MEN SENTENCED FOR STEALING SANTA MARGARITA BAR

The two men responsible for stealing a gold bar from a Key West treasure museum were sentenced Monday at the federal courthouse in Key West.

The two drove to Key West from Palm Beach County in August of 2010. Security video from the Mel Fisher Maritime Museum shows them both hanging around the museum near closing time and returning repeatedly to the museum's most popular exhibit — a gold bar in a clear case with a hole in front. Museum visitors were encouraged to reach in to touch and lift the gold bar, which came from the Santa Margarita, a Spanish treasure galleon that wrecked off the Keys in 1622.

The "lift-a-gold-bar" exhibit was the museum's centerpiece, and featured heavily in their marketing.

"Probably about 3 to 4 million people lifted that bar," Kendrick said. "Even if you have the insurance money for it, you can't replace it. There's not another."

To read the complete article, see:
Gold Bar Thieves Sentenced, Ordered To Pay Half Million In Restitution To Keys Museum (http://www.wlrn.org/post/gold-bar-thieves-sentenced-ordered-pay-half-million-restitution-keys-museum)

The two men who swiped a 17th century gold bar from a maritime museum in Florida will face time behind bars for stealing, chopping up and selling the 'priceless' artifact.

Richard Steven Johnson, 41, and Jarred Alexander Goldman, 32, led their heist on August 18, 2010 where they broke into a display case at the Mel Fisher Maritime Museum and took the $560,000 oblong bar from its perch.

The pair were handed prison sentences on Monday after they said they destroyed the artifact by cutting it up and selling it in Las Vegas.

The relic had been aboard the Santa Margarita, a Spanish galleon that sank in the Florida Straits in 1622 with more than 9,000 ounces of gold plundered from the Americas. The stolen bar has not been located.

Treasure hunter Mel Fisher, for whom the museum is named, discovered part of the Santa Margarita wreck in 1980 while scouring the sea floor for ships which were once in a fleet sailing treasures back to Spain.

To read the complete article, see:
Two thieves are jailed for stealing, chopping up and selling 'priceless' 17th century gold bar swiped from a Key West museum in 2010 (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6009283/Two-thieves-jailed-stealing-priceless-17th-century-gold-bar.html)

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