Moon rock
On May 18, 2004, Malta’s Goodwill Moon Rock was stolen from Malta’s Museum of Natural History in Mdina. According to an Associated Press story appearing in "USA Today", "there are no surveillance cameras and no custodians at the Museum of Natural History because of insufficient funding. The only attendant is the ticket-seller"… "A Maltese flag displayed next to the rock — which the U.S. astronauts had taken up with them — was not taken". Joseph Gutheinz, a retired NASA Office of Inspector General Special Agent who heads up a "Moon Rock Project" at the University of Phoenix (where he assigns his students the task of hunting down missing Moon rocks), urged the Maltese authorities to grant an amnesty period to the thieves. He advised that only an amateur thief would have taken the Maltese Goodwill Moon Rock and left the plaque and flag behind, as all three together would have been self-authenticating and eliminated the risk of a geologist needing to authenticate the Moon rock.