Hogue was sent to Cedar Junction prison in Walpole, Mass. Officials at the facility said yesterday that he is no longer being held there.

Hogue is now believed to be serving a five-year sentence in New Jersey on a warrant for leaving Utah under a false alias, according to reports in The Daily Princetonian and The Peninsula Times-Tribune last year.

Upgrading Security

Harvard museum officials now claim that a case similar to the Hogue heist could not happen again.

Frances A. Beane, deputy director for finance and administration in the University art museums, said yesterday that Hogue's thefts barely outpaced improvements to Harvard's security in the museums.

"When [the Hogue thefts] happened, we were in the process of upgrading the entire security system," Beane said.

In recent months, the University has used a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to improve security. A crime similar to Hogue's now cannot occur, Beane said.

While some employees know how the museums' security systems work, workers are not allowed to go into a room or gallery without a fellow employee in tow, Beane said.

"It would be impossible for a security person to take something out of the gallery," Beane said.

Still, the art museums continue to hire employees without doing background checks. "We do not have a process for doing security checks for all our staffs," Beane said.

James Cuno, the Cabot director of the University art museums, said the extent of the background checks on employees depends on the responsibilities given to each individual.

"It differs according to the position the person has, how close to sensitive materials they are," he said. "Secondly, if they are security staff there is a different kind of background check than if they are curatorial staff."

An Inside Job

Still, a smart employee with knowledge of an internal security system can foil even the most sophisticated surveillance, police said.

That, at least, is what happened in the Womack case, according to police.