Forbes Smiley Pleads Guilty to Map Thefts

Established rare-map dealer admits to stealing more than $3Mil worth of antique maps from Yale University library; sentencing due 21 Sept.

As reported by the Hartford Courant today, E. Forbes Smiley, an established antique map dealer from Martha’s Vineyard, MA, pled guilty in federal court to one count of stealing an antique map from Yale University’s library, and admittted to stealing almost 100 antique maps from various libraries, including the New York and Boston Public Libraries, Harvard University’s library, and the British Library. Some maps dated back as far as the 16th Century.

As cited by the Courant, Smiley can expect to spend up to six years in prison and will be expected to pay restitution, though the amount has yet to be determined.

What may surprise the unititate about Smiley’s reign as that, during the time he was stealing the maps from the various libraries, he was actually a successful dealer in antique maps, with a website (which is still up at the time of this writing, http://www.efsmaps.com) that boasts of a twenty-five year history of satisfying clients, “helping them build interesting, and often important, collections of early maps and atlases relating to the discovery and settlement of North America”.

His stock is the rarefied stuff on the high collector: on this page is touted the sale of a 1676 John Seller “Mapp of NEW ENGLAND” for $75,000. If you have to ask, you can’t afford it.

His “About Our Company” page claims that he has helped build “several of the largest collections of American cartographic materials in this country, including the Norman Leventhal Collection of New England maps, and the Lawrence H. Slaughter Collection of English maps and atlases - now at the New York Public Library.”

That a man who created a business dealing in cartographic antiquties would end up being sent to prison for stealing those maps may seem ironic–but just as much so as stealing from the same New York Library that he touts having service. We suppose the question is begged as to where he obtained some of his stock, but that is beyond the scope of this publication, and must be left as an exercise to the reader.