BALTIMORE (AP) - A presidential memorabilia collector who has acknowledged stealing thousands of rare and valuable documents from historical societies and archives nationwide has been sentenced to 7 years in prison.
Barry Landau was sentenced Wednesday in federal court in Baltimore. Prosecutors had asked the judge to sentence him to nine years in prison.
Landau was caught stealing documents from the Maryland Historical Society last year. A subsequent investigation concluded the New York resident stole at least 4,000 documents worth more than $1 million from archives around the country.
Many of the stolen documents were more than 100 years old and worth thousands of dollars. They include documents signed President Franklin D. Roosevelt and President Abraham Lincoln and letters written by scientist Isaac Newton and novelist Charles Dickens.
(Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)