[MSN] Map Dealer Sentenced to 3 ½ Years

[Museum Security Network Mailinglist]

Map Dealer Sentenced to 3 ½ Years
5:03 PM EDT, September 27, 2006 

By KIM MARTINEAU, Courant Staff Writer  NEW HAVEN -- A map dealer who looted
$3 million in maps from some of the world's finest libraries has been
sentenced to just over 3 ½ years in prison and admonished for his crimes
against culture that hurt librarians and other map dealers but also the
public at large.

E. Forbes Smiley III, 50, stood as the judge handed down the sentence
Wednesday afternoon in federal court. The sentencing came after Yale
University and the other libraries he plundered spoke of how his actions
have inhibited scholarship, tarnished their reputations and discouraged
public support.

In sentencing Smiley, U.S. District Judge Janet Arterton said she wanted to
send a message to deter other would-be art and book thieves. The judge also
ordered Smiley to pay $1.9 million to the map dealers and collectors who
unwittingly bought the stolen goods.

The money Smiley will make selling his home on Martha's Vineyard and his
summer house in central Maine is expected to cover only a fraction of what
he owes. As he heads off to jail broke, with his business in tatters, few of
the map dealers he betrayed are holding their breath waiting for payment.

Over the last few months, librarians from around the world have written
Arterton. The curator at the special collections department at Northwestern
University outside Chicago, still reeling from the thefts of Gilbert Bland
more than a decade ago, was among them.

"He ripped part of the fabric of our society in the same manner as any other
criminal and while the results might not be as visible, they are felt and
the damage has been done," wrote R. Russell Maylone, in a letter provided to
the Courant. "Policies of access will now change, more institutions will now
have security cameras and guards, collectors who might have become friends
of institutions will now shy away and most of us will trust all a good deal
less. We are all diminished. Beyond this, do we even know all that Smiley
stole or what has become of it? I doubt it very much."

A few of Smiley's friends were there for support: a childhood friend from
the New Hampshire town where he grew up and two friends from Hampshire
College, where he later went to school. His wife and six-year old son were
notably absent.

An eight year crime spree came to an end on June 8, 2005 when a librarian at
Yale found an X-acto blade on the floor, near where Smiley was sitting.
Police later found stolen maps stashed in his sport coat and briefcase.
Within a month, Smiley began cooperating with the FBI. This past June, he
pleaded guilty to a theft of major artwork and admitted stealing nearly a
hundred maps from libraries in New York, New Haven, Boston, Chicago and
London.

Next month, Smiley will go before a state judge to be sentenced on three
larceny charges tied to his arrest last summer. The sentence will run at the
same time as the federal. 

http://www.courant.com/