PHILADELPHIA (AP) – An art store owner surrendered Tuesday on charges he smuggled one ton of banned African elephant ivory into the United States.

Victor Gordon is accused of getting his ivory from west and central Africa, where conservationists consider the ivory trade a major threat to the dwindling African elephant population. He paid an unnamed co-conspirator to buy and carve the ivory, and then had them stain it to appear to be decades old to get around an international treaty, prosecutors said.

U.S. officials called the amount of ivory seized in the case staggering, but could not immediately estimate how many elephants allegedly died at Gordon’s hands.

“It’s safe to say dozens of elephants sit before you,” Edward Grace, deputy chief of law enforcement for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said at a news conference Tuesday in Philadelphia, where officials displayed a cache of intricately carved tusks seized from Gordon and his customers.

Gordon, 68, had the tusks smuggled through New York, where the case is being prosecuted, authorities said. He appeared in federal court in Brooklyn with his lawyer Tuesday morning, and was released on $1 million bond.

The lawyer, Daniel-Paul Alva, said his client pleaded not guilty. He said Gordon is a legitimate collector and dealer of ivory tusks who has documentation to show he was collecting them in the hopes of leaving them to a museum and who had no knowledge that any of them came from illegal poaching. A phone at the downtown Philadelphia store, Victor Gordon Enterprises, appeared to be disconnected.

Ivory over 100 years old can be imported as an antique. Newer ivory has been banned since the 1980s under an international conservation treaty.

Nonetheless, demand for the ivory has exploded with the economic growth of Asia, where ivory figures are treasured. The elephant population has fallen sharply in the past 20 to 30 years, said Richard Ruggiero, a chief conservationist with the wildlife service.

“The market goes up, so the killing goes up,” he said.

Poachers first seek out the largest males in the group, then mid-size males, then the largest females, typically the matriarchs. With their deaths, the social structure of the group disintegrates, he said.

Some of the tusks displayed Tuesday appeared to come from a 30- to 50-year-old bull elephant that would have weighed five tons, officials said.

“It’s like displaced persons from a war,” Ruggiero said. “We’re seeing the last battle for the survival of the forest elephant in central Africa right now.”

Gordon’s indictment capped a five-year investigation begun after agents intercepted ivory being smuggled through John F. Kennedy International Airport. More than a half-dozen people were convicted as they worked their way up to get Gordon, officials said.

The ivory was smuggled from or through Cameroon, Gabon, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda, officials said.

While Ruggiero cited Gabon as an example of a country with progressive leadership to fight elephant poaching, other countries lack the resources or will to do so.

“Elephants, they know what’s going on. They know they’re being hunted,” Ruggiero said. “Their entire ability to use their habitat and be social animals is greatly compromised, because they’re under so much pressure.”

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BALTIMORE (AP) – The FBI is unraveling a yearlong plot by two New York City men to sell valuable historical documents they stole from archives around the country, a Baltimore prosecutor said Tuesday at bail hearings related to the alleged theft of $6 million in documents.

Bail was set at $500,000 for presidential historian Barry Landau, 63, and $750,000 for his 24-year-old assistant Jason Savedoff. Both had been held without bail since their arrest on charges of theft over $100,000 earlier this month. Their attorneys dispute the charges.

The men were arrested July 9 after a Maryland Historical Society employee saw Savedoff take a document out of the library, prosecutor Tracy Varda said. When officers arrived at the historical society, Savedoff was in the men’s restroom and shreds of paper were seen in the toilet after he left, leading investigators to believe he may have flushed documents, she said.

Investigators found 60 historical documents, many of them signed out by Landau, inside a locker Savedoff was using at the library, Varda said. They include papers signed by President Abraham Lincoln worth $300,000 and presidential inaugural ball invitations and programs worth $500,000.

“He shows zero respect for the history of this country. The documents he has stolen represent the heritage and history of this country,” Varda told the judge, adding that when considering whether Landau was a flight risk, this behavior may translate to a lack of respect for the court system, too.

Landau’s attorney, Andrew C. White, a former federal prosecutor, argued that the case before the judge was a non-violent, attempted theft case with no loss and he suspects the actual value of the documents will turn out to be significantly lower. Landau, who appeared in a disheveled blue and white striped button-down shirt and khakis, is very well known in his field and is not likely to be able to walk into a library at this point, he said.

The FBI is involved in the investigation under a federal statute that covers museum thefts, but no federal charges have been filed. So far, the FBI has found that the men have been taking documents from archives including the National Archives, Vassar College, presidential libraries and historical societies in New York and Connecticut over the last year, Varda said. When the FBI examined the documents, investigators found a list of historical names — including Presidents Harry S. Truman, Ulysses S. Grant and Andrew Jackson and President of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis — with values next to them, believed to be the value of documents the men were looking for, she said.

Documents found at Landau’s mid-town Manhattan apartment were taken to the National Archives to be cataloged. Investigators believe one of those recovered documents, an April 1780 letter from Benjamin Franklin to John Paul Jones about acquiring military supplies and worth about $100,000, was taken from the New York Historical Society in March, Varda said. Investigators also believe that Landau and Savedoff took a set of inaugural addresses signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt from the Roosevelt presidential library in December and later sold them to a New York dealer for $35,000, she told the judge.

FBI investigators also found typewritten library catalog cards they believe the men took so libraries would not know the documents were stolen, she said.

The Historical Society of Pennsylvania told The Associated Press that it received information last week that Landau may have tried to sell a letter signed by George Washington that went missing from the society’s collection. Records show that in the weeks before it was offered for sale, Savedoff checked out a box that contained the letter during one of the duo’s 17 visits to the archive in Philadelphia. But after the dealer contacted the society to see if it was missing from their collection, the society said the letter was mailed back anonymously.

The FBI doesn’t know who Savedoff is and is unsure of his citizenship, a pretrial services representative told the judge, noting that Savedoff had used multiple aliases. Savedoff, who appeared in a bright yellow jumpsuit, has dual American and Canadian citizenship, his attorney, Larry Nathans said, adding that he has a sociology degree from the University of Canada and is an accomplished violinist, he said.

Savedoff’s mother flew in from Canada and planned to get an apartment in the area if Savedoff was granted bail, Nathans said. Noting that Savedoff was hunched over with his head down, Judge Stuart Berger asked if he was having medical problems. Nathans said Savedoff suffers from Crohn’s disease, which has been causing him significant stomach problems that he has not been able to regulate by adjusting his diet in jail.

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Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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