AN ISRAELI TELEVISION DOCUMENTARY has accused Oded Golan of being part of a forgery ring:

Fake ossuary leads Israel to look into sellers of antiquities

By Dan Vergano, USA TODAY
An Israeli documentary Wednesday claimed the James ossuary, the ancient burial box bearing a discredited inscription mentioning Jesus, is just the tip of a long-running forgery ring that has duped antiquities collectors worldwide for the last 15 years.

First reports of the ossuary in a 2002 Biblical Archaeology Review created a frenzy over the relic that bears the Aramaic inscription "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus." Throngs visited the Royal Ontario Museum to see the empty stone box. Scientists all agree the ossuary is a genuine artifact from the era of the New Testament, but many scholars believe the inscription was added recently.

Produced with the help of Israeli Antiquity Authority (IAA) officials, the Israeli investigative news show Ouvda ("fact" in Hebrew), says ossuary owner Oded Golan participated in dozens of forgery sales.

Golan denied the charges on the show, calling them "unbelievable."

The forgery ring accusation has been around for a while. I noted it here back in August.

The real surprise in the USA Today article comes in the last paragraph:

BAR editor Hershel Shanks has defended the ossuary in his magazine, saying the evidence remains inconclusive, and calling for a new study of the inscription. In the journal's upcoming issue, biblical scholar David Noel Freedman suggests linguistic errors in another suspect artifact, the so-called "Jehoash" tablet, may actually be valid Hebrew. Widely regarded as a fake, the tablet describes the collection of money for the repair of the First Temple in Jerusalem.

My emphasis. This I will have to read.

There's another brief article on the forgery ring accusation in Ha'aretz. Both articles were drawn to my attention by Stephen Goranson.