{"id":25621,"date":"2023-07-04T04:20:06","date_gmt":"2023-07-04T08:20:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=25621"},"modified":"2023-07-04T04:20:06","modified_gmt":"2023-07-04T08:20:06","slug":"us-court-orders-146m-penalty-over-500000-missing-silver-coins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2023\/07\/04\/us-court-orders-146m-penalty-over-500000-missing-silver-coins\/","title":{"rendered":"US court orders $146m penalty over 500,000 missing silver coins"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A US court has ordered two precious metals companies to pay almost $146m (\u00a3115m) after more than 500,000 American Silver Eagle coins went missing.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The firms and their owner Robert Higgins have been accused of running a “fraudulent and deceptive scheme”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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They had allegedly promised to store the coins for customers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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However, when investigators entered vaults that were meant to hold the coins, they were nowhere to be found.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Under the court settlement, precious metals dealer Argent Asset Group and First State Depository Company, which were both owned by Mr Higgins, were ordered to make restitutions of $112.7m and pay a penalty of $33m.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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US financial watchdog\u00a0the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)<\/a>\u00a0said Mr Higgins’ companies ran “fraudulent silver leasing programmes” from 2014 to 2022.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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These were known as the Maximus Program and the Silver Lease Program.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Through the schemes, the companies “solicited and misappropriated at least $7 million in funds and silver from at least 200 customers,” the regulator said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The firms also made “false and misleading excuses for why assets could not be withdrawn”, according to the CFTC.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The regulator said that over 500,000 American Silver Eagle coins and more than 9,000 gold coins were missing from customers’ accounts.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In their place, investigators said that they found “‘IOU’ slips in empty boxes marked to indicate a customer’s account, yet containing no assets.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“This kind of egregious behaviour merits the full weight of the Commission’s enforcement authority,” the CFTC added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Mr Higgins did not immediately respond to a request from the BBC for comment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The weight and purity of American Silver Eagle coins are guaranteed by the US government.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Each coin contains at least one troy ounce (31.1g) of 99.9% pure silver,\u00a0according to the United States Mint<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A US court has ordered two precious metals companies to pay almost $146m (\u00a3115m) after more than 500,000 American Silver Eagle coins went missing. The firms and their owner Robert Higgins have been accused of […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25622,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[109,2,3],"tags":[9571,9568,9078,305,2351,9569,9570,9567],"class_list":{"0":"post-25621","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headline","8":"category-news","9":"category-usa","10":"tag-american-silver-eagle-coins","11":"tag-cftc","12":"tag-commodity-futures-trading-commission","13":"tag-fraud","14":"tag-gold-coins","15":"tag-maximus-program","16":"tag-silver-lease-program","17":"tag-united-states-mint","18":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25621"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25621\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25624,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25621\/revisions\/25624"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}