Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio Zaren Burnett.
Hey, Elizabeth Dutton, how are you? I'm doing all right? Does my hair look good?
Looks amazing? It looks so good. Oh it's really nice. You know, it's ridiculous.
Oh my god, do I MRI scans? You know about those them? Okay? Yeah, so they're magnetic resonance imagery. They getting that two the magnets inside. You know, they're really strong right there, two hundred times stronger than your average magnets you have for that size. Now, Americans, you know how they are, right? They love their guns. So this Wisconsin woman she was getting into an MRI and they asked her, oh, ma'am, do you have any metal you
in your pockets? Because it'll be a problem for the magnet. She's like, I do not. Turns out she was lying or wrong or forgot, who knows she had metal on her pockets? Elizabeth, she had a gun.
She had a gun on her and oh yeah, you know what happened.
The MRI machine It triggered the gun. The gun shot her in that she got shot her own gun, and they had the MR right there to watch it happens. I would love to see the imagery of that a gun shot recorded that. We found out about this because a report got submitted to the FDA's Manufacturer and User Facility Device Experience, a voluntary reporting site for accidents involving medical devices. That's how we find out about this. Yeah, so she was fine, only a flesh loan. She had
plenty of butt for the bullet to hit. And no one else was hurt either. So there you go, boom, ridiculous bringing a gun into a hospital. I don't care what.
Happens to you.
And the question do you have any gun? Do you have any metal on you? Nope, no, nope, it should disaswered. Do you have a gun on you? You're an American? Do you have a gun on you? That that counts?
Yeah?
Right, I mean like your car keys.
That is ridiculous.
Thank you?
Do you want to know what else is reading?
Oh my god, it came for here, for.
Dealing books and not even being from Modesto. What this is ridiculous crime A podcast about absurd and outrageous caper's heiss and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous. Right do you do you remember the book thief from Modesto. Yes, and then the biblio Dick.
The Bibliadic's my favorite.
Well, you know there are more thieves out there, book thieves. These are their stories. Yes, dog, so Ed Maggs. He's a fifth generation co owner of what was Queen Elizabeth's favorite bookstore.
Wait, there's a bookstore named Ed owner named.
Ed maggsg Mags, and he owns Mags Brothers.
I love this. Yeah.
He once told Vanity Fair that quote, the problem of the connoisseur book thief is a real one.
Oh it's a real one, real one, Elizabeth.
We're about to see that written largely. I got three Biggins for you. I love the Let's start in jolly old England. This one has some oceans, eleven qualities too, and mission impossible.
You're talking.
I love that. Stuff's very cinematic. They're also Eastern Europeans. Oh my god, great modern cinematic crime villains. Let's talk about the Feltham book heist. What book I felt them Feltham f E L T h A M. It's not Feltem, Feltem Feltham whatever.
It's in West London.
Oh like felt Ham who felt this Ham, the Feltham book heist.
Oh my god. People the UK are just like like they're having a physical response.
Oh I'm so sorry about that. But we're Americans.
They're having like an anal squeeze over it. The Feltham book heist in West London. So this is this place. This is the home of Frontier Forwarding Warehouse and it's a bonded warehouse for secure storage of goods that go in and out of Heathrow Airport. They had like custom services there. It's the hub for European air freight shipments.
So February twenty seventeen, the California International Antiquarian Book Fair was scheduled to take place in California, Oakland, California, at the Oakland Marriott City Center right there at Broadway in Tenth, Okay. And it was going to feature collections and like rear treasures of nearly two hundred booksellers from over twenty different countries, and it was recognized as one of the world's largest and most prestigious exhibitions of antiquarian books.
Happened in our backyard. I don't even know about this.
I know in the run up to this book fair, book dealers prepped to have their finest wares shipped to Oakland, which like nowadays I think, and at the Frontier Forwarding Warehouse in Feltham crates of books from three dealers. There's two Italians and a German. They arrived on January twenty eighth, and these rare valuable tomes. They were only going to be there for like a little more than twenty four hours and then off they would fly to the Golden State.
Well, yeah, you know about the Italians and Germans. They loved your team up, so I can see this.
They just came by air. So but crime interrupted these plants and so January twenty ninth, twenty seventeen, a crew struck. And when I say struck, they pulled off a heist with mission impossible levels of precision. Yes, it started. A car pulls up to the side of the road near the warehouse. Two men get out, and then the car drives off. The men cut a hole in the fence and they head towards the building. And that's all anyone
had of these guys on camera. And after that they're invisible, like they're.
Just out out camera.
A camera shots somehow they scale the sheer wall, the blind spots. They scale the sheer wall of the warehouse. There's like no little outcroppings on which to get a foothold, like, I don't know.
Slither up the side cartoon suction cups.
Yes, And they get onto this steep roof that's on there, and they pop open the skylight and then like the warehouse is rigged up with state of the art security. There's alarms, there's like you know, motion sensors, cameras. They don't trigger a thing. Wow, nothing, no alarms, no cameras. They used either ropes or like ladders to descend into the warehouse, apparently very slowly, so they don't trigger anything. And they made their way to these crates of books.
Now there's other valuable stuff in the warehouse, you know, you know, other stuff you don't steal and sell.
It's a bonded warehouse. It's a way.
Station for valuable goods. They ignored everything but the books, well not everything. There was a shipment of large, heavy canvas tote bags and they broke that open and took the tote bags to haul out their loot.
I guess that it was listed on the outside of the box. Okay, and so.
They go through the books in like a really meticulous man. It took five hours to pick out the ones they wanted.
I just thought that these books are getting stolen before they get to Oakland.
You know, don't want to blame us e eccastically, So the stolen items included more than one hundred and sixty rare books. Wow, here's some notable ones. Albert Einstein's own sixteen to twenty one copy of Johannes Kepler's The Cosmic Mystery, where he lays out his theory of planetary motion. A seventeen seventy seven edition of Isaac Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. A fourteen ninety seven update of the first
book written about women, concerning Famous Women. A fifteen sixty nine version of Dante's Divine Comedy A Sheath that had eighty Goya prints in it. A fifteen sixty six Latin edition of On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres by Copernicus. Oh, and then that one alone is where two hundred and ninety three thousand.
Dollars has to be.
All said, the missing books are valued at more than three point four million dollars and they were worth a lot more than that because a lot of them had handwritten notes in.
Them Einstein's top these are like adding.
Yeah, and most of the books could just irreplaceable. You could not replace them. The next morning Scotland Yards called in and they are just blown away. This is like something out of the movies. In the middle of the warehouse or the three empty metal cases where the books had been lesser books kind of strewn on the floor, skylights still open. So forensic teams they get to work scouring the scene for clues. And when one of the Italian book dealers was called and told about the theft,
he almost fainted. I mean he freaks out. He rushes to the airport in Padua and catches the next flight to London. The German dealer couldn't believe what he was hearing. He told Vanity Fair quote, I had never heard of so many books being stolen at once. Insurance fraud, somebody who wanted to harm one of us, a book lover who wanted to have one item and threw away the rest of the books cover his intentions. That was that's a you know, convoluted way.
They left all this hemingway behind. What the hell.
All three of the dealers were worried that the theft would just ruin them financially. These are the prize positions, the guest items. Meanwhile, the heist crew kept moving and they have.
To know, like, I mean, this is like an inside inside job. I mean, this is a place in a warehouse. You have to know they're going to the warehouse. You have to know that these books are in there.
I mean this is like, so they get the books out to a house in London and then to the chunnel and then to the continent.
Gone. Yeah wow.
And they weren't just moving the books out of the country. They were striking again and again. Yeah, other warehouses were hit.
On the way. They're like, let's just hit a couple of more jobs.
Yeah, there's in one they stole a huge number of Lenovo laptops and like put a pin in the in the laptops will come back to that. So remember the footage of the guys cutting into the fence.
Yeah, and then they were not seen again.
Yeah, police were able to track down the car are in the video. It was wiped clean, but a forensic tech was able to find one single hair on the headrest. It was logged. No matches pop up. Meanwhile, in Romania, Elena Albu she's the chief prosecutor of organized crime in Romania and there's there's.
A lot of work for her to Yes, she's a busy lady. Yeah.
A couple of weeks after the book how she gets a call and the tipster tells her that the thieves at the heist were Romanian and here they got names too, Elena, check it out. Tea Zoo, Blondie and Christi the Bruiser.
I love Christi. So these are the people.
Basically, these are members She hadn't heard of some of these, Yeah, I bet not. They're members of Clumparu. And this is an absolutely horrific gang like think coke and human trafficking, run by an absolute monster named i Clumparu aka Pighead aka.
The Godfather pig Head.
Yeah, because he's just a big like sick next.
Oh, I get the idea. But your criminal nickname is Pighead. Yeah, like, oh.
MANI he's doing a thirty year stretch for his crimes. But his protege, Gavrel popin Chiuk, he started his own crew and he saw all the Pighead's mistakes as like lessons of what to avoid.
He learned from Pigett.
He learned from Pigott, and so as a result, he created a criminal network that carried out targeted strikes of property crime in other areas of Europe. It's like nothing on Romanian soil, and everything was ever rotating. Crews would pull off a heist and then hand the goods to a newly arrived transport crew before immediately leaving the country, and then the transport crew would move the goods to
another location. Then they'd rotate out of the country while a new crew got those goods out of the country. So they're just constantly rotating. Some of the stolen stuff was fenced, some was us this collateral for things, and some was stolen especially for like a particular person.
That's what I was thinking.
Yeah, I told you about a similar crew of the Pink Panthers before. Yes, those were Yaks, Yugoslavians, Albanians, Croatians and Serbians. But these these guys, they're just Romanians.
Yeah, that's it.
So people exactly your people.
People.
So Alena Albu and then Tiberius Minea. Tiberius is head of organized crime investigations for the Romanian National Police. They get in touch with Scotland Yard because they're like, we just got this huge tip, this is the break they'd been hoping for. So papin Chiuk, he's well known to the Romanian authorities and he was like he was always he was the mastermind, never a foot soldier. But Romanian authorities had like a good notion of who he used
to carry out his dirty work across Europe. In fact, they had just busted a guy named Narses Popescu and he was stopped while driving and the cops found a ton of electronics in his Van Lenovo laptized. Hey, it could all be traced back to a warehouse break in in England. So the cops they ran his DNA against the hair in the car found ditched in South London and they got a hit. Whoa yeah. So then DNA was also recovered from a piece of metal in the warehouse,
like touch DNA. So now that the authorities had the identity of the purpse, they were able to backtrack their movements in the days leading up to the burglary. Eventually they're able to connect the crew to twelve different warehouse hes and you know they were good every time they slipped in and out without detection and adding it all up, they got like five million dollars in stuff in this little spree theirs.
Did they ever find out how these guys were doing their stuff?
No, no, So Scotland, Yard, Romanians and then Europeol they they got all together and they were able to identify all of the various men and then they came up with what they called Z day Xerenday twenty fifth, twenty nineteen. So on that day, one hundred and fifty police officers spread out simultaneously and searched forty five houses in other kind of locations in England, Italy, Germany, Romania. Thirteen men were arrested and then sent to England to stand trial. All of them pleaded innocent.
Of course, good good on them. You kind of got to Yeah.
The trial started on February twentieth, twenty twenty. Think about that date.
Yeah, we're going right into COVID.
Uh huh. Trial did last long because COVID lockdown kicked in just a couple of weeks later everything ground to a halt. This was a huge case and like tons of witnesses, evidence and hubbub, but you know you got this global pandemic wreaking habit. Court gets canceled. The defendants are told to sit in stew and jail until things open back up. And like remember back in that time, we were like, oh, it'll be like two weeks, three
weeks for yeah. Oh boy. So the guys they realized this is going to drag on after a while, and on the advice of council, all all but one pleaded guilty.
All but one.
Yeah. Judge Jonathan Davies said, quote, each of you joined and played a part in a criminal enterprise carried out with skill and determination. You took risks with your eyes open. This was a carefully planned operation, often carried out with mission impossible skill.
Bravo. So yeah, I'm gonna wap you guys up, come on, give it up.
They all got reduction for pandemic conditions.
Oh okay, the release release.
Yeah. On their sentences. The foot Soldiers got three to four years based you know depending Papinciok he got five years and eight months. And like none of them would reveal how they knew to hit the warehouse at that specific time. For those specific books. Everyone's like there had to be an insider, but they never found out who could be.
So there's some criminal overlord who is a reader and he's like, I need my like and also the scientific book code.
Well here's the thing though, what happened to the books?
Why Neil de grass Tyson pay for this? That's why I want to know.
Well, okay, so they still they're trying to figure out what did happen in the books? Was there like a criminal who's you know, a science guy.
Yeah, he's like, I really wanted my own copy of Principal mathematic.
Grass Tyson order this hit. Two of the men who were convicted were brothers, and authorities were aware of the fact that they had built a really large house very recently right next to their parents' place out in the country in Romania, and they figured, you know, we should check this new construction.
Can I dig guys?
So the cops they go. They busted up a six inch slab of concrete over the garage floor and underneath there was a board and Tiberius, right, he's on hand, He's the one who gets to lift the board.
They made him lift the board.
Yeah, he said, quote it was very tense. I was really worried about damaging the books. We'd work so long and hard to arrive at that moment. And then so they lift the board and there's an underground bunker and that's where the books all were. So most of them are in recycling bins. Some were still in the canvas totes from the heist. Yeah, the authorities they took the books and they moved them to a climate controlled room at the National Library in Bucharest, and the book dealers
they all descend to like claim their precious cargo. Only a couple of the books were damaged, but it was all really small stuff that could easily be fixed, like a little bit of water, Yeah, that kind of stuff. There were only four books missing, but they weren't like the big ticket items. Book dealer Biselobado, he's the one who came from Padua. He said quote, I had given up hope. When I saw them, I felt like the youngest book dealer in the world. They were fantastic books.
The youngest, whole life of promise of book dealing lay before me.
So that night, the book dealers and then like the Romanian cops, the English cops, they all got together for dinner at a restaurant in Brest.
They read from the books.
Well in bizzello, he yells out, tonight we drink like lions.
Wow, these guys are on boy.
So that that's we got a happy I like that.
Way to go.
Let's get a glass of water, stretch our legs. Here's some ads. When we get back, I'll hit you with another book. Heist zaren a bit. Let's stay in Europe.
I like it there not, I got my passport on me. Let's do it.
I like Italy, and that's where we're going for this next book. Heist.
Okay, I like Yugoslavia, but it's not a country anymore. It's okay, I can't go there.
Let's try Italy.
Okay.
My mom's favorite city in Italy is Naples. Really, she loves place.
I mean nothing against Naples. I'm not like doubting, but.
What it loves everything about it?
Okay. I mean I love Milan, but I really love Bologna, which is not said a lot of people talk about, but one of my favorites of all Italy. So Naples is it? The food? Is that the art?
Culture is the art the culture? She said, it's gritty that it's that so this.
One goes out to the monis like the edge much of it.
So the Biblioteca giro Lamini in Naples. It's one of the oldest and most prestigious libraries in Italy. It's located inside the sixteenth century church complex right in the middle of Naples.
All the best libraries are.
Oh, totally, and it looks like you'd imagine like this isn't some modern glass and steel, climate controlled vault. Totally Like I'm talking rich dark wooden shelves soaring up to cathedral ceilings, ornate designs, gilded walls, you know those like long ladders that reach the top.
Totally.
You know how some people have zoom backgrounds with like lux European libraries. Why have you noted that? But that's what this looks like. What's your zoom background?
By the way, I just I just make it blurry and because I have dreads and makes it constantly interesting where it doesn't know how to cut off my hair. So I'm just moving in out of this weird filter.
Space so you don't raw dog it and just have I used to do that, but.
People kept commenting on like all the stuff behind me. I'm like, well, you people are weird not doing that anymore. Blur.
There's too much this detectable in the blur.
I don't care. I'm just like I don't want to talk about it.
I have like a blaze.
I just like a blue, like a having a solid background. So do you have like a fixed thing? Wow, look at us, solid blue. I don't zoom with you. No, we don't. And let's keep it that okay.
Hey anyway. Biblioteca giro Lamini. It contains an extensive collection of rare books and manuscripts, and like for years people would visit from all over to marvel at the wonders with him.
They should.
They had a fifteen eighteen edition of Thomas Moore's Utopia yea Galileo's sixteen ten treatise Siderus Nincius, containing more than seventy drawings of the moon and the stars.
Give it up to my heretics.
Kepler's Study of the Motions of Mars Astrona Mia Nova. It's supposed to be one of the greatest books in the hit story of astronomy.
It was the new astronomy at the time. Elizabeth, It's right there.
But you know, in the eighties, the library fell into disrepair.
Yes to everyone.
I was like that museum in Brazil I told you about with the dinosaurs. Oh what like, we don't take enough care of our cultural institutions and.
We can't even blame Reagan for this one.
No, sadly, and so that that's what happened in Naples. They didn't have the money to restore it or like fully staff it. So it's it's closed to the public, but academics could still act okay cool, and they still had, you know, librarians working there. Zeren close your eyes.
Whoa okay closed?
I want you to picture it.
It's spring twenty twelve.
You are an art history graduate student at Universita del Sturdi de Napoli Fredridue. The university was founded in twelve twenty four and is the world's oldest state funded university in continuous operation. You have the great honor of studying under famed art historian and academic Professor Tomaso Montenari. The Florentine scholar is an expert in Baroque art, and he's written more than one hundred scholarly essays on the topic. The bespeckaled professor with a boyish haircut came to you
a couple of days ago with concerning news. He'd received a call from a brother and sister who work at the Biblioteca Girolamini. They'd seen unsettling footage on the library's CCTV. They wanted Professore to take a look at the library and see for himself what was happening there. They said it was bad. You can't imagine what that means. Tamaso asked you to go with him to the library, as he wanted both a witness and some muscle. It's only a ten minute walk or so from the university to
the library. As you walk down via Duomo, moped's whiz by and diner's chat at cafe tables on the sidewalk, you crossed via de Tribunali and share comments about Caravaggio's The Seven Works of Mercy House. Just here left in the Pio Monte de la Missicordia, you reached the Duomo
di Napoli and you know you've arrived. Just across from the cathedral, filled with frescoes and candles and the stunning Baroque high altar, is the library, a once equally impressive building The library is shabby and has seen better days. The professor presses a doorbell on the main front door. As tourists and Vesco's speed by you. There's a buzz and a door on locks. You push it open and escape from the hot sun the din of the bright street into the silent tomb.
Of the library entryway.
Your footsteps echo off the marble floors as you cross through the main library room. It looks dusty, but none worse for wear.
Bonjana.
The professor calls out silence. You proceed into the back of the library, into the rare books area. The professor lets how to gasp when you round a corner. The bookshelves are empty. On tabletops and on the floor, books and loose papers are piled into random jumbles. You walk into the next bookroom, it's the same books everywhere the floor. On stairs, you hear a weak and papers slide from a crowded tabletop to the floor. A mouse scurries out
of the pile and ducks under a doorway. As you walk, you stumble on potato chip bags and accidentally kick an empty soda can across the room. You hear a tapping sound. You and the professor turn you recognize that sound. It's the sound of a dog's nails on a tile floor. A scruffy pup sticks his head around the corner, a bone in its mouth. You've got to be kidding me. This is outrageous, the professor yells. The dog knows when he's not welcome, so he trots off in the direction
of the back of the library. You hear quiet footsteps, the soft souls of a librarian. A woman enters the room. Come this way, she tells you. You and the professor follow her down a hall to an alcove by.
A fire exit.
There are no CCTV cameras here.
She leans in and whispers.
Professor, the director has been looting the library. Well, who is this director?
One?
Marino Massimo Dico Dacao is a self taught bibliophile. No college degree. He studied law at the University of Siena, but he dropped out before getting a degree. He moved to Verona in nineteen ninety eight and he took a job as a communications director at a government office.
Ah, the Ungentleman of run exactly, and then like around this time, he meets this Argentine book dealer at a bookfair in Milan, and so he gets that connection, and then he starts going to Argentina on the regular and he would like hang out with all the book collectors there.
Eventually he met Cardinal Jorge Mahia, who's from Argentina and also happened to be the director of the Vatican Library.
Oh yeah, and it.
Takaro gets access through him to the Vatican Library's card catalog. So he's just like this operator. In February of two thousand and three, Tacaro gave the Vatican Library sixteen books printed before fifteen oh one and three fifteenth century manuscripts in total, all worth about a hundred thousand dollars.
Why do they give them books?
I don't know, Like, yeah, they're broke.
Like like they don't need Come on now whatever, All right, get into Heaven. Okay, fine, man.
Well, in exchange, though, the Vatican gave him six books valued it more than a million dollars.
Oh, they're just trading books.
They're trading books like baseball cards. Yeah, including three Galileo titles that had been owned by relatives of Pope Urban the Eighth.
What.
Yeah, the Vatican was like, we got other copies of the Galileo text, no big like.
We got us. We got a lot of his books. We'll give you some, right, we confiscated a bunch of stuff.
And like the Pope's secretary totally.
Authorized the deal. Of course, what do they care it? Right?
So, however, there were people at the library who thought it hanky. I'm with them, yes, so much so that when they tried to broker a second deal, someone put the brakes on it.
They're like, you need to stop this, Like, bro come on.
Yeah. So twenty ten DeCaro he's named an advisor on energy issues to the Agriculture minister in the government of mister Bunga Bunga party himself, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
That's all I have to hear. I now know everything I need to know about this guy, get it.
When that minister moved from agriculture to the Culture portfolio in twenty eleven, Dakaro went with him, and from there Jacaro starts lobbying to become the director of the library in Naples, and then in that same year they give him the gig. He's not qualified in any way other than just being like, I really like books and I know how to make deals with the Vatican Library.
I hate the lack of respect for how like things like this it took a long time to create and to mag and these long traditions were like, well the hell once it worked? To you, Bob, we've turned everything into a commodity and there is nothing that isn't like, what will you give me for this?
Exactly? So he gets the gig and then not even nine months later, it all starts to fall apart. Of course, So after the professor visited the library, he wrote an article about it in the paper, and then the cops launched an investigation.
What kind of article do you have to write? The cops like, well, what is going on?
Liter was like there was a dog with a bone in its mouth walking around the library and soda cans on the floor, like that's in there. So it turns out that like Tacaro got in and basically started looting the place, that sounds like, And eventually he's arrested. Major Antonio Coppola, the police chief in charge of the operation to like get all the books back. Copola, yeah, said quote. Our investigations found that there was a true criminal system
in action. A group of people carried out a devastating systematic looting of the library. What strikes you was the complete lack of respect for these precious works. Many of them were thrown on the floor, chaos, rained shelves in which very important books, once rested, were now totally emptied.
So another Coppola understands the respect. We need to pay a call exactly, So they all understand exactly. Yeah.
In all, it's estimated that Tacarro lifted about four thousand books from the library Are you kidding me?
In nine months?
And it went like this, So at night he would turn off the library CCTV system, which was like limited anyway. And in one case there's well there's footage of him taking something and realizing the cameras there and then covering it up and then like so he and some associates they would just totally I forgot that one. They would just take books right off the shelf, like he had these little you know, minion.
One.
Yeah, the ones that are of particular value they put into boxes and they loaded those into vans outside. And sometimes they would just make piles next to the stacks as they scan through the books of real value. So they're like toss, keep toss, keep.
I hate to know what they can do it. I guess it's just all monetary value.
Yeah, completely. So he had a bookbinder who worked for him, and that guy's job was to remove the library stamps from the books, and in some cases they just ripped them out and like seriously damaged the books in doing so. Coppola said, sometimes they would even remove the binding of the book. Ah, he said, quote they wanted to make it impossible to trace them back. But some of the books had binding from the seventeenth century, which in some cases made the binding more valuable than the book.
Wow, come on, guys.
And so the books they made their way all over Europe, South America, Asia, they ended up with antique sellers, collectors, auction houses, suspects. Yeah, five hundred books went to a German auction house who paid a million euro advance on the lot. Yeah this, Coppola said, quote, this was only one load of the books. So you could imagine how much money they could have made from this looting if
we and the courts hadn't stopped it. Yeah. He said that DeCaro was like a well known figure in all these these bookselling circles, and that quote he had some kind of political cover that enabled him, over the years to reach positions of responsibility and institutions more or less controlled by the Ministry for Culture.
Yeah, I imagine him in like the mask on parties or whatever.
Totally, so they're like, you know, he says, yeah, I took him, but I did it because I was trying to raise money for the library and then the kids the library.
Come on, you know, like, if.
That's true, why are you removing all the markings and doing it not under cover of darkness and trash and.
The joint people come up in lives like that, like, look, I'm trying to save it by destroying destroying. I'm not good at that.
Come on. He wasn't the only one to go down for this, thank god. Well, the same prosecutors who go after the mafia in Naples, Yes, guys, they went after the book gang and the same investigation tactics. So Naples prosecutors, they focused on rare book dealers and collectors who may have bought the works.
They created the network, they found it.
Yeah, they totally just dismantled the whole thing. The New York Times reported at the time, quote, they are slowly exposing the practices of the rare book market, where deception sometimes rains, prices can reach into the millions of dollars, and the trail often goes dead at the Swiss border. The international market absorbed without batting an eye books that they could not have known came from the Geralamini library.
Giovanni Mililo, the Naples prosecutor who's leading the investigations, said in an interview this week the rule don't ask, don't tell is what governs the rare book market. He added, prosecutors have requested cooperation from across Europe, as well as from the United States and Argentina.
It sounds like the rare book market is basically the art world with less cocaine and more dust.
Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, it's the bookish modern art world totally. One guy arrested was a priest responsible for security at the library. Like they no one was spared. Then there was Marcello Delutri. He was a senator and a member of Silvio Berlusconi's People of Freedom party party. He was a close aid of Captain Bunga Bunga and was known to have mob ties, and it was said that he received about ten of the stolen books for his personal collection.
Of course. Quote, Bosters love that kind of stingy.
This is what his lawyer told BBC. Quote, he received some books as a free gift. As soon as he realized from newspaper reports that they probably came from the Jerlimini library, he contacted the authorities and gave him back.
Yeah, since he realized there may be trouble, He's like, oh, I guess I can't keep these.
But he didn't return a fifteen eighteen edition of Thomas Moore's Utopia. Really, and this is what his lawyer said, quote regarding the other book, we're speaking about a book of very little value, and he simply can't fight it at the moment. As soon as he does, he'll give that back as well.
Hey, I just love murdered parishioners.
So in court proceedings, Diccado testified that he had a bunch of copies of Galileo's Sidarius Nuccius forged in Argentina.
Forged copies now and the world too.
Yeah, and he was like, I'm a really good forger, including one that he placed in the National Library in Naples. When he took the original, he just put his little yeah.
He topped it.
According to The New York Times, quote asked outside the courtroom in Naples, how you go about forging a book by Galileo let alone, one that was sold at auction and fooled some of the world's leading experts, mister DeCaro smiled with excitement. Borhes Inficxioones wrote that when a book is false, it is equal to, if not better than, the original. He said. Then one of his lawyers quickly approached and said the conversation was over.
He's quoting Borhees.
He quotes Borhes, I love that that. I hate him.
Now right.
He gets sentenced to seven years imprisonment but house arrest, and then he also had a lifetime exclusion from public office. And the good news is that eighteen months after the looting was discovered, police believed that they had managed to track down most of the books. Copola said, quote, we think a high percentage, up to eighty percent, has been recovered. And then in twenty twelve, the authorities recovered more than a thousand volume in a self storage unit in Verona
that Dacaro had. So he just put it into self storage.
Like lost track, and didn't pay his bill and He's like, Oh, I forgot which one is that in, and all of a sudden someone buys all these books like four thousand euro or whatever.
So Copel I will go back to him. Quote. This is thanks to investigative activities shadowing and wiretapping, for example, that has enabled us to identify movements in places where books were being kept warehouses, underground parking places, houses. We've had important collaboration with associations of antique booksellers. We've warned them to keep an eye open for books that they might have even the slightest suspicion could be coming from the library. And he said that, like people all over
the world have contacted him about books. Quote, my personal email address is spread around the world among those in this sector, and I'm often reached by people that have doubts about a book.
Oh who's a player, right, you can find my email everywhere.
So he's thinking that, like, you know, when all the attention dies down, that like maybe more of the books will reach Twelve years later, library remains closed. No, let's take a break. When we come back. I've got a state side book heist.
For you, and I got a book you may want to buy.
Zaren, Elizabeth Zaren, I got books.
I got books for you too.
Yes, I told you about books in a warehouse. I told you about books in an old, poorly guarded library. Are there any places where books are safe submarines? Yes, the safest rare book collections. They use what's known as a defense in depth, So like a series of small overlapping measures that like, you know, you have to get through too many chambers or too many layers of security.
Timed locks, and then into vaults that box sign out. Yeah.
So an example of this is the Oliver Room, which is home to the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh's rare books and archives. So there's a single point of entry and only a few people have keys to it, and all guests they got to sign in. You have to leave personal items like your bag or your coat.
You know, people have to turn different keys at the same time.
But yeah, so it's extensive CCTV. Why am I telling you?
Why are you telling me this, Elizabeth?
Oh, surely the books there are safe.
Don't call me, Shirley.
In twenty seventeen, the library's administration discovered something shocking.
What did they discover?
A bunch of stuff was gone.
Those would be like electric outlet.
No, like a like a lot of stuff is gone?
How much we're talking.
Eight million dollars worth of real It's like, what are we talking about? You want me to give you a little.
Inventory a whole building? What the hell?
A book signed by Thomas Jefferson. The oldest book in the collection was gone. It was a collection of sermons printed in fourteen seventy three. There was a first edition of Isaac Newton's ninety eight, A first edition of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, a letter written by WILLIAMS.
Jennings Bryant, Oh across the Gold, Yeah, A rare copy of Elizabeth Katie Stanton's memoir eighteen eight Memoir, A first edition of a book written by John Adams, the first English edition of Boccaccio's De Cameron.
Oh I have that book? Yeah?
Well, this one was printed in London in sixteen twenty.
You got that mine from eighteen hundred.
I thought maybe you had this one. No, no, no, the first edition of George Elliott Silas Marner. Missing were one hundred and eight of the one hundred and fifty five hand colored lithographs from Audubon's eighteen fifty one Quadrupeds of North America.
Damn Audubon's book. Dude, you know the paintings and everything.
Fifty one plates and maps from John Ogilbee's America, one of the greatest illustrated works about the New World, sixteen seventy one. All of the maps from a copy of Ptolemy's Legiographia printed in fifteen forty eight. Whoa, yeah, Ptolemy's maps. Yeah, all two hundred and seventy six hand colored lithograph maps in the sixteen forty four Blau Atlas that mapped the
known world in the age of European exploration. Oh, fifteen hundred rare photogravure plate prints of Native Americans by Edward Curtis. Oh really, yeah, And only two hundred and seventy two sets were created, And in twenty twelve Christie sold one of those sets for two point eight million.
I think I remember hearing about that, and so one of those is gone totally.
And so while the London heist I told you about like that took just a few hours, and the Naples looting went on for about nine months, this was a slow moo heist.
It went on for almost a quarter of a century. Are you kidding? I'm not kidding. You first said slow, like they just did it and they like.
To not set off motions exactly totally. So who was in charge there? You must be asking.
Elizabeth who was in charge of this Carnegie Mellon one room.
Library fellow by the name of Greg Priori, not Greg Prior, Greg greg Priory a Priori. In nineteen ninety one, the library decided to establish like a true archive of its collection, and like, yeah, ninety one. So Greg, he had an MA in European history and he was working in the library's Pennsylvania room while he was getting a library science degree at University of Pittsburgh, and he had like that was with an emphasis on archives management. So he's like
the perfect choice for this. Yeah, and he's a chill guy's local boy made good. He's like doing his dream job, dream location and running a tight ship. Like his desk was right where people signed in and out of the archive and he would personally assess each item that was removed and returned. It was just a hard ass. Like when he set up the archive, he worked with a preservation specialist to assess the Carnegie Librariy's collection.
A plenty of white gloves good, oh for days.
Then he hired two rare book experts who found that the library hadn't really done much to preserve its oldest books.
You know, it's harder to find rare books experts.
Yeah, those are really hard to find. So they created a climate controlled environment like that followed all the best practices at the time. It became a prime example of a spectacular rare book archive. Zaren. It was highlighted on c SPAN. You know it's book TV.
Yeah, you know I watched books.
I know you do watch book TV. So, as with any kind of collection, there came time for an audit, and in the fall of twenty sixteen, library officials hired the Paul mal Art advisors.
Like the cigarette company, Yeah, to.
Undertake They come in, all smoking cigarettes.
Come on, you guys are not addiction on stuff? Whoa, whoa, ladies.
So Carrie Lee, Jeffrey and Christianiskavuzo they come in. They began their audit on April third, twenty seventeen, and they were using this is in twenty seventeen. They're using the nineteen ninety one inventory as their guide. Oh wow, so when it was first established and they immediately.
Found problems like yeah.
According to Smithsonian Magazine quote, Jeffrey was looking for Thomas McKinney and James Hall's History of the Indian Tribes of North America. This landmark work included one hundred and twenty hand drawn lithographs, the result of a project that began in eighteen twenty one with McKinney's attempt to document in full color the dress and spiritual practices of Native Americans who had visited Washington, d c. To arrange treaties with
the government. The three volume set of folios, produced between eighteen thirty six and eighteen forty four, is large and gorgeous and would be a highlight in collection. But the Carnegie Libraries version had been hidden on a top shelf at the end of a row. When Jeffrey discovered why, her stomach dropped once a plump book filled with plates, she would recall the sides had carved in on themselves. All those stunning illustrations had been cut from the binding.
Oh God, so just just cut it all out.
The book predates Andrew Jackson's Like Indian Removal Act stuff. We're talking like American history.
You can't.
It's just like pure documentation.
Goes in there with like an exact knife and just like I can get seventy bucks for this.
Domino's falling after that, like things missing, pieces or items, every everything's missing. And then she she sees it and it's like the world is spinning out from underneath her.
Oh yeah, her stomach shopping cried.
Like she wonder officers just started crying when she learned the extent of the thievery and the damage.
Some people get upset when they see, like animals hurt. I'm sure she've had that.
Visceral reach exactly exactly. So five days after the start of the audit, five days Jeffrey and Skuvuzzo they met with the library's director, Mary Francis Cooper, and then two other administrators, and they detailed their findings up until that point. Four days later, Cooper has the lock to the Oliver room changed and they didn't give Greg Priori a key. They kind of figured, you know, this all went down on his.
Watch, and he's the only one with the watching everything.
And it's also because he was the one taking everything. And the thing is he wasn't living large off the sales of these books and prints. You know, he was married, he had four kids. They lived in like a you know, little apartment, but he was like running up debt. His kids all went to posh.
Private schools, so the books are paying for that pretty much.
And between his place and work there was there was a bookstore, Caliban Bookshop, and the owner, John Shulman, he started his business in like the eighties and he worked out of his apartment and then he opened Caliban Bookshops. He was he was a member of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America RIAA. That's the this should all be an affront to Biblio Dicks. That was Biblio Dick's group exactly.
So this dude he even served. Shulman he was on the board of governors for the mid Atlantic Chapter of He served as an appraiser for the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University, and Penn State. And he was even on PBS Antiques road Show.
I don't trust those people. We've talked about it, it's happened before. I just don't trust him. Just generally. I'm like, you want to be on TV too much. I don't trust ANTIQ people shouldn't want to be on TV like this. No, he should be private.
So Priori he would bring the books that he stole to Shulman. Shulman would inspect the item and then he would list it for sale on his website. And here's the thing though, remember how it enables their partners, their total partners. The guy in Naples hired the bookbinder to remove any marks or stamps from the books.
They didn't do this.
All of the items in the library had this special book plate inside the front cover.
No problem.
Shulman had a small red stamp in his store that read withdrawn from library. And when he had something from the Oliver collection, he'd used the stamp to mark the bottom of the book plate and apparently that was enough to override the book plate. Like the library got rid of this one.
Yeah, you see, it wouldn't question it.
So Priori he had sort of seen the audit coming. He knew and he was a little nervous about it. And his coworkers thought that he was acting that way because he's just very territorial. But like they didn't know that he had liquidated most of the stuff in there. And like now the walls are closing in, and so Priori and Shulman had they came up with a bunch of explanations as to why stuff was gone, Like they
just workshopped ideas. So they doctored paperwork saying that some of it was out for repair or like loaned to another institution. And then they're like, oh, maybe we could blame the former director of the library.
He's dead.
Let's just blame him.
Let's blame the dead guy.
Yeah, or like, oh, let's just blame the staff, like you know whatever, Oh no, even better.
Maintenance workers them like that.
Yeah.
So this was in no way a one off though, right, It's not like, oh there's just one big thing missing or like five items suddenly gone.
You're going for so long, and all.
Signs point to Priori, and so first he gets fired obviously. Then the cops raided his house, and they raided the bookstore and the warehouse for the bookstore, and at the warehouse, the auditors rode along with the cops, and they were able to identify ninety one of the Edward Curtis Prince and seven maps from that atlas, and then plus they found the withdrawn from library stamp just sitting right there, and then upon questioning, Priori cracked. Of course, he pleaded
guilty to theft and receiving stolen property the partner. Yeah, well yeah, he gets sentenced to three years of house arrest and twelve years probation.
And people were mad.
They didn't think that was enough.
Yeah, I could see that.
Shulman pleaded guilty to receiving stolen property, theft by deception and forgery, and he got four years of house arrest and twelve years of probation. But he also had to pay fifty five grand in restitution. That's not a lot. And so like these days, people lived so well in their homes, right, you got everything, Oh totally, Look, we just survived a couple of years a half exactly. And so like those who'd bought the books, they had to surrender them, either at their own volition or the order
of the police. Bill Clasby is he's a head of special collections for Case Western Reserve University's main library. Okay, August of twenty eighteen, he gets called by someone from the DA's office in the Alleghany County, Pennsylvania, asking about a book of early modern astronomy that he bought from Caliban Books and like right there on the book plate was the telltale red stamp, so clasp he sent the
book back. Another guy, Michael Kaisel, private collector, he bought a book from a rare book dealer in England and the same detective reaches out to him and let him know that Shulman had sold the stolen book to the English dealer, which meant his book was hot and he had to return it. So he did, and the detective he just continues to reach out to the duped and they all sent.
Everything back, good for them.
Yeah, And there's some debate about Shulman's involvement in all of this.
I don't have.
Any yeah, something that he was unaware that the books were stolen, and others think that there's no way that he was that naive.
Yes, I mean, come on, he's got the stamp to be like falsifying things, and even he's being told by somebody, then he's just really dumb.
Yeah, exactly. Smithsonian Magazine pointed out, quote the Ethics Code of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America states that members quote shall make all reasonable efforts to ascertain that materials offered to him or her are the property that sellers and members shall make every effort to prevent the theft or distribution of stolen antiquarian books and related materials. Shulman was not only a member of the ABAA, he had served on its Ethics and Standards Committee.
I mean, come on, man, we all know this. Your whole job is to be suspicious. Yeah, that's it.
You're supposed to be suspicious exactly.
You're selling an item we all know is going to be likely either stolen or like possibly hinky right.
And Patrick Dowd, board chair of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, said the thefts quote will forever raise doubts about the security of all future charitable donations, particularly to the Carnegie Library. The damage wrought by John Shulman and Greg Priori is unfathomable. The true depths of their betrayal of trust, their vandalism, destruction of public property, and theft from our community is unquantifiable.
People don't value trust enough once it's gone, right.
Yeah, Priori, he was eager to throw Shulman under the bus. According to the New York Times quote, mister Priori told the authorities that he had stolen the items for money to stay afloat and help pay tuition for his four children. I should have never done this, he said. I loved that room my whole working life, and greed came over me. I did it, he said, but Shulman spurred me on.
It's okay. That was gonna be my question to you, Elizabeth. You've read about these guys, do you think? Shulman said, Hey, man, you work at the book store. You know, can you ever get me something? The guy came in and said, hey, Shulman, I got some stuff, like is it a Priori telling Shulman I got the idea?
Because I'm thinking that, like, I don't know, it's sort of this chicken egg.
I think it was Shulman. I think the guy who sells is gonna be the one who comes up with the idea I can sell some books at the post of the guy who's like, hey, will you be my fence, because that's a harder question to ask.
Or maybe there was one that like was legitimately removed from the I.
Figure I started telling me about he goes and I could do.
This again, you know, if you don't find another way to go.
I got this stamp on me I keep this thing ready. It's inked up right now.
Saren, what's your ridiculous takeaway?
Oh? Man, I don't mean to be you know me, I am naturally suspicious, and when I see people who act smug, I start questioning them more so like antique stealers, these these rare books people, they immediately make the hairs on my next stand up where I'm like mmmm, And I just want them to do that for their customers. And these people are coming up we go, I got some books I want to sell you or whatever. I got this fake bnett or you know it's real monet,
yeah whatever. I want them to be as suspicious of their customers and possible clients as I am of them.
Well, I think many are biblio dah, of course, exactly.
Yeah, but it's I find that attitude is less and less common.
That's very true in a lot of things.
Yes, just generally everybody's falling into the whole like what can I get for this? I'm like, doesn't anybody think that something has a value outside of what can I get for this?
Yeah? Exactly.
We're losing your whole culture, Elizabeth, thousands of years of history and people are willing to just forsake it, and I'm not even you should have me be the one to ending Western civilization. You got me to the boy going what about Plato? Yeah we are lost?
You know what we need?
What I talked that? Yeah, Calmus down, he hit me, Daves, Oh my god, super I love cheek.
So I'm listening to your Big Boy episode and I had to stop when you said sigmoid flexure. Uh so, I have a degree in animal science, and a sigmoid flexer refers to two different things. One is an S shaped curve sigmoid flexure in the human colon right before the rectum, or an S shaped curved in a bowl penis. They have a fibro elastic penis instead of an erectile penis, so it has to fold up inside of them. You're welcome.
No, take it back. That got retractable bull penis in my head.
I've heard it like sigmoid colonoscopy.
Yeah, the folding. I know it was a fake name. I didn't know anything would do with bullpeness. I didn't see that is Spanish inquisition. Elizabeth Howe is a bullpen It's like the Spanish inquisition.
That's all that's all we have for today. You can find us online at ridiculous crime dot com. We're also on social media. Email us at ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com and then also most importantly, leave a talk back on the iHeart app reach out. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnette, produced and edited by Biblio Dick, Biblio Dix, Dave Cousten, starring Emilis Rutger as Judas. Research is by book plate specialist MRSA. Brown
and Rubber Stamp enthusiast Andrea Song Sharpen Tear. The theme song is by Warehouse, Third Shift Security Thomas Lee and Italian Library Dog Travis Dutton. Post wardrobe is provided by Botany five hundred guests, hair and makeup by Sparkleshot and mister Andre. Executive producers are lifetime members of the A BAA, Ben Bowen and Noah Brown.
You hear the interns of there.
Shdus Crime say it one more times.
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio. Four more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.