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 appeared before a magistrate Monday, charged with the theft of priceless lunar samples brought back to Earth by the Apollo missions.

The four, aged 19 to 26, were arrested at the weekend when a 600 poundkilogram) safe containing the samples, stolen from the Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Texas on July 13, was recovered, a statement from NASA said.

A joint operation between the FBI in Tampa, Florida the NASA Office of the Inspector General led to the arrest of Thad Roberts, 25, Tiffany Fowler, 22, Gordon McWorter, 26 and Shae Saur, 19 after their plans to steal and sell the lunar samples had been monitored via the Internet.

FBI officers were alerted by an e-mail tip-off and had used the Internet since May 2002 to communicate with an individual offering priceless moon rocks, which the vendor described as the world's largest private and verifiable Apollo rock collection, according to James Jarboe, the special officer in charge of the case.

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 finalise the purchase, Jarboe said in a statement.

SPACE.WIRE