This intern may have had a stellar rise within NASA, but he ended up crash landing after he nicked £15.5M in lunar rocks to have "sex on the moon" with his girlfriend.
In 2002, Thad Roberts hatched a plan to pinch 17 pounds of moon rocks and a meteorite from Houston's Johnson Space Centre. The FBI reported that the 24 year old managed to swipe the priceless samples from every Apollo mission, which were locked in a 600-lb safe.
Roberts, who triple majored in physics, geology and geophysics at the University of Utah, was convinced his plan was foolproof. After securing the samples, Roberts tried to find a buyer.
It was reported that Roberts contacted a potential buyer from Belgium through his friend, who offered to buy the samples for £760 to £3,800 per gram. The buyer, growing suspicious of Roberts' offer, allegedly rang the FBI, who instructed them to keep chatting while they investigated.
Reports revealed that around this time, Roberts became romantically involved with Tiffany Fowler, another NASA intern, who agreed to help her new boyfriend's wicked scheme once they had moved in together after three weeks of dating. The pair managed to persuade a third intern by the name of Shae Saur to also join them, reports The Mirror US.
The trio, armed with their NASA-issued IDs, infiltrated the space centre and made off with the artefacts. On 20 July 2002, marking the 33rd anniversary of the first moon landing, an oblivious Roberts and Fowler set off to meet their supposed buyer's family in Orlando.
In a 2012 CBS interview, Roberts disclosed that while waiting for the family, he used a buzz saw to open the safe, hid some of the rocks under the bed covers and then engaged in intimate activities. "I take some of the moon rocks and I put them underneath the blanket on the bed," Roberts confessed during the interview.
"I never said anything, but I'm sure she could feel it," he added. "It was more about the symbol of what we were doing, basically having sex on the moon.
"It's more uncomfortable than not, but it wasn't about the comfort at that point," Roberts elaborated. "It was about the expression. And no one had ever had sex on the moon before. I think we can safely say that."
Roberts and Fowler had to abandon their plan to sell the rocks when they arrived at the exchange only to find several FBI agents waiting for them. The rocks were promptly seized; however, the FBI stated that they were "virtually useless to the scientific community."
The trio's audacious heist obliterated three decades' worth of handwritten research by NASA officials. Roberts, following his arrest, confessed to pilfering dinosaur bones and fossils from the Natural History Museum in Salt Lake City.
When probed about his motives for the theft, Robert told CBS News that he "wasn't" viewing it as stealing at the time. "We weren't going to take this money we were getting from it to go buy a yacht or lots of cars or a big house," he explained.
"We were gonna live just the small kind of lifestyle we were, but fund science that might change the world, you know," he added. Roberts, Fowler and Saur all admitted guilt to conspiracy to commit theft and interstate transportation of stolen property.
Roberts was handed an eight-year sentence in federal prison but only served six. Fowler and Saur were given 180 days of house arrest and 150 hours of community service.
McWhorter, found guilty at trial, was sentenced to six years in prison. It was also reported that Roberts and Fowler had a falling out and never saw each other again.
