The "Kim Kardashian" Forfeiture

The "Kim Kardashian" Forfeiture

In 2016, federal agents seized an ancient Roman sculpture as it entered the U.S. at the Port of Los Angeles. The importer named on customs forms was Kim Kardashian of Woodland Hills, California.

The contents of the shipment was falsely described as "40 pieces of Antiques & Modern Furniture & Decorations Objects” with a gross weight of 5,000 kg and a stated value of USD$745,882. It fact it contained the lower half of an statue of Myron’s Samian Athena, along with 40 other decorative objects.

The shipper was Axel Vervoordt, a Belgian antiquities dealer and interior designer. An invoice dated November 2012 claimed the statue had been sold to Vervoordt by Galerie Chenel in Paris. But Italian authorities identified the statue at The European Fine Art Fair (“TEFAF”) in Maastricht, Netherlands on March, 2011, suggesting that Vervoordt had owned it earlier that the receipt claimed.

In 2021, the US Attorneys Office in Los Angeles filed a civil forfeiture complaint again the sculpture, alleging it had been looted in Italy and illegally imported into the USA. The forfeiture was granted and the statue was repatriated to Italy in 2021.

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Sculpture – statues, carvings, bronzes, reliefs, figurines

Roman

Kim Kardashian

Italy

Damien Huffer

Jason Felch