KAROS GUILTY AGAIN IN FEDERAL COURT

By Michael Horne
The last time we saw Marilyn Karos around these parts it was Halloween, and she was in U. S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin to face sentencing on charges of obstruction of justice in a failed attempt to spring her lover, Chicago antique dealer Richard O'Hara, from prison.
She got 20 months for that caper, with time off Wednesday for a field trip to St. Louis, Mo., where she appeared again in a familiar venue -- federal court -- to plead guilty to charges of attempting to sell a fake Rembrandt painting for $2.8 million on behalf of a phony Saudi sheik in 2004.
The hapless Karos and her princely pal had a willing buyer in an undercover federal agent, leading to her arrest.
She and her accomplice, Majed Ihmoud, also tried to sell a pair of bronze doors, valued at $10,000 for $130,000, falsely claiming they had once been the property of boxer Muhammad Ali. That sale, in July, 2004, likewise was to an FBI agent.
Karos pleaded guilty in 2001 to possession of stolen goods in the case of the missing items from the Rome Observatory, consisting of astrolabes and armillary spheres, which she had tried to market out of her Whitefish Bay home.
A very shady character named Zakria El-Shafei was lured to her home and beaten by O'Hara in that bizarre case. El-Shafei has disappeared. However, a recently-published book entitled Forbidden Prayers, includes a character who very likely is, or is based on, El-Shafei.
Karos' Milwaukee nemesis has been FBI Special Agent James Doyle who led the investigation into her recent activities here which brought to light the St. Louis connection. Karos is to be sentenced in St. Louis in May. According to the Bureau of Prisons website, she is now in transit, presumably to the detention facility in Chicago where she has been housed.
An article about Karos appeared in Wednesday's St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which is also accompanied by a lovely photograph of Karos. Use the Google search engine above to find the entire trove of milwaukeeworld.com stories about Marilyn Karos.

UPDATE-- Thursday, April 6th 2006 -- Majed A. Ihmoud was sentenced yesterday to five months in federal prison and and additional five months home confinement for the Rembrandt caper. Karos' sentencing is set for May 31st. -- Ed.]