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United States Attorney Eric Melgren
District of Kansas
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
News releases are available at www.usdoj.gov/usao/ks/
Contact: Jim Cross
Phone: (316) 269-6481
Fax: (316) 269-6420
Aug. 23, 2006
FORMER COSMOSPHERE DIRECTOR ORDERED TO PAY RESTITUTION, ALLOWED TO REMAIN FREE DURING APPEAL
WICHITA, KAN. – The former director of the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center was ordered Thursday to pay $132,374 in restitution for the items he was convicted of stealing from the museum and NASA.
Max L. Ary, 56, Oklahoma City, appeared Wednesday before U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Marten in Wichita.
Judge Marten also granted Ary’s request to remain free while he appeals his conviction. Ary was convicted in November 2005 on 12 counts of an indictment charging him with stealing historic space artifacts from the non-profit museum he headed in Hutchinson, Kan. In May, he was sentenced to 3 years in federal prison. Ary has not yet begun serving the sentence.
Following a two-week trial in federal court in Wichita that ended Nov. 1, 2005, a jury convicted Ary on the following charges:
– 2 counts of wire fraud
– 3 counts of mail fraud
– 2 counts of theft of government property
– 3 counts of interstate transportation of stolen goods
– 2 counts of money laundering.
Ary was the president and CEO of the Cosmosphere from February 1976 to September 2002. The Cosmosphere at 1100 N. Plum in Hutchinson, Kan., is a not-for-profit corporation and receives more than $10,000 annually in support from the United States government.
The Cosmosphere received on loan artifacts from the American space program provided by Smithsonian, the United States Air Force, the National Air and Space Museum and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration through the Johnson Space Center in Houston. As director, Ary signed loan agreements with NASA accepting responsibility for the safekeeping of the artifacts and acknowledging the conditions of the loan, which prohibited the objects from being sold. The Cosmosphere did not receive title to the artifacts and it could not unilaterally dispose of NASA property without obtaining NASA’s prior authorization.
Evidence presented at trial showed that Ary knowingly sold artifacts that belonged to the Cosmosphere or NASA and deposited the money in his personal accounts.
Melgren commended the Federal Bureau of Investigation and NASA’s Office of Inspector General for their work on the case.