Moon Rocks Wanted
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flavor-packed recipes like parmesan herb-crusted salmon. You'll be filling your kitchen with the cozy aromas of a homemade meal in no time. So go ahead, try HelloFresh. It's homemade, made easy. Learn more at HelloFresh.com. I was glued to the TV when the Apollo 11 launched. I was glued to the TV when Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon. I watched Apollo 12. I was...

I watched Apollo 13 and worried about that, Apollo 14, 15, 16, and 17. And I wished that we had 18, 19, and 20. Did you ever think about becoming an astronaut? Probably not. It was not really in my forecast that that would be something I would do. But about six months ago, I almost bought it.

Neil Armstrong's house that was being sold, but then they upped the price and I was out of the market. You almost bought Neil Armstrong's house? I almost bought Neil Armstrong's house, yeah. Six-car garage. Do you have six cars? No, but I would have gotten a couple more. Joe Goodhines was a special agent at NASA's Office of Inspector General from 1990 to 2000.

When he first started, he worked out of Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where all of the Apollo missions launched from. You know, you're driving into the center, past the guards. You're looking at the Vehicle Assembly Building, which is one of the tallest buildings in the world. You have a line of sight at some points to the launch pads.

the orbiter processing facilities and so forth. Really cool stuff. When you walk around the center, you actually see alligators and wild animals out right along where the astronauts or NASA officials would be walking. It's really a different world.

Joe Goodhines later moved to Johnson Space Center in Texas. His office was next to a group of Russian scientists who were stationed there after the end of the Cold War. He investigated many crimes involving NASA. Once, he found someone was using fake leases with NASA to steal millions of dollars. The man used the money for a pizza chain to make a horror movie and run a candy business.

In 1997, Joe Gutheinz investigated the cause of a fire on the Russian space station Mir, while an American astronaut was also stationed there. Another time, a man showed up at Marshall Space Flight Center claiming he was an astronaut. He had sent them a fake resume that also said he had worked for the CIA. He was allowed into the mission control room. Later, he tried to get clearance to fly a jet.

Joel Goodhines tracked him down and arrested him for impersonating a federal officer. But none of this is why we called him. We called him to talk about something else. The thing about moon rocks is that it's like the ultimate collector's item. You're getting something that was brought back from space by man to Earth that nobody is allowed to own because NASA treats them as a national treasure.

In the United States, in most cases, it's illegal to privately own any artifacts brought back from NASA's missions, like moon rocks. Who paid the money to go to the moon? The United States government, right?

What do we do on the moon? Essentially, we mined for moon rocks. I mean, we just picked them up off the ground, but we had a very expensive venture to go to the moon, collect the moon rocks and bring them back. And then the United States government said, okay, these moon rocks are now U.S. property. They're a national treasure. They belong to the people. They belong to history.

They don't belong to individuals. And that was the thinking of it. Nobody has a right to a moon rock unless the government that owns those moon rocks gives them up. And the United States was pretty tight with their moon rocks. On July 24, 1969, Apollo 11's crew returned to Earth with 47 pounds of rocks and dust from the moon. That same year, people started trying to sell fake moon rocks.

Newspapers reported that a woman ran an ad that she was selling moon dust for nearly $2 an ounce in California. In Florida, a salesman was selling moon rocks door-to-door. He was a vacuum cleaner salesman in Miami. He was knocking on doors saying, hey, look, I got a moon rock from Neil Armstrong. Would you buy it for $5?

And there were a lot of people that said, well, gee, that's a great deal. And they bought the dirt that he had in his hands that, of course, was not from the moon for five bucks. And it was the perfect scam if you think about it. You go into a party and you say, hey, look, guys, I shouldn't be showing you this, but I got an Apollo moon rock. And, you know, this means a lot to me, but I could let it go for X amount of money. But you can't tell anybody.

And they would take it and they would put it in their safe and they'd lock it away. Of course, at some point, word gets out and, you know, some guy, relative or whatever, will say, hey, you got scammed. But until then, it's the perfect con. You don't know about it until months later or years later or maybe never.

In 1995, two brothers, Ronald and Brian Trockelman, tried to sell a moon rock through an auction house in New York. They said that astronaut John Glenn had given the rock to their father in honor of his work for the space program. But John Glenn was a Mercury astronaut, not an Apollo astronaut. Mercury did not go to the moon. The Mercury missions were test flights NASA was conducting to see if they could put an astronaut in orbit around the Earth.

First, they sent up empty ships, then a chimpanzee, then ships with humans, and then, in 1962, a ship went into orbit around the Earth. That one was piloted by John Glenn. John Glenn was the first American astronaut to orbit the Earth. He named his ship the Friendship 7, after the seven original astronauts selected for the Mercury missions. He said he came up with the name with his kids.

When news about the Trackelman brothers' fake rock broke, John Glenn issued a statement. He had never owned a moon rock and had never given anyone a moon rock as a gift. Ronald and Brian Trackelman were charged with conspiracy and wire fraud. A man named Richard Keith Mountain said he had moon dust from the Apollo 11 mission. Between 1996 and 1998, he sold it to people in the United States, Canada, and Australia. He said the dust had been verified by Buzz Aldrin.

A NASA laboratory tested the dust and said it was not from the moon. Richard Mountain made over $90,000. He was sentenced to nearly two years in prison. Joe Goodhines didn't see the fake moon rock market ending anytime soon, so he came up with a plan. He called it Operation Lunar Eclipse. My idea was put an ad in USA Today.

with an astronaut jumping on the moon under the caption, Moon rocks wanted. And then putting our fictitious address in their phone number to contact. When someone called the number, it would ring a recorded phone line, an answering machine, in Joe's office at NASA. The message would say that they had reached a company called John's Estate Sales, which

Joe would pretend to be a man named Tony Coriasso. Coriasso was actually taken from my uncle, Dr. Coriasso's last name. And I had a rich buyer and I was, who's interested in all things NASA. And you tell me you got a moon rock. We're very interested. Let's talk more. The ad ran on September 18th, 1998.

About two weeks later, Joe Goodhines got a phone call. I get a call from a guy by the name of Rosen, Alan Rosen. He says, Tony, you know all those guys, they're calling you about moon rocks? That's bull. He said, I've got the real thing. And I'm going like, okay. He said, Tony, here's my web address. I want you to click this in and take a look at what I got.

And I click it in, and it's this huge, long thing. It's not, you know, a short deal with a bunch of symbols, the whole nine yards. I pull it up, and I see a 10-by-14-inch plaque with a lucite pole with a rock in it, the flag of recipient country, and two metal plates. And I kick back, and I go, this is unlike anything we expected to see. It's unlike any scam that I've ever heard of.

I thought to myself, oh, this is the real thing. When we started Operation Lunar Eclipse, I was looking for con artists selling bogus moon rocks. I was not looking for people selling real moon rocks. I didn't even know it was a problem. Nobody knew it was a problem. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. We'll be right back.

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Most of these are stored at Johnson Space Center in Texas and at a facility at White Sands, New Mexico. They're kept in special pressurized cabinets in an atmosphere of nitrogen. No one is allowed to touch the rocks directly in the lab. Scientists have used them to try to figure out how the moon formed.

When the first lunar samples from Apollo 11 were brought to Earth, they were taken to a lab and placed in containers with animals like mice and shrimp, as well as dozens of different kinds of plants. Scientists wanted to make sure the samples wouldn't cause any harm before anyone was allowed to study them. In the 1970s, the United States gave moon rocks and moon dust to 135 countries, in all 50 states, as gifts.

The samples are mounted on a plaque with an inscription. This fragment is a portion of a rock from the Taurus-Littrow Valley of the moon. They were called Goodwill Rocks. When Joe Goodhine saw Alan Rosen's picture of his moon rock, he knew it had to be one of the Goodwill Rocks. But he didn't know which country it belonged to. The plaque, the center of the flag, was blocked out. And the name of the recipient country was blocked out.

I find out that in Central and South America, there are a half dozen countries with the identical flag except for the center of the flag. And so what he was telling me, it's one of these six countries. And so I start to check around. He started calling government officials in the six countries, but no one knew where the rocks were. Joe set up a call between Alan Rosen and an agent from the U.S. Postal Service who was undercover as John Marta, the man interested in buying a moon rock.

His real name was Bob Krieger. When he asked Alan Rosen about the history of the rock, Alan Rosen claimed he had bought it from a retired colonel in Central America. Bob Krieger asked if they could meet in person. They arranged to meet at a restaurant called Tuna's in Miami. Instead of their usual suits, Joe Gutheins and Bob Krieger dressed casually. I kind of got a windbreaker on, and I got my Glock and my belt in the back, and

Krieger has a fanny pack on, and he has his gun there. Under his windbreaker, Joe Goodhines was also wearing a wire. Two U.S. Customs agents were stationed two blocks away, listening in. So Alan Rosen comes in, and another guy who identifies as his financial advisor, and we sit down. Is he suspicious of you? Always. He would tell me from day one that he thought we were undercover agents.

They didn't trust us, that he was very suspicious that our intent was to kick in the door and grab the moon rock. You know, he wasn't a dumb guy. He had some brains, and he was testing us all the way along. Alan Rosen told Joe Goodhines that he was nervous that people were looking for him. He's talking about how he half expects...

some South American paramilitary guys to come around the side of the wall with AK-47s or something like that. Joe Goodhines asked how the rock had been brought into the country. He wanted him to admit to smuggling it in. But all Alan Rosen would say was that there was no paper trail. He had brought photographs of the rock, but not the real thing. He said he still didn't trust them yet.

Eventually, Joe Gutheinz told Alan Rosen that he wanted to buy the Moonrock. I said, I want the whole Moonrock. I want the plaque. I want the whole nine yards. And Alan said he wanted $5 million. NASA considers Moonrocks priceless because they're so rare. It's hard to put a value on them. But in 2002, three interns at NASA stole a safe containing Moonrocks from Johnson Space Center.

During the trial, NASA estimated that based on how much the Apollo mission had cost to retrieve these samples, each gram of moon rock that had been stolen was worth about $50,000 in 1973. Today, that would be nearly $370,000 per gram. After their meeting with Alan Rosen,

Joe Goodhines and Bob Krieger drove back to Texas from Miami. Ed Rosen calls again. He says, I think this is a sting operation. I think you're undercover agents. I said, how can we prove it? He said, give me five customers from Johnson State Sales right now. I'm going to call them right now, and I'm going to see if there really is a Johnson State Sales.

So Krieger and I start calling five agents at home. I say, hey, look, you're going to get a call. Sorry about this. You're now a customer of John's Estate Sales. The Inspector General, Roberta Gross, wonderful Inspector General, good person, was not happy that I gave up the phone numbers of, private phone numbers of five agents. Allen Rosen was satisfied.

Afterwards, Joe heard that NASA arranged for the agents to get new phone numbers. It sold it. He believed that there was a John State sales after that because he couldn't believe that anybody would set that up in the middle of the night like that. So you pass the test. He calls these fake clients and agrees to sell the rock. He was asking for a lot of money. That was test one. Test two comes up.

He wants proof that we have $5 million to buy the moon rock. I go, hey, no problem. Call up NASA. Hey, can you set aside $5 million for the sting operation? No. FBI? No. Postal? No. We went to D.C. Somebody even called the CIA. No. Nobody had $5 million. And then Joe Goodhines got an idea.

My father was a big fan of Ross Perot. My father was a career Marine, and Ross Perot was known to be good to the military. Ross Perot had served in the U.S. Navy as a young man. He became a millionaire in 1968 when his technology company went public on the stock market. In the 1970s, he tried to rescue two of his company's executives, who'd been arrested during the Iranian Revolution.

In 1989, someone poisoned the treaty oak in Austin, Texas, which has been called the most perfect specimen of any living tree in the country. We did an episode about it called Perfect Specimen. Ross Perot got involved, offering a blank check to save the tree. We called him for that episode. And they called me and they asked me and I did it. That's all I can tell you. Joe Goodhines wondered if Ross Perot would help with money for the moon rock.

I'm looking at Krieger. I'm going, I wonder what would happen if I called up Ross Perot's company in Dallas and asked him if he could come up with five million bucks. This was six years after Ross Perot had run for president. Joe Goodhines got Ross Perot's secretary. And I basically said, look, I'm with NASA. I'm a special agent. And we have a sting operation that we're doing and we need his help.

And so she says, OK, I'll let him know. And so I'm literally hanging up the phone, looking at Krieger, and I'm going like, can you believe that? I got through to his personal secretary. A half hour later, Joe Goodhines' phone rang. I mean, that quick. Ring, ring. Pick up the phone. Hello, Joe. This is Ross Perot.

How can I help you? When he explained Operation Lunar Eclipse, Ross Perot said yes, he would give them the money. He actually said, hey, if you need me to go down there and help you with it, I'll do it. I'm going like, no. I got into a bit of a...

a pickle on this. I didn't go through my chain of command to ask about calling Ross Perot. I just did it. Ross Perot sent the money to an account at the same bank in Miami where Alan Rosen was keeping the Moonrock in a safe deposit box. Joe Goodhines got a letter from the bank's vice president as proof of funds for Alan Rosen. Alan Rosen agreed to sell the rock, but he didn't want to do the deal directly. He wanted to go through an intermediary.

He wanted the intermediary to meet him in Miami. And before he'd show anyone the rock, he wanted Joe to prove he was in Texas, not Florida. I said, okay, how can I do that? Stand by your phones. I'm going to call you. Now, Rosen, he was a smart guy, but I don't think he understood the way cell phones work.

And I'm going like, my phones are cell phones, so that area code goes wherever I go. But I'm not going to tell him that. The plan was for Alan Rosen to meet with a bank employee who would photograph the rock and send it to Joe as proof that the rock was real. But the bank employee was actually an undercover agent from U.S. Customs. When Alan Rosen opened the safe deposit box and handed over the moon rock—

The customs agent presented him with a warrant. So we seized the moon rock. Later that day, I took the moon rock, put it in my pants pocket, had a briefcase. I had my Glock underneath my jacket coat, board the plane armed with the briefcase, never leaving my hand. And the bottom line was the...

You know, the idea was anybody would be focused on the briefcase, not my pocket. So I walked around with $5 million in my pocket for a day or so. Well, how big is $5 million? 1.142 grams. A little pebble. Little pebble. So you were just carrying this little pebble around in your pocket? For a day. I mean, was it in something sparse? Did you wrap it up a little bit or...?

No, it was just in my pocket. Just in my pocket. Didn't try to make any type of big deal about it. If anybody noticed me at all, I want to notice the briefcase. You know, the idea they could knock me down, take the briefcase. But the moon rock was going to be secure. And, you know...

Nobody really knew at that point that we had seized the moon rock, right? So it was not like anybody was looking for me walking on the plane with the moon rock. And I got to tell you, I've felt the moon rock and it feels like a rock. No magical powers coming out of it. No magical powers, none. We'll be right back.

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Visit squarespace.com for a free trial, and when you're ready to launch, go to squarespace.com slash criminal to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. When Joe Gutheinz got home to Texas, he had the rock tested by a geologist at Johnson Space Center who confirmed it really was from the moon. What was the reaction when you brought the moon rock into NASA?

celebratory. It was like a major victory. Everybody was giving high fives. It was really something that nobody had ever seen before. It was certainly not the way we expected our case to go. And so it was high fives all around. In 2001, The Rock was taken to Miami. It was met by a team of customs agents at the airport.

It wasn't clear if the rock had been stolen or not by the Honduran colonel, so it wasn't clear if Alan Rosen had done anything wrong, or if the United States had the right to seize the rock from Alan Rosen. There was a trial. United States versus one lucite ball containing lunar material, one moon rock, and one 10-inch by 14-inch wooden plaque. The court decided that the colonel had illegally gotten the rock from the president of Honduras.

And the United States did have the right to seize it from Alan Rosen. But in the end, Alan Rosen was not charged, and the rock was returned to Honduras. I would actually fly to D.C. and be present when they presented the moon rock to the ambassador of Honduras, who had his son present. It was very cool. He seemed to love the moon rock. It's now in a children's museum.

In 2000, Joe Gutheinz retired from NASA. He opened a law firm with his sons, and he started teaching criminal investigation classes. One day, a friend of Joe's told him, you're the only one teaching. He used to work at NASA. My mentor said, you should incorporate something in your class that's unique to your experience.

And I thought immediately moon rocks. After Operation Lunar Eclipse, Joe realized that many goodwill rocks were unaccounted for. The countries I was contacting, nobody seemed to know where their moon rocks were. So I'm going like, okay.

I'll create what I'm going to call the Moonrock Project and teach my future investigators how to conduct an investigation that's safe because I'm not going to allow them to interface with people, only over the phone, over the lines, and so forth. They could go to museums, but that was the extent of it. No face-to-face type things. And so the bottom line was that...

My students, basically, they were coming back with goose eggs. As part of their project, his students were supposed to publish an editorial in a local newspaper with their findings. In Alaska, one of his students found that the state's moon rock was supposed to be in the Alaska Transportation Museum, but it had disappeared after a fire in 1973.

When she published her findings in the Capital City Weekly, a man named Coleman Anderson came forward claiming he had the moon rock. Anderson is one of the skippers from the first season of The Deadliest Catch. He claimed he found the moon rock after the fire when he was a teenager. He thought it was a, quote, neat souvenir.

Coleman Anderson sued the state of Alaska. He wanted to be given legal ownership of the rock or to be paid for its return. And so they had a lawsuit that went through and long story short, he loses and NASA gets back the moon rock which now is in the hands of Alaska. Another one of his students found that Colorado was missing its moon rock. No one had seen it for years.

Governor John Vanderhoof had accepted it on behalf of the state in 1974. So there's a front-page story about the conclusions of his investigation. That day, John Vanderhoof picks up a phone and says, I got it. It's been on my wall for 35 years. He says that he and his students have found over 70 missing Goodwill Rock, including ones for West Virginia, Arkansas, Missouri, and the countries of Romania and Canada.

Once, one of his sons gave him a present, a spinning globe inscribed with the words, Moonrock Hunter. Joe Goodhines keeps it on his desk. What did your students think when you told them that they'd be looking for moonrocks? Well, you know, initially I get this reaction from the first class, like, really? I'm going like, yeah, well, we could be looking for widgets, but the moonrocks have a little bit more value.

But after the first class, everybody was wired in on it. And whenever I would teach a class about the Moonrock Project, I would say to my students, I interviewed an astronaut talking about Operation Lunar Eclipse, and I said, how much is a moonrock worth? Because I'm trying to find out if when I'm negotiating with this guy for $5 million, if I'm just insane to do that. And he says, no.

I don't know. I said, well, thank you very much. I'm closing up. But he said, I'll tell you what it's worth to me. And I'm going like, okay. He says, when I was a kid, I always wanted to be a pilot. Always wanted to be a pilot. And he said, then I go to this museum and they have this NASA session. He says, he starts walking towards the moon rock display. And he says, somewhere between starting on that journey to that moon rock,

And actually arriving at that moon rock, he had decided that he was going to be an astronaut. I would say to my students, this is why it's important that nobody should privately own a moon rock. Because we want some kid to be able to walk into a museum and be inspired to do something the way that astronaut was inspired by that moon rock. And having some millionaire walking around with a moon rock in his pocket doesn't do anybody any good.

If all of these moon rocks were recovered, what would you do then? Well, I wouldn't be talking about them as much, but no, I'd probably visit a few of them. You know, they've been part of my life since 1998, so I probably would go and take a look at some of them. Joe Gutheinz says there are still 150 moon rocks missing.

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