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Four students arrested for theft of moon rocks from NASA
WASHINGTON (AFP) Jul 23, 2002
Three young US students who worked as summer employees with NASA and an accomplice have been charged with the theft of lunar samples collected by the Apollo missions and meteorite pieces NASA estimated to be worth one million dollars.

Thad Ryan Roberts, 25, Tiffany Brooke Fowler, 22, and Gordon Sean McWorter, 26 were taken into custody in Orlando, Florida Saturday and charged with "conspiracy to commit theft of government property and transportation in interstate commerce of stolen property."

A fourth accomplice, Shae Lynn Saur, 19, was arrested in Houston and charged on the same count, said Paul Shawcross, director of NASA's Office of the Inspector General.

Some 53 lunar rocks collected by the Apollo missions to the moon and 165 meteorite fragments -- including one fragment from the famous Martian meteorite ALH 84001 in which NASA scientists found possible evidence of fossilized life in 1996 -- were amongst the samples in a 600 pound safe stolen on July 13 from NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

"It's priceless," said Sara Oates an FBI agent working on the case, noting that the arrests coincided with the 33rd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.

In May, a Belgian meteorite collector alerted the FBI's Internet Fraud Division to a suspicious advertisement posted on the Antwerp Mineralogy Club website, according to the charges filed in the Florida court.

A mysterious seller calling himself "Orb Robinson" offered "priceless" moon rocks collected by Apollo astronauts between July 1969 and December 1972 for prices ranging from 1,000 to 5,000 dollars per gram.

To give a comparison "some lunar dust was sold for 3,000 dollars per gram at Christies a couple of years ago," Shawcross said.

"As you well know, it is illegal to sell Apollo lunar rocks in the United States...I must be cautious that this deal is handled with delicacy in that I am not publicly exposed," "Robinson" wrote in one of his postings.

FBI agents, masquerading as close US friends of the Belgian collector, began to e-mail "Robinson" to inquire about purchasing samples from the "world's largest private Apollo rock collection," according to James Jarboe, the special officer in charge of the case.

"Robinson," who authorities suspect to be Roberts, did not get suspicious.

The continued exchanges included curatorial and historical records on the samples provided by the seller, and culminated in a meeting at a restaurant in Orlando, Florida last weekend to finalize the purchase, Jarboe said in a statement.

At the same time, the four, three of whom were student summer interns at the Johnson Space Center allegedly contrived to steal the 600 poundkilogram) safe containing the samples.

"Robinson," by then supposedly in possession of the rocks, asked for a rate increase from 2,000 to 8,000 dollars per gram just four days before the meeting.

"I would like to stress that this is the world's largest private Apollo rock collection, not to mention the only verifiable Apollo rock collection. I must make adjustments to my base prices," he said in an e-mail.

A joint operation between the FBI in Tampa, Florida and the NASA Office of the Inspector General led to the arrests and the recovery of the safe Saturday afternoon in Orlando, Florida after authorities realized that "Robinson" was one the alleged safe thieves.

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