Simone Del Rosario:
If your only reference to the U.S. Marshals Service is Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive, here’s part of what the real agency actually does: Seize millions in goods procured by criminals and sell it off on behalf of federal courts. So here’s a short movie on that: The most interesting and expensive scores auctioned by U.S. Marshals in this week’s Five For Friday.
The value of U.S. Marshals’ stash ballooned in 2021 and 2022 thanks to crypto seizures, according to the Bloomberg analysis. The government timed the market perfectly, making $39.5 million from a Bitcoin sale in 2021 when a single coin brought in nearly $60k. They made another $12.6 million in Bitcoin from a dark-web drug dealer and roughly the same in Ethereum from another dark web entrepreneur. In a more old school situation, they sold about $100 grand in gold bullion in 2019 from a woman who trafficked weed across the country.
Art is one of the best ways to launder money. Just saying. These scores came out of the $4 billion dollar 1MBD scandal. Andy Worhol’s Round Jackie, literally a round portrait of Jackie Kennedy, sold for a cool mill. Ed Ruscha’s Bliss Bucket sold for $370 grand. And a movie poster for 1927’s Metropolis sold for $1.1 million. We heard Leo DiCaprio has one of these.
Trading cards have traded up to first-class investments. Unfortunately the bad guys know it too. Last year, Marshals auctioned off an elusive Charizard Pokemon Card for $43,000. Sounds like a lot, but the knucklehead they busted for stealing $85 grand in COVID relief funds paid $58k for it. A 1952 Mickey Mantle card went on the Marshals block, too, for $105,000, but the quality was just a 7 out of 10. The same card with a 9.5 rating went for $12.6 million last year, the most expensive sports card ever sold. Moral of the story, kids, don’t play with the cards.
Criminals can be somewhat predictable. U.S. Marshals auctioned off 44 Rolexes in 2018 alone. The most expensive Rolex was the “Everose” Gold Sky-Dweller which went for $33 grand, but the most expensive watch in recent years was the $269,000-dollar Richard Mille Black Phantom timepiece. Other luxury goods included Hermes bags for $26k and 12 pairs of Louboutins for a paltry $6k, which seems like a pretty good deal.
Here are some of the sweetest rides on the auction block. An Irish sport horse named Cinda fetched $60K in 2020. A 2014 Ferretti yacht brought in $3.2 mil at auction, while a pair of Boston Whaler Outrage Motor Boats sold for $815,000, taken from a guy who defrauded lottery winners. Now, you gotta be bold to buy a plane, but this 1994 Raytheon Hawker 800 sold for $405,000. And you know supercars are all the rage with society’s underbelly. Marshals got $760k for the 1991 Ferrari F40 seized from a guy that stole $13 million from Veterans Affairs.
If you’re looking for something more useful, there’s a 4 bedroom houseboat that sold in 2020 for $354,000. It had 7 TVs but no smoke detectors. Priorities. That’s Five for Friday. I’m Simone Del Rosario. It’s Just Business.