, an American attorney who serves as a legal adviser to the Cambodian Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts, sent an email to Bunker’s son, Lambert, on Nov. 21 requesting Bunker’s “extensive notebooks concerning Cambodia” and other archival materials in the family’s possession.

Gordon also asked for photographs of Cambodian statues, noting that Bunker arranged the photography for many of the images used in the publications she co-wrote with disgraced collector and dealer Douglas Latchford.

“We are very eager to consult these materials as we continue our search for several important statues originating from the country,” Gordon wrote in the email, which he provided to The Denver Post.

The Bunker family, he said in an interview, has not responded.

Gordon called the documents a “missing roadmap,” saying their contents could mark “a significant turning point in our investigation.”

“These notebooks could be a crucial piece of our investigative work as we continue to unravel what we consider one of the largest art crimes in history,” he said.

Looted: Stolen relics, laundered art and a Colorado scholar’s role in the illicit antiquities trade

The Cambodian government, for years, has been on a . Many of the country's ancient temples were plundered during a in the 1970s and subsequent civil war. Looters took advantage of the upheaval to sneak out priceless statues, which ended up in the collections of prominent museums around the world, including the Denver Art Museum.

Authorities pegged the main trafficker as Latchford, a British dealer who amassed one of the world's largest private collections of Khmer artifacts. A federal grand jury in New York him in 2019 on charges related to trafficking illicit antiquities, but he before he could stand trial.

Latchford found an especially eager taker in the Denver Art Museum due to his longtime friendship with Bunker, The Post found in a three-part investigation in 2022. The pair wrote three books together about Khmer art -- works that are now used not for their scholarship but as treasure maps for investigators and governments scouring for stolen works.

Bunker helped Latchford use the Denver museum as a way station for looted art, The Post found. She leveraged her cachet as a respected scholar to vouch for his collection and helped Latchford forge provenance -- or ownership -- documents to facilitate his high-priced sales. Bunker, who died in 2021, was never charged in connection with the scheme, though federal investigators were zeroing in on her involvement before her death, The Post reported last year.

The Denver Art Museum, following The Post's reporting, has distanced itself from Bunker. In 2023, museum leadership removed Bunker's name from its Southeast Asian gallery wall and returned a six-figure donation to her family.

The museum also turned over multiple pieces Bunker donated to its collection to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security last year to be returned to Southeast Asian countries.

One of Emma Bunker's daughters, also named Emma, said in an interview that she's not sure where her mother's notebooks are or if they're even still in the family's possession. She said she last saw them 20 years ago and is not in touch with her siblings.

But, Bunker added, her family should help the Cambodians if they can.

"What good does it do us to keep the notebooks?" she said. "It would be nice to get things where they belong."

The established the in 2017 to “conduct training on the preservation, protection and investigation of cultural heritage and property; to coordinate and support investigations involving the illicit trafficking of cultural property around the world; and to facilitate the repatriation of illicit cultural items seized as a result of (federal) investigations to the objects and artifacts’ lawful and rightful owners.”

Looted: Stolen relics, laundered art and a Colorado scholar’s role in the illicit antiquities trade

, the department's investigative arm, once had as many as eight agents in its New York office investigating cultural property cases. A select number of additional agents around the country also worked these cases, including a nationwide investigation into looted Thai objects.

The has previously acknowledged that two relics from Thailand in its collection are part of that federal investigation.

Since 2007, HSI says it has repatriated over 20,000 items to more than 40 countries.

But the Trump administration, as part of its unprecedented mass-deportation agenda, earlier this year dissolved the cultural property program and moved the agents to immigration enforcement, multiple people with knowledge of the change told The Denver Post.

Homeland Security officials did not respond to requests for comment.

A few months after Trump took office, a Homeland Security staffer with knowledge of the antiquities field told The Post that they received an email from their bosses. The message, according to their recollection: "The way of the world is immigration. Bring your cases to a reasonable conclusion and understand that the priority is immigration operations."

This individual, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said they were given no time frame for the new assignment. Leadership, though, was clear that there would be no new cultural property cases.

Instead of conducting these investigations, this individual said they have been driving detainees between detention facilities and the airport for their deportation.

"I just spent almost a month cuffing guys up, throwing them in a van from one jail to another," this person said, adding that the work doesn’t take advantage of their specialized training.

It's frustrating, the individual said, because cultural property cases don't require a lot of agents or resources. They don't need all types of fancy electronic equipment.

"The juice from the squeeze on these cases is a lot more than people wanna give it credit," this person said.

Thai objects in Denver under investigation

For years, HSI has been investigating two Thai relics in the Denver Art Museum's collection after officials in Thailand raised issues with their provenance, or ownership history.

The pieces — part of the so-called "Prakhon Chai hoard" — were looted in the 1960s from a secret vault at a temple near the Cambodian border, The Post found in a three-part investigation in 2022. Villagers told the newspaper that they recall dredging the vault for these prized objects and selling them to a British collector named Douglas Latchford.

A federal grand jury decades later Latchford for conspiring to sell plundered Southeast Asian antiquities around the world. He before he could stand trial.

Latchford funneled some of his stolen antiquities through the Denver Art Museum due to his close personal relationship with one of the museum's trustees and volunteers, Emma C. Bunker, The Post found.

The museum told The Post last week it hasn't received any communication from the federal government since December, before Trump took office.

High-profile cases in New York and Denver are proceeding despite the reallocation of resources, one agent said.

With the federal government mostly out of the game, cultural heritage investigations will be largely left to the in New York City, which has an .

But the DA's office relies heavily on its partnership with HSI, which has federal jurisdiction and can serve warrants and issue summonses across the country. The Manhattan DA's office only has authority over New York.

"The future for the DA’s office and the (antiquities trafficking) unit is in jeopardy," said an individual familiar with the Manhattan unit's dealings, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. "It's unclear who's going to be swearing out warrants going forward."

A spokesperson for the Manhattan DA declined to comment for this story.

'Doing the right thing still has power'

These changes in enforcement priorities mean countries seeking the repatriation of their cultural items have fewer partners in the U.S. who can help them deal with museums and private collectors.

“A few years ago, the United States led the world in restoring stolen history — and it mattered,” said Bradley Gordon, an American attorney who for years has represented the Cambodian government in its quest to reclaim its pillaged history from art museums, including Denver's.

It's a shame, he said, that federal agencies have stepped back, even as the Manhattan DA continues its work.

"This work isn’t just about art; it����ap about security, diplomacy and restoring dignity," Gordon said. "These looted objects were never meant to be hidden in mansions or displayed in museum glass cases far from their origins. When they are returned, entire communities celebrate with sincere happiness. It����ap a reminder that doing the right thing still has power in the world.”

Representatives from Thailand's government, meanwhile, said they haven't gotten an update on the Prakhon Chai investigation since Trump returned to office this year.

Cultural heritage experts say these investigations can serve as an important diplomatic tool and use of soft power — a way for the U.S. to strengthen connections to allies or thaw fraught relations with longtime adversaries.

In 2013, for example, President Barack Obama's administration from the seventh century B.C. to Iran. For years, American officials said they couldn't return the million-dollar relic until relations between the two countries normalized. The move — which NBC News titled "archaeo-diplomacy" — represented a small but important gesture as the with the Middle Eastern power.

"The return of the artifact reflects the strong respect the United States has for cultural heritage property — in this case, cultural heritage property that was likely looted from Iran and is important to the patrimony of the Iranian people," the U.S. State Department said at the time. "It also reflects the strong respect the United States has for the Iranian people."

A lack of law enforcement activity in this space could also mean that museums and private collectors will be less inclined to return stolen pieces, said Erin Thompson, an art crime professor at New York's . Museums, instead, will maintain the status quo.

"Without the power of subpoenas, knowing what records people have, most of these returns are impossible," she said. "Without the official stick to back up the carrot of negotiations, it wouldn’t happen. Government presence in these negotiations is absolutely crucial."

Others wonder what the Trump administration's realignment would mean for the illicit antiquities market.

Mongolia has spent years fighting for the return of dinosaur fossils from around the globe. HSI has worked on numerous investigations on this front, a of items that are considered some of the best relics of life on Earth from millions of years ago.

Oyungerel Tsedevdamba, the country's former minister of culture, tourism and sports, said she always held up the United States as an example of what can be done to crack down on the black market for cultural goods. Before collaborating with the U.S., Mongolia was considered "the weakest country" for losing its own heritage to illegal sellers, she said.

"If ICE is too focused on immigration and less on cultural heritage, it would, of course, be a sad thing," she said in an interview, referring to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which oversees HSI. "By discouraging the black market of dinosaur fossils, the international market was shattered. If ICE weakens, the black market might surge back. The American (antiquities) market and American collaboration is essential for stopping the black market of illegal cultural property sales."

The in San Francisco bills itself as one of the world’s most comprehensive collections of Asian and Asian American art, boasting more than 20,000 works from 48 countries.

But a new exhibit lays out an uncomfortable truth for the storied museum: Some of its collection was looted and sold on the illicit antiquities market with the help of a Colorado art scholar.

“” — on view through March 10 — takes an unflattering look at the history of four ancient bronzes from Thailand that the museum acknowledges were illegally excavated from their home country. The museum says it’s in the process of returning these pieces to the Southeast Asian nation.

The bronzes, estimated to be more than 1,000 years old, are part of a collection known as the “Prakhon Chai horde.”

Looted: Stolen relics, laundered art and a Colorado scholar’s role in the illicit antiquities trade

The Denver Post in 2022 published a three-part investigation that documented, for the first time, how local villagers dredged these valuable antiquities from a secret vault at the Plai Bat II temple in northeast Thailand and sold them to a burgeoning collector named Douglas Latchford.

But Latchford didn't do it alone -- he had the help of his close friend and confidant, Emma C. Bunker.

Bunker, a longtime Denver Art Museum consultant and former member of its board of trustees, helped the Denver institution assemble its 7,000-piece Asian art collection through her connections with high-rolling dealers such as Latchford.

As a respected scholar, she also played a crucial role in legitimizing Latchford's looted collection by publishing articles and books about his pieces and fabricating provenance documents, The Post found.

In 1972 and again in 2002, Bunker published articles detailing the origins and locations of the Prakhon Chai horde -- information unknown until her scholarship. Art crime experts and cultural heritage investigators say her writings helped Latchford sanitize these stolen works so they could be sold for big money at auction houses and to private collections and museums.

The Asian Art Museum exhibit explicitly mentions Bunker's close ties to Latchford on a gallery wall plaque under the subhead "Looting." While there's no mention of Bunker in the Asian Art Museum's records, the museum connected her involvement to Latchford through an published last year by members of Thailand's repatriation committee in the .

The museum's donor, Avery Brundage, purchased the four statues from art dealers between 1965 and 1968. Museum research indicates all four were at one time owned by Latchford, who in 2019 was by a federal grand jury in New York, accused of pilfering Southeast Asian temples and amassing a fortune by selling stolen works. He in 2020 before he could stand trial.

At the time of acquisition, letters between museum staff and dealers expressed concern about the possible illegal removal of the statues, the exhibit notes. However, "these concerns were met with vague assurances the works must have been legally acquired," a plaque reads.

In June, Thailand requested the return of the four bronzes, part of a broader effort by government officials to reclaim its plundered heritage from museums across the U.S. Two months later, the museum took the first step toward removing the pieces from its collection for their eventual return to their source country.

The museum says it will work with the Thai government to transfer title of the objects back to that nation following a second vote by the museum's commissioners in the spring.

“This exhibition is one entry in our ongoing efforts to inspire thoughtful consideration of cultural heritage and the ethical responsibilities surrounding collection in the present day,” said Dr. Jay Xu, the Barbara Bass Bakar director and CEO of the Asian Art Museum, in a news release. “As a culturally specific institution with significant ties to the communities of Asia and the Asian diaspora, these conversations are especially meaningful for us. We are uniquely positioned to facilitate dialogues with the communities we represent, and we’re committed to presenting these ongoing inquiries in a forthright and open way.”

The Denver Art Museum, since The Post's series, has distanced itself from any associations with Bunker, who in 2021. The museum in March 2023 removed her name from a Southeast Asian gallery wall and returned a six-figure donation to her family.

Museum officials have also been combing through their collection to identify objects Bunker may have donated, and plan to return 11 pieces connected to the late scholar to Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam

In a brief phone interview, one of Bunker's children, Harriet Bunker, declined to comment on the exhibition, telling The Post that she's "not going to criminalize my mother."

Bunker was never charged with a crime, though the lead investigator on the Latchford case told The Post authorities were set to bring her "into the crosshairs" before her death.

They had just lost out on a big case when a disgraced antiquities dealer named Douglas Latchford before he could stand trial. But the Englishman’s longtime collaborator, Emma C. Bunker, was still alive.

RELATED: Looted: Stolen relics, laundered art and a Colorado scholar’s role in the illicit antiquities trade

The feds wanted to pay her a visit in the Mile High City, said J.P. Labbat, a former special agent with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Investigations and lead investigator on the Latchford case.

Bunker had been on the periphery of the long-running investigation, with Latchford serving as the government’s main target. But over and over again, the Colorado scholar’s name popped up alongside the indicted art trafficker.

“The more you start reading Latchford’s emails, the mindset changes from, ‘she’s just a scholar, museum employee and educator’ to ‘she’s a scoundrel,'” said Labbat, who worked with Homeland Security’s until his retirement last year.

The agents never had the chance to talk to her. Bunker Feb. 21, 2021 — just six months after Latchford. Any potential federal case perished with her.

That revelation, which has not previously been reported, underscores Bunker’s tenuous final months of life as she told friends that she felt authorities were closing in. Labbat’s comments also, for the first time, shed light on the federal government’s plans to question one of Latchford’s closest accomplices.

“It almost feels (Bunker and Latchford) absconded in a way,” Labbat said.

Two of Bunker’s children did not respond to messages seeking comment Friday.

In 2019, a federal grand jury, in a case that sent shockwaves through the global art world, Latchford on multiple counts of wire fraud, smuggling and conspiracy related to the trafficking of looted Cambodian relics. Prosecutors alleged Latchford made millions by directing the pillaging of thousand-year-old Khmer temples and selling the loot to prominent foreign collectors and museums — including the Denver Art Museum.

Latchford found an especially eager taker in the Mile High City — courtesy of close friend and confidant Bunker. The longtime Coloradan spent six decades with the museum, first as a trustee on the board of directors and then for years as a volunteer research consultant. In that role, she helped the museum assemble its 7,000-piece through her relationships with high-rolling dealers such as Latchford.

The pair then used the Denver Art Museum as a way station to boost the value and profile of looted works, The Denver Post found in a three-part investigation published in 2022.

Bunker was never charged with a crime, but she’s mentioned or referenced in at least five civil and criminal cases surrounding the sale of stolen antiquities.

“Emma just kept popping up”

After her death, those in the art world and across foreign governments wondered why Bunker had been spared from legal action. Many speculated that she had cut a deal with the U.S. government and had turned . Latchford himself suspected this at the end, even recording his conversations with Bunker out of paranoia.

Labbat, though, said Bunker never had a deal with federal prosecutors. The agent never even tried to speak with her during the Latchford investigation, he said. That changed as investigators learned more about Latchford’s scheme.

“We weren’t looking at Emma,” he said. “Emma just kept popping up.”

As the evidence mounted, federal prosecutors and agents in 2020 decided it was “probably time to bring Emma a little closer into the crosshairs than on the periphery where she was,” Labbat said. “It seemed to us she had a lot to offer.”

Emails between Bunker and Latchford, some of which The Post reviewed and reported on in 2022, suggested Bunker knew certain pieces had dubious origins, Labbat said. Some of those relics ended up in the Denver Art Museum.

“You can presume she had a huge role to play in that happening — we just don’t know to what extent without talking to her or the museum,” the retired special agent said, adding that he never spoke with Denver museum officials after Bunker’s death.

A close friend of Bunker’s told The Post in 2022 that the scholar, after Latchford’s indictment, feared legal action might be coming.

“She wasn’t optimistic and hopeful,” the friend, Joyce Clark, told The Post then. “It was really just trying to protect herself.”

Bunker did meet with federal agents at least once, in June 2013, and sent unspecified documents to a federal investigator with the Homeland Security Investigations’ Commercial Fraud Group two years earlier, The Post previously reported. Those interactions came amid a U.S. government case against Sotheby’s auction house and for a multimillion Cambodian statue.

Museum distances itself from Bunker

The Denver Art Museum, after The Post’s series ran, has been distancing itself from any associations with Bunker.

In March 2023, the museum removed Bunker’s name from its Southeast Asian gallery, that the longtime scholar had “participated with indicted art dealer Douglas Latchford to mislead the museum into acquiring looted and illegally trafficked works of art.” The museum also returned $185,000 that Bunker and her family had donated as part of a 2018 naming agreement.

For the past 16 months, the museum has been scouring Bunker’s donations, particularly the 50 antiquities she and her husband gifted their beloved institution.

Earlier this month, museum officials said they would be returning nearly a dozen relics from Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam that passed through Latchford or Bunker’s hands.

The Denver Art Museum still has two Latchford pieces in its collection, following the 2022 return of four looted Cambodian relics.

Both originate from Thailand — a dating back more than 2,000 years and an 18th-century that Latchford and Bunker jointly gifted the museum in 2006.

Museum officials contacted Thai and U.S. authorities in 2021 about these works and followed up last year to determine next steps, said Andy Sinclair, a museum spokesperson.

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The Denver Art Museum plans to return nearly a dozen antiquities from Southeast Asia that passed through the hands of indicted art dealer Douglas Latchford or his longtime Colorado collaborator, Emma C. Bunker.

The 11 pieces soon will be repatriated to Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia, senior provenance researcher Lori Iliff wrote in an Thursday.

All of the objects came from Bunker, who played a critical role in Latchford’s decades-long illicit antiquities trafficking operation, The Denver Post found in a three-part investigation published in 2022.

At least five of the pieces passed through Latchford’s hands originally, the museum publicly acknowledged for the first time by publishing provenance information for each of the objects now being returned.

Officials at the Denver Art Museum previously had acknowledged six Latchford pieces in the institution’s permanent collection, four of which were returned to Cambodia last year after the U.S. government moved to seize them. Latchford had also loaned an additional eight objects to the museum over the years.

The Denver Art Museum’s announcement comes five months after The Post reported that government officials from the three Southeast Asian nations had pressed the institution last year to return their stolen heritage. The museum last March deaccessioned — or formally removed from its collection — all 11 pieces.

Bunker donated five of the relics to the museum in 2018 as part of a naming agreement that would cement her legacy with the Mile High institution she worked closely with for six decades. She and her husband both served on the museum’s board of trustees, and Bunker spent many years as a research consultant, connecting the museum with notable antiquities dealers such as Latchford.

But after The Post’s series in December 2022, the museum removed Bunker’s name from its gallery wall and returned $185,000 that she and her family had donated as part of the naming agreement. Museum officials acknowledged for the first time in March 2023 that  into acquiring illegally trafficked art.

The latest news comes as the Denver Art Museum continues to face fallout from its association with Bunker and subsequent reckoning over how it collected its 7,000-piece Asian art collection. The Post found Latchford and Bunker used the museum as a way station for looted works.

U.S. law enforcement, meanwhile, continues to probe the museum’s Southeast Asian collection as part of a nationwide investigation into stolen art.

Federal investigators, in Latchford’s , said the Bangkok-based dealer spent decades marketing plundered Khmer artifacts to wealthy museums and collectors. Latchford, who in 2020 before he could stand trial, found an especially eager taker in Denver through his connections to Bunker.

The Colorado scholar, who died in 2021, introduced Latchford to the museum and encouraged him to donate and sell magnificent statues from the ancient Khmer Empire, which date back nearly a thousand years. She was never charged with a crime, though she’s named or referenced in five civil and criminal cases related to illicit antiquities.

The items set for repatriation include a 2,000-year-old green Vietnamese dagger from the ancient Dong Son culture, a pair of 12th-century iron palanquin hooks, a 13th-century bronze Buddhist sculpture, a bronze 12th-century finial and a 12th-century figurine depicting Prajnaparamita, the Buddhist goddess of wisdom.

Museum records show Latchford held five of the relics in Bangkok before Bunker acquired them. She then loaned or gifted them to Denver’s museum between 2004 and 2016.

Five of the artifacts also appeared in Bunker and Latchford’s 2004 book “Adoration and Glory: The Golden Age of Khmer Art.” They’re attributed only to a “private American collection.”

The pair co-authored three works in all, which experts say played an important role in legitimizing Latchford’s plundered collection and boosting its value in private sales.

The Denver Art Museum has been steadily returning items from its collection in recent years, prompted by increased public pressure and attention from law enforcement and the media.

The museum in September said it had returned five Asian artworks connected to disgraced New York City gallery owners Doris and Nancy Wiener, both of whom collaborated closely with Latchford. In 2022, the museum connected to convicted antiquities smuggler Subhash Kapoor.

Leadership has also expressed trepidation over traveling exhibits lacking provenance. Denver museum officials last year balked at accepting an ancient Greek exhibition from Florida because many of the 57 artifacts lacked detailed provenances, The New York Times in September.

Denver, the museum’s director wrote in a letter, had “experienced recent negative press for a small number of our legacy collections and associations with red flag dealers.”

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Museum officials, in a posted to its website last week, said it proactively contacted federal authorities in January with a list of pieces linked to Doris and Nancy Wiener, a mother-daughter tandem who for decades operated a on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

The sculptures — gifted to the museum between 1980 and 2008 — include three bronze Cambodian pieces from the 12th and 13th centuries, a 14th-century bronze seated Buddha from what is now Myanmar, and a 600-year-old bronze, silver and turquoise depiction of Padmasambhava, the legendary Indian Buddhist mystic, from Tibet.

RELATED: Looted: Stolen relics, laundered art and a Colorado scholar’s role in the illicit antiquities trade

The museum deaccessioned — or formally removed — the artifacts in July from its collection and returned them to U.S. officials for their eventual repatriation.

The returns come as the Denver Art Museum faces a reckoning over its past collection habits — and the shady dealers who helped fill its glass cases.

Authorities have said Doris Wiener, who died in 2011, took “” to South Asia to select stolen antiquities that would later be smuggled into New York. She was a generous benefactor to some of the country’s most prestigious art museums, including the Norton Simon Museum of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In 2016, during New York’s , authorities , seizing prized relics they said were stolen from Southeast Asian temples. Nancy Wiener was later arrested and with buying and selling millions of dollars worth of looted relics from the Middle East and Asia.

She in 2021 to charges of conspiracy and possession of stolen property. In remarks before a New York court, Wiener admitted to buying plundered antiquities and fabricating provenance documents, which trace a piece’s ownership history.

“For decades I conducted business in a market where buying and selling antiquities with vague or even no provenance was the norm,” the gallery owner said, according to court transcripts. “Obfuscation and silence were accepted responses to questions concerning the source from which an object had been obtained. In short, it was a conspiracy of the willing.”

Nancy Wiener, who did not respond to inquiries Tuesday, worked closely with another disgraced collector, Douglas Latchford. The Bangkok-based businessman sold numerous stolen pieces to the New York gallery owner, authorities said. He was in 2020 on charges related to trafficking stolen antiquities but before he could stand trial.

The New York case also illuminated the role of a Colorado scholar in Latchford’s decades-long scheme. Emma C. Bunker, a longtime Denver Art Museum trustee and research consultant, provided Wiener with one of the false provenances cited in the gallery owner’s guilty plea.

Bunker, who died in 2021, served as Latchford’s confidant and respected scholarly voice as he marketed his wares for big money on the international art market. Her connections allowed Latchford to use the Denver Art Museum as a laundromat for looted relics, The Post found in a three-part investigation published last year.

The July returns are not the first time the Denver Art Museum has given back artworks from the Wieners.

Museum officials in 2016 handed back a 10th-century sandstone sculpture — the “Torso of Rama” — to Cambodia after the Southeast Asian nation pressed for its return. The museum acquired the piece in 1986 from the Wiener Gallery. The Cambodians have since said the object originally came from Latchford.

Wiener has been cooperating with law enforcement as they scour the country for other stolen objects.

In October, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office to India that Wiener had trafficked. The following month, the DA’s office a seventh-century sandstone statue of a standing Vishnu that had been broken off and looted at the direction of Doris Wiener.

The Denver Art Museum has been to their countries of origin in recent years amid a rapidly changing landscape in the art world.

The museum last summer relinquished four looted Cambodian statues associated with Bunker and Latchford after the U.S. government moved to seize them. In October, the museum connected to another disgraced former New York gallery owner, Subhash Kapoor.

Meanwhile, federal investigators continue to probe the Denver museum’s Southeast Asian art collection, many of which Bunker donated to the museum. Government officials from Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam this spring pressed the museum for the return of their cultural heritage.

Denver Art Museum leaders previously said they would return a host of items that Bunker had donated as part of a now-scrapped agreement that had put her family’s name on the museum’s Southeast Asian wing.

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Government officials from three Southeast Asian nations say the Denver Art Museum continues to house antiquities stolen from their countries’ ancient temples and heritage sites.

Representatives from Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam sent letters to the museum, via U.S. investigators, in May and June, saying the prized relics had no legal export permits to lawfully leave their countries. The museum, they said, did not respond.

“There is a taint on these cultural properties at the Denver Art Museum,” Phoeurng Sackona, Cambodia’s minister of culture and fine arts, wrote in a June letter obtained by The Denver Post.

The countries are seeking the return of eight pieces in all — including six donated to the museum by Emma C. Bunker, a former Denver Art Museum trustee and research consultant. In December, The Post published a three-part investigation into Bunker’s critical role in a decades-long antiquities trafficking operation that implicated some of the world’s top museums and private collectors.

Bunker’s close relationship with one disgraced dealer, the late Douglas Latchford, spurred the Denver Art Museum to acquire a host of looted Southeast Asian relics — some of which the museum has returned in recent years.

After The Post’s series, museum officials removed Bunker’s name from a gallery wall and returned $185,000 that she and her family had donated as part of a 2018 naming agreement. The museum also shuttered an Asian art acquisition fund dedicated in Bunker’s honor after her death in 2021.

Denver’s museum, though, still holds more than 200 pieces from Bunker’s collection — and host countries are clamoring for their return. The antiquities include a 2,000-year-old green Vietnamese dagger from the ancient Dong Son culture, a bronze 12th-century Buddha from Thailand and multiple 12th-century Khmer bronzes, among others.

Bunker in 2016 donated these six pieces to the museum, along with three others, as part of the naming agreement that would cement her legacy on the museum’s Southeast Asian gallery wing for half a century.

She never faced criminal charges, but Bunker is named or referenced in five civil and criminal cases related to illicit antiquities.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has been investigating the origins of the Southeast Asian pieces since last year.

The museum in March formally deaccessioned — or removed from its collection — five of the donated pieces, Kristy Bassuener, a Denver Art Museum spokesperson, said in an email. The museum is working with the U.S. government to ensure their return, she said.

“The museum has cooperated with the U.S. government, including producing all requested materials, and will continue to do so as it responds to the government����ap inquiries in its ongoing work to ensure the integrity of its collections,” Bassuener said.

“A cause of serious concern”

Thailand has been targeting a cache of stolen bronze statues — known as the “Prakhon Chai” horde — which were unearthed in the 1960s from a secret vault near the Cambodian border. Villagers told The Post last year that they sold these rare finds to Latchford for huge sums. Bunker then marketed these valuable relics in articles to bolster their value.

Two of the so-called “Prakhon Chai” statues sit in the Denver Art Museum, while dozens of others remain in the collections of prominent American galleries from New York to San Fransisco. The U.S. government is investigating those as well.

“These donations to the Denver Art Museum are a cause of serious concern as Thailand has not issued any permits or permissions to Ms. Bunker for the exportation of Thai cultural heritage,” Phnombootra Chandrajoti, director general of Thailand’s Fine Arts Department, wrote in an April letter. “Ms. Bunker was well known among academics for her association with individuals responsible for significant looting throughout Southeast Asia.”

For five of the six donations, Bunker was unable to provide the museum any provenance — or ownership — information, according to museum donation documents, which were obtained by The Post. Bunker said she purchased the sixth piece in 2012 from Jonathan Tucker, a London art dealer and . Tucker told the museum he acquired the item — a 19th-century gilded bronze Buddha — from a private English collection. He provided no contact information or name.

The dagger, appraised at $8,000, “is one of the finest pieces of its kind,” according to the museum documents. Minted between 300 BCE and 200 CE, the 9-inch-tall dagger sports a standing human figure on its handle, a typical feature of Dong Son bronze weaponry. Bunker originally loaned the piece in 2005 to the Denver museum before making it part of her gift.

“It will be a nice addition to our small Vietnam collection,” museum officials wrote.

Small, portable objects like this one, officials noted, are considered “very low risk for repatriation claims.”

The museum also indicated that the dagger, along with two other donated pieces, previously had been published in Bunker and Latchford’s books. The dagger appeared in their 2004 work “Adoration and Glory: The Golden Age of Khmer Art,” attributed to a “private collection.”

Publishing looted pieces in books or articles is a common laundering practice, investigators say. Bunker and Latchford’s three books gave stolen pieces an air of legitimacy, experts say, and increased their value. Latchford, with Bunker’s help, used loans and gifts to the Denver Art Museum in order to market his pieces for sale to wealthy collectors, The Post previously reported.

Experts in the illicit antiquities trade say objects with no provenance — such as Bunker’s donations — also represent enormous red flags, especially when they come from war-torn countries. Cambodia, in particular, suffered from widespread looting during the genocidal Khmer Rouge reign in the 1970s and subsequent civil war.

The region’s history “should have heightened the museum’s scrutiny of its provenance,” said Angela Chiu, an independent art expert who studies the Asian antiquities trade. Instead, officials “assembled a hash of excuses to justify the acceptance.”

Thailand’s cultural patrimony laws date back to 1926, meaning any piece without an export permit cannot legally leave the country. Cambodia never issued permits allowing cultural heritage to be shipped abroad.

“If it’s not there, you don’t have complete provenance,” said David Keller, a special agent with Homeland Security Investigations, the federal agency leading the Thailand probe. It’s been difficult, he said, getting museums to acknowledge that pieces that may have been part of their collection for a long time could have problems with ownership.

“What is rightfully ours”

Museums for decades burnished their collections without much care for provenance. That began to change after a designed to combat the illegal trade in cultural items.

The Denver Art Museum, though, acquired Bunker’s objects well after museums had adopted more stringent acquisition policies. And the donations came just three years after Bunker’s name surfaced in a surrounding the auction of a multimillion-dollar stolen Cambodian statue.

“They’re obviously not following proper ethical standards,” said Bradley J. Gordon, an American attorney leading Cambodia’s efforts to reclaim its plundered history. “You really have to question what was the mindset of the management and board of trustees at that time.”

The Denver Art Museum did not respond to questions about why the museum acquired antiquities with no provenance, only saying acquisition and loan practices have “evolved and improved over the last several decades.”

Cambodia has been especially vocal as it seeks the return of its cultural heritage from collections around the world. Officials have been for dozens of looted objects in its care and for other national treasures. This month, Australia’s national gallery to the Southeast Asian nation.

“The stolen Cambodian objects at the Denver Art Museum are not the result of an isolated incident,” Sackona, the Cambodian official, wrote in the letter. “Many other artifacts were taken from Cambodia without permission over a number of decades.

“But first we must be given back what is rightfully ours.”

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Now the U.S. government says his money is tainted — and they want it back.

Federal prosecutors, in a landmark civil action on Thursday, announced Latchford’s daughter agreed to return $12 million in proceeds her father garnered from selling plundered artifacts.

The deal, spearheaded by the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York and Homeland Security Investigations, represents the largest-ever forfeiture of money from the sale of stolen antiquities, the agencies said in a .

RELATED: Looted: Stolen relics, laundered art and a Colorado scholar’s role in the illicit antiquities trade

“For years, Douglas Latchford made millions from selling looted antiquities in the U.S. art market, stashing his ill-gotten gains offshore,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement. “This historic forfeiture action and settlement shows that we will be relentless in following the money wherever it leads to fight the illicit trade in cultural patrimony.”

Latchford’s daughter, Julia Copleston, will also relinquish a seventh-century bronze Vietnamese statue depicting the four-armed goddess Durga. Prosecutors allege the statue was stolen from the Southeast Asian nation in 2008 or 2009; Latchford then purchased it using “tainted funds,” authorities said.

The Bangkok-based businessman’s alleged exploits were suspected for years, but only began to unravel during a series of civil and criminal cases brought by American prosecutors in the early 2010s. Those investigations culminated in a much-publicized by a federal grand jury in 2019, accusing Latchford of perpetrating a decades-long smuggling scheme to sell looted works.

But Latchford didn’t do it alone. For years, he had the help of a late Colorado art scholar, Emma C. Bunker, who vouched for and promoted his stolen relics, The Denver Post found in a three-part investigation last year. A longtime museum trustee and consultant, Bunker helped Latchford use the Denver Art Museum as a laundromat for looted Southeast Asian antiquities, The Post reported.

After the series published, the Denver Art Museum distanced itself from Bunker, removing her name from a gallery wall and announcing the return of nearly $200,000 in donations from the family. The museum, which returned four Latchford pieces to Cambodia last year, has removed all Bunker donations from its Southeast Asian wing as the Department of Justice probes their histories.

The criminal case against Latchford died when he did in 2020. But prosecutors have continued to go after his assets — including artworks and money stored in offshore bank accounts located in friendly tax havens.

Copleston inherited scores of priceless Khmer antiquities after her father’s death, and has worked with authorities in the United States and Cambodia to .

She did not oppose the forfeiture, and the agreement did not constitute an admission of liability or guilt on her part, according to the

An adviser to Copleston that she was aware even before her father died that authorities would seek assets from his estate.

“The Cambodian campaign for the restitution of their heritage is the right resolution to a difficult history,” Copleston told the news agency in a statement. “It is appropriate that my father’s records have been used by the Cambodian Minister for Culture and Fine Arts, and her team, to shed light on the activities of the very many collectors, dealers and institutions which have been involved with the trade.”

The Durga

Bunker’s name does not appear in the 46-page . But prosecutors, much as they’ve done in previous cases involving Latchford’s dealings, hint at her role in the alleged scheme.

In January 2009, Latchford emailed an unnamed art dealer a photograph of the Durga lying on its back. The 6-foot-tall bronze statue was covered in dirt and minerals — clear signs of recent excavation and that the piece likely was looted, authorities said.

“Confidential: for your eyes only – not to be shown to anybody,” Latchford told the art dealer. He and a “scholar he worked with” believed the piece came from the late seventh century, prosecutors outlined in the complaint.

Bunker, in prior criminal and civil cases, was referred to as “the scholar.”

Latchford paid $750,000 for the relic, authorities said.

In 2011, the Bangkok-based art collector published the Durga in a book — “Khmer Bronzes: New Interpretations of the Past.” His co-author of that book, along with two others: Emma C. Bunker.

The book’s entry for the Durga claimed it to be “one of the earliest known Southeast Asian bronze images cast by (the) lost wax (casting technique) with an iron armature supporting the core.”

“Years, decades even, to unravel”

Publishing looted antiquities in books is a common laundering practice, cultural heritage experts and investigators in the illicit art trade say. The act of featuring items in glossy pages gives them a veneer of legitimacy, experts say, and boosts their value in private sales.

Bunker and Latchford’s names are on three books, though the Colorado scholar acknowledged in private emails that she actually wrote them. Latchford supplied many of the pieces that appeared in those books — many of which had never been seen before.

Cambodian officials have said these books represent the lost culture of their country, which was ravaged by looting during decades of genocide and civil war.

Prosecutions for cultural property were historically few and far between. But these actions have recently, as authorities in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and Homeland Security Investigations turn complex, years-long investigations, uncovering from Southeast Asia to the Middle East and southern Europe.

“I hope this case encourages other departments to go after this kind of malfeasance,” said Erin Thompson, an art crime professor at New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

And the impacts of Latchford’s dealings continue to be felt as Cambodian officials traverse the world in search of their lost history.

“It took him decades to build up his collection of illicit antiquities,” Thompson said. “It could take years, decades even, to unravel it.”

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In January 2018, Emma C. Bunker and the Denver Art Museum reached an agreement — one that would etch the longtime donor and board member’s name on the institution’s walls for half a century to come.

The esteemed scholar, who helped the Denver museum build its Asian art collection over six decades, would donate $125,000 to the museum’s Vision 2021 Capital Campaign, a project to renovate the north building and expand the museum campus. Two of her children would chip in another $60,000 combined.

In return, the Denver Art Museum agreed to put the Bunker name in three-dimensional lettering on a gallery wall, displayed in a prominent location until 2071.

But five years to the day after Bunker put pen to paper on a deal that would cement her legacy in the Mile High City for decades to come, the museum notified the Colorado attorney general that it planned to remove her name from the wall in the Martin Building and give back all the money.

The museum’s attorney, in a , wrote that the institution could no longer abide by the naming agreement due to mounting evidence that its respected donor — who died in 2021 — aided a criminal enterprise.

The letter was sent nearly two months after the publication of a yearlong investigation by The Post that found Bunker helped her close friend and collaborator, Douglas Latchford, sell and loan looted Cambodian relics across the globe.

“In light of Bunker’s long involvement with Latchford, connection to pieces with false provenance, documents indicating that she intentionally provided false provenance, and related issues, the museum has determined that it is no longer willing to abide by the (naming agreement),” the museum’s lawyer, Heidi S. Glance, wrote in the letter.

RELATED: Looted: Stolen relics, laundered art and a Colorado scholar’s role in the illicit antiquities trade

Now, the Bunker name has come down, Denver Art Museum officials confirmed Thursday. The six-figure donation was returned to her estate and children.

“This action, approved by the museum’s Board of Trustees, follows evidence that former museum trustee and volunteer, Emma Bunker, participated with indicted art dealer Douglas Latchford to mislead the museum into acquiring looted and illegally trafficked works of art,” the museum said in a .

Along with the naming agreement, Bunker also donated nine artworks to her beloved museum, pieces she promised had “not been imported or exported into or from any country contrary to its laws.” At least six of those works are under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice. The museum wants to give back the rest, either to their countries of origin or to the Bunker family.

All told, the removal of Bunker’s name and monetary return represents the most significant action taken by the Denver Art Museum since The Post’s investigation outlined the scholar’s integral role in an international art looting scandal.

“We hope this marks a turning point for the Denver Art Museum,” Bradley J. Gordon, a lawyer spearheading Cambodia’s global quest to reclaim its heritage, said Wednesday. “It starts to recognize the terrible harm Emma Bunker and Douglas Latchford did to an entire nation.”

Three of Bunker’s children did not respond to requests for comment or declined to speak to a reporter Wednesday.

A scholar’s role examined

The Post’s series found Bunker was hardly a passive player in Latchford’s scheme to sell stolen Cambodian relics for huge profits.

The Bangkok-based collector and dealer over the years accumulated one of the world’s largest private collections of Khmer antiquities — many of which, authorities say, were plundered during Cambodia’s bloody civil war by bands of Khmer Rouge soldiers. Latchford, meanwhile, sold these thousand-year-old artifacts to wealthy foreign collectors and prominent museums such as .

And he couldn’t have done it without his trusted confidant in Denver, The Post’s reporting found.

Emails taken from Latchford’s computer — and shared with The Post — show Bunker overtly discussing how to forge signatures on documents needed to transport looted works. She co-authored three books on Khmer art that experts say were necessary for Latchford to legitimize and move his plundered pieces around the globe, and she repeatedly vouched for falsified provenances — antiquities’ ownership history.

Bunker’s association with the Denver Art Museum also allowed Latchford to use the Mile High City museum as a way station for these priceless Southeast Asian relics — serving to sanitize them for sale to future buyers, The Post found. Latchford sold, loaned and gifted 14 pieces to the museum, deals that Bunker shepherded along. Only the Met had more Latchford pieces in its collection than Denver.

The Colorado scholar, who died at age 90, is named or referenced in five civil and criminal cases related to trafficking stolen art, though she never was charged with a crime. A federal grand jury in New York Latchford in 2019, accusing him of pilfering Cambodia’s cultural heritage. He in 2020 before he could stand trial.

The Denver Art Museum, through last year, defended its association with Bunker and her decades of financial and scholarly contributions, despite growing evidence that she collaborated in Latchford’s illicit dealings.

, a blog covering the movement of stolen antiquities, detailed Bunker’s questionable involvement with several pieces at Denver’s museum in 2012. The New York Times Bunker in 2017 as a “co-conspirator” in a scheme to doctor provenances — or ownership histories — to allow stolen Cambodia antiquities to be sold on the open market.

Public court documents referencing Bunker’s role in Latchford’s operation were available a decade ago, repeatedly mentioning a “Colorado scholar.”

Only now is the museum reckoning with Bunker’s past.

The museum’s attorney, in the January letter, cited “documentary evidence and sworn testimony of which the museum has recently become aware suggests that Bunker facilitated Latchford’s illegal activities by providing false provenances for, and introducing him to the museum for the acquisition, assumption on loan, and display of, various artworks involved in the DOJ Investigation.”

“The museum has learned that before Bunker died in 2021, her role in Latchford’s criminal activities was part of the DOJ investigation, which continues to focus on the provenance of several Asian antiquities she donated to the museum,” Glance wrote.

The museum also intends to rid itself of the pieces that Bunker agreed to donate in 2017, including six Cambodian bronzes. Six of the nine items the scholar gave the museum are under federal investigation, while five objects not associated with the gift agreement were also shared with federal investigators. The museum said it will either return the artworks to their country of origin or to the Bunker family, pending the DOJ probe.

The Attorney General’s Office was notified since it is charged with overseeing the state’s nonprofits and charitable organizations.

After The Post’s series, the museum has been slowly distancing itself from Bunker’s association.

Officials in December removed from the museum’s website an Asian art acquisition fund named in Bunker’s honor, pledging to use some of that money for provenance research.

The museum also said it would be making it a “top priority” to probe items in the collection associated with Bunker. The Denver Art Museum received 221 pieces from the Bunker family over the years, with 34 still on display as of December.

Around 40 of these objects are considered antiquities and “remain a continuing focus of the museum’s provenance research,” a museum spokesperson, Andy Sinclair, wrote in an email Thursday.

“A pretty big deal”

Removing a donor’s name from a wall or building is uncommon, though there are a few recent examples.

Art museums in the U.S. and Europe in the last few years have , the OxyContin makers accused of launching the opioid crisis.

But giving back nearly $200,000 rarely happens in the museum world. Gary Vikan, the former director of the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, said he didn’t do that once in 20 years at the helm.

“It’s hard to imagine a circumstance when that would happen,” he said. “That’s a pretty big deal.”

Gordon, meanwhile, said Cambodia is still waiting for the Denver Art Museum and Bunker’s family to share records and photographs of Khmer antiquities as his team continues its hunt.

“This information could significantly speed up the massive task we have in front of us to track down Cambodia’s stolen national treasures, scattered across the globe,” he said.

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Museum officials, in a posted to the institution’s website last week, also said they will use money from an acquisition fund launched after Bunker’s death last year to supplement ongoing work examining the ownership history of objects in the museum’s Asian art collection.

That fund raised $25,000 from family and friends and was initially created to help the museum purchase pieces for its galleries. After publication of The Post’s series, the museum removed the fund’s donation page from its website.

“The wide-ranging impact of the Bunker family is reflected in their name being present in many ways in our collections,” Christoph Heinrich, director of the Denver Art Museum, said in the statement. “This is not a history that can or should be easily erased. It needs to be thoroughly researched and clearly and publicly explained.”

The museum said it is “deeply troubled” by documents included in The Post’s stories about Bunker and her work with Douglas Latchford — many of which had been publicly available. The museum’s board of trustees will now determine the “best path forward in dealing with the Bunker Gallery in its Asian collection.”

“In the decades since the Latchford/Bunker antiquities arrived at the Denver Art Museum, acquisition and loan practices across the museum field, including those at the DAM, have evolved and improved,” museum officials said in their statement.

Representatives of the Denver Art Museum did not respond to an interview request from The Post on Monday.

The museum’s first public statement on the Bunker controversy came two days after The Post’s editorial board called for the institution’s top brass to address the newspaper’s “Looted” series and to remove Bunker’s name from museum exhibits.

The Post found that Bunker spent years assisting Latchford, one of the world’s foremost antiquities collectors and dealers, as he peddled stolen antiquities around the world. A federal grand jury in 2019 indicted Latchford on a host of charges related to smuggling stolen art into the United States. He died in 2020 before he could stand trial.

The scholar, who spent six decades affiliated with the Denver Art Museum, helped Latchford falsify provenance documents — or ownership history — for relics known to be pillaged from Cambodia’s ancient temples, The Post found.

She’s named or referenced in five civil and criminal cases related to illicit antiquities dealings — though she never was charged or sued herself.

And it was her connections in Denver that allowed Latchford to use the Mile High City’s esteemed institution as a way station for looted goods. The Bangkok dealer sold, loaned or gifted more than a dozen pieces to the Denver Art Museum and used Bunker’s scholarship to market those pieces in future sales.

The museum this year gave back four Cambodian relics connected to Latchford and Bunker after federal authorities moved to seize them.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is currently investigating three pieces from Thailand that remain in the museum’s collection — including one that had been donated by Bunker.