Man Imprisoned For Stealing From State Archives Gets New Job … At a State Museum
Only in New York, and only in the state government workforce does this happen.
As recently as 2008, Daniel Lorello was sentenced to anywhere between two to six years in prison, and forced to pay over $125,000 in restitution for second-degree grand larceny.
His crime? Lorello was an Archives and Records Managment Specialist, with a side specialty of theft that included over 1,600 artifacts belonging to the New York State Library.
Lorello stole the artifacts and then sold them for profit on eBay or at collector shows for tens of thousands of dollars. Some of the items stolen included documents penned during the Civil War, letters to and from Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, a letter written by Vice-President John Calhoun, and a railroad timetable for Abraham Lincoln’s funeral train.
With that kind of background, what did the good folks at a state military museum in Saratoga decide to do? Why, put him in charge of the bookstore of course.
Lorello is now in charge of running the bookstore at the Saratoga Military Museum, “a state-owned facility with a vast collection of memorabilia dating from the Revolutionary War and tied to New York forces.”
The Times Union reports:
The Saratoga Springs institute holds uniforms, weapons, artillery pieces and art, much of it from the Civil War. It is the repository of the largest collection of state battle flags in the country and the biggest collection of Civil War flags in the world. The site boasts more than 6,000 photographs, unit history files, broadsides, scrapbooks, letters and maps highlighted by 2,300 Civil War photographs and newspaper clippings.
Here’s hoping they don’t end up on eBay.
Mental Recession 