PHILADELPHIA, Sept. 28 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Office of U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania has filed a civil forfeiture complaint against 10 1933 Double Eagle gold pieces, consistent with U.S. District Court Judge Legrome D. Davis' order dated July 28, 2009. The pieces were surrendered to the U.S. Mint by the descendants of Israel Switt. In addition to forfeiture of the 1933 Double Eagles, the government asks the court to declare that, with the exception of a single 1933 Double Eagle monetized and auctioned for more than $7.5 million in 2002, all other 1933 Double Eagles are the lawful property of the United States government.

As detailed in the complaint, the 1933 Double Eagles are $20 gold pieces that were manufactured by the U.S. Mint in 1933, but never released to the general public, because President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had issued Executive Orders, later incorporated by Congress into statutes, taking the United States off the gold standard, and requiring all persons to redeem their gold coins for paper currency or non gold coin. The U.S. Mint was prohibited from releasing any gold. Nevertheless a number of illegally concealed 1933 Double Eagles gold pieces have surfaced in the course of the past 70 years.

The U.S. Secret Service has investigated this matter since the government first became aware of a 1933 Double Eagle being put up for public auction in 1944, and the United States has recovered every such piece that it was able to locate. All of the recovered pieces were traced back through the Secret Service investigation to Israel Switt, a former Philadelphia jeweler, now deceased, who was arrested for unlawfully possessing gold coins in 1934. Switt was interviewed by the Secret Service about the 1933 Double Eagles multiple times before his death in 1990. He claimed that he had no more. However, in 2004, his descendants reported finding 10 of the contraband pieces in a safe deposit box that they had opened years before with items transferred from, but never probated through, Switt's wife's estate.

The United States, through this complaint, seeks to establish once and for all that these 1933 Double Eagles are and always have been the property of the United States.

SOURCE U.S. Department of Justice

RELATED LINKS
http://www.USDOJ.gov