Augusta National Golf Club (Dan Perry / flickr)
Green jackets belonging to golf legends Arnold Palmer and Ben Hogan were among the millions of dollars worth of memorabilia and items a former Augusta National Golf Club employee has admitted to stealing.
Richard Brendan Globensky, 39, faces up to 10 years in federal prison after he pleaded guilty in a Chicago courtroom Wednesday to a charge of transporting and transferring stolen goods in interstate commerce.
Globensky previously worked as a warehouse assistant at Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia — home of the Masters Tournament — where he allegedly stole more than $5 million worth of items over more than a decade.
Federal prosecutors alleged that beginning in 2009, Globensky started stealing “large quantities” of Masters merchandise, including shirts, hats, flags, watches and more. According to his plea agreement, Globensky would load the materials into his truck and transport them from the golf club to an offsite storage facility he maintained in Augusta.
He would then sell these items to an online broker in Florida who specialized in selling and auctioning off Masters memorabilia. According to the plea agreement, he asked that payments he received from that owner be issued to Globensky under his wife’s name.
But beyond taking merchandise available for sale to the public, Globensky also admitted taking “historically significant” items from Augusta, including iconic green jackets — which are awarded to the winner of each year’s Masters Tournament — that belonged to golf legends including Palmer, Hogan and Gene Sarazen.
Globensky also admitted in the plea agreement to taking documents and letters written and signed by famed golf legend Bobby Jones, along with an Augusta National clubhouse trophy, Masters Tournament tickets from the 1930s and a commemorative putter.
According to the plea deal, Globensky sold the stolen merchandise to the online broker for a total of approximately $5.3 million. He also admitted to selling the historical memorabilia to the same broker and another associate for nearly $300,000.
Federal prosecutors said the brokers would then resell the stolen items, often at significant markups. At least one of the stolen items was purchased by a collector in Chicago.
Globensky declined to comment to reporters after the hearing. His attorney, Thomas Church, told reporters the case was being tried in Chicago because some of the stolen goods were recovered in the area. Church declined further comment because of pending investigations.
Getting a ticket to the Masters also gives fans the chance to buy exclusive merchandise that’s not officially sold online. But the green jackets are particularly guarded by the Georgia company that owns Augusta National Golf Club and the Masters golf tournament.
The company sued in 2017 to stop a golf memorabilia company from auctioning off a champion’s green jacket and other items it said were never supposed to leave the club’s grounds.
Augusta National Inc. filed the federal lawsuit against the Florida-based auction company seeking to stop it from selling a champion’s green jacket and two member green jackets, as well as silverware and a belt buckle bearing Augusta National’s map and flag logo.
No one else has been charged in the case, but prosecutors said Globensky is cooperating in the ongoing investigation.
Following his guilty plea, Globensky is scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 29.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.
