Nicholas Laws, 31, of Blanding pleaded guilty in April to trying to sell an ancient American Indian religious figurine to an undercover FBI agent. He had been indicted on three felony charges in June 2009 as part of a more than two-year federal investigation into illegal artifacts trafficking in the Four Corners. U.S. District Judge Ted Stewart sentenced Laws on July 12 to two years’ probation in the case.
Laws is the sixth of 26 people from Utah, Colorado and New Mexico who were arrested in last year’s sting operation by agents from the FBI and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.
Two of the defendants, Blanding physician James Redd and Stephen Shrader of Santa Fe, N.M., committed suicide in the week following the arrests last June. The undercover operative who provided video and audio tapes to the FBI, Salt Lake city businessman Ted Gardiner, also committed suicide several months later.
According to news reports, Laws apologized to the court during his sentencing hearing, and told the judge, “What I did was wrong.”
Five days earlier, two defendants with Moab connections also were sentenced to probation. Moab resident Brent Bullock, 62, pleaded guilty to two felonies and was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball to five years’ probation. In March, Bullock admitted to selling a digging tool, a blanket scrap and a fire board to Gardiner. He also admitted to offering to sell several ceramic figurines. All the items were reportedly stolen from public lands, according to court documents.
According to news reports, Bullock expressed remorse during his sentencing hearing, and his attorney Earl Xaiz, said Bullock had kept the items in a frame on his wall and had bought them years earlier. Xaiz said Bullock was not part of the artifacts-trafficking network that was the main focus of the federal investigation.
Also on July 7, former Moab resident Tammy Shumway, 40, pleaded guilty to two felonies and admitted that she introduced Bullock and Gardiner, brokered a $3,300 sale, and was paid $330 for helping with the sale, according to news reports.
Shumway, who now lives in Arkansas, was sentenced to time served plus three years’ supervised release. She has a previous drug-related criminal history and served time in prison for credit card fraud. Shumway served about three weeks in jail when she was arrested on the artifacts-trading charges in June 2009, according to court records.
Both Bullock and Shumway told the judge they now understand that taking and trading ancient artifacts is wrong, according to news reports.