On 22 September, three dealers who operate the Metropolitan Fine Arts and Antiques store in New York were arrested for selling ivory works of art without a license—a felony in a state under a law passed in 2014 to limit the ivory trade. Officials with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation raided the shop and found 126 objects totalling $4.5m—including two pairs of elephant tusks, one of which was seven feet long. This followed a sting operation in which undercover investigators purchased a $2,000 statuette that was supposedly carved from mammoth tusk but turned out to be ivory from an African elephant.
The Manhattan district attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr said that the dealers—Victor Zilberman, Irving Morano and Samuel Morano—continued to sell ivory works of art after their non-renewable license expired. A lawyer for Zilberman told the New York Times that his client denied the charges and intended to fight them. A lawyer for the Moranos did not respond to a call for comment. All of the objects found in the seizure will be destroyed in New York on World Elephant Day next year.
