MAN SOLD PHONY MOON ROCKS.

Byline: Usha Sutliff Staff Writer

PASADENA - A man who peddled fake moon rocks using JPL documents was sentenced to 21 months in prison earlier this week and ordered to pay $98,750 in restitution to his victims.

Richard Keith Mountain, 53, was also sentenced by a U.S. magistrate in Arizona to three years' probation and 300 hours of community service and charged a $600 special assessment fee.

The sentencing Monday brought to a close a case that started in September 1997 and involved agents from NASA's Office of Inspector General, the FBI and the U.S. Marshals Service.

They slowly unraveled an elaborate and clever scam that included national heroes, an Italian president and a conspiracy theory reminiscent of ``The X-Files.''

Starting in 1996, Mountain sold more than $80,000 in soil granules that he claimed were collected from the moon by Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin ``Buzz'' Aldrin Jr., according to an April 1999 federal grand jury indictment.

Mountain, a disbarred attorney who used the alias Nicholas Parker Cole, said he was an agent of the rocks' owner, soliciting customers through several space-collectible businesses he owned in San Diego and Arizona, the indictment said.

During the investigation, he moved around, living in San Diego and New Milford, Conn., and at one point fleeing to Canada.

Keith Karnetsky, a special agent in the Long Beach office of NASA's Office of Inspector General, said Mountain advertised the fake samples in newspapers in Phoenix, Los Angeles, Denver and other large cities.

In November, Mountain pleaded guilty to six counts of mail and wire fraud.

Mountain told prospective buyers he had lunar material that was meant to be given by the two astronauts to the Italian president in 1969. But instead, Aldrin gave it to a beautiful Italian protocol official, Mountain told buyers, according to U.S. Attorney Michael Shelby, who prosecuted the case.

Mountain sold his grains of sand in a $150 display case. His victims also got appraisals, verification by government officials and an affidavit by Aldrin, all fake, and a 30-page chemical analysis of lunar materials, Shelby said.

``It was a real scientific analysis of moon rocks. It just wasn't these rocks,'' he said.

When Mountain's victims were told about the scam, they didn't believe it because Mountain had convinced them that the government would try to get the moon rocks back as part of a conspiracy.

``This man spent three years concocting a scheme that basically took what many people consider to be the last pure moment of U.S. history and turned it into dirt, literally, and he did it for personal avarice, for greed,'' Shelby said.