![]() ![]() Wearing a miniature camera embedded in a button of his shirt, he recorded 100 hours of videotape on which sellers and collectors casually discussed the prices and sources of their objects. Agents enlisted a confidential informant and gave him money-more than $330,000-to buy illicit artifacts. The search-and-seizures were the culmination of a multi-agency effort that spanned two and a half years. Ogden, announced the arrests as part of “the nation’s largest investigation of archaeological and cultural artifact thefts.” The agents called it Operation Cerberus, after the three-headed hellhound of Greek mythology. attorney general, Ken Salazar and David W. Later that day, the incumbent interior secretary and deputy U.S. Similar scenes played out across the Four Corners that morning as officers took an additional 21 men and women into custody. At one hilltop residence, a team of a dozen agents banged on the door and arrested the owners-a well-respected doctor and his wife. An enormous cloud hung over the region, one of them recalled, blocking out the rising sun and casting an ominous glow over the Four Corners region, where the borders of Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico meet. At dawn on June 10, 2009, almost 100 federal agents pulled up to eight homes in Blanding, Utah, wearing bulletproof vests and carrying side arms. ![]()
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