The one person who may have known how 10 gold coins, minted in 1933 and worth millions of dollars, ended up in the hands of Philadelphia jeweler Israel Switt took the witness stand in federal court Tuesday - and said she had no idea.
That means a jury will have to rely on thick binders of Philadelphia Mint records from the 1930s and 1940s to determine if the rare $20 gold pieces were stolen, as the government insists, or are legitimately the property of Switt's descendants.
Switt's daughter, Joan Langbord, 81, said "I have no idea" about how her father had obtained the Double Eagle coins. A 1933 Double Eagle was sold in 2004 for $7.5 million, a record for any coin.
Government attorneys say there was no legal way that any of the coins could have been obtained from the mint. "Israel Switt and some of his friends stole 1933 Double Eagles from the Philadelphia Mint," Assistant U.S. Attorney Jacqueline Romero said during closing arguments Tuesday.
The case is expected to go to the U.S. District Court jury Wednesday.
The mint never legally issued 1933 Double Eagles, and all 445,471 were accounted for in its records, Romero said. In 1937, all the coins were supposed to have been melted down for bullion. But at least 21 have surfaced, and all can be traced back to Switt, who Romero said had got them from a corrupt mint official. Switt died in 1990. Langbord family attorney Barry H. Berke argued that the coins could have been legally obtained from the mint during a "window of opportunity" in March and April 1933, and that the government had not proved otherwise. "If the coins could have gone out, they have no case," Berke said.
U.S. Treasury officials want the jury to declare the coins forfeit to the government as stolen property, so government attorneys have to show that the "preponderance of evidence" proves theft.
Langbord said she discovered the coins in 2003 during one of her periodic visits to a safe-deposit box containing jewelry inherited from her mother. She reached down to the bottom of the large steel case and saw an old John Wanamaker bag, she said. Turning back the paper, she saw a gold coin with the distinctive design of the 1933 Double Eagle.
Because she had inherited the box, Langbord said, she had not previously fully searched it, and only occasionally opened it to remove a piece of her mother's jewelry, uniquely styled and sought after by a customer, for sale at I. Switt, the Jewelers Row store founded by her father.
