Artifact plundering seen as drug crime

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - Criminals are finding a new hot spot to get their next drug fix by selling ancient artifacts looted from federally protected public lands.

Beyond the crime, pillaging the land makes it increasingly difficult to understand past cultures.

"It pays big bucks; that's why they do it," Katherine Slick with the New Mexico Historic Preservation Division told KRQE News 13.

Slick said artifact trafficking is the most lucrative behind gun and drug trafficking and has become a $5-6 billion-a-year industry across the country.

It is illegal to disturb, disrupt or take any artifact from any public land. Without a permit to do so anyone making off with protected artifacts could be facing federal time.

In one example a man in 2004 said he found ancient leggings made of human hair and had them framed and hanging in his Grants-area house.

His stepson is accused of stealing them from the house and selling them to a known drug dealer, Augustine Chavez.

When officers raided Chavez's house, they found the leggings along with guns and drugs. Chavez is now serving federal time in a federal prison.

In 2004 criminals also looted military graves at Fort Craig in Socorro County and stole Civil War artifacts

Federal officials said those two cases are among dozens where criminals stole, dug up or desecrated ancient artifacts.

Because the West is so vast, the drug-fueled thefts don't seem to be slowing down. The New Mexico Historic Preservation Division has a program called Site Watch .

Volunteers help keep an eye on cultural treasures and report vandalism and theft all over the state. It's not known how many cases of ancient artifact thefts there are in New Mexico.