In mid 1994 Sotheby’s auction house published the catalogue for sale number 6625 which was held on the 15th of November in New York. The catalogue was filled with intriguing pieces of uncertain provenance and provenience and contained neither contextual information nor ownership history for these objects. They are simply listed in a section bearing the subheadings ‘Peru‘ and ‘Property of Various Owners. Upon reviewing the catalogue in advance of the sale, officials at the Peruvian embassy in Washington D.C. and archaeologist Walter Alva recognised the Moche pieces as having come from the site of Sipán. Specifically, the design on the back of the gold beads of Lot 17 was nearly identical to those of the famous Sipán spider beads which were archaeologically excavated by Alva (Atwood 2004: 94). Alva believed that lot 11 (and perhaps lot 7), listed as ‘Chavin’, may actually have been from Sipán as well. With the backing of the Peruvian government, Alva requested that Sotheby’s return lots 7, 10, 11, 17, and 18  makes no mention of lot 7 in his list; Rose  records that lots 7, 11 and 17 were requested and makes no mention of lots 10 and 18). Alva asserted that the lots were in violation of the 1990 emergency restrictions placed on the import of Sipán material into the United States. When Sotheby’s declined this request, the government of Perú formally contacted U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno and the U.S. Customs Agency in New York was given the order to recover the pieces. Sotheby’s was served with a seizure warrant for the suspected Sipán pieces on 14 December 1994, about a month after several of the pieces had been sold. Lots 7, 11, and 17 had been consigned by New York art dealer David Bernstein; one of the pieces was recovered from the office of his counsel (presumably lot 7, the piece that had not sold at auction) and the other two were seized from a Sotheby’s warehouse. The objects were taken to the New York Customs House pending investigation. Lots 10 and 18 were returned to Sotheby’s and subsequently sold.
Following the seizure of the objects, Bernstein filed for their return claiming that the warrants used to confiscate the objects lacked probable cause. The New York Federal District Court questioned if the objects actually came from Sipán but ruled that at the very least they had been smuggled into the United States illegally. Bernstein’s motions were denied because he could not demonstrate that hardship was caused by the seizure of the items. The grand jury proceedings on this matter are unpublished. Eventually it was determined that lots 7, 11, and 17 should be repatriated to Peru. They were presented to then-president Alberto Fujimori on 21 May 1996. They are now in the collection of the Brüning Museum/Museo Tumbas Reales de Sipán in Lambayeque. They are thought to be the first Sipán objects seized and repatriated under the 1990 emergency cultural property restrictions.