NASA catches 74-year-old grandmother attempting to sell moon rock for $1.7 million

Sting operations — you see them in movies and TV shows happening in some seedy location to catch a hardened hooligan or a wrongly-accused hero. But to Joann Davis, a grandmother 74 years of age, it's as real as it gets with NASA hatching a highly-elaborate plot to catch her in the act of selling a piece of moon rock. And it didn't happen in some questionable establishment — it all went down at Denny's.

The cause of it all is a tiny piece of moon rock, not any bigger than a grain of rice, encased in an acrylic dome. Davis claims Neil Armstrong himself gave it to her husband who was an engineer in a company NASA contracted during the Apollo era. More recently, she has decided to sell it to make money for her sick son's treatment as well as to leave inheritance to her children. She shopped it to prospective buyers on the internet — including a NASA contractor who, needless to say, alerted the powers that be of her existence.

What happened next is a flurry of negotiations. Davis reportedly mentioned the black market and selling underground, so it's quite clear she knows that what she's doing — selling government property — is against the law. But in a twist of events, she agreed to sell it for a whopping $1.7 million to NASA. During the meeting at the family restaurant, NASA investigators swooped in on her as soon as she took out the moon rock, and terrified her so much she lost control of her bladder.

Now, five months later, it's revealed that no charges have been filed against Davis. Authorities believe the moon rock was stolen, as Armstrong says he has never given away any, but no proof has been shown. In truth, NASA engineers are known to informally give away paperweight moon rocks like the one in the possession of Davis, so even if she didn't get it from Armstrong, she may have gotten it from someone else.

"I have a real moral problem with what's happened here in California," says former NASA investigator Joseph Guteinz. "I've always taken the position that no one should own an Apollo-era moon rock. They belong to the people. But if we did such a poor job of safeguarding (lunar samples,) I cannot fault that person."

[Image credit: Wikimedia, The Telegraph]

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