Stolen and missing Moon rocks
In 1998, a unique federal law enforcement undercover operation was created to identify and arrest individuals selling counterfeit Moon rocks.
[2] After leaving NASA for a teaching position at the University of Phoenix, in Arizona, Gutheinz challenged his criminal justice graduate students to locate the goodwill Moon rocks.
Cleo Luff, a student from the University of Phoenix, obtained this information after her investigation into the Moon rock's location for a class she had with Professor Joseph Gutheinz.
[citation needed] University of Phoenix graduate students uncovered evidence that the Romania Goodwill Moon Rock may have been auctioned off by the estate of its executed former leader Nicolae Ceaușescu.
[18] Joseph Gutheinz provided Daniel Ionascu of the Jurnalul information from the U.S. National Archives which showed that the Romanian Goodwill Moon Rock was presented to Romania.
Pablo Jáuregui, the Science Editor of El Mundo, a Spanish newspaper, disclosed in a July 20, 2009 story entitled: "Franco's grandson: My mother lost the lunar rock that was given to my grandfather."
Admiral Carrero Blanco was assassinated while in Office by ETA, a Basque separatist organization recognized as terrorist by Spain, France,[20] the UK[21] and the US,[22] but not (anymore) by the European Union.
Coleman Anderson (a crab-fishing captain who was on the TV show Deadliest Catch) claimed to have gone to the museum to scrounge through the garbage from the fire to see if there would be anything worth saving.
Its whereabouts remained unknown until September 21, 2011, when it was discovered by Michael Hodge, an archivist with the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, while processing the gubernatorial papers of Bill Clinton.
[38][39] Based on the investigation of a graduate student, former governor John Vanderhoof, then age 88, acknowledged he had the Goodwill Moon Rock presented to the people of Colorado in his personal possession and agreed to give it back to the state.
Toni Dowdell and her two teammates received this assignment from her professor, a retired senior special agent with NASA's Office of Inspector General.
As with many Moon rock gifts the Nixon Administration gave to the states and the nations of the world, the first problem she encountered was a lack of a document trail.
However, by reaching out to people, to include an operator in the state Capitol, she found the Moon rock hidden in the ceremonial Governor's Office of Oregon.
[54] Sandra Shelton, a graduate student at the University of Phoenix, was assigned the task of hunting down the West Virginia Apollo 17 Goodwill Moon Rock by her professor, a retired senior special agent with NASA's Office of Inspector General.
After 30 years of sitting in storage, the Canadian Goodwill Moon Rock finally went on display at the Canada Science and Technology Museum in Ottawa, on July 23, 2009.
[60] Misael Pastrana Borrero, as President of Colombia between 1970 and 1974, received from Neil Armstrong[a] both lunar sample displays which he kept on his desk at the Casa de Nariño.
[61] Allegedly believing that the displays were a personal diplomatic gift, Pastrana kept the Moon rocks after the end of his presidential term as interior decoration in the living room of his private residence in Bogotá.
[67][68][69] The diplomat's son thereafter began negotiating with NASA's Office of Inspector General, and did so for 5 months until the Cyprus Goodwill Moon Rock was recovered.
[8] During "Lunar Eclipse", Florida businessman Alan H. Rosen, attempted to sell agents the 1.142 gram Goodwill Moon rock presented to Honduras for 5 million dollars.
[71][72][73][74][75][76] Today the Honduras Goodwill Moon Rock is on display at the Centro Interactivo Chiminike, an education center in Tegucigalpa that receives hundreds of young student visitors per day.
[citation needed] AP reporter Ken Ritter wrote that the Nicaragua Apollo 11 Moon Rock "given by then-President Richard Nixon to former Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza Garcia [had] been pilfered by a Costa Rican mercenary soldier-turned Contra rebel, traded to a Baptist missionary for unknown items, then sold to a Las Vegas casino mogul who displayed them at his Moon Rock Cafe before squirreling them away in a safety deposit box.
"[83] In an October 23, 1999 story entitled "Atlanta Man Admits Trying to Sell Bogus Moon Rock", Reuters reported two brothers, Ronald and Brian Trochelmann, who were previously charged in 1998 in "U.S. District Court in Manhattan…"for…"a scheme to sell a phony moon rock for millions of dollars," both pled guilty to wire fraud, a felony, for perpetrating that scheme.
Ms. Hawley said a rock sample collected during the Apollo 12 mission had been part of a shipment of registered and certified mail that was stolen while en route to a researcher at the University of California in Los Angeles in 1970.
"[88] In his August 28, 2009 Associated Press story appearing in the Brisbane Times, Toby Sterling recounted how a spokesman for the Dutch National Museum, Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum, acknowledged on August 26, 2009, "that one of its prized possessions, a rock supposedly brought back from the moon by"...Apollo 11... "US astronauts, is just a piece of petrified wood.."... "The museum acquired the rock after the death of former prime minister Willem Drees in 1988.
Drees received it as a private gift on October 9, 1969 from then-US ambassador J. William Middendorf during a visit by the three Apollo 11 astronauts, part of their 'Giant Leap' goodwill tour after the first moon landing."
[93] Roberts is a certified pilot and scuba diver who was an ambitious student pursuing degrees in physics, geology, and anthropology who aspired to be an astronaut.
[94] Fellow interns Shae Saur and Tiffany Fowler, as well as accomplice Gordon McWhorter were also arrested for their roles in the theft and attempted sale of the rocks.
The author states that the "Apollo 17 lunar sample on open display at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum was slightly damaged…during an apparent vandalism attempt.
The area around the sample's display case was swept immediately after the incident, and the sweeper bag is now at the Johnson Space Center, where it is being sifted in an attempt to obtain the missing material."
A set of six fragments of Moon rocks used in educational programs were stolen from the Louisiana Science and Nature Center by ripping a small safe out of a wall in 1986.
