This article appeared this afternoon on the Courant.com website. --ECW
++++++++++++++++++++
Map Dealer Sentenced to 3 ½ Years
By KIM MARTINEAU
Courant Staff Writer
September 27 2006, 5:03 PM EDT
NEW HAVEN -- A map dealer who looted $3 million in maps from some of
the world's finest libraries has been sentenced to just over 3 ½ years in
prison and admonished for his crimes against culture that hurt librarians
and other map dealers but also the public at large.
E. Forbes Smiley III, 50, stood as the judge handed down the sentence
Wednesday afternoon in federal court. The sentencing came after Yale
University and the other libraries he plundered spoke of how his actions
have inhibited scholarship, tarnished their reputations and discouraged
public support.
In sentencing Smiley, U.S. District Judge Janet Arterton said she
wanted to send a message to deter other would-be art and book thieves. The
judge also ordered Smiley to pay $1.9 million to the map dealers and
collectors who unwittingly bought the stolen goods.
The money Smiley will make selling his home on Martha's Vineyard and
his summer house in central Maine is expected to cover only a fraction of
what he owes. As he heads off to jail broke, with his business in tatters,
few of the map dealers he betrayed are holding their breath waiting for
payment.
Over the last few months, librarians from around the world have
written Arterton. The curator at the special collections department at
Northwestern University outside Chicago, still reeling from the thefts of
Gilbert Bland more than a decade ago, was among them.
"He ripped part of the fabric of our society in the same manner as any
other criminal and while the results might not be as visible, they are felt
and the damage has been done," wrote R. Russell Maylone, in a letter
provided to the Courant. "Policies of access will now change, more
institutions will now have security cameras and guards, collectors who might
have become friends of institutions will now shy away and most of us will
trust all a good deal less. We are all diminished. Beyond this, do we even
know all that Smiley stole or what has become of it? I doubt it very much."
A few of Smiley's friends were there for support: a childhood friend
from the New Hampshire town where he grew up and two friends from Hampshire
College, where he later went to school. His wife and six-year old son were
notably absent.
An eight year crime spree came to an end on June 8, 2005 when a
librarian at Yale found an X-acto blade on the floor, near where Smiley was
sitting. Police later found stolen maps stashed in his sport coat and
briefcase. Within a month, Smiley began cooperating with the FBI. This past
June, he pleaded guilty to a theft of major artwork and admitted stealing
nearly a hundred maps from libraries in New York, New Haven, Boston, Chicago
and London.
Next month, Smiley will go before a state judge to be sentenced on
three larceny charges tied to his arrest last summer. The sentence will run
at the same time as the federal.