From Times Online:

A book dealer from Co Durham has denied theft of a Shakespeare First Folio stolen from Durham University in 1998. Raymond Scott, 53, claims that he found the 1623 book — worth up to £15 million and one of only 228 copies known — in a nightclub in Havana, Cuba.

Mr Scott, of Manor Grange, Wingate, County Durham, claimed he came across the book while visiting his fiancée Heidy Rios, a 21-year-old dancer at Havana’s Tropicana Club.

He was arrested after taking the book to the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC to have it “verified”, and staff became concerned that it was the same First Folio stolen from Durham University Library in 1998.

The book, which is believed to be worth up to £15 million, has been described as one of the most important printed works in the English language…

Way to go, Folger….

I’d love to have been there to see the whole thing unfold…

Imagine the incredulous face of the librarian as it slowly dawns on her… The way she glances up at Scott and then gingerly walks out of the room with the thing, her fingers trembling. Mr Scott would you mind waiting here a moment…

Then, with her whole body shaking, alerting her colleagues who confirm its authenticity… Then rapid whispering: Whadda we do?… Whadda we do?… Call the FBI, dammit… Then giving the guy tea (Folger has a high tea) and chatting him up while the FBI gets there…

A Folger librarian describes the British dealer in stolen goods who showed up at the Shakespeare library in Washington in 2008 with a First Folio and asked that the staff authenticate it.

The startled staff instead called the FBI and — as Raymond Scott settles in to his prison cell – the rest is silence.

Background here.

Raymond Scott is a British book dealer. One night, about ten years ago, he was in Cuba visiting his girlfriend, a dancer at Havana’s Tropicana Club, when his eye fell upon a 1623 Shakespeare First Folio just sitting there at the bar.

O brave new world,
That has such manuscripts in’t!

He grabbed it, hid it in his house in County Durham, and then, last year, flew to Washington’s Folger Library and asked the staff to verify its authenticity.

The staff had him arrested, and now his trial in England begins.

He says it’s all a conspiracy. “[E]xperts desperate to recover the stolen Durham University folio had conspired against him.”

UD is unclear what he means. As the trial progresses, perhaps the basis of his defense will become clearer.