The Three-Billion-Year Theft

0:00 Speaker 1: The man who sold the Moon. The security briefing at

0:03 Speaker 1: the Houston Field office of the FBI on October fourteenth,

0:06 Speaker 1: two thousand and two, began with a photograph that looked

0:09 Speaker 1: like a bad Hollywood prop. It showed a generic heavy

0:12 Speaker 1: duty metal safe sitting in the middle of a nondescript

0:15 Speaker 1: motel room. The man sitting across from the federal agents

0:19 Speaker 1: was an undercover operative. He didn't look like a hero.

0:23 Speaker 1: He looked like a mid level logistics broker with a

0:26 Speaker 1: high stakes gambling habit. He placed a tiny, clear plastic

0:30 Speaker 1: vial on the table. Inside was a single, irregular speck

0:34 Speaker 1: of dark gray dust, no larger than a grain of rice.

0:37 Speaker 1: He's asking five million, the operative said quietly. But he

0:41 Speaker 1: wants it in cash, and he wants it by Friday,

0:44 Speaker 1: he says. If we don't buy it the Chinese or

0:47 Speaker 1: a private European collector, will The agent in charge, a

0:51 Speaker 1: veteran of international art theft and counterfeit currency stings, leaned forward.

0:56 Speaker 1: He didn't care about the five million dollars. He cared

1:00 Speaker 1: about the fact that the tiny speck of dust in

1:02 Speaker 1: the vile was technically the property of the United States

1:05 Speaker 1: federal government. More specifically, it was property that had spent

1:09 Speaker 1: the last three billion years sitting in the Mare Serenitatis,

1:12 Speaker 1: the Sea of Serenity on the surface of the Moon.

1:15 Speaker 1: To understand how a piece of the lunar surface ended

1:17 Speaker 1: up in a cheap Houston motel room, you have to

1:20 Speaker 1: look at a man who believed the universe was a

1:22 Speaker 1: vending machine design specifically for his ambition. Thad Roberts hashtag

1:27 Speaker 1: hashtag hashtag The Prodigy of the Lab. Thad Roberts was

1:30 Speaker 1: born in nineteen seventy seven into a world that expected

1:34 Speaker 1: him to be extraordinary, and he spent his youth ensuring

1:37 Speaker 1: those expectations were met. He was a polymath by nature,

1:41 Speaker 1: a physicist, a geologist, and aspiring paleontologist, and a triple

1:45 Speaker 1: major student at the University of Utah. He possessed the

1:49 Speaker 1: kind of fierce, blinding intelligence that made people forgive his arrogance.

1:53 Speaker 1: By the summer of two thousand and one, Thad had

1:56 Speaker 1: secured the holy grail for any young scientist, eleite fellowship

2:00 Speaker 1: at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. NASA was

2:05 Speaker 1: entering a strange transitional era. The space Shuttle fleet was

2:09 Speaker 1: aging the international Space Station was an expensive construction site

2:12 Speaker 1: in low Earth orbit, and the romantic cowboy era of

2:16 Speaker 1: the Apollo missions felt like ancient history. The interns and

2:19 Speaker 1: fellows brought into the center were supposed to be the

2:21 Speaker 1: fresh blood, the generation that would take humanity back to Mars.

2:26 Speaker 1: Thad didn't want to wait for Mars. He was impatient,

2:29 Speaker 1: driven by a deep seated need to possess things that

2:32 Speaker 1: were forbidden. At the Johnson Space Center, Thad was assigned

2:36 Speaker 1: to Building thirty one, a heavily secured laboratory facility that

2:40 Speaker 1: housed the Lunar Sample Laboratory facility. Inside this building lay

2:44 Speaker 1: the most precious, irreplaceable material on Earth, three eighty two

2:48 Speaker 1: kilograms eight hundred and forty two pounds of pristine moon rocks,

2:52 Speaker 1: coarse samples, and lunar soil brought back by the Apollo

2:55 Speaker 1: astronauts between nineteen sixty nine and nineteen seventy two. The

2:59 Speaker 1: security was legendary. The samples were kept in stainless steel

3:03 Speaker 1: cabinets flooded with pure nitrogen gas to prevent contamination by

3:07 Speaker 1: the Earth's atmosphere. To touch them, scientists had to use

3:10 Speaker 1: thick integrated rubber gloves sealed into the glass walls of

3:14 Speaker 1: the glove boxes. Every milligram was cataloged, tracked, and guarded

3:18 Speaker 1: by armed federal officers. But Thad didn't see an impenetrable fortress.

3:24 Speaker 1: He saw a system run by people who trusted the

3:26 Speaker 1: badges they wore, and more than anything, Thad had met

3:30 Speaker 1: Tiffany Fowler hashtag hashtag hashtag the Anatomy of an inside job.

3:35 Speaker 1: Tiffany Fowler was a fellow in turn, brilliant, beautiful, and

3:40 Speaker 1: utterly captivated by Thad's chaotic magnetic energy. Thad didn't just

3:45 Speaker 1: want to date her. He wanted to orchestrate a grand,

3:49 Speaker 1: cinematic gesture that would tie her to him forever. He

3:52 Speaker 1: began talking about the moon rocks, not as scientific specimens,

3:56 Speaker 1: but as the ultimate forbidden fruit. They're just sitting there,

4:00 Speaker 1: Thad would whisper during late night study sessions. Most of

4:04 Speaker 1: them will never be analyzed. There are museum pieces that

4:08 Speaker 1: the government is hoarding. We could do something real with them.

4:12 Speaker 1: The plan wasn't born out of a desperate need for survival.

4:16 Speaker 1: Thad wasn't poor. He was an elite NASA fellow. The

4:19 Speaker 1: plan was born out of pure, unadulterated Hubris. He wanted

4:24 Speaker 1: to see if he could outsmart the smartest agency on Earth.

4:27 Speaker 1: To pull it off, Thad recruited a third intern, shaysor

4:32 Speaker 1: a quiet geology student, who provided the logistical support the

4:35 Speaker 1: couple needed. The heist took place on the night of

4:38 Speaker 1: July twentieth, two thousand and two, the thirty third anniversary

4:42 Speaker 1: of the Apollo eleven moon landing. It was a detail

4:45 Speaker 1: Thad selected with deliberate, arrogant theatricality. Thad had spent months

4:50 Speaker 1: studying the security patterns of Building thirty one. He realized

4:54 Speaker 1: that while the vaults themselves were biometric and code protected,

4:58 Speaker 1: the electronic key card system for the outer doors suffered

5:00 Speaker 1: from a tiny, predictable lag during shift changes. Using his

5:04 Speaker 1: own clearance badge to access the general building under the

5:07 Speaker 1: pretense of late night research, Thad, Tiffany, and Shay slipped

5:12 Speaker 1: past the primary security desk. They didn't use explosives or

5:16 Speaker 1: high tech lasers. Thad simply used a small, manual lock

5:20 Speaker 1: picking kit he had practiced with for weeks to breach

5:22 Speaker 1: the secondary storage room door. Once inside the lab, they

5:26 Speaker 1: faced the nitrogen cabinets. Breaking the glass would set off

5:30 Speaker 1: silent alarms. Linked directly to the Federal Marshal's office. Instead,

5:35 Speaker 1: Thad did something incredibly reckless. He unbolted an entire safe,

5:40 Speaker 1: a massive six hundred pound steel container that housed dozens

5:43 Speaker 1: of smaller individual lunar samples used for active research projects.

5:47 Speaker 1: Using a heavy duty industrial hand truck they stole from

5:50 Speaker 1: the maintenance closet, the three interns wheeled the six hundred

5:54 Speaker 1: pounds safe out of the lab, down the service elevator,

5:57 Speaker 1: and straight into the back of Thad's battered Ford pickup truck.

6:01 Speaker 1: The security guard at the gate barely looked up from

6:03 Speaker 1: his monitor as they drove away. The entire history of

6:07 Speaker 1: mankind's greatest journey was bouncing around in the bed of

6:10 Speaker 1: a rusted truck hidden under a cheap blue tarp. Hashtag

6:14 Speaker 1: hashtag hashtag the motel room Masterpiece. Within twelve hours of

6:18 Speaker 1: the theft, Thad had rented a room at a budget

6:22 Speaker 1: motel on the outskirts of Houston. He didn't want to

6:25 Speaker 1: sell the rocks to a museum or a legitimate research institute.

6:29 Speaker 1: He knew that was impossible. Instead, he went to the Internet,

6:33 Speaker 1: using early encrypted message boards and classified networks under the

6:37 Speaker 1: pseudonym Orbital Thad began looking for buyers who specialized in

6:41 Speaker 1: illicit mineral antiquities. He found a buyer in Belgium, or

6:45 Speaker 1: rather he thought he did. The Belgian collector was actually

6:49 Speaker 1: an informant for the FBI's National Stolen Art File task Force.

6:53 Speaker 1: The moment Orbital offered authentic Apollo era lunar material for sale.

6:57 Speaker 1: A multi agency sting operation co named Operation Lunar Eclipse

7:01 Speaker 1: was launched. The FBI set up an undercover agent to

7:05 Speaker 1: act as the intermediary for the European buyer. They wiretapped

7:09 Speaker 1: the motel room, tracked Thad's phone calls, and watched as

7:12 Speaker 1: the three young scientists began treating the motel bed like

7:15 Speaker 1: a laboratory table. Because they couldn't open the heavy safe

7:18 Speaker 1: without heavy tools, Thad had used an industrial circular saw

7:22 Speaker 1: to slice through the back panel of the container. Inside

7:25 Speaker 1: were over one hundred small plastic vials containing lunar dust

7:29 Speaker 1: and rock fragments from Apollo eleven, twelve, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen,

7:35 Speaker 1: and seventeen. In an act of bizarre romantic delusions of grandeur,

7:40 Speaker 1: Thad and Tiffany scattered the ancient, invaluable lunar dust across

7:44 Speaker 1: the motel mattress. We're the only people in human history,

7:48 Speaker 1: Thad reportedly told Tiffany as they lay on the bed,

7:51 Speaker 1: who have ever made love on the moon. They had

7:54 Speaker 1: no idea that through the pinhole camera hidden in the

7:57 Speaker 1: smoke detector, federal agents were watching every move hashtag hashtag

8:02 Speaker 1: hashtag the Fall of the orbital. On July twenty fourth,

8:06 Speaker 1: two thousand and two, the undercover agent met Thad, Tiffany,

8:10 Speaker 1: and Shay at an Italian restaurant near the Houston Galleria

8:13 Speaker 1: to finalize the deal. The agent brought a briefcase containing

8:17 Speaker 1: five million dollars in marked nonsequential bills. Thad was ecstatic.

8:23 Speaker 1: He talked animatedly about his theories on quantum mechanics and

8:26 Speaker 1: how he planned to use the money to fund an

8:28 Speaker 1: independent research lab where he wouldn't be constrained by government bureaucracy.

8:32 Speaker 1: The moment Thad reached out to take the handle of

8:34 Speaker 1: the briefcase, the restaurant doors flew open. Swe teams and

8:39 Speaker 1: FBI agents swarmed the table, pinning the three interns to

8:43 Speaker 1: the floor. Thad didn't fight. He lay on the carpet,

8:46 Speaker 1: his hands zip tied behind his back. Staring at the

8:50 Speaker 1: ceiling with a look of profound stunned disbelief. He hadn't

8:54 Speaker 1: been beaten by a superior scientific mind. He had been

8:57 Speaker 1: beaten by a standard federal trap. The aftermath was devastating

9:02 Speaker 1: for the scientific community. When NASA technicians recovered the stolen

9:06 Speaker 1: samples from the motel room, they discovered that Thad's crude

9:09 Speaker 1: methods had contaminated virtually all of the material. The exposure

9:13 Speaker 1: to the motel's air moisture and the fibers of the

9:16 Speaker 1: bedsheets rendered the samples useless for delicate scientific analysis. NASA

9:22 Speaker 1: estimated the total value of the stolen and destroyed material

9:25 Speaker 1: at over dollar twenty one million. In two thousand and three,

9:29 Speaker 1: Thad Roberts was sentenced to over eight years in federal prison.

9:33 Speaker 1: Tiffany Fowler and Shay Sore received lighter sentences of probation

9:37 Speaker 1: and community service after cooperating with prosecutors. Thad spent his

9:41 Speaker 1: time in prison doing exactly what he did before studying.

9:45 Speaker 1: He wrote a massive, dense treatise on quantum space theory

9:49 Speaker 1: and taught physics to his fellow inmates. Today, the empty

9:53 Speaker 1: safe sits in a storage locker at NASA a monument

9:56 Speaker 1: to the day. Three interns managed to steal the sky,

9:59 Speaker 1: only to realize they had nowhere on earth to put

10:01 Speaker 1: it