Who Committed the 25-Year, $8 Million Library Heist? (smithsonianmag.com) 61
An anonymous reader shares a fascinating true-crime story from Pittsburgh. Smithsonian magazine reports:
Like nuclear power plants and sensitive computer networks, the safest rare book collections are protected by what is known as "defense in depth" — a series of small, overlapping measures designed to thwart a thief who might be able to overcome a single deterrent. The Oliver Room, home to the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh's rare books and archives, was something close to the platonic ideal of this concept. Greg Priore, manager of the room starting in 1992, designed it that way.
The room has a single point of entry, and only a few people had keys to it. When anyone, employee or patron, entered the collection, Priore wanted to know. The room had limited daytime hours, and all guests were required to sign in and leave personal items, like jackets and bags, in a locker outside. Activity in the room was under constant camera surveillance. In addition, the Oliver Room had Priore himself. His desk sat at a spot that commanded the room and the table where patrons worked. When a patron returned a book, he checked that it was still intact. Security for special collections simply does not get much better than that of the Oliver Room.
In the spring of 2017, then, the library's administration was surprised to find out that many of the room's holdings were gone. It wasn't just that a few items were missing. It was the most extensive theft from an American library in at least a century, the value of the stolen objects estimated to be $8 million...
Perpetrating a daring 25-year heist, the thief "stole nearly everything of significant monetary value," the magazine reports. So who done it? Just about the only thing that keeps an insider from stealing from special collections is conscience. Security measures may thwart outside thieves, but if someone wants to steal from the collection he stewards, there is little to stop him. Getting books and maps and lithographs out the door is not much harder than simply taking them from the shelves...
The perpetrator was ultimately sentenced to three years' house arrest and 12 years' probation, the article reports, while his fence received four years' house arrest and 12 years' probation.
"After the sentences were made public, Carole Kamin, a member of the board of the Carnegie Natural History Museum, wrote to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that supporters of local nonprofits 'were appalled at the unbelievably light sentences.'"
The room has a single point of entry, and only a few people had keys to it. When anyone, employee or patron, entered the collection, Priore wanted to know. The room had limited daytime hours, and all guests were required to sign in and leave personal items, like jackets and bags, in a locker outside. Activity in the room was under constant camera surveillance. In addition, the Oliver Room had Priore himself. His desk sat at a spot that commanded the room and the table where patrons worked. When a patron returned a book, he checked that it was still intact. Security for special collections simply does not get much better than that of the Oliver Room.
In the spring of 2017, then, the library's administration was surprised to find out that many of the room's holdings were gone. It wasn't just that a few items were missing. It was the most extensive theft from an American library in at least a century, the value of the stolen objects estimated to be $8 million...
Perpetrating a daring 25-year heist, the thief "stole nearly everything of significant monetary value," the magazine reports. So who done it? Just about the only thing that keeps an insider from stealing from special collections is conscience. Security measures may thwart outside thieves, but if someone wants to steal from the collection he stewards, there is little to stop him. Getting books and maps and lithographs out the door is not much harder than simply taking them from the shelves...
The perpetrator was ultimately sentenced to three years' house arrest and 12 years' probation, the article reports, while his fence received four years' house arrest and 12 years' probation.
"After the sentences were made public, Carole Kamin, a member of the board of the Carnegie Natural History Museum, wrote to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that supporters of local nonprofits 'were appalled at the unbelievably light sentences.'"
Conscience? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Just about the only thing that keeps an insider from stealing from special collections is conscience. "
Slightly less effective than several RFIDs inside the book.
Re:Conscience? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just about the only thing that keeps an insider from stealing special collections that have no security is conscience.
The fact that this was done over the course of 25 years in a library that had literally priceless works shows a shocking lack of controls. Positing this as a "well, you just can't protect something when the guy at the top is doing the theft" is wrong on its face. That is a frightened board, aware they have been criminally lax themselves, trying to pin all the blame on the culprit for creating an environment where this was possible. The board should have drafted policies and procedures that never allowed any one person, regardless of position, to ever be alone with a priceless work. And it shouldn't matter the position of the insider doing the theft, no collection of that sort should be allowed to go that long without a full outside inventory. My heavens, 25 years it took them to detect this? The entire board should be fired.
Re:Conscience? (Score:5, Interesting)
I concur.
Nobody ever came looking for a book they knew was there (rare means people pay attention to that shit since they can't get access ANYWHERE ELSE!) and found it missing? Over 25 years?
In the fall of 2016, library officials decided it was time to audit the collection again, and hired the Pall Mall Art Advisors to do the appraisal. Kerry-Lee Jeffrey and Christiana Scavuzzo began their audit on April 3, 2017, a Monday, using the 1991 inventory as a guide.
So you have an $8m+ collection, and you inventory it once every 25 years?
Jesus, if someone stole even 1 book 20 years ago, do you really think you're going to figure out who it was? The only good thing about this was that the thief was fucking boneheaded and stole enough that you could easily figure out who it was. If he had picked the most two frequent visitors and had stolen only what they had checked out, you'd be boned. You'd be doubly boned if he had kept an eye on everyone who came in and only stole stuff that deceased members looked at.
Re: Conscience? (Score:2)
Um if is easier than that. A multiperson inspection inventory annually on all assets over $1,000 value would have caught the thefts in just a couple of years. ( Possibly less but I. Most rare items get counted by the same person annually and so get glosse over. By having multiple parties doing it then someone else will go looking for it evey couple of years.
This is a failure of basic inventory and accounting.
Re: Conscience? (Score:2)
âoe All indications suggest that he was perpetrating his crimes not to get rich but rather, as he told police, merely to stay âoeafloat.â For example, in the fall of 2015, Priore wrote an email to the Ellis School asking for an extension on tuition payments. âoeI am trying to juggle tuition payments for 4 kids,â he wrote. A few weeks later, he asked Duquesne officials to lift a hold on accounts assigned to two of h
Re: Conscience? (Score:4, Insightful)
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But academic libraries pay about $32,000 to $55,000 for positions like his albeit with good benefits.
The law of supply and demand is strong here.
For my own personal anecdotal evidence the school I went to had a Library Science program. I know (and kept friendships with) several people who got a degree in Library Science, and I recall asking what they'd do with the degree, they all had said they'd find a library somewhere that needs them, but they knew it was difficult to find jobs in their field. Now that were're all out of school, zero of them work in libraries. Most work as bookkeepers (money, not shelv
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It is quite clear whodunit (Score:1)
It say so in the first few paragraphs of the story, it was the manager in charge of the room.
If your security system relies only on process and procedure, it's not really security, it's just bureaucracy. Would've been much cheaper to just hire a proper security consultant.
Re: It is quite clear whodunit (Score:2)
Summary (Score:5, Insightful)
Dear Editors,
A random set of paragraphs from the original article is not a summary.
A summary should be self-contained, and it should condense the original story into a few lines, such that anybody can understand it, and the interested reader is motivated to go to the original source to get the details.
Summaries in this site are lately becoming excerpts from the original article, in many cases with significant holes.
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Given the "editor" wrote "So who done it?", let's put the editors through some grade school English before we worry about teaching them how to summarise complex text.
To this I would add (Score:2)
And the master thief was (Score:5, Informative)
"Gregory Priore"
What a shock.
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That is completely uninteresting. The guy everyone will suspect first of doing it did it? Bah.
I mean, really - if the room is that secure and the guy is inside overseeing the entire thing, a
digital copies availability (Score:2)
Re:digital copies availability (Score:5, Insightful)
there aren't digital copies of the books? they tell "rare books" but we can't read them. why? technology is not an issue.
Cost is an issue, not to mention the fragility of some (many?) of these works. These aren't books you can go to Second and Charles and thumb through at your leisure. Depending on the age and condition of the book, they can require some form of temperature and humidity controls. The ink flakes off pages or fades with time. If you've ever seen the Declaration of Independence in person, you'll understand the last part.
Now imagine a library, dependent on the government for its main source of revenue, trying to find the money to digitize each page of every rare book it owns, without further damaging what they have. While the Carnegie Library should have the resources to digitize their books, it's not something done in a few days. The planning to ensure as little damage as possible occurs, that each book is accounted for once scanned, also costs money.
Aside from the logistics, there is something ineffable about researching original books and manuscripts. Understanding you have history in your hand (or lying in front of you) within the pages of a book which only exists in a few places, adds to the excitement of discovery. I realize you're one of those curmudgeons who doesn't care for historical items, that everything should be simplified to its most basic concept, in this case words, but there are people out there who appreciate the work itself. The handcrafted binding, individual pages painstakingly created at an unheard of cost for their time, the time necessary to lay down the words and pictures and guilding, are all part of the research process.
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Cost is an issue, not to mention the fragility of some (many?) of these works. These aren't books you can go to Second and Charles and thumb through at your leisure. Depending on the age and condition of the book, they can require some form of temperature and humidity controls. The ink flakes off pages or fades with time. If you've ever seen the Declaration of Independence in person, you'll understand the last part.
Patrons could visit the collection, and check out the volumes, part of the librarian's responsibility was checking the conditions of books when they were returned.
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These books were in a LIBRARY.
There was a room they were kept in, overseen by a full-time librarian.
The Librarian was there to oversee the collection and loan them out.
From the summary:
The room has a single point of entry, and only a few people had keys to it. When anyone, employee or patron, entered the collection, Priore wanted to know. The room had limited daytime hours, and all guests were required to sign in and leave personal items, like jackets and bags, in a locker outside. Activity in the room was under constant camera surveillance. In addition, the Oliver Room had Priore himself. His desk sat at a spot that commanded the room and the table where patrons worked. When a patron returned a book
, he checked that it was still intact. Security for special collections simply does not get much better than that of the Oliver Room.
Patrons could visit the collection, and apparently check out the collection.
Re: digital copies availability (Score:1)
Re:digital copies availability (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't want to minimize the importance of digital copies -- they're crucial. But the physical artifact inevitably encodes information that's not in the digital copy. Your ability to study where and when a book came is severely limited without access to the physical page and ink.
Manuscripts were often written on recycled parchment -- the old text was scratched out and written over. Using modern technology it's possible to recover the old text. There are many ancient texts we know about from second hand reports but have no copies of that we know of. There may be a recoverable erased copy of the lost second volume of Aristotle's poetics in some manuscript that is unavailable to scholars.
And that's the thing -- stolen manuscripts are unavailable to scholarship or science for study. Stealing unique objects from a library or museum is a heinous crime.
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What happens to these stolen books? When it comes to art theft, we hear of shadowy private collectors commissioning thefts, or buying stolen stuff on the black market. I can't understand the motivation. What is the point? There is the psychology of conspicuous wealth, but that does not work if the stuff was stolen, because even a rich person would not to advertise their criminality. Perhaps some societies are so corrupt that flaunting thievery is permitted, or indeed encouraged.
The security guy did it. (Score:3)
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The summary effectively told you who did it when it showed the quote:
if someone wants to steal from the collection he stewards, there is little to stop him.
Sometimes it's nice to read a summary that needs just a little critical thinking.
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I am afraid the security business is highly attractive to criminals. One example I saw was a night watchman at a warehouse. He was eventually caught on a new CCTV system, opening the gates in the early hours, so a truck could come in and load up with stolen stuff. In a place where I ran a small company, neighbouring offices were rented by a "security company". They were caught going around the industrial estate at night, breaking into cars. They were not nice people.
I am sure there are good security guards.
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At first I wondered if ... (Score:5, Funny)
Who Committed the 25-Year, $8 Million Library Heist?
Light sentencing (Score:2)
Most people are pissed about the light sentences everyone received, house arrest and probation. That judge sure showed them what stealing millions of dollars gets you!
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3 years house arrest for $8 million! Hot damn! I'm working from home anyway with this pandemic. Are you in? I'm in!
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Make sure you are white before you embark on this path. Black man doing this would get the death penalty - shot by cops resisting arrest.
Jesus Christ. Because ALL cops shoot black people on sight, that's what they're taught going to police review school -- even the BLACK police officers. Oh, I'm sorry, they bathe in bleach weekly to become WHITE-face officers so their compatriots don't shoot them as well, so no problems there.
... and the general population and criminals. But if this were truly the case, then like pr0n star females t
YES there are bad police officers, just like everywhere else. YES, they have guns, just like the military
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statistics show otherwise. Too many cops are just trigger happy regardless of race of perp.
Black cops just as bad about shooting black:
https://research.msu.edu/the-t... [msu.edu]
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BLM has no credibility now that their leaders said looting is a form of reparations, they're just thugs looking for excuses for their lawlessness. Fuck 'em.
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Forget it, you've run off the rails. Being a lawless savage is not the answer, that will bring down the jackboot. Normal people are sick and tired of the thugs and will support drastic measures to retake control of law and order.
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Nope, The IRA had to destroy its weapons and take the path of peace. But here we have lawless savages promoting violence and mainstream Democrats supporting them. They will get the jack boot.
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there are several groups that label themselves IRA, but the main one really did disarm. They shit their pants on 9/11 and realized the hammer was coming down on terrorists. No bombing by the real IRA since 1996.
"So who done it?" (Score:2)
Ironically a summary about a book heist was written by someone who seems to have never read a book. I can think of no other way that someone could come up with "So who done it?" as a legitimate phrase.
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thegarbz sneered:
Ironically a summary about a book heist was written by someone who seems to have never read a book. I can think of no other way that someone could come up with "So who done it?" as a legitimate phrase.
And you therefore reveal to anyone who cares that you are entirely unfamiliar with the murder mystery genre, both the reviewers and fans of which routinely refer to its offerings as "whodunnits." Anyone who does, in fact, read murder mysteries would simply have reacted with a wry expression (the entirely appropriate reaction to the lameness of the attempt at humor on the part of ED) and, seconds later, with a frown of disapproval at the deliberate clickbait-yness of his profoundly clumsy de
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And you therefore reveal to anyone who cares that you are entirely unfamiliar with the murder mystery genre, both the reviewers and fans of which routinely refer to its offerings as "whodunnits."
Actually I love the murder mystery genre, but I'm very confused by your post. Why do you think the word "whodunnit" (a word that is actually in the dictionary) somehow excuses the editor's use of "who done it," a phrase that is grammatically incorrect and the kind of thing a 5 year old would write when someone hears another person use the word whodunnit?
Or are you secretly making a big brain comment here, agreeing with me that the editors are unintelligent morons who constantly make linguistic errors and th
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When I saw this story, I had to check something (Score:4, Interesting)
When I saw this story, I had to make sure they were actually talking about a collection in Pittsburgh, and not a collection housed at the University of Virginia. Why? Because it sounded a lot like this story [uvamagazine.org], which which I was already familiar.
I wonder how common this is now. I also wonder where this stuff ends up. I've always kind of assumed it's in some Russian oligarch's mansion, the palaces of dictators, or perhaps just biding time in climate-controlled storage or somebody's attic where the thieves await an overturning of global order that would allow them to fence the goods with impunity--an augmentation to some prepper's cache of gold and ammo.
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(Again, this is all from a passage in a fictional novel...)
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If these books ended up in some Russian oligarch's mansion, would they ever be studied by the new owners? It is probably like the rooms full of shoes owned by Imelda Marcos. Just owning stuff for its own sake. The thing is, once you have more than enough money for a comfortable life, what do you do with the rest of the money? I once visited a wealthy customer, and when I went to the loo, the taps were gold plated. That's just showing off for the sake of it. There are a few people, such as Bill Gates, that t
Worst ever heist movie (Score:3)
We'll sneak into the library and in a daring raid lasting 25 years...
OK, maybe some of the Ocean's movies had a worse plot.
I wonder (Score:2)
"The room has a single point of entry, and only a few people had keys to it. When anyone, employee or patron, entered the collection, Priore wanted to know. "
I guess he was never on a gas-station toilet, who use the same honor system, their hope was, that their toilets are never shitty with that system.
They were wrong.
So and (Score:2)
"supporters of local nonprofits 'were appalled at the unbelievably light sentences.'"
The fences sell them to rich people. As with Epstein, it needs to be stopped there, and no further.