Historian Antonin DeHays was charged in Federal court this week with stealing dog tags of deceased WWII veterans from the National Archives at College Park, Maryland. He sold many of the dog tags on eBay. He even passed off a stolen dog tag that belonged to a Tuskegee Airman as being from his personal collection and donated it to the Military Aviation Museum in exchange for a chance to sit in the cockpit of a Spitfire airplane.

Two weeks after DeHays visited the National Archives at College Park on May 12 this year, staff discovered that dozens of dog tags were missing from the box DeHays had looked at for nearly a half-hour earlier in the month. On June 9, investigators executed a search warrant at his home and found six dog tags along with other documents that belonged to the National Archives.

If convicted, DeHays faces up to ten years in prison for his crimes.

You can find the official U.S. Department of Justice press release about this case here and you can read more about this story from the Washington Post. For more about the NARA Archival Recovery Program, follow their Facebook page.