A prominent North Little Rock businessman and memorabilia collector said Monday that the FBI allowed him to take back some but not all of the items that federal agents confiscated from his home and business last week.
John Rogers, the owner of Rogers Photo Archive and a trader in sports memorabilia, said he was allowed to retrieve a number of items from the FBI’s Little Rock field office on Monday afternoon but he declined to say what the items were.
“I’m thrilled that we got a lot of our items back in less than a week. I couldn’t be happier today. That’s all I can say,” Rogers said by phone Monday night.
Rogers said he will be picking up additional items from the FBI later in the week but he declined to answer further questions about the items or why the FBI searched his home and business.
His attorney, Blake Hendrix, accompanied Rogers when he picked up the items. In an interview, Hendrix said the items taken by the FBI pertained to Rogers’ business, but he couldn’t elaborate on what items were returned or why they were taken by federal agents serving a search warrant.
“I have to leave it as vague as that. I apologize that it’s that vague. Part of that is that I’m not at liberty to say, but the other part is that I genuinely don’t know,” Hendrix said, adding that he’ll be collecting additional items from the field office later in the week.
The search warrant for Rogers’ home and business was signed by U.S. Magistrate Judge Jerome Kearney, who presides in Arkansas’ eastern district, but as of Monday, documents supporting the search warrant remained sealed by court order, Hendrix said.
Hendrix said Rogers was served with a copy of the warrant but not allowed to see the documents supporting it that allowed for the seizure of the items on the morning of Jan. 28.
Federal agents spent several hours that morning carrying boxes out of Rogers Photo Archive at 2501 N. Poplar St. They did the same at Rogers’ home at 3700 Avondale Road.
Some of the federal agents were from Chicago, Hendrix said, but the majority were assigned to local field offices including Little Rock.
Kim Brunell, an FBI supervisory special agent and spokesman for the Little Rock field office, said Monday that she couldn’t provide the assignments of the agents that went to Rogers’ home and business. She also couldn’t say whether Rogers was the target of a federal investigation.
Hendrix said that he had been talking with the FBI about returning the items over the past several days and that Rogers was “extremely cooperative” with agents during the search.
None of Rogers’ monetary assets have been seized or frozen, and his business has been fully operational since the search, Hendrix said.
“There’s been no disruption at all to the business,” Hendrix said, referring to Rogers’ 10-year-old company, which is reportedly the world’s largest privately held photographic image collection.
The company has archived more than 120 million photographs and negatives and more than 50 million digital-only images.
Starting as a sports-memorabilia collector, Rogers has rapidly expanded the photo archiving business in the past few years. As of last year, the company employed 90 people in North Little Rock, 40 in Memphis and 200 more in India.
While the business expanded, it also became the target of a scheme by two former employees.
In May 2013, federal investigators went to Rogers’ aid after an internal audit revealed that more than 100,000 photographs, valued around $2 million, were missing from the archive.
Two former employees, Christopher Jackson and Steve Roby, were arrested and charged with stealing the originals and selling them.
After an investigation by the U.S. Secret Service, both men pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. In June 2013, Jackson was sentenced to 33 months in prison and Roby was sentenced to 18 months in prison.
Information for this article was contributed by Spencer Willems of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 02/04/2014