Jonathan Tokeley-Parry

Jonathan Tokeley-Parry was a self-proclaimed former cavalryman and self-appointed antique restorer. He was notable for his egomania, his brightly coloured suits and for smuggling more than 3,000 pieces of Egyptian antiquities out of Egypt by disguising them as reproductions. It has been reported that Tokeley-Parry changed his name to Jonathan Foreman.

Career In the early 1990s, he smuggled hundreds of antiques out of Egypt by using his knowledge of restoration to camouflage them into look-a-likes. He would then ship them overseas to a duty-free port in order to avoid raising suspicion. He was successful in his endeavors for four years before he was caught and put on trial. He was caught when an assistant took 27 papyrus textbooks and took them to the British Museum to be checked for authenticity upon the buyers' request. The evaluator realized that the textbooks were stolen goods from Egypt and reported them right away. He was sentenced to six years for each of the artifact handling charges as well as charged with illegally obtaining a passport. These sentences were to be carried out concurrently. Before this case, he had been involved in another case. All cases were dropped when Tokeley-Parry tried to commit suicide by swallowing hemlock. Just days later he was sentenced to fifteen years hard labor in Egyptian courts. Although sentenced to fifteen years he only served time in a British prison from 1997 until 2000. At the time of his death, Jonathan had been working on a new book titled Smuggler's Blues.