The Birdhouse of Osmium: How a Campus Vault Vanished for Months
The Birdhouse of Osmium: How a Campus Vault Vanished for Months
A quiet campus morning revealed a sealed cedar birdhouse containing glass vials labeled "Os" - about 400 grams of osmium worth over $200,000 had been siphoned from a locked university vault over nine months with no alarm, no failed badge swipe, and no inventory discrepancy. How did routine procedures and a single administrator let a climate-controlled repository drain without triggering any safeguard?
In this episode, we follow the sequence of visits, the paperwork that tracked them, and the people whose access made the theft…
The skinny
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