Rare Book Monthly
Articles - January - 2009 Issue
Police Blotter: 284,000 Stolen Books, and a Scholar-Thief
Farhad Hakimzadeh is a native of Iran who fled the country after that nation's revolution. He came to America where the obviously brilliant man obtained degrees from MIT and the Harvard Business School. He then entered the business world, and reportedly has had residences in both Britain and America. He became the Director of the Iran Heritage Foundation, an organization that seeks to preserve Iranian culture. Hakimzadeh has also written books relating to the culture of his native region. He is reported to be a millionaire, perhaps many times over.
With his scholarly background and impeccable credentials, it is no surprise that he gained access to antiquarian texts in his field of study at two great libraries. However, despite his reputation, Hakimzadeh realized that cameras still monitored his every move, so he performed his incisions in dark spots, where the cameras didn't scan. It enabled him to get away with his activities for many years, apparently from 1997 to 2003. Ultimately what did him in was the discovery of missing pages from one of the books he removed. Librarians then looked at the history of who had viewed this particular book, and then looked at other items these people had taken out. What they found was that books removed by Mr. Hakimzadeh were the ones missing pages.
The Chief Inspector from the London Police, Dave Cobb, was quoted as saying, "It is extremely difficult to detect the absence of these pages as Hakimzadeh took care to select material that only an expert would be able to identify." Identification was difficult because some items taken may have been uniquely bound into that particular copy, or some books may have already been missing some pages. This made it difficult for librarians to realize when pages were taken.
Hakimzadeh was originally to have been sentenced on November 21. That date has since been rescheduled to January 16, 2009. While he admitted to taking the 14 items found in his home, the British Library believes far more were taken. The total value could run as high as £1 million ($1.5 million). It will be interesting to see what punishment he receives, as it was the British Library that objected most strenuously to the three-year sentence Smiley received, believing he should have been given the maximum of seven years if not more.
