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- Robert Higgins, 69, received a 65-year sentence for defrauding investors of $76 million in gold and silver.
- Prosecutors highlighted Higgins’ lavish lifestyle, funded by the stolen money, while victims described financial ruin.
- The whereabouts of the missing $76 million remains unknown.
Facing an effective life sentence, a man convicted of stealing tens of millions of dollars worth of investors’ gold and silver from his north Wilmington vault had a final opportunity to plead to a judge for mercy.
Instead, Robert Higgins’ final court address on June 17 rang like a final, empty sales pitch about how he could make whole the victims of what is one of the largest frauds in Delaware’s history.
“I have the best plan going forward and tried for eight months to institute it inside the prison,” said Higgins as he slowly waved his hands and faced the victims seated behind him in the courtroom.
Ultimately, presiding Judge Maryellen Noreika sentenced the 69-year-old to 65 years in prison for what prosecutors described as the “largest theft from a precious metals depository in the history of the United States” and calculated to be a $76 million loss for investors. That calculation used 2022 prices for gold and silver − prices that have doubled since then.
“If you think you can help find these people’s money, there is nothing stopping you. Talk to your attorney,” Noreika said. “You haven’t done that. It is all talk, all the time.”
From trial: $50M of gold and silver went missing from Delaware vault. Feds said this man was to blame
Higgins, formerly a resident of West Chester, Pennsylvania, operated First State Depository Co. and various precious metals brokerage businesses out of a nondescript office and vault facility off North Market Street in Wilmington for more than a decade.
There, he and members of his family claimed to safeguard more than a hundred million dollars in investors’ gold and silver bars and coins in his vault. Instead, Higgins used the facility and business as his “piggy bank,” for a decade, paying his debts and funding his lifestyle while leaving hundreds of customers, primarily small investors and retirees, with a small fraction of what they invested, prosecutors said.
Prompted by complaints from investors, federal regulators seized his business assets in 2022 as part of a civil case against those businesses. Investigators found his vault and business accounts were tens of millions short of what he owed to investors.
Last year, federal prosecutors spent eight days presenting to a jury piles of invoices and written correspondence between Higgins and his customers, evidence that they successfully convinced a jury showed Higgins knowingly defrauded investors and was stringing them along with lies when they demanded he return their money.
The jury in 2024 convicted him of five counts of tax evasion, as well as wire fraud and mail fraud.
‘Higgins’ final pitch
Typically, defendants facing sentencing emphasize to the judge their acceptance of responsibility and their remorse in a plea for mercy. At the June 17 hearing, Higgins briefly noted that he was “sorry” and he was “sad it happened,” and that “it has impacted my family.”
He acknowledged that the “most important” part is the victims’ loss, but his winding statement to the court ultimately amounted to a promised plan to make investors whole that he never actually explained.
He told them that he thought he was going to be out of prison by now. He blamed federal regulators and fees collected by an expert appointed by the court to seize the facility, calculate the loss, and liquidate what little was left to compensate investors. He said he hopes to be freed upon appeal and that the awards from lawsuits he will bring will benefit the victims.
“I have a plan,” he repeated, arguing there were “other ways” to recover the money.
At one point, he indicated he was working with Noreika on a solution, which she later clarified was not the case.
His pitch involved an exploration of the differences between facts and truth and invoked biblical scripture in imploring victims to seek an attorney to apparently go after regulators in an effort to recover tens of millions of dollars now lost.
“If you shall come together as one voice, anything you desire can be given,” Higgins said, paraphrasing scripture.
In his defense, his attorney Jeremy H. Gonzalez Ibrahim described Higgins’ devotion to his family, arguing he does have “some kind of redeeming quality.” His 17-year-old daughter told the court that her father is “the best dad” and is “generous to everyone.”
Prosecutors argue for life in prison
In his address to the court, Assistant U.S. Attorney Alexander Ibrahim emphasized evidence showing lavish family vacations, private-school tuition and shopping trips in arguing for an effective life sentence.
“No doubt he is a great father and a great husband,” Ibrahim told the court. “He was happy to use the victims’ money to give them a great life.”
He said Higgins victims included cancer patients, retirees forced back into work to make ends meet, a person who lost their home and many families with ruined plans and futures. Those victims ultimately will receive a very small fraction of what they are owed.
Ibrahim said the only thing that stopped Higgins’ long-running fraud was federal authorities seizing his vault. And even after that, Ibrahim said he “brazenly” lied to the judge about being financially destitute and without transportation in a hearing about whether he should be appointed a public defense attorney.
Shortly after that hearing, investigators found a stash of gold worth tens of thousands of dollars in the ceiling of a guest room at his home as well as a Hummer, which he had initially tried to purchase with gold coins, prosecutors and the judge noted.
Ibrahim said it takes a “special kind of criminal” to lie to a federal judge as easily as “ordering pizza.”
Two women, a couple who asked to remain anonymous, addressed the court on behalf of all victims. They said they invested some $8 million with Higgins at a time when one of them had been very sick and had to sell their business.
One woman explained that, given uncertainty in the world, they wanted their money in something tangible. She said Higgins expertly reeled both of them in, promising insurance that didn’t exist and security that was a mirage.
Read more: Millions in gold and silver missing from Delaware vault lands broker in criminal court
“He is literally the Bernie Madoff of precious metals,” one of the victims told the court.
She detailed their attempts to confront him about the money, how there was always an excuse: an urgent trip, an insurance audit, a sickly aunt. Then, they’d see him in their Facebook feeds depicted in photos that flashed bottles of wine, vacations, cars, parties for his wife, and ‘Catch Me If You Can’ references.
“Meanwhile, we are trying to figure out where our life savings is,” she told the court.
Where is the money?
That is a $76 million mystery that remains hanging over the case: Where is the money?
At trial last year, Higgins’ defense attorney noted that his clients’ personal assets didn’t match the scale of fraud accused by the government. He owned a million-dollar home in Pennsylvania and did some globe-trotting, but his attorney noted he doesn’t own anything like a yacht.
At the time, his attorney sought to paint Higgins’ former secretary as well as his business partner and son, Eric, as the true culprits. They testified at his trial under an immunity agreement.
”The folks who ran it were the folks who had immunity,” Gonzalez Ibrahim said at last year’s trial.
In Tuesday’s hearing, one of Higgins’ victims suggested he write a book about his crimes to benefit the victims and compared his address to the court to the “kick the can down the road” promises they received before he was in cuffs.
“Where is the money? Even if you spent it all,” the victim said, turning to address Higgins directly. “Say something!”
Contact Xerxes Wilson at (302) 324-2787 or xwilson@delawareonline.com.
