Believed to have first been taken from Kanupa Cave in the late 1800s and sold to museums, they were reburied in 2003 by the group Hui Malama I Na Kupuna 'O Hawai'i Nei, a Native Hawaiian group dedicated to the repatriation of Hawaiian burial remains and the objects that accompany them.

A second defendant, Daniel W. Taylor, pleaded guilty and is scheduled to be sentenced May 15.

Court documents said Taylor admitted to trying to sell three items, including a palaoa, or whale-tooth pendant, for $40,000 the day after the break-in. The two were apparently acting on the orders of a third person, M.F., who has never been identified.

Kubo had previously stated that it will be up to the Native Hawaiian community to determine what should be done with the recovered items. Hui Malama is one of four groups that had filed as claimant under NAGPRA rules.

Edward Halealoha Ayau, Hui Malama executive director, praised the Office of the Inspector General for taking the lead in the case. "I believe there were others involved in this case," he said, adding that he wants the agency to continue investigating the Kanupa case as well as similar thefts. "Somebody else is out there monitoring the Federal Register, watching for the repatriation of objects because those are reported in the Federal Register."

Ayau also repeated his criticism of the state attorney general's office for failing to prosecute the case. He said that for the federal crime to have occurred, the two men also had to have been trespassing, breaking and entering, disturbing a historical site, disturbing a burial site, and theft, all of which can be brought as civil charges against the two men.

Attorney General Mark Bennett, reached Thursday night, said he could not comment on the situation other than to say that "we are still actively looking at the case."

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