A Crawford County man has been sentenced to five years' probation for illegally excavating prehistoric bluff shelters in the Ozark-St. Francis National Forest.
David Tudor, 59, of Natural Dam pleaded guilty in April.
Federal agents used hidden cameras to monitor Tudor for four months in 2015 while he dug for arrowheads and other artifacts in the national forest near his home, according to court documents.
They seized 2,831 artifacts from Tudor's residence, according to a Nov. 16 grand jury indictment. He forfeited those artifacts to the government.
Excavation of artifacts from federal lands without a permit is a violation of the Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979. All artifacts excavated from federal lands are the property of the United States, according to the act.
In a sentencing hearing Aug. 29 in federal court in Fort Smith, Chief U.S. District Judge P.K. Holmes III approved the plea agreement, fined Tudor $2,500 and ordered him to pay $12,471 in restitution. Tudor paid the fines and restitution Monday.
Tudor could have gotten a maximum sentence of one year in prison and a $100,000 fine, according to the plea agreement.
According to the sentencing minutes, Tudor is "prohibited from entering any national forest in the United States except for necessary ingress or egress on paved highways for purposes of travel to a destination outside the boundaries of the national forest."
Federal agents learned of the thefts when they received an anonymous email about Tudor posting photos of his finds online, according to court documents. Tudor posted pictures of arrowheads and other artifacts on his Instagram page.
Investigators moved the surveillance cameras from one location to another to correspond with Tudor's posts on Instagram. Investigators found several locations where Tudor had been digging on federal land.
Metro on 09/10/2017