"The NASA employees, who are being prepared at the Gagarin astronaut training center and living at Zvyozdny Gorodok (Star City) in cottages for foreign specialists, noticed three computer notebooks and a personal pocket computer missing on the morning of October 16, 2006," a prosecution spokesman said Saturday.
He said the Americans discovered one of the cottage's windows open and the mosquito screen torn. They later reported that the theft had not been the first, with alcohol, electronic equipment and an American flag having earlier been stolen from a neighboring cottage.
Investigators were able to trace the three sixteen-year-old residents of the town of Shyolkovo-4 when NASA was able to provide Russian police with the date, time and place one of the stolen computers was used to access the Internet.
Backtracking on the basis of that information, investigators were able to identify the thieves, locate the computers, and return them to NASA representatives in Russia.
A court spokesman said the three were given suspended sentences in consideration of their age, and because they publicly repented of their crimes and apologized to their victims.
