posted 05-26-2011 08:55 AM               

NASA busts woman selling $1.7M moon rock

A woman's attempt to sell a purported $1.7 million moon rock was thwarted last week when the buyer she met with turned out to be an undercover agent working for NASA.

The sting, which according to the Riverside County (Calif.) Sheriff's Dept. came after several months of investigation, took place at a Denny's restaurant in Lake Elsinore, Calif., about 70 miles southeast of Los Angeles.

The woman, who authorities did not identify, was detained but not arrested pending the "moon rock" being verified as being of lunar origin.

posted 10-24-2011 11:05 AM               

Five months after NASA investigators and local agents swooped into the restaurant and hailed their operation as a cautionary tale for anyone trying to sell national treasure, no charges have been filed, NASA isn't talking and the case appears stalled.

The target, Joann Davis, a grandmother who says she was trying to raise money for her sick son, asserts the lunar material was rightfully hers, having been given to her space-engineer husband by Neil Armstrong in the 1970s.

"It's a very upsetting thing," Davis told The Associated Press. "It's very detrimental, very humiliating, all of it a lie."

...Davis told AP [the moon rock was] among many of the space-related heirlooms her husband left her when he died in 1986. She said she had worked as a lexicographer and he had worked as an engineer for North American Rockwell, which contracted for NASA during the Apollo era.

Davis claims Armstrong gave the items to her husband, though the affidavit says the first man on the moon has previously told investigators he never gave or sold lunar material to anyone.

In follow-up phone conversations with a NASA agent, Davis acknowledged the rock was not sellable on the open market and fretted about an agent knocking on her door and taking the material, which she was willing to sell for "big money underground."

"She must know that this is a questionable transaction because she used the term `black market,'" Agent Conley states in the search warrant.

posted 10-24-2011 12:08 PM               

Davis claims Armstrong gave the items to her husband, though the affidavit says the first man on the moon has previously told investigators he never gave or sold lunar material to anyone.

posted 10-24-2011 12:55 PM               

Credit: U.S. District Court for the Central District of California

Above: This image displayed on a search warrant provided by the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California shows a very small piece of moon rock, center, taken from Joann Davis during a sting operation where NASA investigators and local agents swooped into a Denny's restaurant to detain Davis, trying to sell a moon rock. (AP)

posted 10-24-2011 02:04 PM               

The statute is broad, covering many types of theft: outright stealing, embezzlement, receiving of stolen goods as well as pilfering. It covers anything of value to the United States or any of its agencies. If the federal government can prove that a moon rock was knowingly converted to an unauthorized use or sold to another without authority, the statute is violated. Assuming the value of the lunar material is in excess of $1,000, the violation is a felony.

Several local police officers and NASA OIG agents then moved in on the suspect, took possession of the alleged moon rock and detained the woman for questioning.

posted 10-24-2011 02:09 PM               

This image displayed on a search warrant provided by the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California shows a very small piece of moon rock...

posted 10-24-2011 05:32 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by ilbasso:
Had to laugh that this attempted $1.7 million transaction took place in a Denny's.

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posted 10-25-2011 10:25 AM               

If it is real and she came by it legally, then yes there is a bit of overreaction. The problem is that if it is real, there is no precedence in a person owning a bit of moon rock that was not gifted to another country. While some allege that some rocks were given as presentations, NASA says no, and none of these have surfaced. If Neil Armstrong did indeed give the rock to her husband (which I strongly doubt), and he wishes to acknowledge it, he will have to explain how he came to be in possession of it.

posted 10-27-2011 08:37 AM               

Buchanan: When you got the suits back you had to clean them up so they had moon dust and all that all over them?

Schmitt: Yes. When the suits did come back they had to be evaluated. We vacuumed out all the moon dust. A lot of the people at that time, contractors mostly, they would take some of that dust and try and give it to their friends. There was an order that came out that we weren't allowed to have that. All samples of the lunar samples had to go to the storage area there. So we didn't get any of that.

posted 04-14-2017 01:15 AM               

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said Joann Davis, the widow of an engineer who worked with NASA, was entitled to show that her detention was "unreasonably prolonged and unnecessarily degrading."

The federal agent "organized a sting operation involving six armed officers to forcibly seize a Lucite paperweight containing a moon rock the size of a rice grain from an elderly grandmother," Chief 9th Circuit Judge Sidney R. Thomas wrote for a three-judge panel.

...a federal prosecutor later declined to press charges, and Davis sued. [Norman Conley, a special agent and criminal investigator for NASA's Office of Inspector General] contended that as a government agent he was clearly immune from liability. A federal judge disagreed, and Conley appealed to the 9th Circuit.

In rejecting Conley's appeal, the 9th Circuit said Davis had presented enough evidence to show that her constitutional right to be free of unreasonable seizure may have been violated.