I think you’ve misunderstood the article. What happened was a district attorney in the united states caught someone smuggling antiquities into the country. So the district attorney who caught them had everything sent back to the country of origin, exactly what they should do with smuggled antiquities. It turned out the guy was trafficking in mostly forgeries of pieces that are in other known locations and were never brought to the united states. The experts the district attorney used thought they were authentic. What on earth do you think the new york DA did wrong here? I guess they could hire better experts. But if they have what they think to be authentic artifacts that were smuggled out of countries, they did the right thing and sent them back to the country of origin. They’re saying this is just embarrassing for the DA because they billed this guy as a smuggler in their court case, but actually he’s a forger. I don’t see any reason for anyone to be outraged though, except maybe at the forger.