Space Museum builder gets three years

THE MAN who made the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center into one of the US's better space museums, has been sentenced to three years for flogging its exhibits on eBay.

According to the the Wichita Eagle, Max Ary, 56, was convicted last November on 12 federal charges, including mail and wire fraud, interstate transport of stolen goods, theft of government property, and money laundering. He admitted flogging the items which belonged to NASA and the Cosmosphere, but said it was a mistake.

In 1999 the Cosmosphere board told Ary to sell some artefacts from the museum's collection to pay for restoration of the Liberty Bell 7.

While he was doing that, Ary decided to sell some items from his personal collection.

He claims he flogged both sets of artefacts from his home on eBay, but somehow the two auctions got mixed up. The items valued at $200-$400,000 were sold over an 18-month period.

Ary didn't realise the mistake until a federal investigation was launched in late 2003 to discover the location of numerous missing artefacts from the Cosmosphere's collection.

Despite pleas for a term of probation, the Judge said that a prison sentence was important in this case. More here. µ