Smiley Ain’t Smiling
Readers of the Forbes Collector newsletter may remember that E. Forbes Smiley made our 2005 list of top scandals that rocked the collecting world. Why? Back in June, the former rare map dealer, a resident of Chilmark, Mass. (seen in his booking photo, above), pleaded guilty to a federal charge of major artwork theft, after having stolen at least 98 rare maps since 1998 from institutions around the U.S. and U.K., including the New York Public Library and the British Library in London. Smiley slipped up and was finally nabbed in June of 2005, during a visit to Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Seems he dropped an X-Acto knife blade on the floor of the rare document reading room.
The map thief’s version of a smoking gun.
Well, here’s the update: in late September, Smiley was sentenced to 42 months in prison by U.S. District Judge Janet Bond Arterton. Given his cooperation in recovering most of the purloined items, he received a relatively lenient sentence. He was also ordered to pay restitution in the neighborhood of $2 million, though that figure is subject to change. Dealers he sold to aren’t holding their breath, since he’s heading off to the slammer in a state of financial ruin.
Library officials were, on the whole, disappointed with the sentence. The Times of London quotes an angry official of the British Library who opined, “It will go down in criminal and library history as one of the largest, most prolonged, premeditated and systematic of all thefts from libraries, and with no mitigating circumstances.”
He is supposed to report to prison in early January. —D.L.
