The Postal Inspection Service said it has recovered all but two of the 160 inverts of the Richard Nixon stamp, misprinted stamps that investigators say were taken from scrap wastes at a New York stamp printer. Such wastes are supposed to be destroyed.
A U.S. District Court jury in New York on May 22 convicted Clarence Robert Robie of Pearl River, N.J., on two charges, theft of public money and interstate transportation of stolen property, in connection with the stamps. A former employee of Banknote Corp. of America, Robie will be sentenced in late August.
Banknote used intaglio presses on Long Island to apply the name "Richard Nixon" onto commemorative stamps that received the late president's portrait on offset presses in New Jersey. What caused a sensation was that the name Nixon appeared printed upside down on 160 of the stamps.
Investigators said Robie sold 120 of the stamps to a New Jersey stamp dealer for $60,000 and 40 to a Brooklyn dealer for $7,000 cash and $13,000 in stamps. Postal inspectors said an unidentified stamp dealer has reported that he lost one of the stamps and another dealer said he was to receive the other missing stamp by a commercial carrier, but it was lost.
Spokeswoman Pat Bossert warned the public not to trade in the two missing stamps because investigators consider them stolen government property.
