Man who sold bogus bracelet avoids jail

By Bill Donovan
Staff writer

GALLUP — Amrio Al-Assi knew going into his sentencing hearing that he probably wouldn’t be facing any prison time for defrauding one of his customers when he owned an Indian arts and crafts store here in Gallup back in 2004.

But District Court Judge Robert Aragon wanted to make sure at Friday’s hearing that he could send Al-Assi to jail if he wanted to.

Aragon wasn’t happy back in August when he learned after a Gallup jury convicted Al-Assi of fraud, a fourth-degree felony, that the District’s Attorney’s office and Al-Assi’s attorney, Richard Wade, had made a deal that the DA’s office would not ask for a jail sentence if Al-Assi agreed to waive his preliminary hearing.

District Attorney Karl Gillson said at the trial that the deal was made to avoid the expense of bringing witnesses from across the country to testify.

At Friday’s sentencing, however, Aragon got both Gillson and Wade to agree that their deal would not prevent him from sentencing Al-Assi to some jail time anyway. But in the end, Aragon decided to give the former Gallup trader a deferred sentence, requiring him to make restitution of $600 and pay a fine of $1,000.

This all stemmed from a case that gained some national publicity back in August when Al-Assi, a former co-owner of the Silver Bear Trading Co., was found guilty of selling a bracelet to a Massachusetts woman, Barbara Sheroke, that she claimed had been sold to her as being made by Preston Monongye, one of the most acclaimed Navajo silversmiths working today.

Monongye, both at the trial and at Friday’s sentencing, told the court that the bracelet in question was not made by him.

There was testimony indicating that Sheroke should have realized something was wrong when she was offered a bracelet that was claimed to be made by Monongye for $600 when normally his bracelets sell for $20,000 and more.

In fact, Monongye said at the hearing Friday that the bracelet in question was not even a copy since it so inferior to anything that he had ever made. The only similarity, he said, was that it had a bear motif which he uses on some of his jewelry.

Speaking as a collector himself, Aragon said he used to collect toy soldiers to the point where he could be described at times as either “passionate or even obsessive” about his collecting. Along the way, he learned that there were times you bought things that you knew could not be authentic because the price was so low. But your desire, he said, to add that to your collection was so great that you would ignore the buyer beware warning and you would “cooperate in the fraud that was taking place.”

Officials for the Indian Arts and Crafts Board testified at the sentencing that fraud in the arts and crafts industry is becoming rampant and the area where it is the most rampant is in Arizona and New Mexico.

But Wade urged Aragon not to take out the problems within the industry on his client, pointing out that Al-Assi is no longer in the business — he works for his family’s car detailing business — and has no plans to go back to selling Indian arts and crafts.

He also pointed out that Al-Assi has no criminal record.

Gillson was not happy with the verdict. He had wanted Aragon to give Al-Assi a suspended sentence so he would have a felony charge on his record. With a deferred sentence, the charge would be erased from his record if he maintains a clean record for 18 months.

Aragon said he was not happy with a request by Sheroke that she be given back the $600 she paid for the bracelet as well as the bracelet itself and instead ruled that the bracelet would go to the DA’s office. Gillson said he plans to use it as an educational tool to warn visitors to this area about the dangers of being cheated.