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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- Another defendant has been sentenced to probation for trafficking in ancient American Indian artifacts.
Nicholas K. Laws got two years of probation Monday in federal court in Salt Lake City for selling a ceremonial twin effigy object to an undercover government operative.
Prosecutors dropped additional charges involving other artifacts the 31-year-old Blanding resident was accused of selling.
The father of three has maintained he never collected artifacts from federal lands with the intent to sell them, but when offered money he desperately needed it.
Laws was the seventh defendant to be sentenced and among 26 rounded up last summer in a Four Corners sting operation.
All have received probation except for a widow who got six months of home confinement.
(Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
