FBI Arrests 4 College Interns For Stealing Lunar Materials

An anonymous reader "Today, the fourth member of a group of college interns working at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston turned herself in after being charged with conspiracy to steal government property. Click2Houston.com has an article with a video feed covering many details of the case. Apparently, three of the alleged theives went to Florida and tried to sell, online, the 5 oz. of moon rocks and meteorite material they lugged out of the JSC in a 600lb case. Here's another article from the Houston Chronicle."

Comments

What did they expect..

[Chicane-UK]

And they didn't expect to get caught? I might understand if they were trying to sell a harddrive they had stolen from work, or a 2nd hand base unit they had sneaked out. But a few hundred pounds of moonrock are sure to be noticed, especially when you sell em on eBay!

They deserve to get caught..

Who would buy these?

[Myco]

What kind of idiot would buy moon rocks over the Internet for any appreciable sum of money? How exactly would you verify what you were buying? And what kind of idiot wouldn't know that any moon rocks for sale must be stolen property?

There is, last time I checked, *one* moon rock in the U.S. (or the world?) that is in any way available to the public. You can go and touch it. I did. Whee. Looked like a rock, to me.

Re:Government property?

[MadFarmAnimalz]

Us Government property, UN property... Hmm. Am I missing a distinction in there?

Let's not split geopolitical hairs.

thank you, you stupid fucking intern

[xeeno]

for making life hard for the rest of us at NASA. Because of this, every person interning at NASA is going to be put under the microscope.

Re:Government property?

[itsnotme]

Its not like you OWN the earth either, its been around longer than any of us and we are claiming that patches of land on it belong to us exclusively. Why should the moon be any different, greed is greed.

Re:Government property?

[the gnat]

It's shocking how many people in this thread agree with you. As government property, it was available for research (one of the linked articles has an archived article discussing this) and held in trust for the people. In fact, that article says they get requests from institutions all over the world to study the rocks. Anyone who wants their own personal moon rocks can fund their own expedition to get them. I doubt the feds would have much of a case trying to wrest those away.

At any rate, the point here is that these particular rocks were most certainly US property, and these assholes were trying to sell them to a private collector. I fail to see any gray area.

Re:Government property?

[clickety6]

Us Government property, UN property...

Is the US still actually a member of the UN? I thought their representative just went along to the meetings for the free cookies!

Here's what went down...

[Gennette]

Here's what I get from reading the actual article in the Houston paper, rather than just reading the little summary. Four friends decide it would be funny to post something about selling moon rocks. They haven't stolen the rocks at this point, and they probably don't really intend to. They have some good laughs over it, I'm sure. Then, someone actually replies about wanting them! (someone that is just a front for the FBI) Encouraged by the huge amount that he is supposedly willing to pay, they are enticed to actually steal the rocks. In fact, they don't even steal them till after the undercover FBI people set up a price and meeting place. By this point, they feel like they're in too deep to back out. The joke has gone too far. They feel they have no choice but to actually follow through. Hello entrapment! (anyone who actually read it, feel free to discuss...others please don't comment)

Re:Here's what went down...

[Binky The Oracle]

You wouldn't happen to be their defense lawyer, would you? Because that's exactly the argument I'd take to try to make to weasel out of this. "It's ahl a gubmint cohnspeerasee yah honah! These heah rocket wizahds was TRICKED into a life ah crime!"

I'm not a lawyer, but if I recall correctly, entrapment only occurs when the enforcement organization actively initiates the transaction or crime.

For example, let's say that the FBI puts two and two together (as they're apparently good at doing) and thinks that Senator Hollings is on the take. They call him up, offer him some money in return for some legislation, and pay him off. Well, ok, that's not a great example because we already know he's on the take, so this is just a sting proving his behavior. ;-)

Instead, let's say your local police force sends an undercover officer to your house and the cop convinces/coerces you to take his gun and hold up the convenience store down the street. He goes with you and arrests you when you pull out the gun in the store. That's entrapment.

If, however, I start asking around about where I can get a gun fast and the police get tipped off and start an undercover operation to catch me doing whatever it is I'm planning, that's not entrapment.

Regardless of their original intent, at least one of these four posted an email saying they had lunar materials for sale on a web site and subsequently followed through with the theft and attempted sale. Their intent could conceivably have bearing on sentencing, but shouldn't on whether or not they're guilty of the crime. They said they had moon rocks for sale, they stole moon rocks, they tried to sell the stolen moon rocks. Period.

(And yes, I read the Chron article.)

Re:The "Moon": A Ridiculous Liberal Myth

[Xerithane]

The analysis isn't conclusive because it's not only done by a bunch of tin-foil hat wearing people who think Art Bell should be president, but completely flawed.

Have you seen the original photos? I mean the originals. The real originals.

Let me tell you a story, it's about Mars. You see, Mars has this face on it, right? It's a human face, that's how the story goes, if I recall. I saw the original feed. I had access to all of those images. Every single mars image we have ever taken, straight from the archives.

You know what? All those "Mars Face" images are doctored. In a really easy way, just playing around with overlay and contrast and you get a very nice face.

If you think that analyzing photographs and only photographs is considered real research than you really do need to take a forensics course when you get into college. If it would have been real research they would have explained and counter-proofed all the rebuttals.

Such as why there is no crater. Which I think is the stupidest one of all. We are talking landing at less than 2 feet per second. 2 feet per second. You jump harder than that dipshit. I don't see craters forming on NBA courts everywhere. Hell, I don't see craters forming out in the dirt when you jump up and down.

Anyway, go open your eyes read up on light reflection on the moon and physics, and you will see that you sound like a complete fucking moron right now trying to say this is a hoax.