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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;all_fakes, post: 349081, member: 55&quot;]2004 must have been a big year for such enforcement.....I&#039;ve been told that in 2004 there were 400 prosecutions involving fake Native art and artifacts.</p><p>And also in 2004 the US Fish and Wildlife folks broke up an Indonesian crime ring:&nbsp; they were illegally obtaining genuine ivory in Alaska from endangered species; shipping it to Indonesia to be carved into replicas of genuine native items; shipping it back to Alaska to be sold as genuine Native carvings.&nbsp; &nbsp; Who would imagine, seeing a carving that is obviously genuine Alaskan ivory, that it might have been faked in Indonesia?</p><p><br /></p><p>(and even sadder, while confiscating the fakes they found <u>10,000</u> small carvings made from Indonesian water buffalo bone, not otherwise illegal; they auctioned these off, and the buyers were almost certainly wholesalers.&nbsp; To this day, if you see an ebay auction for a &quot;buffalo bone&quot; item, a fetish or shaman&#039;s charm, it is almost certainly one of these, or more likely, one from the current production; because the 10,000 items were just stock on hand, the carvings from that week or that month.&nbsp; I&#039;d guess there are 120,000 of these annually, or more, most destined to be sold as genuine native artifacts.</p><p>(I&#039;ve got a link to the Fish and Wildlife article on this somewhere....)[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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