PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania (AFP) – The US government can keep 10 rare gold coins seized from the descendants of a Philadelphia jeweler amid allegations that they had been stolen, a federal jury has ruled.
The jury decided Thursday that the government had proven its claim that the coins, valued at $75 million, were removed from the US Mint without permission nearly seven decades ago.
The government contends the 10 coins were stolen because the 1933 Double Eagles, worth $20 when they were minted, were never authorized for circulation.
But lawyers for the descendants of Israel Switt argued that nobody knows exactly how their father came to possess the coins.
Authorities believed they had destroyed nearly all of the 455,000 coins that were minted, as part of the US efforts to go off the gold standard.
But a few of the coins turned up over the years, all of them traced to back to Switt, a Philadelphia jeweler.
In the 1940s, authorities believed that all but one of Switt's coins had been tracked down and destroyed.
What was believed to be the last coin found its way into the collection of Egypt's King Farouk, and was later sold at auction for $7.5 million.
But in 2004, Switt's daughter, Joan Langbord, approached the US Treasury with 10 more of the coins she said were found in her late-father's safe deposit box.
The government seized the coins, saying there was no way the coins could have been legally removed from the Mint's vaults.
Langbord, and her sons David and Roy sued, saying nobody truly knew how the coins left the vault.
Since the government could not prove the coins were stolen, the family had argued their constitutional rights to the property had been violated. Appeals in the case are expected.
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