Guard Pleads Guilty To Stealing Coins From US Mint In Philadelphia
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - Sentencing has been set for later this year for a one-time police officer at the US Mint in Philadelphia who has admitted to taking hundreds of coins manufactured there.
William Gray, 64, of North Wildwood, NJ, spent almost 15 years at the mint, but during the last four he started taking home some presidential dollar coins.
Not just any dollar coins, mind you, but coins that had been through only a portion of the full manufacturing process and would therefore become quite valuable in the coin collecting world as "errors."
The US attorney in New Jersey notes that Gray took about a thousand of those incomplete coins and shipped them off to a dealer in California, who then paid him a total of $2.4 million over that time -- money that went directly into Gray's credit union account.
Gray also failed to report the income to the IRS.
Put that all together and Gray is now facing up to 15 years in prison and fines that could go to a half-million dollars.
The US attorney says the mint has instituted procedures to improve security at all of its facilities.
Reported by David Madden, KYW Newsradio, 1060
The stolen coins never hit the open market and were recovered.
