Three plead guilty in moon rock scheme
By Richard Stenger
CNN
ORLANDO, Florida (CNN) -- Three college interns pleaded guilty to charges in connection with the disappearance of moon rocks and meteorites valued at more than $1 million, which later turned up for sale on the Internet, NASA announced this week.
The trio worked at NASA's Johnson Space Center this summer when a 600-pound safe with lunar samples and martian meteorites vanished from the Houston facility, the space agency said.
In July, posing as potential customers, special agents with the FBI and NASA Office of Inspector General arrested Tiffany Fowler, Gordon McWhorter and Thad Roberts in a Florida restaurant. An alleged accomplice, Shae Saur, was arrested in Houston the same day.
This month, Fowler, Roberts and Saur pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit theft and interstate transportation of stolen property.
McWhorter, a college acquaintance of Roberts who did not work for NASA, is scheduled to go on trial for the same charges in January.
The sting operation came after an advertisement was reportedly placed on the Web site of the Mineralogy Club of Antwerp, offering lunar specimens for $1,000 to $5,000 a gram.
The undercover agents had set up the Orlando meeting after using e-mail to communicate with one of the suspects, who claimed to have the "world's largest private and verifiable Apollo rock collection," NASA said.
During the meeting, the students described how they had stolen the safe with the rocks and hauled it into a sports utility vehicle.
Astronauts with the Apollo missions collected the moon rocks in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
