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Plundered Mosaics (Den of Antiquities)
In 1974 in war torn northern Cyprus a priceless mosaic is chipped from the walls of a Greek orthodox church by Turkish looters. It is smuggled out of the country into the underworld of stolen antiquities and broken into pieces before being sold to the highest bidder. The highest bidder in this case is an Indianapolis art dealer, Peg Goldberg, who falls in love with the mosaics, pays $1 million for them and ships them back to the States.
But then it all goes wrong. The Getty Museum is offered the mosaics for $20 million but the museum smells a rat and reports the case to the Cypriot authorities. Goldberg is now lumbered with mosaics that are virtually unsellable. Worse than that, the Cypriot government threatened legal action against her to get them back.
Had Goldberg been the victim of an elaborate scam? Had she been lured to Europe and seduced into buying the beautiful mosaics by a string of dubious characters desperate to off load the plundered antiquities? This film follows the complex trail of deception that leads from the sparse hillsides of Cyprus to Munich, Geneva and Amsterdam and finally to a courtroom in America. Peg Goldberg lost her case and the mosaics she bought for a $1 million can now be seen in a museum in Nicosia.
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