The Stolen Boat Story

1976

This really happened

It’s a True Story

Written 3/2011* 1,454 Words

#160 By Howard Yasgar

In 1976, I was running a small precious metals refining company in Hialeah Gardens Florida, the company was called NEARCO Refining.

NEARCO had started out as a part time business that I worked at in the evenings.

Our main business was the processing of scrap platinum tipped aircraft sparkplugs, which at the time were used on commercial and military reciprocating aircraft engines. “That was before jet engines came along”.

Once I mastered the platinum refining business, I started playing around with refining other things like silver from photographic film, as well as gold from scrap electronics and some gold from jewelry.

At the time in 1976, Miami was mostly a tourist town, so to drum up business I would visit the Miami Jewelry Exchange.

The Jewelry Exchange was a collection of entrepreneurs that bought and sold used jewelry and I started doing business with a few of them.

Unfortunately, the used jewelry business also attracts quite a few dishonest people, so rather than have them see my refining business operation, I had them stop by my house where I had a small office, I felt it was better to do that, rather than letting people see what I was doing at the Hialeah Gardens refinery.

One day I received a phone call from a fellow that said he wanted to sell me some scrap platinum and gold jewelry, so I invited him to my home.

He appeared to be about fifty years old and he had his son with him who looked to be about seventeen years old.

The father said that he had been divorced for a long time and that his son was living with him in the town of Miramar.

Over the next two months they came by to sell me scrap platinum and gold, and little by little we became friends.

One evening he brought me over a small quantity of scrap gold and said he wanted to show me something, and he then placed on my desk a small metal ingot that looked like pure 24 karat gold.

The ingot appeared to be about a quarter of a pound, and I was going to get my scale to weigh it. But then I looked closely at it and asked him how much he wanted.

He smiled and said he couldn’t sell it to me because the bar of gold was a phony. He said that he and his son were making the gold ingots out of a mixture of metals called jewelers Alloy.

After pouring it in a mold, they were having the ingots heavily 24 karat gold plated.

After they were done, it made the ingot look and feel just like real gold. I was amazed as it sure looked like real gold to me.

The father said they were selling the ingots to investors, because the investors put them away in safety deposit boxes and vaults. They felt that the investors would never discover that they were fake gold until many years later when they tried to sell them. It was easy to see how they could do this, because I was almost fooled myself with the sample they had put on my desk.

What was now also apparent to me was that I now had confirmed to myself that I was dealing with a couple of crooks.

The father said that they would leave me with one of the fake gold ingots so I would always remember what they looked like and I should make sure I didn’t ever buy any of them.

I then asked them, “what else are you guys doing besides selling the fake gold?”

“Oh”, they said, “The selling gold and jewelry is not our main business, we are really in the insurance claim business.

I thought that meant that he was an insurance agent.

They went on to explain that many people wanted their cars or other property to disappear so that they could collect the insurance money. I had heard of Insurance fraud, but I never knew it was a business, nor had I ever met anyone who admitted that they were involved in that kind of business.

I asked them what they did to make the cars just disappear, so they told me.

They said that they drove the cars into canals all around Miami, and they had already put so many cars in some canals, that the canals couldn’t be used to hide anymore cars.

They said some canals around Miami were now five cars deep, and they always had to try and find new canals to sink the cars in.

I was flabbergasted to hear their story. I always knew that stolen cars sometimes ended up in the canals, but here I was with the very people that put them there.

It was then that they asked me if I wanted a new car, as they had several late model cars to dispose of every week.

I told them that I didn’t need any stolen cars, but as a joke I said that if they ever ran into a good fishing boat that I could buy cheap, they should let me know.

About two weeks later, it was long after I had all but forgotten our conversation, I came home about 5 PM and there, parked in my carport was a fishing boat on a trailer.

I got out of my car and walked up to it, I was wondering what this boat was doing in my car port, I knew it wasn’t mine.

The small boat was an 18-foot fiberglass bow-rider on a trailer, and it had a two hundred horsepower Chrysler outboard engine on it. The boat was complete with fishing gear and that included several fishing rods.

My wife said she had heard some noises in the carport earlier in the day, but she hadn’t noticed anyone putting a boat there. That’s when it dawned on me that my friends, the insurance fraud guys, had probably brought me a stolen boat.

I started to think of what would happen if the police found the boat at my house, I knew that

I could never use the boat, as it probably had already been reported stolen, and I was sure the police were already looking for it, so the more I thought about it, the more nervous I became.

That evening I could hardly sleep; I was worrying about the possibility of the police finding the boat in my carport.

So, the next morning, I called the fellow on the phone and asked him if he had left the boat. He said yes, the boat was part of a friendly divorce and the owner wanted it to disappear, so he could collect the insurance.

I told them that I was very concerned about having a stolen boat in my carport, and I wanted them to remove it as fast as possible. He was very calm and told me not to worry, he would take care of everything.

The next day, when I came home, the boat and trailer were gone. But he had left three fishing rods leaning against my house.

From that day on, I never heard from them again, and I never tried to contact them as I now knew for sure that they were not only con men but car and boat thieves as well and I didn’t want anyone to ever associate me with them.

I assumed that they could have been in jail, so, I was quite happy with the fact I never saw or heard from them again, and that was not until twenty years later in 1995.

In 1995 I bought a building, the building had been owned by an old friend, so when I went to his office to sign some papers, I was told that my friend was in a meeting with his accountant.

After a few minutes his office door opened and my friend appeared with his accountant right behind him, and you will never guess who the accountant was.