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These are bigger than just regular
run-of-the-mill cases.

These artifacts, once they're gone,
they're gone forever.

When I walk through a museum today
and I look at those statues,

I just know that there's so much history

that the people looking at those statues
don't want to know.

They really don't want to know.

If they know, they would go back
and ask for a refund.

They'd say, why would you charge us
to see these blood antiquities?

Why do you even have these here?

I've been to many archaeological sites.

I've never seen one absolutely
completely plundered.

In a very short time period,
they fell victim to war profiteers,

they fell victim to greed.

It would seem
that it was highly organized

by people who had finances
and the power.

It had to be someone in authority.

The networks behind them
were very advanced,

the smuggling routes were complicated.

These are difficult investigations.

The illicit trade in art and antiquities
is funding organized crime,

it's funding violent extremism.

Death threats,
calls in the morning at 3 o'clock.

People have families, they've got kids.

You don't put that stuff at risk.

My daughter and my bodybuilder chef
talked to two priests,

independent of one another.

Both of the priests indicated
that in some previous life,

I was Khmer,

and that what I collect
had once belonged to me.

He would take people like the Lindemanns,
who were these billionaires,

Martin Lerner, who at the time was
the curator

of the Metropolitan Museum of Art,

to these remote jungle sites.

It must have been very exciting.

And having someone
like Latchford show them around

and have so much knowledge
about all of these items,

I'm sure he was very entertaining.

There was a British stone conservator.

Simon Warrack is his name.

He had been working
at this beautiful site of Koh Ker,

which used to be the capital
of the Khmer Empire.

The statues there are very, very distinct
and very different.

This is the site of this beautiful piece
that they called the Duryodhana.

And he spotted two pieces
of stone on the ground.

These blocks just had the feet attached,
and the body was nowhere in sight.

This is pretty much where they were
when we saw the feet the first time.

And since then,
they've excavated this trench.

He happened to be in a library,
and he saw a statue.

He could see
by the position of the legs,

he said, "This kind of looks like
it might fit one of those pedestals."

And sure enough, he lined them up
and he said, "I think this is matching."

A few years later, Eric Bourdonneau,
a French researcher,

he was able to do computer modelling

to show that that statue
in Adoration and Glory,

said to be owned
by a private collection,

was the statue
that matched the pedestal.

In 2010, this Belgian widow decided
she wanted to sell the Duryodhana statue

that her husband had acquired.

She reached out to Sotheby's,

which is obviously
a very elite auction house,

and said, "Look,
I really want to sell this."

Sotheby's put that statue on the cover
of its auction

of South and Southeast Asian art

for an estimated value
of $2 to $3 million.

Cambodia then sent a letter
to Sotheby's saying,

"Don't sell it
because the feet are found."

"This statue belongs
to Cambodia."

Within hours to spare,
this auction was stopped.

U.S. authorities said,
"Look, this is looted.

"We want to return it to Cambodia."

Sotheby's said, "No, no, no, no,
we want to sell it,

"and we have the right to sell it."

And so they, in the search
for the provenance,

reached out to Emma Bunker,

who also was a very close friend
of Douglas Latchford's.

A lot of the emails between Emma Bunker
and Douglas Latchford

were very illuminating.

It was clear that he definitely was
the first owner,

because they were then trying
to cover for him.

I think that made him
a person of interest.

I don't know where they imagined
that I owned the piece,

but let me confirm to you first
that I did not own the piece.

I had nothing to do with it.

So the Pandora Papers was this cache

of nearly 12 million financial documents

from offshore secrecy havens

that showed basically
how wealthy people

and also sometimes criminals
conceal their assets.

With the art market in general,
you have items worth millions of dollars

that are being sold
in a very non-transparent way,

that are changing hands
often across international borders.

I ended up working on the Latchford one

and so I was basically going through
every single document I could find.

Shortly after the Sotheby's suit,

the Latchfords turned to Trident Trust,
which was this offshore service provider.

We were able to see that this guy
Latchford is pretty interesting.

Where did the antiquities go?
And where did the money go?

We were trying to track
both of those things.

What interested us was, about three months
after the sale was actually stopped

is when you saw the Skanda Trust
being formed.

-So I mean, it could be coincidence.
-Certainly not a coincidence!

Start scrolling away some of the artifacts
into a trust...

Right, and also
some of the finances too,

because that's a lot of money.

Anytime I would see a story
about law enforcement or crime,

but in particular the federal agents,

I just knew that's what
I needed to be doing.

It was like a calling:
"That's what I'm going to do."

Narcotics investigations,
money launderers, fraudulent passports.

Over the years I had done
all of those types of cases.

I hear rumblings
of an agent in our office

who's recovering ancient artifacts,
so I sought him out.

He told me he was drowning in cases
and could really use the help.

There's been no looking back
ever since.

It's been a wild ride.

Whenever we start an antiquities case,

we approach it from two aspects.

Can we prove that the piece is dirty?

And then, can we prove
that someone committed a crime?

Did someone knowingly smuggle
something illicit?

Two aspects: the piece itself,
and then whether someone broke the law.

I knew Latchford was dirty
from the Duryodhana case

and seeing pieces that his name
was associated with.

What I was trying to figure out is
how involved, how dirty was Latchford?

In 2016, I led Operation Indochina
Peninsula Plunder,

which was the investigation
into Douglas Latchford and his network.

If you're going to allege

that a particular artifact
originates in a certain temple,

who's going to know that better
than people there on the ground?

My name is Bradley Gordon.

I'm officially appointed to advise
the ministry

on repatriations
of stolen antiquities.

I walk into a museum, I feel like,

do they have my picture
behind somewhere?

"Brad Gordon,
don't let this guy in!"

The DOJ said to me, "We're working
on a case involving Sotheby's."

"You know about Latchford, right?"

I went to the Cambodian government
and said,

"Look, there's someone out there,
you should get back his collection."

If you look at Cambodia,

and you're considering the number
of temples that these guys raided,

the number of crime sites,
the number of statues,

it's an enormous amount.

We were hired
to find the looting network.

Our assignment was to come up here

and track down villagers,
track down witnesses.

With Naren, the two of us
went over the country

and we interviewed many, many people.

In the beginning, I didn't quite know
where Latchford fit into the picture.

People were terrified, they were afraid.

They didn't want to talk
about who was involved.

They were willing
to identify certain statues.

You transform a piece of rock
into a piece of art

and then you also embed spirituality,

a sense of divinity
in that piece of rock.

They're not just statues.

They're our gods, they are our kings,
they are our ancestors.

If we are not careful,

my children, the future generation,

might lose the collective memory
of their identity.

I feel very uncomfortable

that we transform a sacred value
for people into money.

Blue Tiger is extraordinary.

He was a trusted lieutenant of Lion,
the head of the gang.

He has helped us tremendously.

Given what was taken
out of Prasat Krachap,

as soon as I heard about
the statues that came out of there,

I knew that this was
an extremely significant temple.

I now believe it maybe is one
of the most important ones in Cambodia.

And Blue Tiger was there

and participated
in the removal of the statues.

Khmer Rouge was a communist movement.

They started guerrilla warfare
from the early 60s.

You know, in the 60s, President Nixon
and his Secretary of State, Kissinger,

planned a secret bombing of Cambodia.

They bombed Cambodia
without telling Congress.

More bombs were dropped on Cambodia

than any time before
in mankind's history.

I've seen anywhere from
150,000 people were killed and up.

It definitely destabilized the country.
There's no question about it.

The Khmer Rouge were empowered
by the bombing

because so many people in
the countryside joined the Khmer Rouge.

It's April 1975, Khmer Rouge soldiers

are surging into Phnom Penh,
Cambodia’s capital.

Widespread panic permeates the streets,
as the new government empties the city,

marching the population
in to the countryside.

They undertook a very radical
transformation of Cambodian society.

They basically tore apart

all the traditions and institutions
of Cambodian life.

So they tore apart families, schools,
the government,

Buddhism,
all these things they tried to destroy.

I think they've estimated between
one and three million people died

from either being
murdered or from famine or illness.

After the Khmer Rouge fell,

all these people had been separated

from their villages,
from their families,

they didn't know who was alive
or who was dead.

They had no income.

It was a desperate struggle
for survival.

All kinds of looting
of artifacts that took place.

Looting, theft,
it happens all around the world.

In conflict and crisis zones,

you quite often have
a breakdown of the social order.

You have opportunity for criminals,

but also people we wouldn't
necessarily think of as criminals,

to take advantage of that situation,
maybe to feed their families.

In 2016, Latchford, he's just a blip
on the radar screen.

So my first question to myself:

"What is Latchford about?"

Latchford was born
in the British Raj in India

and then went to boarding school.

When he was about 20,
he moved to Bangkok.

And then he just fell in love
with Khmer culture

because, of course, Thailand
and Cambodia share a border.

Latchford had a reputation for
hanging out with the museum glitterati,

the society people.

He was a very high-profile character
around Bangkok.

I was at dinner one evening
with François Duhau de Berenx,

who was an interior decorator.

François showed me a stone female torso,

and it immediately had an effect on me
that would change my life.

I was smitten and could, from then on,

think of nothing
but this wonderful torso.

He fell in love with it
and he became this collector.

And he started collecting
Khmer antiquity at this voracious speed.

He became one of the most preeminent
scholars of Khmer antiquities as well.

He wrote these three coffee table books
that really catapulted his name

to the top of people who knew
anything about Khmer statuary.

One of my jobs
as a journalist in Bangkok

was to write a story
about Douglas Latchford.

And he showed me
through his place.

Every little nook and cranny
of that apartment

had ancient artifacts
sitting on it.

He had beautiful artwork on the walls,
it was very tastefully done.

Pretty much like you'd see in a museum,

but these were sitting
on mantelpieces and shelves.

You could see he had
a deep affection for those pieces,

probably more than he did for people.

A fortune teller had told him

that he had once been Khmer
in a previous life,

and that's why he loved
all these Khmer statues.

It's very interesting because Latchford
was both public and very secretive.

On the public side,

he tried to present himself as
this adventurer-scholar, in his words.

So this is kind of drawing on
those colonial motifs

of a very heroic European man

who goes into the jungle
and discovers lost cities.

Somebody who rescued
these Khmer artifacts

that had been lost to the jungle.

When I complimented him

on the amazing array of things
he had in his apartment,

he laughed and said,
"Yeah, but my best stuff

"is at my daughter's place
in Mayfair in London."

Douglas owned the entire
apartment block that he lived in.

He kept a whole floor for himself.

It's right on a canal
in the middle of Bangkok.

There was very heavy security there.

I remember walking up to the window
of the security guard there

and there being a number
of other security guards

watching me from inside the gate,
all bodybuilders.

It wasn't just one or two guys,
it was about five or six.

Mini Schwarzeneggers, yeah,
Pocket Hercules,

whatever you want to say, but they're
all muscle men, bodybuilders,

and obviously very strong.

One of the things I do as a hobby

is to help the Thai
Bodybuilding Association.

I was elected as president of Asia
earlier this year.

I'm also president
of the Thai Bodybuilding Association.

His love of the Thai bodybuilding,

so we're told,
had more to do with his lifestyle

than anything to do with sport.

Halfway through the interview,
he said "Let's have a pause,"

and he picked up a bell on the table,
he rang a little bell.

The door swung open
and a Thai guy came in

with a tight shirt on and a tie,
a butler-type guy.

The bulging muscles
were nearly splitting his shirt

and he came in and said,

"Would you like Earl Grey
or English Breakfast?"

It took a long time for them to realize
who exactly this man was.

For the longest time, he was just
this kind of quirky, romantic figure

who was this bodybuilding aficionado

and probably kind of an interesting,
strange dinner conversation companion.

When I went and interviewed
some of the looters,

they talk about how they actually
met with Douglas Latchford.

So he has direct communication
and direct access to the looters.

We sat down with Blue Tiger,

showed the images of artifacts
that we were still hunting.

He was able to and another looter
was able to identify some pieces

that they were directly responsible
for having taken out of the country,

which was so rare.

The entire interview was a wow moment.

We found on Douglas Latchford's
computer a photo of this temple

and it showed just the top
of that piece up there

and it was labeled "Peacock."

We heard from Lion

how he came here in 1997
and he dug up the peacock.

I had my eyes wide open
and my jaw dropped

the entire time
we were talking to them

because who, what,
where, when, how, right?

That's what you need to prove a case.

We have that from the mouth
of the very people involved.

The Skanda on Peacock statue,
which sold for $1.5 million,

I was able to successfully track it down
and I got it returned to Cambodia.

And then your hunt continues
because there are so many of them.

As we come to learn, there are different
Khmer Rouge controllers of areas

in between the temple
in the forest, the jungle,

and getting it across the border
and into Thailand.

He's selling statues
for one, 1.5 a piece.

We know Shiva and Skanda
he tried to sell for $25 million.

He had another statue,
the Durga that's going back to Vietnam,

he tried to sell for $34 million!

Once I realized
that Latchford's a bigger player,

Latchford becomes his own board.

Who are his sources?
His sources are the looters in Cambodia.

Who is he supplying?
Numerous entities.

They're going to supply museums,
to supply gallery owners,

to supply private collectors.

Now, Latchford's in the middle,

and you have those arms branching out
to all these other people

who have received
illicit property from him.

Who else is helping Latchford
with provenance?

Who are Latchford's restorers?

And then his resellers,
there could be a dozen of them.

Before you know it,
you have so many names on the board.

It was simply a matter of:
"Okay, what's next?"

You know, among all the many people
who aided and abetted Douglas Latchford,

Emma Bunker is probably
the most important person.

Emma Bunker was a major co-conspirator
of Douglas Latchford's.

Because Emma Bunker was attached
to the Denver Art Museum,

Latchford could introduce pieces
to a major museum

and have Emma Bunker
vouch for the integrity of the pieces

for the purpose of laundering,

so they could turn around and resell it
using the name of the Denver Art Museum.

"This piece was just shown
at the Denver Art Museum,"

so no one would ever think
that there was a problem with it.

She was also a scholar.

I think she never
actually finished her PhD,

but she did really want
to be well-known as a scholar.

And she helped him co-author

a number of these coffee table books
about Khmer statuary,

which authorities later said
were essentially used

to launder these looted statues.

Not everything that was photographed
in the books was looted,

but that's how it works.

You take some legitimate ones,
mix them with ones that are looted

and poof, provenance, right?

Provenance is the history
of an artifact,

meaning the ownership history.

A lot of museums don't actually list
provenance information.

They would not share
those details with us.

There's a number of Latchford pieces

that have an Ian Donaldson
reference in the provenance.

Some of them were supposedly written
after Ian Donaldson had already died.

It's clearly letters that were
cooked up by Latchford

just to be able to show
the museum something.

I mean, how cynical is that?
You use your dead friend's name

and you imitate, try to fake
a signature for your dead friend.

It's really quite sick, isn't it?

There's a list at Homeland Security,

and on that list is maybe
a dozen museums

that have Latchford pieces.

The Met was in New York,
I was based in New York.

We knew they had some pieces.
That would be the next one to go after.

There are some clear signs of looting,

and it's something we look for
when we're poring over evidence.

A statue will get broken
into smaller parts.

Makes it easier to ship.

Soil deposits
are a thing that we look for.

Anything that's exposed to the elements,
you start to see some corrosion.

Corrosion is a red flag.

We have security on the front steps.

-Southeast Asia.
-Southeast Asia, over there.

There's so many pieces here
that we have records on,

I don't even know where to begin.

So this headless female figure,

we had the opportunity to speak
with one of the looters in Cambodia,

and he admitted his role
in the removal of this piece

and transfer across
the border into Thailand.

On the condition report for this piece,
it notes burial soil found on the piece.

For this bronze Avalokiteshvara,

we know that it arrived heavily damaged,
from the Met's own internal reporting.

We have from Latchford's
email source photos,

source photos showing the piece in
the condition in which it was found.

This four-armed bronze Avalokiteshvara,

the Met's own condition report
states that it arrived heavily corroded.

You can even still see
parts of the corrosion

on the top crown
and on one of the arms.

So, you know, typical evidence
of pieces that were looted,

when they arrive corroded.

I have stuff on this one too.

This standing forum Vishnu
has so many discrepancies

in the provenance documents
contained at the Met.

We learned the true story
of when it was found

and when Latchford acquired it,

and we presented that evidence
to the Met.

It completely contradicts the story
that they have on their own records,

and we showed the documentation
to support that.

This piece has bad provenance
and was looted,

like so many others.

It should be a no-brainer
for this one to go back.

I didn't run into him very many times,
but I knew him.

He's a person you stay away from.

Do you recognize these pieces
from the Met Museum?

Either of these?

These are obviously
very good pieces, yeah.

Yeah. Did you ever own them?

Because in his emails...

Did I own them? Or...

So in his emails, in Latchford's emails,

he said that you sold those to the Met,

both of those pieces.

-No, certainly not.
-You didn't?

Certainly not.

Certainly not.

If I would have owned them,
I would have kept them.

Evidence has been presented to the Met

that a number of the pieces
that they have were looted.

Straight-up looted.

Eyewitness testimony from
some of the looters that were involved.

From the late 80s into the mid 90s,

the Curator of South and Southeast Asian
Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

had to fill an immense new gallery
that they were building.

One of the people that could supply
that was Douglas Latchford.

The Metropolitan kept saying to me,
"Show me your evidence."

And we kept asking them
for their provenance documents.

They kept saying,
"Look at our website."

There's hardly anything there.

There's some records on some pieces

where they have two conflicting
pieces of provenance

for the same piece in their records.

Here's where
we got the piece from,

and a completely different story
which contradicts that one.

The years are off,
the sources, the names are different.

And they're in the same packet
for one of the pieces on display.

You'd think that the Met,
with the team that they have,

if they see different conflicting
provenance and they have those records,

that might raise a red flag for them.

And no one has made the connection
that they're different, right?

Or that they conflict each other.

To ignore the issue,
I think it's disrespectful.

My name is Sophiline Cheam Shapiro,

and I am the founder and director
of Sophiline Arts Ensemble.

Performing at the Met,

it was a form of quiet or silent protest

to bring attention to the issues
of looted antiquity.

This is the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

I'm more disappointed than I'm angry.

It's the Met!
Like, what are you doing?

The Met Gala tickets are $75,000 each.

I know nothing else of the Met Gala
except that

Kim Kardashian posed in front
of an Egyptian sarcophagus made of gold,

and we seized it!

The old British museums
used to argue that,

"If we didn't save these, good lord,
they would have just been lost!"

Which probably isn't true,

but it becomes a justification
for basically handling stolen goods.

Admittedly, these things were
moonlighted out of Cambodia

and wound up somewhere else.

But had they not been,

they would likely have been shot up
for target practice by the Khmer Rouge.

My bicycle isn't
very well looked after by me,

because I leave it outside
all the time,

but someone else always
brings their bicycle inside

and therefore
it's in much better condition.

That's not a reason
for that other person to own my bicycle.

When I buy a piece on principle,
I thoroughly research it.

I certainly don't want to buy a piece
that's been stolen or anything.

It is true that some
of the temples there had pieces stolen,

but it wasn't on a large scale.

Bullshit.

That's not true.

So this is a legitimate profession.

But it's not legitimate

when those restorers are taking in goods
that they know are stolen

and repairing them.

Neil Perry-Smith is an art restorer.

I arrested him for his role in restoring
stolen and looted antiquities.

Neil Perry was in London,

and the artifacts
had to be shipped to London

for Neil Perry
to start working on them.

He helped Latchford

to clean up and remove the dirt
and other evidence of looting.

Once a finished fully restored artifact
is ready to sell,

it's mostly Latchford reaching out
to his circle, his crew,

and showing pictures, and oftentimes
those pictures show the pre-restoration

and post-restoration photographs.

So he's basically saying,

"Here's when I found it,
and here's what it looks like now."

Take an artifact that was worth
$100,000 to Latchford

and it gets completely restored to
where now he could sell it for millions.

Museums were a little bit easier
for us to investigate, the museum items.

Private collectors,
it's a whole different world,

and it's very, very difficult
as an investigative reporter

because they're basically a black box.

Unless the owners want to showcase

their private collection
for some reason,

you might never know
that that collection even exists.

Brad sent me
this very discreet picture.

He had gotten it from
an associate of Latchford,

who gave him no information about it.

"What do you know
about this?"

I said, "Oh my gosh,
all of these Khmer antiquities

"sitting in this billionaire's
living room."

Where did this come from?
So we started trying to search.

We found the name of the street,

we found some details
about the couple.

Then we were able
to kind of triangulate

based on other real estate listings

that had other similar pictures
that matched,

that this was actually
the Lindemanns'.

We have the Metropolitan Museum of Art
and now we have the Lindemanns.

In each of those,
the number of pieces they had

was far greater than we thought going in.

George Lindemann Sr.
was the patriarch of this family.

He and his wife Frayda have
tons of properties, tons of companies.

Access to the looters puts a spotlight
on the Lindemanns

because the looters
are referencing specific pieces.

And we sat down with Blue Tiger,
showed the images.

We decided to do a spin-off investigation.

Why do the Lindemanns have these pieces,
and what else can we find?

We started trying to track down
any other photographs we could find

of other properties,

including this 2021
Architectural Digest spread,

which we realized
was Sloan Lindemann's.

It was this beautiful courtyard

that had these pedestals
on it that were empty.

Combing through Peter Marino's website,

the architect who worked
with the Lindemanns,

and they found an identical photo,

except these pedestals were not empty,
they had heads on them.

And they had these Khmer heads,
really beautiful Khmer heads.

To me, that's very suspicious.

We have the picture with the heads,

and then we have the same
beautiful courtyard with no heads,

actually photoshopped out.

And we thought, well, this is great.

It's not until we start
getting records back

and we're looking
and we're like, oh my God,

a massive collection of rare,
extremely valuable and important pieces

that needed to go back to Cambodia.

The Lindemanns amassed a collection
valued around $35 million.

And people who have that much money,
I think they want to be special.

They want to have something special,
something that nobody else has.

The Lindemanns,
they just weren't as cooperative.

But ultimately, it came down to,
you have a choice to make.

We can go the easy way
or the hard way.

He certainly felt like he was untouchable,

and so you might have to wonder
why he thought so.

One-track minded,

and he had very good friends
in high places.

He was protected,
and he wouldn't tolerate any competition.

I got an email from Douglas
saying he'd like to catch up with me

at the National Museum in Phnom Penh.

They gave him Cambodian
citizenship.

The Deputy Prime Minister at the time

conferred Cambodian citizenship on Douglas

because he'd donated
so much to that museum.

I have donated I think seven pieces back

and I think these are primarily pieces
that they don't have representation of.

And my family and I have decided

that in the future we would like
to donate more back to Cambodia.

Deputy Prime Minister Sok An came,

made a speech, and gave me a Khmer title.

A royal title.

So he came, he lied to the Cambodians,

he flashed around a lot of money.

I think he tricked them.

I mean, they probably thought
they were doing the right thing.

And in terms of getting these medallions,
Boy Scout badges,

yeah, great, knock yourself out.

You know, it just legitimizes him.

He's got his bodybuilders,
his lawsuits, his lawyers.

He's got the Bunker family.

He's got lots of money.

He had his addresses in London,
museums around the world.

He's got everything he wanted.

With the bodybuilders
came the bodyguards.

They had a reputation
that scared a lot of people,

in particular local journalists and fixers

who might be working
on this type of story.

He was offloading his collection
in exchange for diamonds,

in exchange for other antiquities.

Hello?
Good morning.

Hi there.

I got your email.

Why are people interfering

and coming to inform you
that I sold some bronzes?

Well, I think they were upset
that things got sold.

I think they thought that
they were sort of important

and it was funny that they were sold.

I mean, I was surprised.

Well, who told you this?

Why were these sold?

I think they were listed as Skanda Trust.

What's it got to do with them?

People get curious when they move around.

-That's all.
-Curiosity killed the cat.

-So what else do you know?
-Nothing.

Anything new and exciting?

No, everything's quiet here.

Well, is that good or not?

No news is good news.

We see him conspiring

between him and Emma Bunker
or him and Nancy

to manipulate the data
or the information that's out there

to sort of dance around it.

Their imagination has gone wild.

They've seen too many
Indiana Jones films.

Nancy Wiener was huge
for the Latchford case.

She was an art dealer in Manhattan,

and she specialized in Asian
and Southeast Asian antiquities.

She was already being looked at
by Homeland Security.

In March of 2016, her gallery is raided
and she's subsequently arrested.

Having access to Nancy's records
really is the breakthrough moment

in the case against Latchford,
because now we see,

not only is he so blatant
in his emails with her

about where he's finding pieces
in the field

and the source and the condition
that they're coming in,

but he's also blatantly discussing
with her how to make provenance.

"What kind of provenance
are you going to need to sell this?"

"Is this good enough?
I'll write this letter."

He would send her little samples.

So having her records
blew the door open.

I've just been offered this
Sri Lankan bronze head.

Height: 18 centimeters.

I've compared it with one I had,
it's the same.

They're looking for the body,
no luck so far.

All they found last week
were two land mines.

What price would you be interested
to buy it at?

Let me know, as I'll have to bargain.

I've got one fresh out of the ground.

We're cleaning the dirt off it now.

Hold on to your hat!

Just been offered
this 56-centimetre Buddha.

Just excavated.

It's still across the border,
but wow!

This is smuggling 101.

The looter finds it,
sells it to Latchford.

Latchford's gonna turn around,
sell it in Manhattan to an art dealer.

For an investigator, you don't often get
this smoking gun kind of material.

We used the documentation that we received
from Nancy to indict Latchford.

In 2019, Douglas Latchford
was finally indicted.

Conspiracy to commit wire fraud,

substantive wire fraud

and smuggling.

Conspiracy to commit an offense
against the United States.

Entry of goods
by false statements

and one count
of aggravated identity theft.

There were so many museums
and dealers who dealt with him,

and so if Latchford's being indicted,

where's the shoe going to drop next?

Possibly on them.

And so museums are contacting us
and they're notifying us in advance,

they're saying, "We have pieces,

"we don't want to have agents come
storming into the museum.

"We want to try
and get ahead of this."

At the same time he's indicted,

doctors find him to be incompetent.

I'm not buying any of it.

So I send agents to his hospital room
to actually inspect him

and make sure he really is in
as poor shape as they say he was in.

And they actually confirmed
that he was in pretty bad shape.

Not long after that, his health
continued to decline, and he passed.

I would have liked for him
to have faced his day in court

and answer for the crimes
that he committed.

Douglas Latchford's family made
an enormous amount of money from this,

and they continue to hold onto that money.

Julia Latchford
is Douglas Latchford's daughter.

Julia signed an agreement with Cambodia

to turn over hundreds of pieces
in the Latchford estate.

It didn't make sense for Julia
to hold on to pieces

that she couldn't sell
because they were tainted,

and potentially she could be
in violation of law

for criminal possession
of stolen property.

You have the opportunity
to come out smelling like roses

and unload all this dirty material.

I think for her, it was a no-brainer.

We had to go through a process
of working with a family representative.

I went to London to drive with him
to the countryside.

So I went with him
and we drove out to a pub.

I took a photo of the pub
when I walked up,

just thinking if I disappeared,

somebody could check my iPhone
for that photo.

And we went in to have lunch
and Julia was there.

And she's like,
"Okay, you ready to see the gold?"

She opens the trunk of the car,

and she's got cardboard boxes in there,
four cardboard boxes,

and it's the Angkorian jewels.

It's the crowns and the bracelets
and the armlets

from the Angkorian Empire

in the back seat of her car.

Not the back seat, the trunk.

But she went and just opened everything
and held it up.

Showing me, "This is an earring,
this is a bracelet."

And I was deeply saddened and mortified

that the treasures
of this great ancient empire

were in the back trunk of a car
a couple hours outside of London.

The looting didn't come
directly from them.

It came from Douglas Latchford.

People can still do something good,

even when they've done
something horrible in their life.

But when they did that
when they were kids,

they were in a very difficult position.

It's remarkable, it's beautiful,

and it's not something
I would've thought of when I started.

I think it's a beautiful story
of redemption.

The U.S. Attorney's Office
of Homeland Security

and the Metropolitan Museum of Art
had been in negotiations

over which pieces
would be returned,

and it was a surprise to me
that all of a sudden,

the Met just announced that

we're going to return this batch
of their Cambodian antiquities.

The Met have given back these 14,

by and large, because they know
that they are connected to Latchford.

If they thought
that these were not stolen,

I think they would never
have given them back.

I think they would have fought
for the rest of my life,

for a couple of generations.

They have done
something unprecedented,

given back so many
to a country like Cambodia.

But there's no admission,
there's no nothing.

I think it's wrong.

If they really want to sincerely
help Cambodia heal,

they need to give
the provenance documents.

They need to help us with the history.

I believe that they know.

They know the background.

They know why
these are blood antiquities.

It's raining so hard.

Is it a sign of joy? Is it tears of joy?

After so many decades, after war,

and so much havoc
and damage in the country,

I believe it's wonderful
that Cambodia is now being recognized

as a leader for restitution.

This is a beautiful, beautiful message
to the world.

Having visited the different temples
and seeing the empty spots,

and seeing everything that was missing,

it just made me realize
that there's a lot of work to do

and there are a lot of pieces
out there still.

To see so many people
come together right now

and do something positive,

and to know that this has touched
so many peoples' hearts,

it's incredible.

You know, Cambodia,
we lived through war and genocide.

If we are not focusing
on the positive side of life,

we all are crazy.

It's hard to move on if you focus
on the negative side of life.

I know what it's like
to have no hope.

I know what it's like to live in fear.

You know, we are not all that.

There was a time, many centuries ago,

that we had built a great civilization.

They have gone, but their work stays.

Past, present, and future can connect.