Local man charged in Korean artifact sale

OXFORD (AP) -- A Detroit area auction house owner has been charged with illegally transporting and selling a Korean currency plate dating from 1893, federal officials said. James Amato, 50, was arrested Tuesday in his Oxford home, north of Detroit, according to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement release. Amato, the listed owner of Midwest Auction Galleries, was charged in a federal warrant with making false statements, transportation of stolen goods and the sale or receipt of stolen goods stemming from the sale of a Hojo currency plate, believed to be one of three currency plates from the 1890s that still are in existence. The currency plates ushered in modern currency printing methods in Korea, according to the ICE release. The plate was sold in 2010 for $35,000, which also led to the arrest last month of a man in Fort Lee, N. J. on similar charges. The plate was sold on behalf of the family of a deceased American serviceman, who reportedly brought it back to Michigan after a tour of duty in the Korean War, authorities said. Before it was purchased, both Amato and the buyer in New Jersey were advised by Korean Embassy and U.S. State Department officials that selling the artifact could be in violation of the National Stolen Property Act. The Republic of Korea's Cultural Heritage Administration wrote to ICE officials in Detroit in 2010 that the plate was issued during the country's Joseon Dynasty, according to federal court records. Hojo currency notes also are considered a Korean heritage item with significant academic and historical value, and that legitimate export of plates would have been "hardly likely," the court filing said. The plate also "is a tangible artifact of the extremely difficult socio-cultural transformations of nineteenth and twentieth-century Korean society," wrote LaGrange College assistant professor Joshua Van Lieu, who gave an independent analysis to federal officials from online images of the plate. Van Lieu teaches in the Georgia school's history department. He is considered an expert in Korean monetary policy and currency design. The Associated Press left a message Tuesday for Van Lieu seeking an actual monetary value for the currency plate. "Artifacts have a specific dollar value in the legitimate marketplace where they are bought and sold," said William Hayes, acting special agent in charge of ICE's Homeland Security Investigations in Detroit. "But the cultural and symbolic worth of these items far surpasses any monetary value to the people and nations of their origin." The Associated Press was not immediately able to determine Tuesday if Amato had an attorney. Published: Thu, Feb 14, 2013