The growing network of online sales is promoting businesses, allowing sellers to reach the far end of the world in an instant.
But at the same time, this e-commerce trend is also creating a fertile ground for illicit trade practices to flourish on. One such case has landed an investigation by both the U.S. and the UK.
At this time, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is probing the sale of potentially stolen artefacts from the British Museum to U.S. buyers.
According to reports, officials are trying to trace the whereabouts of hundreds of ancient jewels and gems that were missing from the British Museum in 2023.
It all began when a buyer in the New Orleans, Tonio Birbiglia, bought an amethyst gem depicting a cupid for £42 and an orange scarab-beetle gem for £170 from eBay, and paid for them using PayPal.
The collector was later contacted by the FBI regarding these two pieces.
Birbiglia, who previously worked for an antiquities gallery, expressed shock when he was contacted by the FBI and requested more information to help trace the gems.
Further investigation led to the FBI to the seller, which is identified as "sultan1966,” an name that is later linked to Dr. Peter Higgs.
Report suggests that Higgs, a senior curator at the British Museum, has been accused of stealing, damaging, and selling artefacts over the past decade.
The FBI has also investigated 268 items sold in Washington D.C., believed to be connected to the same seller.
The museum alleges he stole items worth approximately £100,000, mainly from its storerooms, and sold them to at least 45 buyers on eBay.
Sources indicate buyers paid up to £7,000 for these items, dealing with Higgins through email.
Higgs denies these allegations and is defending himself in a civil lawsuit.
Despite the seriousness of the accusations, no arrests have been made.
The multiple stolen items are believed to have been sold to buyers in the U.S. through online platforms, which make the sales pretty much untraceable.
To conduct the investigation, the FBI works in collaboration with the Metropolitan Police in the UK.
The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London.
Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world.
But in 2023, it has been the subject of unwanted worldwide attention after it reported that over a thousand items from its collection, including jewelry, gems, and Greek pottery, had been stolen, were missing, or had been damaged.
626 have been recovered, and another 100 have been located but not yet returned.
However, the issue is that, most of the stolen items hadn't been officially recorded.
What this means, most of the stolen items were were uncatalogued, and this is complicating the efforts to verify their origins.
Because of this, the museum is still trying to figure out how to prove they belong to their collection.
It was only following this, that it's realized the museum's effort to reclaim its treasures can be extremely difficult.
According to antiquities dealer Dr. Ittai Gradel, who alerted the museum to the thefts, he has tracked items sold to buyers across Europe and Asia. Some of the items, include a rare 2nd-century obsidian head of Hercules, which ended up in the Deutsches Edelsteinmuseum in Germany.
In 2017, Dr Gradel purchased this gem for £300, unaware of its stolen status, and just like what the FBI speculated, it was also sold under Higgs’s alias, with the seller claiming it was a family heirloom.
Making things more heartbreaking, some of the stolen items from the museum reportedly listed on eBay at low prices.
Items worth around $63,000 were listed for as little as $50, a report said.
The British Museum has since recovered some these items and continues to work on proving their origins.
The museum is committed to locating the remaining stolen pieces and holding those accountable, and is also working with collectors to have these items donated back for assessment.
Fortunately for the museum, news of the items' theft have "sparked a renewed public interest in these objects."
