Kaleun96

I believe "incorrect" can be synonymous for "false". I've also described it as "false" multiple times. 🤨No, and I haven't said anything like that. I'm not sure where you got that from. This entire time I've been arguing that Beale knew the provenance was false as is stated in the affidavit. I think you've misread my posts in my attempt to explain the affidavit in plain language for sand and AmazedAncient. It's difficult to say where you got that impression from though since you don't quote me except for saying "incorrect" instead of false. I only said Beale published the provenance before Informant #2 told him it was false.

You are very mistaken, it is the same informant mentioned throughout this paragraph. The Special Agent has precisely numbered each informant throughout the affidavit. He would number the other informant if they were introduced in this sentence and he would also capitalise "informant" because it would then be a proper noun referring to a specific person, rather than just a noun. Since it is the same informant which is the subject throughout, he has left "informant" lowercase in that instance. "According to Informant #2, when the informant [i.e. Informant #2] told Vecchi and the defendant that the provenance was false, Vecchi and the defendant offered 100,00 Swiss francs for Informant #2 to sign provenance documents, which Informant #2 refused to sign". You are really bending over backwards to find some excuse for Beale when the language of the paragraph is quite clear.

Then why did he try to pay Informant #2 to attest to the provenance after the informant had told Beale that the provenance was incorrect?

Ok let's run with that theory according to the facts as stated in the affidavit. Informant #2 is Provenance Person 1 in your example, and Owner 1 is Baron Dominique de Chambrier. Mr Beale and Roma Numismatics publish the auction catalogue with the provenance of Owner 1 Provenance Person 1, aka Informant #2, emails Roma/Beale and says that the provenance is false. Mr Beale and Mr Vecchi then offer Provenance Person 1 a sum of 100,000 Swiss francs to sign a document attesting to the provenance that Provenance Person 1 has already said is false Why would Beale only offer to pay for this supposed proof of provenance, which Provenance Person 1 supposedly has, after publishing the auction catalogue stating such provenance? After Provenance Person 1 tells Beale and Vecchi that the provenance is false, why would Beale/Vecchi then pay for some proof or original document from Provenance Person 1 that actually says the provenance is not false. If Provenance Person 1 has already said it is false, they of course don't have a document they're trying to sell that says something to the contrary. Both you and AmazedAncient are bending over backwards to create hypothetical situations that are not compatible with the facts as attested to by the HSI Special Agent. I think the key thing you're both forgetting is that the person who was offered the money for the provenance is also the informant. It is of course nonsensical to think the Beale/Vecchi were trying to pay Informant #2 for legitimate proof of a provenance that the informant has already said is false.

If you believe this to be the case, you also must believe the following: 1. This is the only time Mr. Beale has paid for provenance research ("this was the first and only time that the defendant had ever paid for provenance"). 2. Even though it was the only time he ever needed to pay for provenance research, he was offering 100,000 Swiss francs for such research 3. The person he paid for the research said it was false! 4. Mr. Beale decided to go ahead and use the provenance that their research guy said was false anyway. Does that really seem likely to you? Why would you pay someone so much money for a provenance that is not only false, but that your provenance researcher refuses to attest to? And why would you use the provenance? If you knew the provenance was real, you wouldn't need the researcher. You are forgetting that in your hypothetical situation where "paid provenance" = "paid provenance research", that informant #2 and the researcher are the same person.

I'd recommend reading the affidavit signed by the HSI Special Agent on the first page. It alleges Mr. Beale was made aware of the false provenance by Informant #2 but decided to go ahead anyway and only after he was made aware of the false provenance did he and Mr. Vecchi offer the money to Informant #2. This is not a matter of paying money for someone to do provenance research.

Good luck to their Dispatch Administrator!

1. That doesn't legally protect you if you paid someone, or attempted to pay someone, 100,000 Swiss francs to attest to a false provenance. Otherwise auction houses could put anything they like in their lot descriptions and get away with it. A company's terms and conditions do not nullify the law. You can't knowingly make material misrepresentations of an item, from which you profit or the buyer suffers, and hide behind "but my terms and conditions say it's only an opinion". 2. I suspect that is for civil matters, i.e. the buyer couldn't sue Roma in NY when their Eid Mar gets seized by the authorities - unless Roma was a registered company there. For criminal matters, Roma does not get to decide the jurisdiction. If they break the law in New York, then New York has the right to bring criminal charges in NY courts. That doesn't mean Beale is compelled to go to NY, which is perhaps why they arrested him after arriving in NY rather than going through UK police. If he doesn't return to NY, it's possible the US will petition the UK to extradite him, but if he was in a country without extradition agreement with the US, then NY could be out of luck. I'm not a lawyer either and may be wrong on a few nuances but I'm reasonably confident your two points here don't help Mr. Beale in his legal defense.

Maybe follow-up with them and ask not if you won the lots but if they received your bids on the lots? My first guess is that the bids weren't received, for whatever reason, but it's possible they have a secret reserve system that they don't seem to make apparent.

I guess he has a habit of doing this as his latest blog post has also lifted quite a lot of the text from a comment left on CoinTalk. It seems he doesn't rewrite the posts from scratch, instead he just copies them across and maybe changes a word or phrase here and there. It's also not a sign of great journalism when he says "it is reported that the house of the palestinian trafficker in gaza has been raided", when that is what the post he is copying is saying. So he's merely reporting that someone else reported that supposedly the trafficker's house has been raided. He links to the CoinTalk comment as if he's citing that report, but he's only citing the report of the report 😆

I find it funny that he copied part of one of my comments nearly word-for-word without attributing it to me and seems to be refusing to publish my comment on his blog pointing that out. edit: my comment on the left, his on the right:

Beale has already admitted to much of what he is accused of, according to the affidavit. Sure, that's not a conviction but it's significant information that is useful to know for those considering bidding/selling with Roma given the risks to the company. You're free to ignore this thread and wait for a verdict if you prefer. I don't see why there is any need to though, just try to balance the information provided in the affidavit and elsewhere with the known facts and supplemental information to the case (e.g. prosecution history of this DA). The discussion we're in the middle of touches on this very point; the fraud/conspiracy charges do not look good but there isn't any solid evidence presented for grand larceny. So one might put more weight on the fraud/conspiracy charges resulting in a conviction than the grand larceny/CPSP charges at this stage.

Thanks for clearing that up. So it sounds like the DA has to have some direct evidence of the coin having been stolen/looted if they are to have any chance of those grand larceny and CPSP charges sticking. Falling back on a lack of provenance for evidence of theft wouldn't get the job done, it seems. I wonder if they decided not to mention this evidence due to Italo Vecchi being a co-conspirator and not in their custody (i.e. hasn't given a statement, presumably). They may want to hold that back until they can interview him and see if he contradicts what they know.

What's the burden of proof etc like for the MOUs? Do you need to demonstrate that the coin meets the conditions of the MOU upon importing it into the US, and can that be as simple as "I was told by the seller it had been outside X country for more than 10 years"? What I'm wondering, but completely lacking in knowledge, is whether proof that the supplied provenance is false (for a coin being imported) would then automatically default to the coin being subject to the MOUs and thus deemed stolen property of the relevant country with the MOU. In other words, if you lie about the origin of the coin and you have no other proof that the coin is legal in terms of the MOU, then it is considered to be stolen on the balance of probabilities. No idea if the law would work like that in this case though, or what burden of proof (and on which party) is necessary for the MOUs.

Have wondered this as well. My entirely speculative guess would be to pay someone who is a descendent of de Chambrier or has otherwise researched/inventoried/catalogued de Chambrier's collection (if there is one). Basically someone who would have some authority to say "yes this coin was part of de Chambrier's collection".

It seems Beale's next court appearance for the 8th of March has been pushed until the 8th of May. I won't speculate why that might be as it could be any number of things but for us I think that might mean we may not get any new information from the DA or legal proceedings until then. Unless either side files a motion before then, I guess, but I'm not sure whether records like that are made public for active criminal cases similar to this.

That's what it sounds like, or I think the language was "Vecchi gave the coin to the defendant" so maybe no money changed hands. But that doesn't change much, Roma Numismatics is the entity that sold the coin and would be the one to refund the buyer in the event of it being seized. Normally, I imagine Roma would then go after the consignor and ask the consignor to repay them given the falsified provenance but since the coin and false provenance was provided by Beale and/or Vecchi, I'm not sure what that would mean for this scenario. Additionally, if the DA is correct and the coin is stolen, Beale/Vecchi will presumably lose the money they received from the sale of the Eid Mar. So I would assume Roma, as a company, might be out of luck in that the money received from the sale is gone but they're still stuck responsible for reimbursing the buyer. Whether that's how things actually work legally, I'm not sure, I'm just speculating in that regard.

I think the main concern is that while the alleged crimes are against an individual, they relate to coins sold by the business and which the business would be on the hook for refunding the buyer in the case where the coins are seized. So using the Eid Mar as an example, the buyer may have that coin seized and will receive zero compensation from the authorities. Their only avenue for recompense is presumably to ask Roma Numismatics for a refund, and failing that legal action. Refunding $3.5M USD may or may not be an issue for a business like Roma but it's possible that Roma Numismatics as a company could wind up in financial difficulty, separate from Beale's own legal issues. I don't think anyone here can say with much certainty how things will play out so all one can do is exercise the caution they personally think is necessary based on the information at hand.

It seems the DA is charging Beale in relation to three coins: the Naxos tetradrachm, the Eid Mar aureus, and one of the Gaza dekadrachms. The Special Agent mentions the five Gaza dekadrachms in general for context but it's just one of these, which sold at Roma in 2018 and then again in 2022, which seems to be the cause for one count from each of the Grand Larceny, CPSP, and Conspiracy charges. The Gaza dekadrachms are undoubtedly "looted" in the sense that they were exported (and later imported) illegally and it seems Beale has more or less confessed to knowledge of this. So I don't think the facts in the affidavit about the Gaza dekadrachms are just there to cast aspersions, they're evidence for some of the alleged crimes.

I think Italo Vecchi is based in London these days, he's employed by Roma as a consultant specialist too. Based on the information in the affidavit, it seems possible he could be at risk of being arrested in the UK and extradited to the US - or would the alleged crimes not warrant that?

Did you read the statement of facts signed by the special agent? This is not a matter of "from an old European collection", it's a matter of trying to pay someone 100,000 CHF to falsify the provenance of a coin that subsequently hammered for 2.7M GBP. They supposedly didn't make up some random family provenance from the 60s either, they gave it a fancy 19th century Austrian royal court provenance. Undeniably, that would have a chance of affecting the hammer price, i.e. making Roma Numismatics more money, i.e. committing fraud. Some of these crimes Beale is accused of have nothing to do with bad antiquities laws, they're straight up fraud. Too late for that:

Absolutely, and seeing as Roma have not been forthcoming about their predicament (understandable) but decided to power on ahead with their sales anyway (questionable), I think it's all the more important that the facts of the case as known are shared with and discussed by collectors who may be clients of Roma and likely to bid under normal circumstances in their auctions.

I agree, keep it to the facts known or what has been reported. Speculation about individuals isn't a good idea at this stage. Nonetheless, things aren't looking good based solely on the facts. A statement of facts signed by one of the HSI Special Agents is floating around some numismatic communities and lays out some unfortunate accusations that would be quite devastating if true. According to these documents, much of the accused crimes were admitted to by the defendant. This involves not only the Naxos tetradrachm but also the Eid Mar aureus and several Alexander decadrachms from the Gaza hoard. I don't see any reason for these documents to be fake but I also don't know how one can access them publicly so for now I won't personally share them here but someone else is free to.

Saw this on the r/AncientCoins subreddit earlier today and it seems like something that people here should be made aware of if they're not already: The reddit thread links to an arrest report that you can find here: https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/webcrim_attorney/Detail?which=case&docketNumber=yY1xDZ9cEK4QwpkxjBVP_PLUS_g==&countyId=ftUCLXxA/VgUxT4CDSVwBw==&docketId=bbI5Xbl0IVgJ8btvEQGu9g==&docketDseq=o6PDyKIx4BvSfbvyCgDnHw==&defendantName=Beale,+Richard&court=New+York+Criminal+Court&courtType=L&recordType=C&recordNum=Wv8WzRIFOL4jek_PLUS_QRTW74Q== The details provided there seem to line-up with this press release from the Manhattan DA: https://www.manhattanda.org/d-a-bragg-returns-14-stolen-antiquities-to-italy/ And you can find photos of the Naxos coin sold by Roma in the background of these photos:

I could be wrong here but something you'll want to check is the exchange rates offered by the bank. They may not have any additional fees for the conversion itself but they could be using a conversion rate that nets them money on the transaction, essentially what PayPal is doing. Wise has a small fee but the conversion rates are often pretty good, often better than what many banks offer. Since fees and conversion rates differs from bank to bank, and country to country, the best option is for each person to look into their specific circumstances to work out what's cheapest or best.