This is (almost) the end of a long-term investigation. The Florida Wildlife Conservation Commission announced in a press release on November 26 that they had found 37 gold coins stolen in 2015 during the recovery of Spanish shipwrecks dating from the 18th century. The loot is estimated at more than a million dollars.
The investigation, led by the state Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission in close collaboration with the FBI, accelerated last June when damning new evidence came to light. All pointed to a certain Eric Schmitt. According to authorities, the Schmitt family was hired in 2015 to work as salvage operators during shipwreck hauls near Florida's Treasure Coast. The Schmitts then found a real treasure: one hundred and one gold coins but they only declared half of them. Fifty gold coins thus ended up directly in their pockets. If the criminals had left no clues on site, it was their digital traces that betrayed them. Metadata and geolocation data helped link Schmitt to a photograph of the stolen pieces taken at his family's condominium in Fort Pierce, Florida. During their hunt, authorities executed several search warrants and recovered coins from private residences, safes and auctions. Five stolen coins were indeed recovered from an auctioneer based in Florida, the latter unaware that he had done business with a treasure looter. And three of the gold coins were even found at the bottom of the ocean. It was Schmitt himself who threw them into the sea in 2016.
The gold watch of a “Titanic” hero sells for more than 1.7 million euros
The watch which was given to the captain of a ship which saved passengers and crew members from the Titanic was sold at auction.
A window into history
“Recovered artifacts provide us with a window into history and are protected by state and federal laws,” the release states. They will thus be returned to their “legitimate guardians”. Spanish ships sank off the coast of eastern Florida in 1715 after a severe hurricane while en route to Seville, Spain. The first of the ships was discovered in 1928 by William Beach north of Fort Pierce, Florida. Since then, gold and silver objects have continued to be recovered offshore. The investigation into the 2015 thefts will nevertheless continue. As a reminder, of the fifty pieces stolen, thirteen are still missing.
