Two men have been sentenced for stealing a Key West museum’s 17th-century gold bar.
During Monday’s federal court hearing, Richard Steven Johnson of Rio Linda, California, was sentenced to five years and three months in prison, while accomplice Jarred Alexander Goldman of Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, received three years and four months. They were both convicted of theft this past spring.
Johnson and Goldman were ordered to share in paying restitution of $570,195 that includes the 74.85-ounce gold bar’s $556,000 value. It was discovered in 1980 on a 1622 Spanish galleon shipwreck site off the Florida Keys. It disappeared from the Mel Fisher Maritime Museum in 2010.
Only a fragment was recovered by authorities.
Johnson and Goldman had each faced up to 15 years for conspiracy and theft of a major artwork.
