The New York Times
January 29, 2008

A History Buff Uncovers Thefts of American History Treasures 

By ERIC KONIGSBERG
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/k/eric_konig
sberg/index.html?inline=nyt-per> 

Until two weeks ago, Joseph Romito, a history buff, was not a person who
trolled the Internet for artifacts related to the statesman John C.
Calhoun, a 19th-century vice president.

But on Jan. 17, he happened to type the name into a search field on
eBay, saw a listing for an obscure handwritten letter signed by Calhoun
in 1823, and recalled having seen it somewhere else.

What's more, he had enough knowledge of Calhouniana to turn to his own
25-volume collection of Calhoun's correspondence to verify his hunch.

Mr. Romito's index to the Calhoun volumes listed the letter as the
property of the New York State Library. He alerted the library, and was
told that the matter was being looked into. 

"I didn't know what was going to happen," Mr. Romito said. So he bid on
the item himself. "I knew I wasn't going to end up buying it - I wasn't
going to pay for it - but I put in what I thought was a very high bid to
try and keep it from going somewhere else. The government can be slow."

Mr. Romito's discovery led quickly to a state investigation, and on
Monday resulted in charges being filed against the would-be seller,
Daniel D. Lorello. Mr. Lorello, 54, has worked at the New York State
Archives in Albany for 29 years. The state attorney general's office has
charged him with several criminal counts, including grand larceny,
criminal possession of stolen property, and scheming to defraud.

In a handwritten confession that the authorities obtained from Mr.
Lorello on Thursday, he said he had been illegally selling rare books
and documents from the state's collections since 2002. His thefts
intensified last year, he wrote, "because my daughter, Maria,
unexpectedly ran up a $10,000 credit card bill."

"I estimate that I've taken more than 300 or 400 items in 2007 alone,"
Mr. Lorello wrote. The attorney general's office said he sold them on
eBay and at collectors' trade shows. Robin L. Baker, a deputy attorney
general, said at a news conference that investigators had discovered
"more than a dozen boxes of stolen items" at Mr. Lorello's home in
Rensselaer. She said they were believed to form the majority of the
stolen documents.

The government said that Mr. Lorello was an archives and records
specialist at the State Archives. 

Among the most valuable items he sold was a "Davy Crockett's Almanack,"
which went for $3,350. 

Mr. Romito, whom Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/andrew_m_c
uomo/index.html?inline=nyt-per>  called "the hero in this case," is a
lawyer in Richmond, Va., specializing in litigation and estate planning.
He earned a master's degree in history at the University of Illinois
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/uni
versity_of_illinois/index.html?inline=nyt-org> , focusing on the Middle
Ages, he said during an interview, "but I'm also interested in American
history, Southern history, and Calhoun in particular."

The eBay letter, dated Nov. 9, 1823, is addressed to a Colonel Haine,
who Mr. Romito figured out was Charles Haine, a personal secretary to
DeWitt Clinton, a two-term governor of New York. Over the course of four
rather vague pages heavy with insider-speak, Calhoun, Mr. Romito
deduced, is asking Haine to drum up support for him in New York should
he decide to run for president against John Quincy Adams
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/a/john_quinc
y_adams/index.html?inline=nyt-per> . "Mr. Adams will fall without a
blow," he predicts. (A year later, Calhoun was elected vice president.)

The listing on eBay, by a seller who identified himself as lld1863,
described the document as "a super letter with excellent content and one
that would make a great addition to any 19th-century American political
autograph collection." He noted, "There are the usual mailing folds
present as well as overall age toning and minor foxing."

Last Tuesday, the day the auction was to end, bidding for the letter
stood at $274 before Mr. Romito took matters in his own hands and
indicated that he was willing to go as high as $1,777.77, should a
bidding war break out. 

At 8:55 p.m., with five minutes to go, a member of the attorney
general's office took up Mr. Romito's tactics and began bidding for the
item - only to be automatically outbid by Mr. Romito. Finally, a bid of
$1,802.77 stuck, and the government was declared the winner.

A listing page on eBay shows that without the bids of Mr. Romito and the
government, the highest offer was $795, by a bidder presumably unaware
of the document's complicated provenance.

Two days later, the seller gave his confession.

Mr. Lorello wrote that on the last day of the auction, he realized that
state archivists were aware of the fraudulent listing, and he began to
sense that he was being outfoxed. "I first became nervous after a
conversation with Kathleen Roe, my boss's boss. She asked me if I knew
who 'LLD' on eBay was. I knew that it was me."

Mr. Cuomo said that the government was continuing to piece together the
value of everything that Mr. Lorello had stolen. Mr. Lorello noted in
his confession that most of what he stole was not particularly valuable
(some of his items sold for as little as $10). Most of the artifacts
were known among dealers as trash, he wrote, although he used a trashier
word than trash.

Copyright 2008
<http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html>  The New
York Times Company <http://www.nytco.com/>  


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