A member on an anti-fraud site came home to find over $50K in coins stolen: This is a rant, bear with me. And the stupid part is at least part me. Friday when I came home I found my house (the well armed bunker complex) was broken into. The stole 2 televisions, a box of coins and a quilt. The quilt was one I had given my mother shortly before she died, it means more to me than anything else taken. When I was divorced it got taken mistakenly by my ex wife, and though she had no actual malice, getting it back took 4 years and I only just recently did get it back, it was setting on the kitchen table only because the night before my girlfriend and I were looking at it to choose paint colors for a remodeling in progress, I'm sure they used it to wrap one of the TVs which makes it just stupid. The TVs are nice ones, but both insured and in the grand scheme of things unimportant. If they had just taken the coins, it may have been months before I even noticed they were gone. Taking the TVs was stupid, because the box of coins (1907-1932 $20 Gold pieces) were worth over $50K. And also one 1907 $5 gold piece, which my great grandfather went and got when FDR called in the gold in 1933. It was the one that got me interested in them and again, it means more to me than all the rest of them. And my sister has told me for years it was stupid to keep stuff like that in the house.... Of course, the really stupid thing is that I have (had, we put it in a safe deposit box Saturday) a 200 oz gold bar that was literally in my sock drawer, but they didn't find that. Anyone have experience in helping law enforcement locate thefts like this? What are the odds the fellow will recover his losses? Do the smart thieves just deface semi-numismatic items and send them to a refiner?
You want to Post all info about Location / Coins. Ways for us to identify if we do see.. Watch EBAY and Other Auction Sites.. They were not Pros.. They would have found the Bar. Pictures.. Grades? Anything?
Here's the original thread: http://www.quatloos.com/Q-Forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=5301 I doubt he's a b.s.'r. The site is literally swarming with Gmen, IRS agents, lawyers, private detectives, etc.. He has survived long enough to be free of trying to pull a b.s. stunt--they would be after him like a pack of wolves if he were lying.
" The site is literally swarming with Gmen, IRS agents, lawyers, private detectives" Where do you see that.. The Screen names sound like "Trekies" Not that that is Bad..
I started coin collecting many, many years ago as a kid. I had (at the time) a decent little collection. I was really getting into it, and had no clue what was involved in coin collecting. I thought the object of the game was to just find a decent one and seal it with my thumbprint into a Whitman. At one point, I remember finding a Lincoln that was about half off-center and thinking "Yuk!, I don't want this in my collection", and couldn't spend it fast enough. Anyway, we went on vacation one week and when we got back we had been robbed, and you guessed it, my coins were gone. That really took the wind out of my sail and I just didn't have the heart to start over. NONE of ANY of our belongings were recovered, much less the coins. It was always in the back of my mind and just recently I have decided to take it back up. There is so much more to collecting than I thought.
Well, yes "Quatloos" comes from the relevant Star Trek episode. But the site is dedicated to exposing various tax fraud schemes. Now with the big promoters like Lynne Meredith, Hendrickson, Irwin Schiff and the offshore banking nailed to the wall, things have gotten a little boring on a formerly lively site. You will see the relevant law enforcement people visiting there for info on active cases and other curiosity seekers. Who ever knows who is behind the screen name, eh? It could be one of millions of people on planet earth or maybe an ET or:rolling: Martian?
Owle, I would be careful to announce what the thieves "could have" gotten, as these dirtbags probably have no idea what the value of the gold is, and will probably come to sites like this to try and find out. And if they come across this post, you're divulging a lot of sensitive information that could put you, your family and home in serious jeopardy by desperate thieves looking for a high dollar target. -LTB
Oh sorry Owle, I just realized you were reporting another person's story. But the same goes for him, he's even announcing specifics regarding his geographic location; what's the matter with this guy? He's putting out a calling card to all bored and would-be thieves and prompting them all to go on a "treasure hunt" for this guys house. -LTB
Seriously, I had a relative have some silverware stolen a while back and he told me that it took the police a relatively short period of time to close in on who they thought stole the silver. This was in a small town though so that was advantageous for the police. You'd be amazed what a trained police dog can find out simply with a superior sense of smell. They did say that one of the disadvantages to a high silver and/or gold values was that the thiefs would probably just get the silverware melted down and made pretty much untraceable. The real lesson in this was that they still haven't been able to make an arrest. let's just say that fingerprints and DNA aren't an overnight order. It can take up to six months depending on the severity of the crime. As a result the police can't close the case yet.
I own a summer place in upstate NY. Years ago we moved a lot of our excess stuff up there, you know, old furniture and the like. The more to make the place feel habitable. Along with all of that stuff was a wooden box that contained some old coins that I'd gathered as a young lad. Mostly old Lincolns and Jeff's in the form of rolls, along with a lot of mercury dimes. I really never thought very much about those coins, After all, they were just excess. Stuff that I collected as a kid and was just relocating to a spot where, as a collector, I could look at them in leisure on a warm summers night. I never gave that stuff a second thought....till the place was broken into. The contents of that box were stolen. Never to be returned. The local cops were sympathetic, but in the end nothing was recovered. I miss those coins. They were gathered when I was very young and before I re-discovered coin collecting. I'll never know what those rolls contained. I kick myself for being so stupid as to place a "collection" in harms way. Stupidity in classifying a box of "old" coins as excess. I'm still payin' that one off.
It's hard to believe with all the smart people here that he was the only one who stores 200 oz gold bars in his sock drawer :rolling: Not surprisingly, the same guy also likes to leave his BMW parked in Watts with the keys in the ignition overnight and leaves a sign on his open front door proclaiming he'll be out of town for a week. The guy's a victim of his own stupidity. Guy~
Over the course of my life my home has been broken into 3 times. All 3 times the police could not catch the guys or figure it out. So I did. In all 3 cases I found the thieves myself. Longest it took was a week, shortest was 1 day. Found one guy 1200 miles away - took me 3 days. In 2 of the cases, I dealt with it. In the 3rd, I set up a sting with the police involved and had him arrested. Should have dealt with that one myself as well - he was out the same day. In all 3 cases, I recovered my property.
