Thieves pay the price for robbing rare book room

One by one, rare books vanished from the library: the Journal of George Washington; a copy of Isaac Newton’s “Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica,” valued at nearly $1 million (U.S.); and an atlas by a 19th-century German explorer, worth $1.2 million.

Over a quarter of a century, these printed treasures and hundreds of others were stolen from Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Library. And some of them were heading just around the corner.

This past week, Gregory Priore, the former archivist of the Carnegie Library’s rare book room, and John Schulman, owner of Caliban Book Shop, pleaded guilty to theft and receiving stolen property for snatching $8 million worth of rare books, maps and other objects. Schulman also pleaded guilty to forgery. Their sentencing is scheduled for April.

Prosecutors say the scheme ran from 1992 to 2017, during which time Priore would steal the rare texts from the library’s R. Oliver Special Collections Room — sometimes simply walking right out of the building with them, prosecutors said — and pass them along to Schulman, who would sell them at his store and online.

Some of the books wound up for sale at Caliban Book Shop, a warren-like used and rare book store with a cobalt blue exterior that is less than a 10-minute walk from the ornate Carnegie Library in the Oakland neighbourhood, Pittsburgh’s academic centre.

Others travelled much farther. Such is the case of a 400-yearold Geneva Bible, which federal authorities tracked down in the Netherlands. Isaac Newton’s “Principia” wound up in the hands of a rare bookseller in London, who was able to recover it from a buyer after he learned it was stolen.

An attorney for Priore could not immediately be reached for comment.

Schulman’s attorneys, Robert Del Greco Jr., Albert Veverka and Ember Holmes, said in a statement that he had accepted “responsibility for his association with books under circumstances whereby he should have known that the books had probably been stolen.”

Priore was fired from the Carnegie Library in 2017 after discrepancies were discovered in the library’s records, and he and Schulman were charged in July 2018 for the thefts. An audit by Pall Mall Art Advisors found that more than 300 items that they valued at about $8 million had been stolen, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported.

According to a criminal complaint, Priore received about $117,0000 in cheques from Caliban Book Shop between 2010 and 2017.

“Greed came over me,” Priore told investigators, according an affidavit. “I did it, but Schulman spurred me on.”