Almagià, a Princeton-educated antiquities dealer, was born in New York to prominent Jewish Italian immigrant parents. Once a high-profile dealer, between 1980 and 2006 he conducted lucrative sales to numerous museums and collectors, mingling with fallen-from-grace art-world elites like Marion True, Dietrich von Bothmer, and Michael Padgett.

Almagià first became a person of interest in 1992 during Italian investigations. Facing charges for his own crimes, notorious capozona Pietro Casasanta revealed to interrogators that he had shopped the freshly looted Triade Capitolina to Almagià for his U.S. clients. Casasanta told the officers he sent the dealer a Polaroid of the recently excavated sculpture, depicting the tutelary deities of Rome—Jupiter, flanked by an eagle, Juno, and Minerva in a Corinthian helmet—shortly after it was unearthed in Guidonia Montecelio, near Rome. 

Almagià reportedly only wanted to pay Casasanta $20,000 for the multi-million-dollar statue, and after a bit of drama, declined the offer and moved on to sell the looted marble sculpture to the owner of Atelier Amphora, Mario Bruno, another suspect intermediary dealer operating in Lugano, who also had zero compunction about handling suspect art. 

1996

By 1996, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) had seized two dozen Etruscan ceramics from the New York Upper East Side gallery of Renee and Robin Beningson which had ties to Edoardo Almagià.  According to that investigation, all 24 artefacts at New York's Antiquarium Ltd., had been looted from what is now known as the Parco Archeologico di Crustumerium. This site represents an ancient city which once overlooked the Tiber between Eretum and Fidenae north of Rome.   

Later evidence would determine that following the seasonal closure of authorised excavations at Crustumerium in July 1987, Almagià had hired tombaroli—professional looters—to pick up where the departing archaeologists had left off. 

The dealer is then alleged to have the goods extracted by the looters smuggled out of Italy, passing first through Switzerland, before ultimately travelling overseas to New York where they came into the control of the Beningsons.

2000

Almagià’s next brush with the law came when he was stopped at John F. Kennedy (JFK) International airport in Queens, New York in 2000 with two stolen Italian frescoes from the ancient city of Vulci that he had falsely declared.  

Six weeks later, one of his commercial shipments was also stopped in Newark.  That shipment contained five stolen Italian antiquities and again was accompanied by false documentation. 

By 2006, Almagià’s high life as a prestigious dealer cracked completely when, in April 2006,  Special Agents with the US Department of Homeland Security, with intel assistance from officers of the Italian Carabinieri, obtained the legal authorisation to enter and photograph the contents of his New York apartment on 169 East 78th Street as well as his rental storage space at Manhattan Mini-Storage, located at 420 E 62nd Street.  There, officers documented dozens of antiquities and a stack of business records which coldly outlined  the excesses of this dealer's trafficking operations.   

Through the initial work on this investigation, seven antiquities were quickly identified as having been stolen from Italy.  But while the review was still under way, Almagià used the intervening time to shift suspect objects and their documentation from his apartment and storage facilities into a shipping container placed on a ship bound for Naples before fleeing the country.

When the ship was intercepted at port on December 14, 2006, Italian authorities recovered 37 paintings and numerous archaeological objects as well as thousands of documents and Polaroid photographs. Like Giacomo Medici's and Gianfranco Becchina's earlier archives, the "Almagià Archive" includes a sales transaction ledger, written in the dealer's handwriting, referred to by officers as the "Green Book" and the "Yellow Book" encompassing transactions  in 1997 and 1998.

In the "Green Book" Almagià listed, in concrete details, the 1,698 artefacts he sold out of his New York apartment. To do so, he often grouping artefacts by the tombarolo from whom he had purchased them (identifying the tombarolo by his nick name or initials).  Some entries listed both the price Almagià paid to his source supplier, as well as the price he subsequently sold the artefact for.   On occasion, some entries even list to whom the looted artefact was sold to.

For example, one entry for an "Attic red fig. Lekythos w panther" shows that Almagià bought the object for $1,000 from "Mau" (Tombarolo Mauro Morani) and sold the vessel onward to "antiq", the abbreviation for Renee and Robin Beningson's New York gallery, Antiquarium, for $2,000.  

The extant pages of the "Yellow Book" document 84 stolen antiquities or groups of stolen antiquities known to have been trafficked by Almagià  and/or his cousin Peter Glidewell.  This level of detail in both of these ledgers creates a strikingly clear blue print, which, along with seized  Day Planners, invoices, and lists, has given authorities a clear map to follow which has proven critical to this complex and lengthy investigation, tracing where each of these suspect artefacts travelled. 

Immediately after the 2006 seizure in Naples,  Italian prosecutor Paolo Giorgio Ferri brought charges against Edoardo Almagià for knowingly committing crimes against the cultural heritage of Italy.

Acquittal, Seizures, and Restitutions

Although Almagià's criminal case in Italy was dismissed due to the statute of limitations, in 2012 the Italian courts upheld the confiscation of all relics previously in his possession, stating that his activities contributed to "one of the greatest sacks of Italian cultural heritage based on the sheer amount of stolen goods."

In connection with the U.S. side of the investigation, New York’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit has identified over 2,000 stolen antiquities trafficked by Almagià, recovering 221 of them to date, valued at nearly $6 million. Of these, 150 were seized as part of the Michael Steinhardt investigation, with the New York billionaire having purchased ten items from Almagià.

Arrest Warrant

Yesterday, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office obtained an arrest warrant for Edoardo Almagià on three charges:

1. Conspiracy in the Fourth Degree under Penal Law § 105.10(1)
2. Scheme to Defraud in the First Degree under Penal Law § 190.65(1)(b)
3. Criminal Possession of Stolen Property in the Third Degree under Penal Law § 165.50

The arrest warrant, totaling 80 pages, details the extent of this trafficking network and the harm caused to Italy’s cultural heritage. As New York authorities await their day in court with this trafficker, the hope remains that dealers, collectors, and museums will disclose any remaining materials tied to Almagià.