Stephen Fenton
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Stephen Fenton is a British coin dealer who was arrested for possession of an illegal 1933 Double Eagle gold coin and questioned by United States Secret Service agents during a sting operation at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City. The 1933 coin, which was made within a month of Franklin D. Roosevelt's ban of private gold ownership in the United States was never officially issued. At first, he told the Secret Service agents that he bought the coin over the counter from a customer at his coin shop. Later, under sworn testimony, he claimed the coin was the same one that disappeared from the collection of King Farouk of Egypt, though there is no way to sustantiate this claim.
Charges against Fenton were later dropped, but he defended his ownership of the coin in a court. The case was settled in 2001 when it was agreed that ownership of the Double Eagle would be returned to the U.S. government, and the coin could then legally be sold at auction. The Treasury issued a document to "issue and monetize" the coin, thereby making it the only legal tender gold coin in the United States.
On July 30, 2002, the 1933 Double Eagle was sold to an anonymous bidder at a Sotheby's auction for $6.6 million, plus a 15 percent buyer's premium, and an additional $20 needed to "monetize" the face value of the coin so it would become legal currency, bringing the final sales price to $7,590,020, almost twice the previous record for a coin. Half the bid price was to be delivered to the United States Treasury, plus the $20 to monetize the coin, while Stephen Fenton was entitled to the other half. The whole auction took less than nine minutes.
