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In the spring of 2011, an ancient statue from Cambodia was set to be auctioned at Sotheby's in New York.
The five-foot tall artifact with its powerful chest and large round eyes is known as the Duryodhana.
The Duryodhana is a thousand-year-old sandstone sculpture of a warrior from a Cambodian temple called Koh Ker.
Matthew Campbell is a senior reporter and editor for Bloomberg Businessweek.
Though the figure was sculpted out of stone, it managed to capture movement,
as if the warrior was ready to leap in a duel.
The object is significant artistically because it is one of the most amazing stone sculptures
that's ever come out of Cambodia
and specifically of this remarkable ancient civilization called the Khmer Empire, which produced among other things, Angkor Wat.
Sotheby's was aiming to sell the sculpture for as much as $3 million.
To collectors, it was a masterpiece.
But to US prosecutors who've been tracking its sale, it was something else—evidence.
What was really significant about it from a legal perspective was no one had seen this object in a long time.
It had last been published in 1975.
There was no record of where it was before that.
For decades, the Duryodhana had seemingly vanished before resurfacing on the other side of the world.
Records showed that it was first sold in 1975 in London.
Documents tracking its chain of custody beyond that were scant.
But federal investigators who were looking into the statue had one clue they couldn't ignore.