[meteorite-list] Federal Court Sets Value Of Stolen Moon Rocks At $5 Million

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:16:29 2004
Message-ID: <200308061810.LAA17208_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.floridatoday.com/topstories/080603moonrocks.htm

Federal court sets value of stolen moon rocks at $5 million

Valuation part of sentencing in Orlando theft trial

Kelly Young
Florida Today
August 6, 2003

ORLANDO, Fla. - A federal court this morning set the value
of moon rocks heisted from the Johnson Space Center at
more than $5 million based upon what it cost the United
States to go get them rather than what they might sell for
on the open market.

In what some collectors have said is the first official
government valuation of the rocks that American astronauts
brought back from the moon on the Apollo expeditions,
prosecutors and defense attorneys agreed to value moon
rocks and Martian meteorites stolen from JSC at between
$2.5 million and $7 million.

The valuation was part of the sentencing of two NASA
interns, Tiffany Fowler and Shae Sauer, in U.S. District
Court in Orlando earlier today. The two, who were found
guilty of collaborating with two others to pilfer the
space rocks and other items from Johnson Space Center and
sell them, were sentenced to three years probation.

Each will serve the first 180 days of the sentence in home
detention and will do 150 hours of community service. They
also were ordered to pay $9,167 restitution to the space
agency to cover the cost of other items and equipment that
were either stolen or destroyed in the incident.

Some of the defendants have said they took an entire safe
full of meteorites, moon rocks and other scientific items
from a lab at the NASA center in Houston. They were busted
in an undercover FBI sting.

The other two defendants are Thad Roberts and Gordon
McWhorter.

McWhorter was convicted in June. Roberts, who pleaded
guilty in December along with Fowler and Sauer to
conspiracy to commit theft and interstate transportation
of stolen property, testified against McWhorter at the
trial.

For space enthusiasts, however, the more interesting
element of the sentencing was the requirement to figure
out the value of what many scientists and collectors deem
priceless items. The co-conspirators apparently were
trying to sell the rocks on the Internet for between
$1,000 and $5,000 per gram.

The government did that by using the cost of acquisition
and market value.
The moon rocks were valued based upon what it cost the
U.S. government to go get them back in the 1960s and
1970s. The court determined that, in 1962-1973 dollars, it
cost the government $50,800 per gram to collect the lunar
samples.

The interns took 101.5 grams from the Houston space
facility. So the total value assigned to the stolen rocks
was set at $5.1 million.

It remained unclear what the value of the rocks would be
today if sold on the open market, based on the system the
government used to value them. Also because of the method
used to set that value, it was unclear whether it would be
valid to convert the decades-old price to present-day
dollars.

At first glance, compared to past experience, the value
seemed low. By contrast, in 1993, the famed auction house
Sotheby's sold some moon material brought back by the
Soviets at a price equivalent to about
$2.2 million per gram.

Using that standard, the 101.5 grams stolen from JSC might
be worth as much as $223 million though it's impossible to
know what the true value would be since the merchandise in
this case was stolen and might have had to be sold
secretly - basically on the black market.

The Martian meteorites, part of a larger collection that
was the result of a massive find by scientists in
Antarctica, were priced at $1.8 million based on their
believed market value.
Received on Wed 06 Aug 2003 02:10:54 PM PDT