Heritage Farmstead Museum Theft Proves Massive Fraud Not Just a Woe for Big Institutions

Apparently it isn’t just big deal museum directors like Lawrence Small or W. Richard West Jr. who skim a little off the top of the coffers for their own personal benefit. It can happen to both the big and small. Such was the case in this interesting story from the Heritage Farmstead Museum in Plano, Texas, where director Ted Peters wound up swiping more than $150,000 from the museum’s funds. But he won’t be going to jail or having to pay back any of it, as he committed the perfect crime by dying a year before the investigation began to figure out where all that money was disappearing to.