In December 2011, a beautifully-illuminated, 300-year-old German bible was among items lost in a truck theft. Though the thieves were caught, they had already gotten rid of it. It took a year of detective work to track it down. Holly Zachariah of The Columbus Dispatch:
A few weeks ago, one of Shier’s cousins saw a notation about an old German Bible on the website ancestry.com. It described the book in detail. She called Shier, and he called the Union County sheriff’s office. Sheriff’s detectives enlisted the help of Goodwill, which had sold the Bible online, and tracked it first to Louisiana and then to Georgia. But the couple who had bought it wouldn’t send it back without the $405 they had paid for it.
Seems odd that the buyer was allowed to keep (and ransom) stolen goods.