LOS ANGELES - An Orange County man pleaded guilty Friday to trying to sell the skull of a Hawaiian warrior over the Internet.
Jerry David Hasson, 55, of Huntington Beach, pleaded guilty in federal court to violating the Archaeological Resources Protection Act, said Assistant U.S. Attorney William Carter.
Hasson admitted in a plea agreement with prosecutors that he offered the skull for sale on eBay last February, claiming it was the skull of a "200-year-old Warrior" who "Died on Maui in the 1790s." The bidding started at $1,000 and the skull could be immediately purchased for $12,500, prosecutors said.
Hasson stated on the online auction site that he and others took the skull as a "souvenir" in 1969 from a guarded Maui excavation site.
A member of the Native Hawaiian group Hui Malama I Na Kupuna O Hawaii Nei (Group Caring for the Ancestors of Hawaii), warned Hasson that selling the skull was a violation of federal law and he pulled the skull off eBay, prosecutors said.
An undercover officer with the Bureau of Indian Affairs then contacted Hasson, who said it would be difficult to sell the skull because it was an "antiquity." Hasson proposed presenting the skull as a "gift," if the agent bought another auctioned item for $2,500.
A University of Hawaii anthropologist determined the skull was that of an adult female who was about 50 years old when she died.
The expert also found that the skull was from a person of Polynesian descent who lived in prehistoric Hawaii before 1778.
