The missing Benjamin has been found.
It's Benjamin Franklin, of course, but it's not missing money we're talking about here. No, we're talking about a lot of money, actually, in the form of a bust worth $3 million that was stolen from an elderly Pennsylvania man.
George D'Angelo, an 85-year-old retired lawyer living in the Philadelphia suburb of Bryn Mawr, reported the theft of the bust, one of three made in 1778 by noted artist Jean-Antoine Houdon, on August 24. The culprit is apparently a woman who goes by various names and used to clean D'Angelo's house. She was arrested as she got off a bus in Maryland. Investigators found the missing bust in a duffle bag she was carrying. (It's not a huge bust, weighting in at 25 pounds and measuring up at 28 inches tall.)
The cleaner, by whatever name she goes these days, faces charges of theft, fraud, and (since she crossed state lines with the bust) interstate transportation of stolen property. She had apparently been fired by her employer, the cleaning company responsible for cleaning D'Angelo's house, three days before the bust went missing. She was then, apparently, seen driving away from Angelo's house on the day that the bust went missing. The evidence would have been entirely circumstantial but for the fact that she had the bust on her person when she got off that interstate bus.
So Mr. D'Angelo can look forward to having his rare Benjamin Franklin bust back on his mantle stand soon, as soon as the FBI finish dusting for fingerprints.
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