Over 3,500 archaeological items have been recovered from the house of a controversial Canadian property magnate in Honduras, adding to a growing list of criminal accusations against the “Porn King” that include money laundering, fraud, and land usurpation.
The artifacts were found just outside the city of Trujillo, on the country’s northern coast, in the former home of Randy Roy Jorgensen, a Canadian property developer who bought up swathes of the Honduran coastline in a series of dubious property deals starting in 2007. Jorgensen was the previous owner of Adults Only Video, a multimillion-dollar pornographic video chain store that earned Jorgensen his moniker, the “King of Porn.”
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Jorgensen used his profits to buy, subdivide, and sell the Honduran coast, marketing plots to Canadian retirees. However, the developments were exclusively on lands claimed by Honduras’ Indigenous Garífuna population, who hold ancestral land titles. Garífuna groups have long submitted legal complaints of usurpation against Jorgensen’s developments, though Honduran authorities frequently ignored them.
Honduras’ Attorney General seized 233 of Jorgensen’s properties, including the house where the artifacts were found, in April after complaints from Canadian investors. In a statement, the Attorney General’s Office accused Jorgensen of money laundering and of defrauding Canadians, but provided few other details. The prices at which Jorgensen bought and sold properties were also misreported in public declarations, according to the AG.
Jorgensen has not been arrested or charged in relation to the property seizures. He did not respond to requests for comment.
The artifacts at the center of the latest controversy surrounding Jorgensen were discovered by members of the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras (Organización Fraternal Negra Hondureña – OFRANEH), a nonprofit that represents the Indigenous Garífuna population.
Archeologists working with OFRANEH identified 3,511 items over 12 days, including necklaces, masks, and three colonial cannonballs. Many of the items were made of jade and appear to have been plundered from sacred burial sites, according to OFRANEH. The haul, one of the largest in Honduras in recent years, included items from several Indigenous and pre-Columbian cultures.
“The pieces suggest the desecration of tombs,” Rony Castillo, a member of OFRANEH, told InSight Crime, “Not only in Honduras but from other parts of Mesoamerica.”
Contentious Land Developments
The cultural artifacts discovered in Jorgensen’s property mark the newest chapter in decades of tensions between Garífuna communities and the “Porn King” on this part of the Honduran coast, rooted in accusations that the Canadian national illegally took possession of Indigenous lands.
Jorgensen’s Honduran properties are located in Colón, a lush coastal department with large tracts of land titled to the Garífuna. The region is a center for investment linked to tourism and large-scale agriculture. It is also the most murderous part of Honduras, with 57 killed per 100,000 people in 2023, nearly twice the national average. The department has historically failed to recognize Garífuna heritage, which has complicated OFRANEH’s case against Jorgensen.
Jorgensen’s property developments were expedited following Honduras’ 2009 military coup. In the aftermath, Honduras was declared “open for business,” and Jorgensen developed luxury condominiums and retirement villages. A port for cruise ships, also constructed by the entrepreneur, displaced a large chunk of Rio Negro, a Garífuna community in Trujillo.
Garífuna communities filed complaints of land usurpation with Honduras’ Attorney General’s Office. After a decade-long legal battle, prosecutors said their investigations had proven that Jorgensen illegally appropriated Garífuna lands, though he was later acquitted.
Impunity Ruins Everything
Alejandra Fuentes, a lawyer with the Association for a More Just Society (Asociación para una Sociedad más Justa – ASJ) has investigated Garífuna land rights in Colón and told InSight Crime that municipal governments had significant power over communal lands but were often pliant to powerful interests.
“Either authorities have given permits that are not correct, or they simply pretend not to see” the violations of Garífuna property titles, said Fuentes. “There’s no punishment for those who commit crimes in this way. Impunity ruins everything.”
The Inter-American Court on Human Rights has three times ruled that the Honduran state violated the rights of Garífuna communities by failing to title and enforce their territories properly. They have also ruled that Honduras failed to ensure the right of the Garífuna people to participate in decisions affecting their lands.
OFRANEH representatives told InSight Crime it was doubtful that the seizure of Jorgensen’s properties indicated that they would be returned to the Garífuna given the Honduran state’s history of inaction on previous complaints of land usurpation.
Hidden in Plain Sight
While attempts by OFRANEH to hold Jorgensen accountable for land usurpation have so far been unsuccessful, the organization hopes that the Attorney General may take interest in the archaeological items found on the developer’s property.
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OFRANEH issued a complaint to the Attorney General’s Office on November 26 and claimed that pieces in Jorgensen’s collection appeared to have been illegally excavated “for the purpose of trafficking.”
“Whoever acquires these types of pieces is considered a trafficker under the penal code,” Edy Tábora, a lawyer for OFRANEH, told InSight Crime, “This is a quantity too large. In order to have a collection of pieces, you must have the authorization of the state.”
Castillo added it was “strange” that the Attorney General had failed to recognize the value of the 3,511 artifacts inside Jorgensen’s property during the initial seizure in April.
“They mention a shark-hunting boat, some tractors, but never the archeological pieces in plain sight,” he said.
The Attorney General’s Office did not respond to a request for comment.