The late Douglas Latchford made millions selling antiquities suspected to be stolen from holy sites across Southeast Asia to wealthy American collectors and prestigious museums, including the Denver Art Museum.
Now the U.S. government says his money is tainted — and they want it back.
Federal prosecutors, in a landmark civil action on Thursday, announced Latchford’s daughter agreed to return $12 million in proceeds her father garnered from selling plundered artifacts.
The deal, spearheaded by the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York and Homeland Security Investigations, represents the largest-ever forfeiture of money from the sale of stolen antiquities, the agencies said in a news release.
RELATED: Looted: Stolen relics, laundered art and a Colorado scholar’s role in the illicit antiquities trade
“For years, Douglas Latchford made millions from selling looted antiquities in the U.S. art market, stashing his ill-gotten gains offshore,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement. “This historic forfeiture action and settlement shows that we will be relentless in following the money wherever it leads to fight the illicit trade in cultural patrimony.”
Latchford’s daughter, Julia Copleston, will also relinquish a seventh-century bronze Vietnamese statue depicting the four-armed goddess Durga. Prosecutors allege the statue was stolen from the Southeast Asian nation in 2008 or 2009; Latchford then purchased it using “tainted funds,” authorities said.
The Bangkok-based businessman’s alleged exploits were suspected for years, but only began to unravel during a series of civil and criminal cases brought by American prosecutors in the early 2010s. Those investigations culminated in a much-publicized indictment by a federal grand jury in 2019, accusing Latchford of perpetrating a decades-long smuggling scheme to sell looted works.
But Latchford didn’t do it alone. For years, he had the help of a late Colorado art scholar, Emma C. Bunker, who vouched for and promoted his stolen relics, The Denver Post found in a three-part investigation last year. A longtime museum trustee and consultant, Bunker helped Latchford use the Denver Art Museum as a laundromat for looted Southeast Asian antiquities, The Post reported.
After the series published, the Denver Art Museum distanced itself from Bunker, removing her name from a gallery wall and announcing the return of nearly $200,000 in donations from the family. The museum, which returned four Latchford pieces to Cambodia last year, has removed all Bunker donations from its Southeast Asian wing as the Department of Justice probes their histories.
The criminal case against Latchford died when he did in 2020. But prosecutors have continued to go after his assets — including artworks and money stored in offshore bank accounts located in friendly tax havens.
Copleston inherited scores of priceless Khmer antiquities after her father’s death, and has worked with authorities in the United States and Cambodia to return them to their ancestral homeland.
She did not oppose the forfeiture, and the agreement did not constitute an admission of liability or guilt on her part, according to the stipulation and order of settlement.
An adviser to Copleston told Bloomberg that she was aware even before her father died that authorities would seek assets from his estate.
“The Cambodian campaign for the restitution of their heritage is the right resolution to a difficult history,” Copleston told the news agency in a statement. “It is appropriate that my father’s records have been used by the Cambodian Minister for Culture and Fine Arts, and her team, to shed light on the activities of the very many collectors, dealers and institutions which have been involved with the trade.”
The Durga
Bunker’s name does not appear in the 46-page forfeiture complaint. But prosecutors, much as they’ve done in previous cases involving Latchford’s dealings, hint at her role in the alleged scheme.
In January 2009, Latchford emailed an unnamed art dealer a photograph of the Durga lying on its back. The 6-foot-tall bronze statue was covered in dirt and minerals — clear signs of recent excavation and that the piece likely was looted, authorities said.
“Confidential: for your eyes only – not to be shown to anybody,” Latchford told the art dealer. He and a “scholar he worked with” believed the piece came from the late seventh century, prosecutors outlined in the complaint.
Bunker, in prior criminal and civil cases, was referred to as “the scholar.”
Latchford paid $750,000 for the relic, authorities said.
In 2011, the Bangkok-based art collector published the Durga in a book — “Khmer Bronzes: New Interpretations of the Past.” His co-author of that book, along with two others: Emma C. Bunker.
The book’s entry for the Durga claimed it to be “one of the earliest known Southeast Asian bronze images cast by (the) lost wax (casting technique) with an iron armature supporting the core.”
“Years, decades even, to unravel”
Publishing looted antiquities in books is a common laundering practice, cultural heritage experts and investigators in the illicit art trade say. The act of featuring items in glossy pages gives them a veneer of legitimacy, experts say, and boosts their value in private sales.
Bunker and Latchford’s names are on three books, though the Colorado scholar acknowledged in private emails that she actually wrote them. Latchford supplied many of the pieces that appeared in those books — many of which had never been seen before.
Cambodian officials have said these books represent the lost culture of their country, which was ravaged by looting during decades of genocide and civil war.
Prosecutions for cultural property were historically few and far between. But these actions have stepped up recently, as authorities in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and Homeland Security Investigations turn complex, years-long investigations, uncovering sprawling trafficking networks from Southeast Asia to the Middle East and southern Europe.
“I hope this case encourages other departments to go after this kind of malfeasance,” said Erin Thompson, an art crime professor at New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
And the impacts of Latchford’s dealings continue to be felt as Cambodian officials traverse the world in search of their lost history.
“It took him decades to build up his collection of illicit antiquities,” Thompson said. “It could take years, decades even, to unravel it.”
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