Posted on 09/08/2012 11:35:22 PM PDT by grundle
A judge has ruled that ten rare gold coins worth roughly $80 million belong to the U.S. government, not the family that possessed them, according to ABC News.
In 2003 Joan Langbord and two other family members opened a safety deposit box that belonged to Langbord’s father, Philadelphia coin dealer Israel Switt, and found the valuable collection. When they asked the Philadelphia Mint to authenticate the find, the coins were apparently seized without compensation and taken to Fort Knox.
The 1933 Saint-Gaudens double eagle is “one of the most sought-after rarities in history,” according to Courthouse News. Originally valued at $20 each, one owned by King Farouk of Egypt reportedly sold for as much as $7.5 million at a Sotheby’s auction in 2002.
The Langbords unsuccessfully sued the government in 2011, alleging that the coins are rightfully theirs, and now they have lost the appeal.
Jacqueline Romero, assistant U.S. attorney in Philadelphia, explained that the coins legally belonged to the government after Franklin Delano Roosevelt ordered citizens to exchange their gold for cash in an effort to keep the banks afloat during the Great Depression.
“Those coins were all in a vault and were supposed to be melted,” she asserted.
The family maintains that in another seizure of the valuable coin, the government split the proceeds with the original owner after it sold for $7.59 million in 2002, and that the coins escaped the Mint legitimately through a “window of opportunity” between March 15 and April 5, 1933, the Huffington Post relates.
However, U.S. District Judge Legrome Davis Jr. wrote in his decision: “The Mint meticulously tracked the ‘33 Double Eagles, and the records show that no such transaction occurred…What’s more, this absence of a paper trail speaks to criminal intent. If whoever took or exchanged the coins thought he was doing no wrong, we would expect to see some sort of documentation reflecting the transaction, especially considering how carefully and methodically the Mint accounted for the ‘33 Double Eagles.”
“Nobody witnessed the disappearance of the 10 coins, but the jury could – and did – properly infer criminal intent,” Davis added.
Barry Berke, the family’s attorney, concluded for ABCNews.com: “This is a case that raises many novel legal questions, including the limits on the government’s power to confiscate property.”
That’s not quite the full story.
Cermak, known by the sobriquet “Ten-Percent Tony” was putting the squeeze on the Chicago mob. The mob’s then-leader Frank Nitti decided it was time for the greedy Cermak to go.
Funny thing about Zangara....he had plenty of mob contacts and friends both in the US and the old country. Its come out that Zangara actually may have worked for Albert Anastasia’s and Lepke Buchalter’s “Murder Inc.”, an arm of the national syndicate someone like Nitti might turn to instead of using his own people.
The whole crazy act, (long questioned by psychiatrists), and the tinfoil-hat story about wanting to kill Roosevelt was an act. He went to the chair like many of the Murder, Inc. gunmen did....silently. In those days Omerta meant something, I guess.
Oh, and Zangara’s family never wanted for anything for the rest of their lives, either.....if you know what I mean.
agree 110%!
PS, If I’m not mistaken, the shooting occurred in Florida, not Chicago.
The thief worked for the mint...
Goldbug ping.
Some lessons can be learned here. Very rare and unique items will always raise red flags with IRS, because their origin can be determined. It is better to purchase expensive but more common stores of value, ie common gold coins, expensive but not one of a kind stamps,paintings, antiques etc. That way, when passing them on to your inheritors, they are easier to sell without arousing attention. Use cash, in person, when buying these items so as to avoid a paper trail. You can get a safe or use a non-bank safe deposit box. Of course, you can’t insure these items because that would leave a paper trail.
Not having insurance, no will, and not putting these items in a safe deposit box does have its downsides. But you have to ask yourself are you and your inheritors more likely to be ripped off by a common criminal or by the government criminals?
The TSA has been hassling folks travelling with coins from time to time. I remember seeing some Alex Jones video of a guy hassled in Las Vegas for having some silver dollars that he was going to cash in. In this case, if a TSA dude did detain ths guy, and found out the high value, the coin would be confiscated by customs.
Government steals the entire constitutional money system, it’s OK. People come into 10 “unmonetized” gold coins questionably, not OK.
Got it...
two wrongs don’t make a right, neither does it matter that the amount stollen is trivial (even by 1933 standards) A Wal-Mart employee taking a $0.25 pack of gum off the rack is just as much a theif as the employee taking a 60 inch LCD TV off the loading dock.
Thanks..
I wasn`t holding Zangara up with any sense of idealism.. just a matter of the different turn this country would`ve made had his aim been true.
I didn’t say anything about the first part.
Whoever you want to say the coins belong to, one thing is certain for me, they do not belong to the people who “found” them.
If you want to say they belong to the original people they were taken from, okay by me. If they can be found, give the coins to that family.
The people that sent them in were the heirs to the man that obtained them from the mint, most likely in a pre-release exchange which the mints did all the time for employees and friends of same. That the coins weren’t subsequently “monetized” (for whatever that term is worth amist the construct of the illegal destruction of the currency system at the time) is merely a fluke of history.
What is going to happen now is that they will either A) be used as a fantasy value backing for the emission of something on the line of 7 or so billion dollars of fiat currency, or B) end up in the hands of special crony collectors within the Federal Reserve, or Government...
Fascinating history! How did Farouk acquire his specimen?
Well, I don’t know where we go from here. Perhaps new information will come out that will tell us the truth about how the coins were obtained by Switt?
I think a display in the Smithsonian would be good. They are great examples of the old coinmaking art.
Export licensed gift from our government.
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