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Millionaire Iranian businessman and scholar Farhad Hakimzadeh spent almost a decade stealing priceless history pages from the British Library and the Bodleian Library in Oxford. Between 1997 and 2005, Hakimzadeh, who was the chief executive of the Iran Heritage Foundation, would cut pages to replace damaged or missing leaves in his personal collection.

Having cut up to 150 rare books and incurred a damage of over one million pounds (approx $1.28 million), he was only caught when another library user noticed a page missing. Hakimzadeh pleaded guilty to 14 counts of theft when a Scotland Yard investigation found some of the missing pages in his flat.

Earlier this year, Gurugram millionaire UdayRatra was caught on camera walking out of the National Museum in Delhi with a precious replica of the ancient Olduvai Handaxe. When the police landed at his doorstep, he allegedly asked his pack of dogs to attack them, but was eventually arrested. The Olduvai Handaxe is said to be the first great invention of mankind about 1.5 million years ago.

United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz made headlines this year when he stole ‘sand’ from a public beach to shore up his beachfront home. According to reports, the sand was illegally excavated and moved to the front of Munoz’s $6.8 million home and the homes of three of his neighbours to replace the protective dunes that had been wiped out by hurricanes.

Munoz was fined $24,000 for violating Florida environmental statutes. His neighbours — CEO and president of Web.com David Brown, managing director for UBS Financial Chris Aitken and a woman named Margaret Connolly — faced similar fines.

In 2016, multi-millionaire CEO and founder of Moji, Oliver Camilo, was arrested for stealing an $800 camera on a flight. A child witnessed the theft and alerted the victim. When the victim approached Camilo, he claimed that he had given it to the stewardess believing it to be lost property.

When the stewardess denied receiving any item, the LA police confronted Camilo and arrested him. Camilo claims he didn’t return the camera because he was shocked by how aggressive the victim’s friends were.

Earlier this year, billionaire Lui Ruopeng, who invented the jet-powered surfboard, was accused of stealing the prototype for an invisibility cloak from Dr David Smith, a Duke University professor he studied under. While Ruopeng was pursuing his PhD, Smith was working on a prototype for the US military to make objects invisible to microwave signals.

When an exact replica of the prototype showed up in Ruopeng’s former lab after he graduated, the FBI opened an investigation into intellectual property theft but abandoned it due to shortage of evidence.

A viral video clip in 2011 outed former Czech Republic president Vaclav Klaus as a notorious kleptomaniac. Shot during a press conference with Chilean president Sebastián Piñera, Klaus can be seen discretely pocketing a ceremonial pen encrusted with Chilean lapis lazuli stones.

When questioned, Klaus admitted that he picks up items like these all the time, be it a pen from a NATO summit or a notepad from the Latvian parliament. “It is what people do regularly. They keep notepads and pens from such events.”