A dealer in antique treasures who admitted stealing more than $3 million in rare maps was sentenced on Wednesday to three and a half years in prison after a judge ruled that he deserved leniency for cooperating.
Edward Forbes Smiley III, once one of the country’s most respected dealers in rare maps, also must pay $1.9 million in restitution for stealing 98 of the world’s most precious maps, U.S. District Judge Janet Bond Arterton said.
Smiley had faced up to six years in prison under federal guidelines but was handed a lighter sentence after helping authorities recover most of the stolen maps, Arterton said.
“I’m deeply ashamed,” Smiley told the court.
Several libraries said he got off too lightly.
“We’re really disappointed at the leniency of this sentence in terms of the imprisonment of three and a half years — that equates to around 12 days imprisonment for every map which was stolen,” Clive Field, director of the British Library in London, told reporters.
In June, Smiley admitted to the thefts from the British Library, the New York and Boston public libraries, the Harvard and Yale university libraries and a Chicago library. They took place over seven and a half years.
Caught red-handed at Yale
He was caught with seven rare maps in his briefcase and tweed blazer after leaving Yale University’s rare-book library. A sharp-eyed library staffer had noticed a dropped X-Acto knife blade on the floor and alerted authorities.
Prosecutors had said the 50-year-old antiquarian from Martha’s Vineyard island in Massachusetts had stolen the maps to finance his rich tastes and rising debt but deserved credit for cooperating with federal investigators.
“Forbes Smiley is a thief, and a good one at that,” said Connecticut District U.S. Attorney Kevin O’Connor.
“He’s also now a convicted felon, and he’s also someone who is looking at what we think is a fair sentence of three and a half years in prison,” he added.
Treasures gone forever?
Prosecutors said six of the maps likely never will be recovered, while two are in the hands of identified collectors and 90 have been or most likely will be recovered.
“If you steal humankind’s treasures you will go to jail, but if you help recover them it will be weighed in the balance,” Arterton said in handing down the sentence.
One of the oldest maps was a Tudor world map dating from 1520 lifted from the British Library’s reading room. Another was a 1524 drawing of the New World by Spanish explorer Hernan Cortes belonging to Houghton Library at Harvard University. Like many of the others, it had been cut out of a bound book.
Under a plea agreement, Smiley has agreed to sell some of his property to help make restitution, including a home worth around $600,000 on 4.3 acres in Martha’s Vineyard and another in Maine.
