Real-Life Coin Caper: Upwards of $250k of Rare Coins Stolen in the East
Arizona Coin Collector
The web link below has both photo image
and a streaming video news story.
---------------------------------
Real-Life Coin Caper: Upwards of $250k of Rare Coins Stolen in the East
By Philip Jones
Reporter
Published: February 18, 2009
Wednesday's weather might have tempted you to
curl up and get lost in a good book.
However, you don't have to turn to a mystery
novel to find an unusual caper.
That's because more than a $100,000 worth of
rare coins have been stolen in the east.
Investigators arrested a suspect-though Nine
On Your Side's Philip Jones reports many of
the coins could be lost forever:
"The coin collection belonged to Mr. Lionel
Willis Sr., who ran a store in the Goose Creek
area of Pamlico County on Neuse Road for many,
many years," said Pamlico County Sheriff's
Department investigator Billy Jewel.
He says that store was once an institution for
people who lived in the area.
"If you were traveling that way and you wanted
to stop and get a Coca-Cola, that's where you
went," he said.
But even more legendary than the store was
Willis' coin collection.
He owned hundreds, if not thousands, of coins.
So when he recently died, his family wanted to
take stock of the gold dollars, steel pennies,
Morgan dollars and mercury dimes.
"When they opened the safes up, the coins were
missing," Jewel said.
An investigation was launched immediately.
Eventually, Jewel says, it became clear Willis'
grandson, Shannon Todd Willis Jr., had been
stealing the coins and selling them for months.
Jewel says Todd Willis Jr. has confessed to selling
hundreds of those coins to two different shops in
New Bern for a little under $12,000. Because the
investigation is on-going and because those stores
had no way of knowing the coins were hot, Jewel has
asked us not to identify them in this story.
Investigators were able to recover very few coins
from Todd Willis Jr.
The rest of the coins-valued roughly between
$180,000-$250,000-may never be found because they've
either been sold by those shops or are still missing.
Todd Willis Jr. faces two counts of safecracking
and felony larceny.
Deputies say he admits to stealing some of those
coins. But, he told investigators some were already
missing before he got to them.
Jewel says Willis Jr. got the combinations to the
safes from other family members and that he used
the money to support himself after he lost his job.
..