Michel, president of the Archaeological Conservancy, a national group based in Albuquerque told The Durango Herald in June 2009, when Vern and Marie Crites were arrested as part of sting operation targeting suspected illegal trades in stolen artifacts.
“There are thousands of archaeological sites in (the Four Corners), and I’ve never seen one that hasn’t had some looting,” Michel, who as worked in the area for 30 years, told the Herald.
Twenty-six people, 19 of them from Utah, were arrested on federal indictments accusing them of stealing, receiving or trying to sell artifacts. The relics included bowls, arrowheads, necklaces, stone pipes and sandals.
The case involved hundreds of artifacts with an estimated worth of $335,685.
Federal officials said most of the stolen objects came from Bureau of Land Management land. Some came from tribal lands.
In August, 2009, federal authorities seized thousands of ancient artifacts, five truckloads, from the Criteses’ Durango home.
“I had no choice,” Vern Crites said when the items were seized. “They came and took my things. It was either that or they’d come with a search warrant and take them.”
