06/28/2026: Betting on War, The Looting of Cambodia

Summary

60 Minutes Podcast Summary

Episode Date: June 28, 2026
Stories: “Betting on War” & “The Looting of Cambodia”
Hosts: Bill Whitaker, John Wertheim, Anderson Cooper, Leslie Stahl

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Overview

This episode presents two major investigations:

1. The explosive rise of “betting on war”—a new era of insider trading where individuals wager on military decisions and operations, including with classified information.
2. The systematic, decades-long looting of Cambodia’s sacred cultural heritage, the shadowy networks behind it, and the ongoing fight to bring home stolen artifacts, many housed in world-famous museums and private collections.

The show combines detailed investigative reporting, interviews with experts and insiders, and emotional stories of restitution, blending hard-hitting facts with personal impact.

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Part 1: Betting on War

(Time: 00:09 - 15:00)

Main Theme

A new and dangerous frontier in insider trading—using military intelligence to make bets on the outcomes and timing of armed conflicts—has emerged, raising profound security, ethical, and market trust questions.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

• Emergence of Military Betting Markets

  • Online platforms like Polymarket now allow bets on military events—such as attack dates, regime changes, armed conflict outcomes—mirroring gambling on sports or politics.
  • Over $1 billion wagered globally this year on such events (01:30).

• Insider Trading with Classified Intel

  • U.S. Special Forces mission to capture Venezuelan President Maduro became a historic case:
    • U.S. Army Master Sergeant Gannon Ken Van Dyke charged with using classified mission intelligence to place high-stakes bets ahead of the event (02:35).
    • According to the indictment, Van Dyke made $400,000 in profit from bets totaling $34,000 (03:41).
    • He attempted to withdraw his profits and delete his betting account immediately after.

• Systemic Insider Trading

  • Michelle Kendler Kretsch and the Anti Corruption Data Collective found that long-shot military wagers on Polymarket (less than 35% odds) inexplicably succeeded more often than not—a strong sign of insider trading (05:45).
    • Compared to sports bets: military bets succeed 52% of the time; sports, only 7% (06:14).

• Scale of Abuse

  • Paris-based analysts (Bubble Maps) uncovered clusters of connected accounts with a staggering 98% win rate, netting $2.4 million—far more than Van Dyke’s case (07:21).
    • “This is like winning the lottery multiple times, you know.” — deebz (07:45)

• Market Manipulation Beyond Betting Sites

  • Old-school commodities and oil futures markets show suspicious activity around war news.
  • On March 23, 2026, $800 million staked in oil futures minutes before US-Iran ceasefire news broke, causing a 10% drop in price and tens of millions in profit (09:42).
    • “You see this graph and you think insider trading, that's a natural conclusion to draw.” — David Covell (10:22)

• Threats and Intimidation of Journalists

  • War bets have grown so lucrative ($22 million staked on a single Israeli missile incident; 11:56) that criminals threaten journalists to influence reporting and outcomes (11:20).
    • “If you abide by my instructions and change it, then you know, you can end with money in your pocket.” — threat to Emmanuel Fabian (11:56)

• Regulatory & National Security Risk

  • Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is stretched thin as enforcement drops and insider trading proliferates (13:16).
  • A new CFTC chair, Michael Selig, pledges to use AI and expand staff, but sources warn the problem is escalating, with potential national security implications (13:47).
    • “This could be putting people's lives at risk. Other adversaries may be using this information in order to plan their own strategy.” — deebz (14:05)

• Aftermath and Updates

  • Since the initial reporting, more insider trading cases have emerged, including a Google engineer accused of exploiting confidential company information on Polymarket (14:29).

Notable Quotes & Moments

• “A soldier using classified intelligence to trade. Unprecedented.” — John Wertheim (00:26)
• “This is a new kind of insider trading.” — Rob Schwartz (00:32, 04:39)
• “Military bets are right for corruption.” — deebz (08:31)
• "You have government officials, military planners, intelligence analysts, even spouses... there are a lot of potential insiders." — deebz (08:39)
• “What are the odds the government knows the identity of whoever executed that?” — John Wertheim (10:39)
• “If they go to the exchanges, they can know them.” — David Covell (10:43)
• “I do worry. We know when there’s a lot of money involved. In this case, $22 million. I think that can cause people to, you know, to lie.” — Emmanuel Fabian (12:21)
• “Where do you draw the line? I guess reasonable people can debate where the line is.” — Nicolas Viman (13:47)
• “If market watchers can spot irregular trades, surely enemies can too, and they'll make their war plans accordingly.” — Bill Whitaker (14:00)

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Part 2: The Looting of Cambodia

(Time: 15:00 - 41:51)

Main Theme

A global network of thieves, collectors, and museums enabled the plundering of Cambodia’s sacred artifacts—icons of history, faith, and nationhood—leaving deep wounds while the fight for restitution continues.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

• Vast Cultural Ransacking

  • In temples across Cambodia, looters left pedestals bare, and statues without heads or feet (15:52).
  • The 1970s-90s, marked by genocide and war, saw organized looting become a massive illicit business.

• Douglas Latchford: Kingpin of Art Theft

  • British businessman, scholar, and bodybuilding promoter Douglas Latchford masterminded the looting and international trafficking of Cambodian antiquities (19:38).
    • “He was extremely deceptive … was ruthless. But he hid that behind this incredible facade of charm.” — Brad Gordon (20:16)
  • Used glossy reference books as sales catalogs to launder and market stolen works (20:48).

• Inside the Looting Network

  • “Lyon”—a former Khmer Rouge child soldier and gang leader—worked directly for Latchford's network, later cooperating with investigators and providing unprecedented inside knowledge (22:11).
    • “I’m going to transfer everything in my head to you. I’m going to tell you everything, every secret.” — Lyon (22:25)
    • His guilty conscience and search for redemption drove his cooperation.

• "Blood Antiquities"

  • Looters risked—and lost—their lives. Many artifacts are connected to violence and bloodshed (24:08).
  • “Whenever I see a statue, I think about, you know, who died to get this out of the ground or get it out of a temple and to move it here.” — Brad Gordon (24:08)

• Breakthrough: Repatriation Milestones

  • The thwarted 2011 Sotheby’s auction of a 500-pound sandstone warrior—matched to the temple by its feet left in the ground—brought US prosecutors into the case (25:05).
  • “That case put more of a focus and a spotlight on him. And then efforts were then doubled to like really peel back the onion and look into Latchford’s activities.” — JP Labatt (26:32)
  • Latchford indicted in 2019 but died before trial; his family eventually agreed to return some treasures (27:17).

• Ongoing Struggle: Museums & Private Collections

  • The Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC holds one of the world’s largest collections of stolen Cambodian artifacts, many acquired—bought or donated—from Latchford (29:40).
    • “Most people walk through the Met, they have no idea those are blood antiquities.” — Brad Gordon (30:09)
    • Provenance checks were weak or nonexistent for years; only since strong external pressure has the Met committed to investigating and returning stolen pieces.
    • “It was a slow process… But I think… the fact that we are fully engaged now, fully cooperative now is our only answer.” — Andrea Bayer, Met Deputy Director (36:48)

• Unmasking Hidden Treasures

  • Socialites and billionaires, like the Lindemann family, amassed vast Cambodian collections, displayed openly in lavish homes and even featured in magazines (32:18).
  • Former looters identified pieces in U.S. homes as specific items they dug out decades ago (33:10-33:34).

• Restitution and Healing

  • Emotional moments as Cambodian investigators, archaeologists, and survivors witness the return of sacred artifacts (40:11-40:55).
    • “The soul of the nation. It's not only for me, but all my family who died during the war and for all Cambodian people.” — Lyon (28:35)
    • “We always say the gods want to come home. We feel like the gods have spoken today.” — Brad Gordon (40:11)
  • As of the episode, the Met still holds dozens of disputed artifacts, and Cambodia’s government has called for wider repatriations (41:25).

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “We know when the looters came to sites like this, the first thing they took was the heads. ... But they were not very careful, so they left behind pieces.” — Michelle Kendler Kretsch (17:40)
• “Blood antiquities. ... so much of this looting was done in the shadow of the war, shadow of the genocide.” — Brad Gordon (24:08)
• “It's not only for me, but all my family who died during the war and for all Cambodian people.” — Lyon (28:35)
• “Do you think people visiting the Met know that these were looted?” — Hannah
  “I think most people walk through the Met, they have no idea those are blood antiquities.” — Brad Gordon (30:09)
• “You acquired pieces from unknown smuggler who used a team of looters… you have items in the museum which were named in the indictment… And so these pieces should go back. There's no question it's the right thing do to.” — JP Labatt (38:30)
• “We always say the gods want to come home. We feel like the gods have spoken today. They want to come home.” — Brad Gordon (40:11)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Betting on War Developments: 00:09 – 15:00

  • Van Dyke case details: 02:35
  • Systemic insider trading analysis: 05:45, 06:14
  • Journalist intimidation over war bets: 11:20
  • Federal enforcement and regulation: 13:16
  • National security implications: 14:00

• The Looting of Cambodia: 15:00 – 41:51

  • Background and scale of looting: 15:52
  • Latchford as kingpin: 19:38
  • Inside the looting network (“Lyon”): 22:11
  • Sotheby’s/Sandstone Warrior turning point: 24:24
  • Museum accountability and restitution: 29:40 – 38:17
  • Return of artifacts & cultural impact: 40:11
  • Ongoing repatriation fights: 41:25

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Tone & Language

The report blends the investigative, factual CBS News tone with moments of empathy:

• Clear, direct, authoritative voices for facts, legal and market explanations.
• Human, occasionally emotional language when talking with survivors, looters-turned-informants, and Cambodian culture leaders.
• Direct challenges and discomfort in exchanges with museum officials.

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Useful for Listeners Who Haven’t Heard the Episode:

This summary provides the essential facts, colour, and drama of both stories—the risks of financialized warfare and the restitution of plundered spiritual heritage—along with main arguments, expert testimony, emotional highlights, and the ongoing nature of both crises.

Transcript

[Bill Whitaker]

As long as there have been wars, there have been war profiteers, but never quite like this. Tonight, new evidence that betters, including a US Soldier may have profited by using inside information to wager on when and how military operations went.

[John Wertheim]

A soldier using classified intelligence to trade. Unprecedented.

[Rob Schwartz]

There is nothing to compare that to. This is a new kind of insider trading.

[Anderson Cooper]

For a year, 60 Minutes investigated the

[Leslie Stahl]

theft of Cambodia's cultural heritage. Thousands of sacred stone, bronze and gold artifacts from religious sites across the country, leaving empty pedestals where gods and deities once stood. We found some of them on display

[Anderson Cooper]

at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

[Leslie Stahl]

How did these looted treasures get here? And will they ever be returned?

[Andrea Bayer]

We are on the verge of returning a number of them. All of them that I can't say.

[Brad Gordon]

I'm Bill Whitaker.

[John Wertheim]

I'm John Wertheim.

[Anderson Cooper]

I'm Anderson Cooper.

[Leslie Stahl]

I'm Leslie Stahl. Those stories tonight on 60 Minutes.

[Bill Whitaker]

The war with Iran and the US Military operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro have carried the usual hallmarks of conflict. Soldiers, strategy, casualties, cost. But they've also been accompanied by a new feature, betting on war. This year alone, more than a billion dollars has been staked online on military decisions and outcomes. As if they were wagering on football games or Oscar winners. Bettors all over the globe have taken positions, some suspiciously timed and with information seemingly too specific for a civilian outsider, on when and how an attack might happen. Even the fate of world leaders. As we reported in May, it's created a whole new category of insider trading. As long as there have been wars, there have been war profiteers. But never corrupt quite like this. Cloaked in night, shrouded in secrecy. US Special Operations forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on January 3rd. He was taken to the US to face drug trafficking and narco terrorism charges.

[Hannah]

You need to bring us to the other courthouse.

[Bill Whitaker]

Do not block his way, please. As it turned out, the president of Venezuela wasn't the only figure in the operation who would find himself confronting federal charges. U.S. army soldier Gannon Ken Van Dyke, who was involved in the planning and execution of the Venezuela mission, was charged in April with using classified intelligence to place bets based on when the surprise

[Rob Schwartz]

raid would unfold if the allegations are true. This is one of the worst betrayals of trust in this area that I can remember and possibly ever. Americans should feel confident. The most important little agency they've probably never heard of is on the job now.

[Bill Whitaker]

A private lawyer in Washington, Rob Schwartz, until last year worked for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, a federal agency policing fraud in Insider trading.

[John Wertheim]

A soldier using classified intelligence to trade

[Rob Schwartz]

unprecedented classified intelligence that he knew about because he helped plan and and to execute the mission. There is nothing to compare that to.

[Bill Whitaker]

The Justice Department alleges Van Dyke made a series of wagers totaling roughly $34,000, including a half dozen the day before the raid. He ended up netting more than $400,000. According to the indictment, Van Dyke immediately withdrew his profit, then tried to delete his betting account on polymarket, the world's biggest online prediction market. The 38 year old army master sergeant has pleaded not guilty. Polymarket says it cooperated with law enforcement.

[Rob Schwartz]

If you are a corporate executive and you're privy to non public business information, you go trade on that. That's insider trading. Everybody knows that. But the same thing exists in prediction markets where this soldier is alleged to have traded.

[John Wertheim]

You're saying different context from what we usually think. Two guys at the golf course or winking and whispering and tipping each other off. But this is still meeting the definition of insider trading exactly right.

[Rob Schwartz]

This is a new kind of insider trading.

[Bill Whitaker]

Spiking in popularity. Prediction markets, including polymarket, offer wagers on the likelihood of future events. Will the Dodgers win the World Series? Will Jesus return in 2026? For that matter, in a 60 Minutes interview, would President Trump say the word trillion more than 10 times? Turned out that one didn't pay off. But lately, another kind of wager has found popularity. What will happen in military conflicts? Dates of attack? Will an airspace close? Will enriched uranium change hands? You can bet on it. You can also bet on insiders. People holding non public information will be laying down their money too. In the US it's prohibited to make military bets on platforms like polymarket, though it's easy to find digital workarounds, as Gannon Ken Van Dyke allegedly did. Here's what's more astounding than the existence of military how often they pay off.

[Leslie Stahl]

It's alarming to see a culture around betting on war.

[Bill Whitaker]

Michelle Kendler Kretsch and her team at the Anti Corruption Data Collective examined polymarket bets on military outcomes. She looked specifically at long shot wagers with less than 35% odds. Despite being underdogs, they won more than they lost. A telltale sign, she says, of quote, systemic insider trading.

[John Wertheim]

Give me the apples to apples comparison this military bets versus, say sports wagering.

[Lyon (codename Lion)]

So military bets are 52% success rate, sports 7%.

[John Wertheim]

Wildly disproportionate to what conventional probability should be telling us?

[Lyon (codename Lion)]

Absolutely.

[Bill Whitaker]

In Ocean Away, another team of digital detectives say they too have identified Crooked bettors wagering on war.

[Nicolas Viman]

This might be the most insane pattern we have found on Polymarket so far.

[Bill Whitaker]

Based in Paris, Nicolas Viman's small data analytics firm, Bubble Maps creates visualizations of bets on Polymarket to spot but bubbles or clusters of suspect traders. One paradox of everything about the trades is totally transparent and public. Except the traders themselves remain anonymous.

[Deebz]

This big cluster in the middle, no one talked about it.

[Bill Whitaker]

The firm's head of investigations goes by his online handle, deebz. He asked us to obscure his identity over fears of retaliation for his detective work. They shared for the first time what they believe is a more egregious insider trading case than Gannon. Ken Van dyke's.

[Nicolas Viman]

We spotted nine polymarket accounts, all connected, who made collectively $2.4 million betting almost exclusively on U.S. military operations. Van Dijk made 400,000 here. 2.4 million. And now here's the crazy part. 98% win rate.

[Bill Whitaker]

98.

[Nicolas Viman]

98.

[Michelle Kendler Kretsch]

98.

[Deebz]

This is like winning the lottery multiple times, you know.

[Bill Whitaker]

The linked accounts made dozens of winning bets on the specific dates of pivotal moments in the war with Iran, even when the odds were low. The first US strikes, the removal of Iran's supreme leader, the announcement of a ceasefire.

[John Wertheim]

How do we know this isn't just someone who has really good instincts?

[Nicolas Viman]

Luck alone cannot explain those numbers.

[John Wertheim]

If you know this, why don't federal prosecutors.

[Nicolas Viman]

Well, hopefully with your interview, they're going to know this.

[John Wertheim]

We talked to one source in the Defense Department with relation to Sergeant Van Dyke, and he said, listen, there are dozens more of these. Van Dyke was just a small fish for sure.

[Deebz]

There's so many people involved in the planning and the execution of a military operation.

[Bill Whitaker]

A former US military officer, Deeb speaks from firsthand experience when he says military bets are right for corruption.

[Deebz]

You have obviously the government officials, but you also have the military planners, right? You have the military intelligence analysts and even spouses. They hear things. And that means that there consequently are a lot of potential insiders.

[Bill Whitaker]

And it's not just the voguish high tech online prediction markets where trades based on war have raised intense suspicions. It's happening on the old school and heavily regulated commodities markets too.

[David Covell]

I'm highly suspicious at this point, and I'm not the only one. Any trader right now is highly suspicious.

[Bill Whitaker]

A former commodities trader, David Covell, is now a New York lawyer representing victims of fraud on the same markets he once traded. In 2021, he secured the largest whistleblower award for commodities market manipulation in US history.

[David Covell]

Well, this is a classic Graph that any commodities trader will understand.

[Bill Whitaker]

Covell walked us through the morning of March 23rd. Fighting had been raging for three plus weeks, and it was a slow trading day in oil futures.

[David Covell]

If you see the chart, you'll see that no one is trading during that time period. Why would you trade at that time? It doesn't make a lot of sense unless you have a real reason.

[Bill Whitaker]

Then, according to data the financial firm LSEG provided us, suddenly at 6:50am More than $800 million was staked on the chance of oil prices dropping. Fifteen minutes later, President Trump posted on Truth Social that the White House and Iran had, quote, very good and productive conversations about ending hostilities. The news sent the price of oil plummeting more than 10%.

[John Wertheim]

What kind of profit is that resulting in?

[David Covell]

We're talking tens of millions. Could be $80 million.

[John Wertheim]

You see this graph and you think

[David Covell]

insider trading, that's a natural conclusion to draw. I can't know it without knowing what happened, but it's a natural conclusion to draw.

[Bill Whitaker]

Covell is not alone in finding this highly dubious. 60 Minutes has learned federal investigators are probing these oil market trades as well.

[John Wertheim]

What are the odds the government knows the identity of whoever executed that?

[David Covell]

If they go to the exchanges, they can know them.

[John Wertheim]

This could have been someone inside the US this could have been someone from a foreign country. This could have been an enemy.

[David Covell]

Identifying who it was would be the secret to figuring out whether it was insider trading or not.

[Bill Whitaker]

It's not just markets that risk manipulation by war bets. It's truth as well. Emmanuel Fabian, military correspondent for the Times of Israel, thought little of a piece he wrote in March about an Iranian missile strike in an empty forest near Jerusalem. But soon after he published the account, Fabian received a barrage of messages asking him to change his story. He ignored most, but they turned darker.

[Emmanuel Fabian]

One of them was, you're going to make us lose $900,000 and we'll invest even more than that to finish you, is what he wrote. He also wrote details about my siblings as well. He said, I know how often you visit your family.

[John Wertheim]

What's your fear factor?

[Emmanuel Fabian]

At this point, I was quite worried.

[Bill Whitaker]

He investigated and found war bets on polymarket hinging on whether an Iranian missile would enter Israel specifically on March 10th. And Fabian's small news story voided the side of the bets predicting no missile, angering the losers.

[Emmanuel Fabian]

It was at $14 million that were being wagered there.

[John Wertheim]

$14 million?

[Emmanuel Fabian]

Yeah. But by the time it closed, it actually went up to $22 million, if I'm not mistaken. Also the person who wrote them, they wrote that, you know, if you abide by my instructions and change it, then you know, you can end with money in your pocket and this will all be over.

[John Wertheim]

Despite this pressure campaign against you that escalated to death threats, you did not go in and change your copy. You do you worry that other people might not have your principled stance?

[Emmanuel Fabian]

I do worry. We know when there's a lot of money involved. In this case, $22 million. I think that can cause people to, you know, to lie.

[Bill Whitaker]

Fabian reported the threats to the police and to Polymarket, which said that threatening a journalist was unacceptable and banned the accounts involved. Polymarket has said they work proactively on any suspicious activity. Constantly behind the scenes, overseeing all this, playing sheriff in this new wild. In the US it's that niche government agency, the Commodity Futures trading commission. The CFTC set up in the 70s to regulate food prices, historically led by a commission of five. Today it's run by one person, Michael Selig, a 36 year old whom President Trump nominated chairman last fall. We will hold whoever is engaging in

[Emmanuel Fabian]

fraudulent, manipulative or insider trading activity accountable to the American people.

[Bill Whitaker]

But enforcement actions have dropped by more than 2/3 since 2024. Staffing has dropped sharply too. Seely declined our interview request, though the CFTC told us it is hiring more staff and using AI to go after bad actors. And government officials are aware of the new potential for corruption. In March, the White House issued a memo to staffers noting it is a criminal offense for anyone to use non public information on prediction markets.

[Nicolas Viman]

Where do you draw the line? I guess reasonable people can debate where the line is.

[Bill Whitaker]

Source after source told us they fear today's insider trading scandal is tomorrow's national security scandal. If market watchers can spot irregular trades, surely enemies can too, and they'll make their war plans accordingly.

[Deebz]

Just to put it plainly, this could be putting people's lives at risk. Other adversaries may be using this information in order to plan their own strategy.

[John Wertheim]

If you're taking a futures position a year from now, Sergeant Van Dyke is the only person charged with insider trading.

[Nicolas Viman]

No, I think it's just going to multiply from here.

[Bill Whitaker]

In fact, it has multiplied since our story aired. In May, federal prosecutors brought another case, this time against a software engineer at Google who allegedly used confidential information from inside the company to make bets on Polymarket. According to prosecutors, he took home more than a million dollars in profit. His lawyers say he plans to plead not guilty.

[Anderson Cooper]

The theft of Cambodia's cultural treasures. Thousands of Sacred stone, bronze, and gold artifacts from religious sites across the country might just be the greatest art heist in history. It began nearly a century ago when Cambodia was colonized by France. But in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, amidst genocide, civil war, and political turmoil, the looting became a global business, much of it run by a British man named Douglas Latchford. He kept some of it for himself, but much of what his gang of thieves stole, Latchford then sold to wealthy private collectors and some of the most important museums around the world. As we first reported in 2023, Cambodia's government has spent the last 14 years trying to track it all down and bring their history and heritage home.

[Leslie Stahl]

Angkor Wat, with its towering spires, is the glory of Cambodia. Nearly 1,000 years old, it's one of the biggest and most extraordinary religious temples in the world, sprawling across 400 acres. Originally built to honor the Hindu God Vishnu, it then became a Buddhist temple and remains a place of worship today. You can wander here for weeks, lost in a labyrinth of ancient stone corridors and sacred chambers. But the scars of plunder run deep. Looters have hacked off the heads of many statues. They've stolen bodies as well. Empty pedestals mark where gods and deities were. On some, only the feet remain. It's worse in the rest of Cambodia's 4,000 temples, nearly all have been looted. This one is 100 miles northeast of Angkor Wat on a remote mountain called Sandak.

[Michelle Kendler Kretsch]

This was hit very heavily by the looting gangs. They found gold, they found statues, they found many, many things.

[Anderson Cooper]

That's Brad Gordon, an American lawyer who's

[Leslie Stahl]

been working with the Cambodian government for 14 years, tracking down its stolen treasures. He brought us to Sandak with his team of investigators, archaeologists, and art scholars.

[Hannah]

This is so cool.

[Leslie Stahl]

In the temple's crumbling courtyard, little remains, mostly empty pedestals scattered among the sralao trees.

[Hannah]

It's remarkable to me just how much stuff is just scattered on the ground.

[Michelle Kendler Kretsch]

Yes, it's like a pedestal graveyard.

[Hannah]

We've all seen in museums, these statues with no feet on them. And I don't think people realize the feet were hacked off because in order to steal them, that's the easiest way to get them off the pedestal.

[Michelle Kendler Kretsch]

We know when the looters came to sites like this, the first thing they took was the heads. That was the easiest to grab. And then later on, maybe they come back and get the torso. But they were not very careful, so they left behind pieces.

[Leslie Stahl]

For Cambodians, these statues are not just works of art. They are sacred deities that hold the souls of Their ancestors, to whom they ask for guidance and pray.

[Hannah]

This is incredible. These were all looted?

[Lyon (codename Lion)]

Yes, looted.

[Hannah]

All of these heads.

[Anderson Cooper]

This head was cut off for Rangsakanak.

[Leslie Stahl]

Cambodia's Minister of Culture is in charge of the government's efforts to track down their stolen gods. We met her in a closely guarded warehouse not far from Angkor Wat, where more than 6,000 pieces from temples across the country are stored for safekeeping. Each one sculpted by an artisan from an ancient Khmer empire that lasted for more than five centuries and spanned Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam.

[Hannah]

So the statues have a soul? The statues are.

[Leslie Stahl]

Are they living?

[Lyon (codename Lion)]

Of course, yes. And we believe that we can talk with them. They will hear. They will see. What do you want? What do you see? What do you do in your life, in your house, outside, in the society?

[Hannah]

Also, they're watching.

[Lyon (codename Lion)]

They're watching everywhere.

[Leslie Stahl]

Thorong Sakina's entire family was killed in the genocide that began in 1975 when the Khmer Rouge, a radical communist group, took over, forcing millions of Cambodians into labor camps. Some 2 million people, nearly a quarter of the population, were slaughtered or starved to death. The Khmer Rouge lost power in 1979, but fighting and instability continued for decades, leaving Cambodia's temples unprotected and vulnerable, easy targets for unscrupulous antiquities dealers like Douglas Latchford.

[Hannah]

Who is Douglas Latchford?

[Brad Gordon]

I would say that he was in many ways the mastermind behind the greatest art heist in history.

[Hannah]

The greatest art heist in history?

[Brad Gordon]

Yes, in terms of scope and multitude of crime sites and the enormous amount of statues that were taken out.

[Leslie Stahl]

Latchford lived in Thailand. An enigmatic British businessman, he began collecting in the 1960s. He had, it seems, two great Cambodian antiquities and Thai bodybuilders sponsored Bangkok's biggest bodybuilding competition, the Latchford Classic.

[Hannah]

How would you describe him?

[Brad Gordon]

He was extremely deceptive, I think, in many ways was ruthless. But he hid that behind this incredible facade of charm.

[Leslie Stahl]

Latchford portrayed himself as a scholar and protector of Cambodia's culture, a reputation he burnished by donating sculptures to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and other prestigious institutions. He also published three books filled with the finest examples of Cambodian antiquities, many of them, it turns out, Latchford had stolen.

[Michelle Kendler Kretsch]

He was using the books as sales catalogs. You know, he was handing them out, he was using them to sell pieces. And he understood a certain psychology of collectors out there that if they see something in a beautiful book, they think it's legitimate. You're doing the transcript right now.

[Leslie Stahl]

Those books have been an invaluable guide for Brad Gordon and his team, helping them compile a database of thousands of missing artifacts, many of which they didn't know existed until Latchford published photos of them. Gordon's team got their big break when they met this man in 2012. He was a former Khmer Rouge child soldier and leader of a gang of looters. His name was Day Duck.

[Michelle Kendler Kretsch]

That first meeting, I didn't really know who we had met. You know, I knew that he was important. I knew that many people were telling me he was the best, and I knew that he was feared.

[Hannah]

Why were people afraid of him?

[Michelle Kendler Kretsch]

You know, over the years, he had killed many people.

[Leslie Stahl]

It turned out Day Duck had worked for decades, supplying Douglas Latchford with thousands of treasures. And he was amazed to see them again in Latchford's books.

[Michelle Kendler Kretsch]

He kept opening the book and going back to the front cover and going through and tapping and saying, I know this one, I know this one, I know this one.

[Hannah]

And when he says he knew this one, means he helped loot those ones.

[Michelle Kendler Kretsch]

That's what we learned later, yeah.

[Leslie Stahl]

Day Duck became a key confidential source for Gordon's team. They gave him a codename, lion, to protect his identity and followed him to dozens of temples where he confessed what he'd found and how he'd stolen it.

[Brad Gordon]

He would say to us, I'm going to transfer everything in my head to you. I'm going to tell you everything, every secret.

[Hannah]

You felt like his memory was very good. It was accurate, it was unbelievable.

[Brad Gordon]

He remembered the size of everything measured against his body. He would use his arm to show us how long a statue was.

[Hannah]

Why do you think he wanted to cooperate?

[Brad Gordon]

You know, he felt tremendously guilty about many things he had done in his life, about the killing, about the looting. And we offered him a road of redemption, a way to do something really good at the end of his life.

[Leslie Stahl]

They recorded hundreds of hours of Lyon's testimony. He explained how gangs of looters would spend weeks at remote temples, using shovels, chisels, metal detectors, even dynamite to find and dig out treasures. Dozens of men would hoist heavy stone statues onto ox carts before transporting them across the border into Thailand and into the hands of Douglas Latchford. Lyon never met Latchford, but he'd sent him photographs of artifacts he could choose from.

[Brad Gordon]

We hear about them saying, oh, we had to go to this temple and take a photo and. And then sending it back. You know, my sense is he was shopping, he had a list. The looters knew his priorities, like these,

[Leslie Stahl]

which came from a temple Complex called Ko K. The statues from there had a distinctive style that Latchford loved. It was, however, a dangerous business. Most looters only made enough to buy food for their families and fighting between rival gangs was common.

[Hannah]

People were killed over these, these antiquities. Do you look at these as blood statues?

[Brad Gordon]

For sure, they're blood antiquities. Whenever I see a statue, I think about, you know, who died to get this out of the ground or get it out of a temple and to move it here. So, so much of this looting was done in the shadow of the war, shadow of the genocide.

[Leslie Stahl]

It was this 500 pound sandstone warrior from Coquet that appeared in a Sotheby's auction catalog in 2011 that put Douglas Latchford on the radar of U.S. law enforcement. Its feet were missing and the price tag, an estimated 2 to 3 million dollars.

[JP Labatt]

When it appeared in the market, there were a number of archaeologists, a number of people who immediately recognized the source of the statue as being a specific temple in Cambodia.

[Hannah]

It came from Koke.

[JP Labatt]

That's right.

[Leslie Stahl]

Until he retired in 2023, JP Labatt was a special agent on the Cultural Property Art and Anti unit with Homeland Security.

[JP Labatt]

A team from the U.S. attorney's office at the Southern District of New York traveled to Cambodia to inspect the site where the statue had been removed. And so the base was still there with it, with the feet still in the ground. And so they were able to match that base and feet to the statue.

[Hannah]

And that was enough evidence to get the statue pulled off the market.

[JP Labatt]

That's right.

[Leslie Stahl]

After years of legal wrangling, Sotheby's finally agreed to send this stolen warrior back to Cambodia. A ceremony was held welcoming it home and investigators were able to trace its original sale back to Douglas Latchford, who was asked about its repatriation in a German documentary in 2014.

[Brad Gordon]

Is it a good day for Cambodia or is it a bad day for the art market? If these things are coming back, it's

[Douglas Latchford]

a good day for Cambodia, it's a bad day for the art market.

[Leslie Stahl]

Law enforcement in New York was closing in on Latchford, but he claimed prosecutors had him all wrong.

[Douglas Latchford]

Their imagination has gone wild. They've seen too many Indiana Jones films. As far as I know, there is no such thing as a smuggling network. And I, I certainly don't belong to any smuggling network.

[Hannah]

The attempted sale of this statue in 2011, was that a turning point in the unraveling of Douglas Latchford?

[JP Labatt]

I would say yes. That case put more of a focus and a spotlight on him. And then efforts were then doubled to like really peel back the onion and look into Latchford's activities.

[Leslie Stahl]

The testimony of former looters found by Brad Gordon and and his team was critical for the U.S. attorney's case against Latchford.

[Hannah]

How rare is it to actually have access to the looters, to people who actually stole these things 10, 20, 30 years ago?

[JP Labatt]

I know of no other case where that's happened. And it's quite remarkable to have looters actively assisting a team of investigators to recover artifacts that they had firsthand in helping remove from the country.

[Leslie Stahl]

Douglas Latchford was finally indicted by US authorities in 2019 for smuggling, conspiracy, wire fraud, and other charges. But he died before he could be put on trial. Brad Gordon eventually convinced Latchford's family to return his personal collection of stolen treasures. Among the first pieces to come home in 2021 was this statue from Coquet. Lyon, weakened by cancer, came to inspect it in Cambodia's National Museum to verify it was the same one he'd dug out of the ground.

[Brad Gordon]

And then he turned to me and he said, it's the real statue. You know, it was a remarkable thing to watch. And just his relationship, it was living to him.

[Hannah]

Do you think he was happy it was back?

[Brad Gordon]

Thrilled. So happy he knew that he had done something good.

[Leslie Stahl]

Lyon died a few months later, but the secrets he revealed continue to bring statues back to Cambodia's National Museum. Masterpieces that left the country long before these school children were born.

[Hannah]

Does the return of these statues, these gods, help some to heal?

[Lyon (codename Lion)]

Yes. To get back the soul of the nation.

[Hannah]

The soul of the nation.

[Lyon (codename Lion)]

It's not only for me, but all my family who died during the war and for all Cambodian people.

[Anderson Cooper]

There are still many more stolen Cambodian statues and artifacts in museums and private collections around the world. When we return, Cambodia's fight to get those looted relics back. It's taken a team of Cambodian investigators led by Brad Gordon, an American lawyer, more than 10 years to document the theft of thousands of ancient statues and relics by a British collector named Douglas Latchford. As we reported in 2023, they've managed to get some of what he stole back. But many of Cambodia's greatest treasures are still out there, hidden away in the mansions of millionaires and billionaires and hiding in plain sight, on display in some of the most prestigious museums around the world.

[Leslie Stahl]

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has one of the most important collections of Cambodian antiquities in the world. But many of the finest pieces on display here in the Southeast Asian art are stolen, like this one and this one. This as well, all passed through the hands of Douglas Latchford. Latchford sold this one to the Met in the early 1990s. This one he donated.

[Hannah]

Do you think people visiting the Met know that these were looted?

[Brad Gordon]

I think most people walk through the Met, they have no idea those are blood antiquities. They have no idea what the history is behind those pieces. They don't know the temples they came from. They don't know the people who were killed to get them here.

[Hannah]

The dirt has been brushed off. There's a little note that says where it came from. Should people believe what's on that little note?

[Brad Gordon]

No, absolutely not.

[Anderson Cooper]

In 2023, we went with Brad Gordon

[Leslie Stahl]

to see where in Cambodia the Met and other museums collections really did come from.

[Hannah]

This is incredible.

[Leslie Stahl]

This seven story pyramid is more than 1000 years and rises out of the jungle in Kokay in northeast Cambodia. It's one of dozens of temples in what was once the capital of an ancient Khmer empire.

[Hannah]

Looters have been all over this site for decades.

[Michelle Kendler Kretsch]

Correct.

[Hannah]

Douglas Latchford loved the statuary.

[Michelle Kendler Kretsch]

In love with the beauty, in love with the artistic.

[Hannah]

The statues from here have a distinctive style that he particularly loved.

[Brad Gordon]

Correct.

[Leslie Stahl]

And perhaps the most famous statues in that distinctive style, the Latchford Stone, were nine stone warriors once arranged together in a battle scene.

[Anderson Cooper]

When we were there, seven had been returned to the National Museum in Phnom

[Leslie Stahl]

penh, including this 500 pound sandstone sculpture. It's the one Sotheby's tried to sell in 2011. They're back on their original pedestals, their ankles reunited with their feet hacked off by looters.

[Hannah]

This was at Sotheby's. This is Christie's. Norton Simon, Norton Simon Museum.

[Leslie Stahl]

Hab Touch is the Secretary of State in Cambodia's Ministry of Culture. He's working with Brad Gordon to bring back the two coquet statues whose empty pedestals sit in the museum.

[Hannah]

So do you know what are supposed to be on? We know you know what are supposed

[Leslie Stahl]

to be here and you know what's

[Hannah]

supposed to be here.

[Leslie Stahl]

Among nine sculptures, we have seven already, only two missing. One of those missing sculptures was discovered in the glossy pages of architectural digest in 2008. This mythical army commander and a stunning number of other stolen works were all together in the Palm beach mansion of the late billionaire George Lindemann and his wife Freda.

[Hannah]

The ancient treasures of Cambodia were sitting in the living room of an incredibly wealthy family in America, in Florida, on display while people were having cocktails.

[Brad Gordon]

And the one thing that I'm always struck by is how many people witnessed it and have been silent and continue to be silent today.

[Leslie Stahl]

The Lindemann spent an estimated $20 million building the collection with the help of Douglas Latchford. Freda Lindemann didn't respond to our request for an interview, but in coquet, we showed her home to two former looters.

[Hannah]

What do you think of this house?

[Leslie Stahl]

It's a beautiful house, he said. It looks like it belongs to a king. The former looters pointed out another statue in the Lindemann's living room. They said they helped steal this reclining figure of the Hindu God Vishnu. They said it was dug out of the ground from this exact spot in late 1995.

[Hannah]

You're 100% sure this was taken from here by you and others in 1995?

[Lyon (codename Lion)]

Yeah, I'm sure.

[Leslie Stahl]

They also identified a number of of other statues they say they stole that appear in books published by Douglas Latchford. They say they found this copper statue using a metal detector.

[Hannah]

This is Bodhisattva d'.

[Lyon (codename Lion)]

Eas.

[Michelle Kendler Kretsch]

Yes.

[Leslie Stahl]

They dug it out of the ground here in 1990. J.P. laBatte, former Special agent with Homeland Security, found photos of the statue covered in dirt on Douglas Latchford's computer. Latchford sold it to The Met in 1992. When we visited, it was still on display.

[Hannah]

You were able to get access to some of Lacherty's emails?

[JP Labatt]

Yes. And in there, there are detailed stories about the manner in which he obtained pieces, the fact that he was having them reassembled and repaired. That dirt and crustaceans were being cleaned off of them.

[Hannah]

They were freshly dug out of the ground.

[Rob Schwartz]

Fresh.

[JP Labatt]

These were fresh pieces that he would describe in his emails that needed a level of restoration before he could even attempt to sell them.

[Leslie Stahl]

Douglas Latchford was indicted in 2019, but died before he could be put on trial. Federal prosecutors in New York, however, continue tracing his looted artifacts. They believe at least 18 of them have landed up at the Met.

[Andrea Bayer]

I am very involved in our work on provenance.

[Leslie Stahl]

Andrea Bayer is Deputy Director for Collections and Administration at the Met.

[Hannah]

The Met has said that they will return objects based upon rigorous evidentiary review. What rigorous evidentiary review was done before acquiring these pieces?

[Andrea Bayer]

Not enough.

[Hannah]

It seems like the Met had a don't ask, don't tell policy. They wanted to build up their collection, and nobody was really asking questions where it came from.

[Andrea Bayer]

For people, many people in the art world, there was a sense of protecting great objects that stood a chance of being destroyed. We no longer feel about it that way under pressure.

[Leslie Stahl]

Thirteen years ago, the Met did return two statues called Kneeling Attendants which had been donated to them by Douglas Latchford.

[Hannah]

In 2013, when you returned the kneeling attendance, did you investigate the other items that Douglas Latchford had brought to this museum?

[Andrea Bayer]

I don't know the answer to that question. I can only pick up the story several years later. When Douglas Latchford was indicted in 2019, when we immediately and proactively went to the U.S. attorney's office and offered our full cooperation.

[Hannah]

Well, I can pick up the story actually in 2013 because a spokesman for the Met said that no special effort was going to be made to check the provenances of any other Douglas Latchford donated work. Why wouldn't the Met want to look into to everything else that Douglas Latchford had brought to this museum?

[Andrea Bayer]

I can't speculate about why that didn't happen.

[Hannah]

But no one investigated all the other items that Douglas Latchford gave?

[Andrea Bayer]

Not to my knowledge.

[Leslie Stahl]

The Met is not the only major museum with looted Cambodian artifacts, but its collection is one of the largest in the world. In 2023, the museum announced it would create a research team to examine the

[Anderson Cooper]

provenance or acquisition history of all its collections.

[Hannah]

It's taken 10 years since Douglas Latchford was shown to have given stolen property to the Met for the Met to set up this provenance team. Why has it taken 10 years?

[Andrea Bayer]

It was a slow process, I'll grant you that. It was a slow process, but I think that the, the fact that we are fully engaged now, fully cooperative now is our only answer to this really. It's a moment of reckoning and we're ready to do what it takes now to right whatever the wrong is. But we.

[Hannah]

Four years ago, when Douglas Latchford was indicted by prosecutors, did you set up a team to check the provenance of every Latchford work?

[Andrea Bayer]

We started, absolutely. We started to dig in right then and there. It's not easy. I mean, the fact that we don't have much information has to do with the fact that it's.

[Hannah]

There's enough information for federal. There's enough information for federal prosecutors to charge Douglas Latchford with stealing and looting and trafficking and smuggled items. How much more evidence do you need? You haven't returned any of the. Any Douglas Latchford related items since he's been indicted. And that was four years.

[Andrea Bayer]

We are on the verge of returning a number of them. All of them that I can't say.

[Leslie Stahl]

Four months after that interview, just two days before we went to air in 2023, prosecutors announced the Met would return 13 antiquities that came through Douglas Latchford but the Met hasn't returned this statue, which was specifically cited in the indictment of Latchford, or this one, which Latchford sold to the Met in 1992.

[Anderson Cooper]

Cambodia's culture minister called the Met's announcement

[Hannah]

a first step and says she looks

[Anderson Cooper]

forward to the return of many more of our treasures.

[Hannah]

Shouldn't museums have thought twice about buying things that were coming out of Cambodia during the genocide and civil war and decades of strife?

[JP Labatt]

And this question that you raise is really the crux of what we're wrestling with. You acquired pieces from unknown smuggler who used a team of looters that the government has interviewed and taken statements from. They have emails which refute the information in your own provenance at the museum. You have items in the museum which were named in the indictment of Latchford that are still there. And so these pieces should go back. There's no question it's the right thing do to.

[Leslie Stahl]

In 2023, the Lindemann family, whose collection was showcased in Architectural Digest, struck a deal with federal authorities voluntarily agreeing to return 33 stolen treasures. In a statement to the New York Times, the Lindemann said, having purchased these items from dealers that we assumed were reputable, we were saddened to learn how

[Anderson Cooper]

they made their way to the market

[Leslie Stahl]

in the United States.

[Hannah]

Why did the Lindemans agree to return their collection to Cambodia?

[JP Labatt]

The pieces were dirty. I think they finally came around to the fact that Latchford was dirty. Their collection was all looted pieces, it was obvious, and so they decided to surrender them.

[Leslie Stahl]

We got a peek at what was the Lindemann collection shortly after the deal was done. It was sitting in a warehouse in upstate New York. A nation's living gods and ancestors waiting for a ride home.

[Brad Gordon]

This is like a whole wing of

[Anderson Cooper]

a museum, a wing of a museum

[Leslie Stahl]

that only the Lindemans and their friends had access to.

[Hannah]

If the Lindemans hadn't published these in Architectural digest back in 2008, I think

[Brad Gordon]

there's a good chance we maybe never would have found it. We always say the gods want to come home. We feel like the gods have spoken today. They want to come home.

[Anderson Cooper]

As one of the biggest crates where

[Leslie Stahl]

was being opened, waiting eagerly was Moy Kung Tang and Tita Long, two members of Brad Gordon's investigative team. This would be their first look at the mythical army commander taken from Koke. They were likely the first Cambodians to set eyes on it since Douglas Latchford stole it more than 50 years ago. He's here.

[Hannah]

There's a look in his eyes and on his face.

[Lyon (codename Lion)]

It's much bigger than expected it to be.

[Hannah]

Its presence is extraordinary.

[Lyon (codename Lion)]

I did not expect to feel this way.

[Leslie Stahl]

Even the commander seemed to be smiling. Then it was time to see the rarest piece in the Lindemann's collection. The Cambodian team knelt in reverence as the Hindu God Vishnu was uncrated. Despite all the fuss, he appeared unperturbed, reclining in a cocktail cosmic slumber. When this statue arrived in Cambodia, it was welcomed as one of the most important ever returned.

[Anderson Cooper]

Earlier this month, the Met returned two more artifacts to Cambodia following a seizure by the Manhattan DA's Antiquities Trafficking Unit. The Cambodian government is still demanding the repatriation of 30 others in the Met's possession.

[Leslie Stahl]

The hunt for Cambodia's stolen crown jewels.

[Michelle Kendler Kretsch]

I just felt like, wow, unbelievable that

[Leslie Stahl]

it's sitting here in a parking [e-mail]

[Hannah]

a lot of them didn't know it existed.