West Chester man gets 65 years in prison for ‘largest’ gold and silver depository theft in U.S. history

WILMINGTON — Robert Leroy Higgins, 69, the West Chester gold and silver dealer found guilty by a federal jury of fraud and tax evasion last fall, was sentenced Tuesday to 65 years in prison by U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika.

The judge also ordered Higgins to pay $76.5 million in restitution for the precious metals he stole from about 1,000 customers of his defunct Wilmington depository in what prosecutors called “the largest theft from a precious metals depository in the history of the United States.”

It is a long sentence for white-collar fraud. But “the scope and brazenness of these crimes is shocking,” the judge told Higgins, minutes after he insisted he had a plan that could have helped get the missing metals back, if only he had not been in federal prison in Philadelphia since his conviction in October.

“Over many years, you lied, over and over and over,” depleting mostly elderly savers’ retirement funds while “you were living a lavish lifestyle with their money,” Noreika told Higgins.

After former employees, investors, and two of his children testified at trial detailing his thefts and cover-ups, Higgins spoke, “without any acknowledgment or feeling of your role,” the judge said.

In pleading for leniency, Higgins sought to discredit the court-appointed receiver, lawyer Kelly Crawford, and the accountants and other professionals whose testimony documented his lies and his clients’ losses. “There are people who would kill” to collect those professional fees, he told the judge.

Higgins insisted “there are other ways,” which he did not detail, of getting back the missing metal. He said he hoped to appeal and to sue the agencies who helped put him in prison. “My hope and belief is that I’ll be free” of these “false allegations,” he added.

Investors are unlikely to get more than pennies for every dollar lost, Alexander P. Ibrahim, assistant U.S. attorney, told Noreika in urging the judge to give Higgins the maximum sentence.

Ibrahim said Higgins spent customers’ money on tropical family vacations, armored vehicles, and his daughter’s private school education, and lied to customers, investigators, and the court.

Federal agents found 44 ounces of gold coins, some of the same types that went missing from his vaults, in a 2023 raid on his million-dollar house near West Chester, but most of the missing metal has vanished and is untraceable, prosecutors said.

The losses were priced for restitution as of Oct. 4, 2022. That’s when Higgins’ First State Depository and related businesses, its vaults, and the framed picture of Russian leader Vladimir Putin near his office desk were seized by federal agents and turned over to the receiver. That followed a civil complaint by the Commodities Futures Trading Commission. In 2023 CFTC won a court order that Higgins pay back investors, plus penalties.

The restitution figure understates the loss in today’s prices: The value of the missing gold and silver has roughly doubled since the business was seized, to around $3400 and $37 an ounce, respectively.

The losses date from at least 2012 to the company’s shutdown in 2022, according to prosecutors. In 2012, one of Higgins’ earlier clients won a $9 million judgment from Delaware’s Chancery Court for failing to pay money he owed. “To any but the most hardened fraudster,” that ought to have changed his behavior, prosecutors wrote in a presentencing memo.

Instead, Higgins followed the court order with years of stealing from his clients’ accounts, using some of their assets to cover his thefts, prosecutors concluded.

More than 90 of Higgins’ investors filed victim impact statements, Noreika noted. One woman said she had been reduced to living in her truck. A man lost his daughters’ college funds. Another man, 80, was working in a deli to support his wife and himself. Others found the losses annoying and embarrassing, though they had not depended on the precious metals for their main retirement income.

The prosecutors’ presentencing memo called Higgins’ fraud “the largest theft from a precious metals depository in the history of the United States,” and said he was motivated by the desire “to be the biggest name in the industry and flaunt his luxury vacations on Facebook.”

Higgins would invite potential investors to his vault in Wilmington, surrounded by barbed wire and a security gate, as a way to gain their confidence.

Many of the investors who gave Higgins their money to buy gold and silver were lured by pitchmen who argued that precious metals were a safe retirement investment.

But to take advantage of federal tax exemptions for retirement savings, the investors were required to store it away from home.

First State Depository was one of several businesses in Delaware, which imposes no retail sales tax, that maintain their own vaults for precious metals.

Delaware state officials say they have no jurisdiction under state law for auditing or requiring detailed reports from independent depositories such as Higgins’ First State Depository.

Retirement custodians such as New Direction Trust Co., based in Louisville, Colo., and South Dakota-based NuView Trust Co., which operate in multiple states, listed Higgins’ companies among the places investors should consider sending their money. Both declined to take responsibility for the ensuing losses.