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Posted on 07/07/2011 5:00:53 PM PDT by Orange1998
A jeweler's heirs are fighting the United States government for the right to keep a batch of rare and valuable "Double Eagle" $20 coins that date back to the Franklin Roosevelt administration. It's just the latest coin controversy to make headlines.
Philadelphian Joan Langbord and her sons say they found the 10 coins in 2003 in a bank deposit box kept by Langbord's father, Israel Switt, a jeweler who died in 1990. But when they tried to have the haul authenticated by the U.S. Treasury, the feds, um, flipped.
They said the coins were stolen from the U.S. Mint back in 1933, and are the government's property. The Treasury Department seized the coins, and locked them away at Fort Knox. The court battle is set to kick off this week.
The rare coins (pictured), first struck in 1850, show a flying eagle on one side and a figure representing liberty on the other. One such coin recently sold at auction for $7.6 million, meaning the Langbords' trove could be worth as much as $80 million.
The coins are part of a batch that were struck but then melted down after President Roosevelt took the country off the gold standard in 1933, during the Great Depression. Two were given to the Smithsonian Institution*, but a few more mysteriously escaped.
The government has long believed that Switt schemed with a corrupt cashier at the Mint to swipe the coins. They note that the deposit box in which the coins were found was rented six years after Switt's death, and that the family never paid inheritance tax on the coins.
A lawyer for the Langbords counters that the coins could have left the Mint legally since it was permissible to swap gold coins for gold bullion.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
They can now go to court.
In the meantime OTHER Administrative Due Process is moving forward regarding unpaid income estate taxes.
You have to differentiate between "Administrative" and "Judicial" processes. They are different ~ as befits our divided system of government ~ so Treasury did it's trick and the Courts will do their trick, and eventually these people will be beggared or given the coins.
Unless Treasury can make a criminal case here, or fraud, the taxes are no longer payable, so it's possible Treasury has somebody tasked with working up a criminal case. In which case the original taxes (plus some interest and penalties) are still due.
The answer is THEY SHOULD HAVE KEPT THEIR MOUTHS SHUT.
They’ll rat out in a NY sec.
Inheritance taxes? The government confiscated exactly $200 in legal tender. How much inheritance tax can there possibly be on $200?
I’ve read about this story off and on over the years, and the Government has always been quite aggressive about going after these particular coins. Long, convoluted and fascinating story...
He is thinking to much into it. Just claim them.
Who says that Uncle Sam won’t turn around and put them on the numismatic market if it wins custody of the coins?
Not sure about that. For it to be stolen “this particular coin” has to be reported. If not reported, no one is alive to say otherwise. Many years past since, I will go with the possession law. Its the only logical answer. Unless the govt can claim anything and everything ever owned by a citizen.
A rich man found a way to take his gold with him when he died. When he got to the pearly gates, Jesus asked him why he valued pavement so much as to bring it with him?
Can you imagine a place, where gold is so common that it's used as walking pavement? Obviously, the moral of the story is that things we place high value on here on Earth, aren't so valuable in Heaven. What we should place value on is things which God values, like other human beings.
Now, having said all of that, I would be pissed off if the government just took something of mine without proving that I had stolen it.
Reid v. Covert, 354 U.S. 1 (1957), is a landmark case in which the United States Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution supersedes international treaties ratified by the United States Senate. According to the decision, "this Court has regularly and uniformly recognized the supremacy of the Constitution over a treaty," although the case itself was with regard to an executive agreement and the treaty has never been ruled unconstitutional.
Medellín v. Texas, 552 U.S. 491 (2008) is a United States Supreme Court decision which held that while an international treaty may constitute an international commitment, it is not binding domestic law unless Congress has enacted statutes implementing it or unless the treaty itself is "self-executing"; that decisions of the International Court of Justice are not binding domestic law; and that, absent an act of Congress or Constitutional authority, the President of the United States lacks the power to enforce international treaties or decisions of the International Court of Justice.
I agree, the IRS is the top criminal organization on the planet!
The very idea of property and excise taxes is that you don't actually own anything but have to pay the government an annual rent for the right to use it. Even though you have purchased the property, maintain the property, Insure the property, and have ownership documentation issued by the same government that demands that rent.
I have long thought that someone should write an account of all the abuses the IRS has caused. However, it would have to be published outside the US and be written by someone that had never set foot on US soil because as soon as the first book was sold they would have a great big target painted on them.
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