When Nowak asked about capital punishment, the government refused to talk about it. Every facet of the death penalty was a “state secret.” In fact, in Mongolia almost anything could be declared a state secret. For years the U.S. embassy had urged the government to either amend or abolish the state secrets law, which the State Department called “among the most restrictive and punitive in any post-communist country.” As a pony caught between two elephants, as President Elbegdorj once put it, Mongolia had good reason to be wary of Russia and China, but this law exceeded even the usual paranoias. “Authorities remain fearful of information and, thus, reticent to comply with citizens, media, or civil society organizations’ requests for information,” the U.S. embassy wrote, quoting one USAID-funded report. A person could be imprisoned for up to eight years for revealing even a banal state “secret.”
Nowak finally learned that Mongolia executed twenty to thirty people every year. Death row inmates had been held in “complete isolation, handcuffed and shackled, and denied adequate food” before they were killed. The public was never informed who, when, or how. Even the families of the condemned were not told the date or location of their loved one’s execution, and afterward they weren’t allowed to collect the body.
Eric’s mom thought he had made a mistake by admitting guilt—she wanted him to fight the criminal charges. His father advised taking a deal. “I feel that he did something wrong, but I don’t think he did it intentionally,” Bill said one day over lunch at Chili’s in Land O’ Lakes. “He got involved with the fossils and that was more important to him than—”
“A lot of people are into fossils and they never get caught,” Doris said.
“What do you mean, ‘get caught’?” Eric asked. He was eating barbecue ribs and drinking Diet Coke. “That’s implying that everybody who’s interested in fossils is hunting illegally.”
“I mean you didn’t get caught,” his mom said. “It’s just—you did everything in the open.”
“He didn’t go through the proper channels, that’s the thing,” Bill said.
“He didn’t go through the proper channels,” Doris said.
“There are no proper channels,” Eric said, now that it was almost all over.
“That’s why they dragging it out so long,” Doris said. “They didn’t know what to do. In the fossil clubs we met lots of fossil people. They were all really into fossils but they all had regular jobs. Eric was the only one who went really into it.”
“That’s not true!” Eric said. “There’s a lot of dealers that do it for a living.”
“There’s a few, yeah,” Doris said.
“There’s hundreds of people,” Eric said. “Look at Tucson. Most of those people, that’s all they do.”
Doris changed the subject. “When I go swimming I forget everything,” she said. “I forget to eat sometimes.”
Later, as the date of Eric’s sentencing hearing approached, Doris stuffed a big brown envelope with mementos from his youth—newspaper clippings about his school honors, fossils, and swimming; photocopies of his dive cards and fossil club memberships. On a piece of loose-leaf notebook paper she wrote her son a note, apologizing for her spelling mistakes—
I am doing thomthing crazy...I send you a lot of paper clippings. I want you send some of the paper story from you, that the lawer got to know you a little better. I help [hope] that he sees you as a yung good man. What you did all your years. I hope you going to do this. Just send it to his office. If I had his adress I would have send it. But Dady sad you do it. If you have your Trial we want both be there. You must fite for it.
She added, “Well I wisch you good luck with what you doing. You are my boy and I love you very much.”
She folded the note, put it in the packet, and mailed it.
On June 3, 2014, Eric stood before the last judge in the last courtroom he hoped to ever see in his life. Two months shy of forty, he wore the one good suit he owned. Eric had always had to YouTube how to tie a tie, but, for court, his father had tied it for him. Strands of gray now laced his hair. His Florida tan had faded, but only slightly, the way a baseball glove loses its brown. The dinosaur, the Gobi, Tuvshin, Serenola—all of that seemed distant now.
The judge wanted to know what the confessed smuggler had to say for himself. Alvin K. Hellerstein, sixteen years on the bench in the federal courts of the Southern District of New York, appeared dissatisfied with the level of detail that had been elicited from the defendant by the magistrate who had taken Eric’s guilty plea—he wanted more. The lawyers did the talking. Jurassic Park came up, as did Rodin’s The Burghers of Calais, lava flow, English law, ankylosaurs, Mongolian tourism, Wyoming, the phrases “law enforcement renaissance,” “sophisticated ringleader,” “dark of night,” “expensive boats, expensive cars, expensive planes,” “media frenzy,” and “public indignity, shame, and humiliation.” Doris and Bill sat in the courtroom; they hated to drive farther from home than the supermarket or church, but they had driven to Virginia and Tyler had chauffeured them the rest of the way to New York. Amanda had traveled separately from Williamsburg. Eric’s friend and fellow fossil dealer Andreas Kerner had driven in from New Jersey.
Judge Hellerstein had before him the pre-sentence investigation from the office of probation and parole:
Offender’s citizenship: U.S.
Dependents: two.
Aliases: none.
Criminal history: none.
Offender’s family: father, eighty-three, retired schoolteacher; mother, seventy-eight, homemaker; one maternal half-brother, truck driver. “He described his childhood as ‘great’ and noted no problems in the household.” Started scuba diving at age ten in the local rivers, collecting fossils. Good relationship with parents.
Divorced: “He said that they were not getting along and there was a great deal of stress placed on them, which included financial issues. He said that his ex-wife always sought financial stability and his business has more peaks and valleys....His court case was the final straw.”
One son: Greyson, age six. One daughter: Rivers, age four. “He stated that his kids and family are the most important thing to him in the world and his biggest worry is being taken away from them.”
Girlfriend: Tyler, thirty-six. “She has remained very supportive.”
Drugs? No.
Drinking? Occasionally.
Drug test results: negative.
Offender employment record: Florida Fossils since 1992, dinosaurs since 2005.
Current job: “He still collects fossils on his own for prep and resale. In addition, he has been purchasing antiques from estate sales and restoring the items for resale.”
Offender’s physical condition: six feet tall, 210 pounds, no tattoos, no scars. Having some eye problems, requires medicinal drops. “The defendant indicated that post-seizure of the Tyrannosaurs [sic] bataar, he attended one or two treatment sessions with a mental health specialist. He indicated that he was prescribed an antidepressant, however he stopped taking the medication after about a week because he did not like the side effects. He said that he is handling things as well as he can. He remarked that he spends more quality time with his children now than he did previously, as he was always working.”
Nothing in the investigative report promised to undo Eric. It was the million-dollar Heritage sale that threatened him. By going forward with the T. bataar sale Eric had unwittingly contributed to his own prosecution: the auction results sealed the dinosaur’s commercial value, allowing the court to impose a higher sentence.
Eric’s lawyer wished to make clear that his client admitted the smuggling but maintained that he never did anything wrong in Mongolia. The judge replied, “My concern has to do with the extent to which there is acceptance of responsibility. Someone who is fudging what happened, in my mind, doesn’t have a clear sense of his own responsibility for his crimes.”
Martin Bell, the prosecutor, told the judge the U.S. government had no reason to believe that Eric was “expl
icitly aware” of Mongolia’s laws but that the constitution rendered “all of the natural things under the ground the property of Mongolia.”
“Look, that is all you need, to convict,” Judge Hellerstein told him.
“As black market enterprises go, this one is a little unusual, and not simply because it involves Tyrannosaurus bones,” Bell said. “It is a little unusual because for the most part it is a black market that has thrived in plain sight, owing among other things to lack of enforcement.” Federal law enforcement was “only recently realizing the contours of that black market,” he went on. Whereas other illicit trafficking carried the “standard sort of earmarks” such as a “high level of secrecy,” fossils were sold at auction and large trade fairs.
“Everyone averts his eyes,” Judge Hellerstein said.
Pretty much, Bell said. Under scrutiny, dealers might resist selling questionable materials, “But that scrutiny hasn’t existed for some time.”
Lederman offered that Eric wasn’t some criminal mastermind, saying, “There has been some confusion about the law abroad, in Mongolia, and to what extent he understood that.”
“I have to feel, Mr. Lederman, that if Mr. Prokopi lied on the customs declaration form, he lied to cover up something, some uncomfortable knowledge, and that uncomfortable knowledge was that he was importing something against the law,” the judge replied.
Bell had written the all-important “501” letter to the court, saying that the defendant had been a good cooperator and recommending leniency “in recognition and consideration for Mr. Prokopi’s substantial assistance to the government.” The T. bataar case, in fact, had “proven to be something of a net gain for the overall cause of law enforcement.” Federal investigators now knew of two dozen Mongolian dinosaurs in circulation, and Mongolia was getting them back. Also, law enforcement now had more insight into the murkier side of the fossil trade, an area Bell said had been “sufficiently ignored.” In fact, the case had prompted “something of a law enforcement renaissance. There is probably not an active fossil investigation at this point that doesn’t owe on some level to information that Mr. Prokopi has furnished law enforcement with, at least indirectly.” The case had altogether resulted in “frankly getting federal law enforcement’s act together with respect to the policing of this admittedly obscure area.”
Bell emphasized that by recommending leniency he didn’t mean to suggest the crime wasn’t “a serious one.” He said, “These are natural resources that literally cannot be duplicated. You would need, frankly, the sort of [resurrection] power that the movie Jurassic Park suggested but which doesn’t exist in reality.” At one point he mentioned Oviraptor. “I think a number of them stampeded in the 1996 movie Jurassic Park. It might have been 1992. I was young and awestruck in any event, Your Honor.”
“I missed the movie,” Judge Hellerstein said. “Maybe I should go back to see it.”
Bell said, “Every now and then it airs on TNT.”
The probation department had recommended prison—a sentence of two and a half years. Hellerstein wanted to think about it for a few minutes, and to “size up Mr. Prokopi and how he feels about what he did and what are the chances of a rehabilitated life.” Lederman asked the judge to consider the degree to which Eric had “already been punished indirectly.” He was divorced; he’d lost his home “to effective foreclosure” and his business “to fear, whether actual or perceived, by others who no longer will work with him for fear that they will suffer reprisals by the government.” When Eric was offered a chance to speak, he stood and read a printed statement: “I would like to apologize to this court and the government for my actions. What I did was wrong, and I failed to appreciate the gravity...My life has been devastated by these mistakes, but I have not lost my love for paleontology and hope to rebuild my business with more emphasis on proper documentation. I sincerely love fossils, and...I am remorseful for the damage my actions may have caused to hurt the relationship between commercial and academic paleontology.”
Judge Hellerstein was in his early eighties, the same age as Eric’s father. He had presided over cases involving 9/11 insurance claims, and he had ordered the federal government to make public certain evidence of detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib prison. Just recently, he had passed sentence on Kareem Serageldin, one of the few Wall Street executives convicted in the massive mortgage fraud that led to the economic collapse of 2008. In that case, Hellerstein had handed down a relatively lenient punishment, partly because Serageldin had worked “in a place where there was a climate for him to do what he did.” The judge had confessed to feeling baffled by the banker’s actions, telling the courtroom, “This is a deepening mystery in my work. Why do so many good people do bad things?”
Hellerstein soon returned to the courtroom and announced, “Mr. Prokopi is an unusual person. He is following a discipline that not very many people follow. The fact that he’s following it and helping to create a market for it is important in the study of fossils, and the study of fossils is important in our understanding of life on earth and where we came [from] as men and women. So he’s to be commended for that.”
But in society, trust and honesty are important, the judge said. “That is particularly important in relationship to the discipline that Mr. Prokopi has engaged in all his life, because he in effect has made a living on the scarcity of history, and in engaging in this reputation he in fact has committed himself to respect the history and the patrimony of countries offering that history.”
The sentence needed to be a deterrent, Judge Hellerstein went on. Then he surprised everyone by sentencing Eric to six months in prison.
In the courtroom, Doris and Bill looked stricken. Tyler sobbed. Amanda thought, “Okay, we can deal with this.” Eric could think only of being away from the children.
Under the agreement negotiated by Lederman, he would spend three months in a federal prison, followed by three months in a halfway house. There would be no fine. Lederman asked that Eric be allowed to serve his time near Williamsburg and that his incarceration start in the fall, so that he could spend the summer with Greyson and Rivers. It was so ordered. Eric would report to prison on September 9, 2014, at two in the afternoon, at a facility to be determined.
A few days later, Seth Meyers, the late-night talk show host, mentioned the resolution of United States of America v. Eric Prokopi in his opening monologue: “Just a word of prison advice: Don’t tell the other inmates you’re a bone smuggler.” Eric posted the clip on Facebook. “Well, at least you’re famous,” a friend commented. When Eric changed his profile photo to a courtroom artist’s chalk rendering of his face, another said, “Your nose isn’t that pointy.” Another said, “Too jowly.” A third said, “Really, who IS that person??”
CHAPTER 20
TARBOMANIA
IN MONGOLIA, PEOPLE COULD TALK OF LITTLE OTHER THAN THE dinosaur smuggler, delighted by the thought of their underdog country recapturing, Genghis Khan–style, a national treasure from a superpower like the United States. Mongolians who had never so much as uttered the word dinosaur enjoyed speculating about how Eric Prokopi got the skeleton out of the country. Stolen gold framed their understanding of smuggling—thieves hid nuggets in their intestines or anus. How big is this dinosaur? they wanted to know.
Oyuna had become the face of Mongolian dinosaurs, and more. The Heritage auction had happened mere days before the deadline to declare one’s candidacy for parliament. “You’re in the media ten times a day. How about running?” President Elbegdorj had asked her as the filing date approached. Oyuna had already run for parliament twice and lost. Mounting a strong campaign was expensive, but Elbegdorj told her she needn’t worry—T. bataar provided plenty of publicity for free. Oyuna had won her seat in parliament, and Elbegdorj had appointed her minister of culture, sports, and tourism. “Thank you, dinosaur!” she’d said.
As Robert Painter had predicted, the Democrats had swept Mongolia’s 2012 elections. For the first time in the country’s history, the f
our most important political seats belonged to the opposition. The Democratic Party now had the collective power to make appointments and affect all manner of policy, including laws and regulations involving mining, transportation, and the judiciary. Segments of the public appeared skeptical. The government had hired a local software company, Interactive LLC, to help rush the new voting machines into service mere weeks before the elections. The machines stood about belly high and resembled smallish photocopiers. The Mongolians had taken one look at them and called them khar khairtsag—“black boxes.” The machines represented “something of a (literal) black box to voters,” wrote Julian Dierkes, an international election observer who worked in Mongolia. He said it remained to be seen “to what extent voters will trust a counting mechanism that neither they nor anyone else can observe directly.” Nine political parties had called for a recount, but the elections commission refused.
Voters’ questions persisted as the nation prepared for the presidential election of 2013. Who controlled the black boxes? Who paid for them? Who programmed them? Who oversaw the programmers? The machines became such a prevalent concern and subject of conspiracy chatter that two University College London anthropologists, Bumochir Dulam and Rebecca Empson, eventually wrote about the constant rumors. “Despite their alleged ‘impartiality,’ speculation has continued to circulate about the possibility that the khar mashins are rigged or can be ‘hacked,’” they wrote. “The General Election Committee maintains and runs the black boxes and its IT officers are in charge of installing and updating programs on the machines. According to some, this means that powerful politicians could very well influence and manipulate the General Election Committee, making sure the machines were used for their own means.”
Oyuna, meanwhile, focused on cultural heritage and tourism. Half a million foreigners were expected to visit Mongolia by the end of 2013. Special-interest tourism appeared an ideal way to attract bird-watchers, skiers, golfers, and spiritual pilgrims. A new international airport was being built in Khushigiin Valley, 30 miles south of Ulaanbaatar, with plans to develop a city around it. Oyuna targeted 2015 as the year for “significant promotion of Mongolia to the world.” The government began testing new tourism slogans; “Go nomadic, experience Mongolia” was followed by “Mongolia—Nomadic by Nature.”
The Dinosaur Artist Page 28