Thad Ryan Roberts, 25, Tiffany Brooke Fowler, 22, and Shae Lynn Saur, 19, will be sentenced in the next few weeks by a judge in Tampa, Florida, after pleading guilty last week.

A fourth student, Gordon McWhorter, 26, pleaded not guilty to a charge of conspiracy to commit theft. His trial will be held next month.

The four were arrested in July by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Police were alerted to the theft when a Belgian Internet surfer reported that an anonymous intermediary had put out e-mails offering for sale what he called the largest private collection of authentic moon rocks.

Police launched a clandestine operation in May in which an FBI agent passed himself off as a potential buyer. The FBI negotiated for a number of weeks with the students before the arrests were made.

The safe contained 53 samples of moon rocks and 165 fragments of meteorites, including a sliver from the Martian meteorite ALH 84001. The total estimated value of the safe's contents, according to NASA, was around a million dollars.

SPACE.WIRE