A six-year 'space crime' saga concludes as Summer Worden admits to falsely accusing astronaut Anne McClain of accessing her bank account from the ISS. Worden pleaded guilty to making false statements to investigators, ending years of speculation. McClain, cleared of any wrongdoing, continues her distinguished NASA career.
A long-running and highly publicised legal saga once promoted as the world’s first “space crime” has reached a definitive conclusion after Summer Heather Worden, the estranged partner of NASA astronaut Anne McClain, pleaded guilty to making false statements to federal investigators. Worden admitted fabricating claims that McClain accessed her bank account from the International Space Station in 2019, an allegation that dominated global headlines and overshadowed McClain’s career for years.
The allegations emerged in 2019 during a bitter separation between the couple. Worden accused McClain of identity theft, saying the astronaut accessed her personal bank account while on a mission aboard the ISS. As investigations began, the claim was widely reported as the first crime ever allegedly committed from space, generating intense public curiosity and media coverage.Federal authorities soon uncovered contradictions in Worden’s account. Investigators established that McClain had been granted access to the bank account years earlier as part of the couple’s shared financial arrangements. There was no...
During a Nov. 18 phone call, Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno's attorney, Donald Day, said he began to represent Marceno around November 2024. More than a year after federal authorities launched ...