[CPProt.net] Insider theft: Honest mistake or theft? Max Ary's motivations for selling Cosmosphere items are suspect.

[MSN CPPnet (Ton Cremers)]

Posted on Thu, Oct. 20, 2005 
 

Honest mistake or theft?

Max Ary's motivations for selling Cosmosphere items are suspect.

BY STAN FINGER

The Wichita Eagle


Max Ary is so respected for transforming the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space
Center into "one of the state's great treasures" that even witnesses for the
prosecution will speak glowingly of him, U.S. Attorney Eric Melgren told a
jury Wednesday morning.

But as he built the Hutchinson museum's collection of space artifacts to
lofty levels -- only the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space
Museum has more U.S. space artifacts, and no museum outside of Russia has
more Soviet space equipment -- Ary came to see the Cosmosphere's inventory
as his own, Melgren said during his opening statement.

Ary faces 19 federal charges that he stole and sold artifacts belonging to
NASA and the Cosmosphere and kept the money for himself.

"This case may involve space, but it's not rocket science," Melgren said.
"It's very simple, and it's very clear."

In his own opening statement, defense lawyer Lee Thompson acknowledged that
Ary sold artifacts that did not belong to him. But it was an honest mistake
made by a man who is "an idea man," Thompson said. "He wasn't a detail
person.

"He was a dreamer, not a schemer."

Ary accidentally mixed artifacts from the museum with those from his
personal collection during a particularly hectic period in his life,
Thompson said. He had just returned from an expedition lasting several weeks
in 1999, during which the Liberty Bell 7 was hoisted from the Atlantic Ocean
where it sank 38 years before at the conclusion of America's second manned
space flight.

Both of Ary's parents became seriously ill while he was gone, and Ary had
decided to sell some of his own artifacts in an effort to simplify his life,
Thompson said. He was also trying to coordinate the sale of duplicate items
from the Cosmosphere's collection to raise money for the museum.

"Max didn't intend to do anything wrong," Thompson said. "He's not a perfect
human being."

Ary co-founded the Cosmosphere with Hutchinson philanthropist Patty Carey,
serving as president for more than 26 years before resigning in April 2002.

His trial, which is expected to last about two weeks, will have its share of
pizzazz: Jurors will get to see an artifact that was used on the moon,
Melgren said, and two astronauts -- Tom Stafford and Gene Cernan, the last
man to walk on the moon -- are scheduled to testify on Ary's behalf.

But the case will be driven by something far more down-to-earth, Melgren
said: A paper trail tracking Ary's actions.

That trail shows artifacts missing from the Cosmosphere's inventory, then
being sold at auction in California with the proceeds going into Ary's bank
account.

Jeff Ollenburger, whom Ary groomed to be his successor as president and
chief executive of the Cosmosphere, testified that the missing artifacts
weren't detected until an audit of the museum's inventory was conducted as
part of renewing a loan agreement with NASA's Johnson Space Center in 2003.

A tape that had been recorded during the Apollo 15 spaceflight was missing
from the Cosmosphere's inventory, Ollenburger said. The Web site of an
auction house that has worked with the Cosmosphere in the past showed it had
been sold in 2000, with the proceeds going to an account opened by Ary.

Ollenburger testified that he did not know Ary had such an account.
Cosmosphere by-laws prohibit an employee from engaging in personal
commercial transactions without permission from the museum's board of
directors -- which Ary had not been given.

Ollenburger said he began going through other auction catalogs and
recognized several other items resembling Cosmosphere artifacts. Many of
those turned out to be missing from the museum's inventory as well.

"There was, in fact, at least a dozen items that had been sold," Ollenburger
said.

Thinking there must have been some kind of mistake, he had the museum's
curator double-check everything.

"I didn't want to believe what I had seen," Ollenburger said.

Meeting minutes show that Ary told the board of directors that "duplicate"
artifacts or items that no longer had value had been sold. But a check of
records showed that the sold items weren't duplicates or worthless at all:
Many had been flown in space, and others were the only ones of their kind
the Cosmosphere had.

When Melgren asked Ollenburger how he felt when he realized records appeared
to show that Ary had stolen artifacts and sold them for his own benefit,
Ollenburger broke down in tears.

"There was nobody I respect more on the Earth," he said, struggling to
regain his composure. "He was my mentor, my friend.

"I just didn't believe it."

Ollenburger will continue his testimony today.

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