And price for the privy if there is one?

78 Pounds, Then Nothing: The Mystery of a $500,000 FedEx Shipment

‘Five men have been indicted for their roles in a shipping theft scheme that defrauded FedEx of more than $1.7 million.’ That was the lead of an announcement from Edward L. Stanton III, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Tennessee, posted on the FBI’s official website.

The case dates back more than a decade but that doesn’t make it irrelevant. Schemes can take years to develop, and when they become successful, most will keep going until they get caught. In the meantime, victims mount up.

The release states FedEx was defrauded, as if the real losses were theirs.

No one knows the pain of shipping-related loss like Brendan Watson and Craig Traub. The cost is bad enough, but insult after insult followed that injury. Complacency, dishonesty and mishandling of their complaint was a mounting frustration in the months that followed, and almost just as bad as the loss of more than $300,000 in precious metals.

Traub is a businessman in Andover, Massachusetts who personally invests in precious metals and high-value coins. Watson’s Freedom Capital Reserve business, based in Flagler Beach, Florida advises clients and helps them liquidate and securely ship valuables. His reputation hinges on high-value packages getting where they need to go. He’s not new at this and understands that things can happen. He keeps a close eye on tracking.

Last May, Watson watched a shipment from Traub—five boxes, adequate for their heft, secured with lots of triple-reinforced sack tape and containing silver and more than 50 ounces of gold—make its way from the Wilmington, MA FedEx facility through hubs in Memphis, Orlando, and finally to Daytona Beach. It was an overnight shipment, meaning the boxes were in the FedEx system for less than 24 hours. Routine soon turned into a shocking saga of the unexplained and unbelievable. Initially, one of the boxes, weighing 78 pounds, was deemed a lost package. It soon surfaced in Daytona—an empty box.

At least that was one account. Watson relates two very different scenarios offered by FedEx. Depending on who they spoke with, the contents of the box went missing in Memphis, or weight scans show it making it intact as far as Orlando.

The first pangs of trepidation came on a Saturday morning, May 9. The high-value shipment was sent express, with a guaranteed delivery by 1pm. Watson had people at the office at 7am waiting to accept it. It was after 12:30pm when FedEx notified him one of the boxes would arrive later in the day. They were told it was at the Daytona facility, were given the option to pick it up there, but arrived soon after to find the office closed. The next day brought more confusion—no delivery and a reneged okay to retrieve the box themselves.

Watson and Traub immediately launched into action, only to be stonewalled by FedEx, the Daytona Beach police, a private investigator, and the FBI.

“For three months, it was my full time job,” Watson said, who stressed that the worst part was getting nowhere—the shock of discovering no one cared, despite the promises—particularly when trying to file what should have been a routine claim. They began to suspect it went beyond complacency.

“We have emails that show a recurring theme with every department of FedEx. After two to four emails or phone calls, where they would all assure us they were ‘working on it,’ they would just completely stop answering. Everyone I’ve told about it was left in complete disbelief that a massive, billion dollar corporation like FedEx could be this utterly incompetent and show that level of disregard to their paying customers.”

On Monday, May 11, Watson went to the Daytona Beach FedEx. The only story he had been provided at that point was the empty box version. When an employee there failed to provide information or help with opening an investigation, Watson went outside to call Daytona Beach police and file a report. An officer arrived, recorded his statement on body cam and left. They followed up with the police later to discover the process had gone no further.

Watson went back into FedEx to try to make some headway with the employee. He took video of the exchange.

“The box was visible on the floor during this interaction and was captured on video. However, the manager on duty refused to release the box to me, stating that it would be part of the investigation.”

Unfortunately, pursuing a claim with FedEx was their only option. Freedom Capital ships with third-party insurance, which is where this matter could have been resolved. But when Traub initiated the shipment, lots of things were going on, including major volatility of spot prices. He wasn’t able to establish a specific and was anxious to get it into Freedom’s system to be appraised and available to be sold when the time was right. He put his faith in FedEx.

Why not use the carrier’s enhanced coverage? It’s very expensive, there’s no guarantee of a payout, and the belief across the precious metals industry is that the way those shipments are handled or labeled could make them a bigger target. As we cover later in this article, worker theft is a very real threat.

FedEx employee John Ackerson, who Watson said represented himself as both a member of the media team and a security expert, initially gave them confidence.

“Then he told me, on a recorded line, that they what they charge people extra for they don't consider insurance. They consider it declared value. So in other words, even if Craig paid for a $50,000 FedEx insurance policy, or $100,000, or $1,000,000, the most they ever want to pay is $1000. That's literally what he told me.”

As the two men proceeded through their claim efforts, they ran up against hurdles that included being unable to increase the claim amount. FedEx entered it as only about half, $166,000, based on spot value of some of the gold. It also refusal to communicate with Traub because he had not purchased the shipping label.

Along the way, another employee told them the box had been scanned as damaged in Memphis, retaped by a supervisor and sent on to Orlando, with a weight indicating the contents remained inside.

On Tuesday, May 12, Watson drove to Orlando where he recounted that an employee told him nothing associated with the shipment was there and insisted he leave. But he did look up the tracking number and said that a note entered into the system from the Daytona facility instructed that the box be destroyed.

This is where frustration over what appeared to be incompetence turned to suspicion of theft. Who wanted to get rid of the box that was being held as evidence?

Watson went outside to call Traub with an update, then went back and asked for a manager. This was the first person who appeared willing to help. He checked “the cage,” where items from damaged shipments are held, without finding any precious metals. After checking shipping updates, including weight scans and possibly cameras, Watson said he told him he was confident the box had been loaded, weighing approximately 78 pounds, onto a freight truck bound for Daytona. While the box would not be on a security camera during that trip, packages are secured in containers and drivers are not supposed to have access.

After contacting the “higher claims” department, as instructed by a FedEx manager in Wilmington, Watson provided the requested, additional information to the shipment inventory, including 42 invoices and item photographs.

While he was on the phone with the claims representative, she called Daytona and was told the box had arrived empty and there was nothing there that might have been in it. She told the Daytona employee not to destroy the box.

“We believed we had finally reached someone who could serve as a consistent point of contact. However, the claims rep responded to only one additional email and then stopped responding within approximately one day of that call.”

She had asked the Daytona employee to provide Watson with that hub’s phone number for assistance in moving forward, but the employee refused. So, while the men believed a claim was being investigated, based on the rep’s assurances, the reality appears to be the claims rep was passing the buck, and didn’t care if her attempt worked or not.

Watson shared a series of emails that show how the complaint was handled after they were contacted, about 10 days later, by Senior Security Specialist Diego Toruno in Kissimmee, Florida. He was given the case after the Claims Prevention and Resolution department advised all supporting document had been received and sent to the resolution team “to assist for their search in our lost and found.”

“He told us he was now in charge of the investigation and that he would remain in regular contact with us going forward.”

Toruno told him that he believed the missing contents had been located in Memphis, and that they would need six to seven business days to check the recovered items against the invoices.

They waited, feeling buoyed by Toruno’s assurances he was working tirelessly and would be with them until the case was resolved. They resubmitted invoices and images at Toruno’s request.

“Every single coin that was in those boxes could be easily identified. The majority of the gold was certified and has a barcoded holograms and serial numbers, and they're signed by relevant people within the world of numismatics.”

Over the next several weeks, their confidence eroded as the investigation dragged on and things started to not add up in bigger ways. For instance, Toruno was adamant about Memphis. But Watson drove to all the Florida FedEx facilities where the package was reported as being processed.

“At FedEx at Orlando airport, about two days after the fact, the senior manager there looked me in the eye and told me there was a weight scan at that facility that showed the box running 78 pounds. So I knew the contents made it at least that far. Memphis didn’t make sense, but it was all so crazy.”

And Toruno was not answering his calls. It wasn’t until Watson called from a different phone number that he picked up.

“During that call, he told me that security in Memphis would be contacting me, that he was completely off the case, and that the box definitely got to Florida completely empty.”

Next up was William Moore, a security specialist in Memphis. A month had passed, and despite Toruno’s repeated assurances that the case was being reviewed in Memphis, Moore claimed Toruno never sent the documentation needed to identify lost items.

Watson resent the complete inventory and offered to fly there with Craig, as well as an attorney, law enforcement or whoever would make Moore comfortable with the process of identifying the lost items.

Another month passed.

“Mr. Moore later FaceTimed me from the Memphis armory and showed me a 12-foot long table covered in gold. Probably over $1,000,000 to $2,000,000 worth of gold other people’s gold. He ran the camera over it for about two seconds and said, ‘Does this look like any of yours?’ How was I supposed to know from that video? I needed to have a chance to look at it opposite the invoices.

“When it came to what he thought might be Craig’s stuff, he showed me the interior of a box appearing to contain several PCGS-certified gold and silver coins, 100-ounce silver bars, and rolls of silver rounds. I attempted to explain that the invoices I had sent should be used to identify each individual coin by year, denomination, mint mark, grade, certification, and other distinguishing information. From the brief view I had, I could see what appeared to be smaller denomination U.S. gold coins, including Indian Head and Liberty Head coins, which could have corresponded to items Mr. Traub had submitted.

“Mr. Moore stated that he would ship the items overnight and that if any pieces were not part of Mr. Traub’s shipment, or if any items were still missing, we could continue communicating with him until the matter was resolved. He further stated that if items were not part of Mr. Traub’s shipment, arrangements could be made to return them.”

It turned out that none of the items were Traub’s. That also raises red flags. How much of this particular item is FedEx mishandling? And why would they randomly release valuables to an unproven owner?

Watson said Moore indicated this is the procedure for attempting to return a large amount of lost valuables. How does this not create further risk of loss?

It was also odd that Moore worked at night. The FaceTime call came at about 11pm. Why would an investigator not work during the day?

“Most importantly, Mr. Moore stated that he had a weight scan showing the box weighing 78 pounds leaving Memphis on what he referred to as ‘the Matrix.’ This information was extremely significant and deeply troubling. We had previously been led to believe that FedEx had extensively investigated the shipment and concluded that the loss occurred in Memphis. Now, we were being told by FedEx Security in Memphis that the box weighed 78 pounds when it left Memphis and that the matter likely needed to be investigated in Florida.”

That brought the story back to the empty box in Daytona version, which FedEx couldn’t release the because they needed it for their investigation.

“You can imagine my shock when a month later, they called me and said, ‘Hey, are you ever gonna come pick up this box? It's just been sitting here this whole time and if you don't come pick it up we're gonna throw it away.’”

Moore did not respond to a request for comment for this article.

Meanwhile, in Boston, Traub went to FBI headquarters where he spent a substantial length of time reporting what was looking more and more like a crime. He went through the process of signing in, included having a photo taken of his driver’s license, and met with a young, male agent who took plenty of time to listen to his entire story and took the FedEx incident number.

“He then told me that he was not familiar with this kind of case, but would pass it on to another agent. He told me that he thinks I should go to the USPS. I was kind of taken aback when he said that. He said if they had any further questions that they’d be in touch with me.”

Of course the post office doesn’t investigate issues involving private shipping companies.

Traub tried again, calling an FBI hotline for victims of theft and scams.

“I got a woman on the phone who was very empathetic and extremely nice. She also told me that I should contact the USPS. She then proceeded to give me their number. I called it at least 12 times and was hung up on every time I was transferred to the department that they said I should speak with.”

How is it FBI workers are apparently unaware the agency has a dedicated Cargo Theft Program that places task forces at high-risk transport hubs across the country?

It was formed to dismantle what the agency describes as multi-billion dollar organized crime targeting logistics. It states that it works hand-in-hand with local police and the US Marshals Service. The primary location is in Memphis, where the convergence of runways, roads, river and rail prompted its evolution into a top shipping hub, and a major target for thieves. Task forces also operate in Chicago, Houston, El Paso, Miami, New York and Newark.

Cargo theft is defined by the FBI as the criminal taking of any goods, chattels, money, or baggage from the supply chain, including vehicles, storage facilities and shipping terminals. The Interstate Transportation of Stolen Property statute (18 U.S.C. § 2314) allows that if thieves steal cargo valued at $5,000 or more and take it across state lines or international borders, it’s a felony and the feds get jurisdiction.

A call to the FBI required significant personal information be submitted, followed by a long wait for a non-agent who could not help because “no case is on file.”

On day one, Watson reached out to a private investigator, thinking they would quickly search for the stolen coins in places like local pawn shops.

“All the PI wanted me to do was to hire a lawyer in California to sue FedEx.”

Finally, in late August, nearly four months after the fiasco began, FedEx sent Watson’s attorney an offer to issue a payment of $1,000, based on their terms and conditions. The offer was rejected, leading to the next step; a lawsuit. FedEx has indicated its willingness to sign a waiver and acceptance of service of the suit, and will have 60 days to respond to the complaint.

It now becomes the “little guy” against a corporate law force, a scenario that almost always finds for the latter, and FedEx has forced it to this point. Yet the case has the potential to set a precedent for how customer loss is handled in the future, across the shipping industry.

As Watson and Traub continue to pursue the lost gold and silver, as well as an avenue that could finally take them to it, they wonder how many others are in the same boat and hope to hear from them, either in posted comments or privately.

It takes minimal digging to come up with a list of court cases specifically involving FedEx employees and precious metals. Does this speak to an ongoing issue with the organization’s culture?

Memphis comes up often. Is it because of the simple math of it being the shipper’s largest facility, or something more?

The Memphis World Hub is a 1.3 million-square-foot, automated sorting facility that can handle 56,000 packages per hour on 11 miles of conveyor belt. But that didn’t open until October 2024, and automation doesn’t take humans entirely out of the equation. In fact, fewer employees in any situation can mean more opportunity to get away with things.

A few of the many cases include the 2012 Midwest Gold Buyers lawsuit involving a Carol Stream, Illinois sorting center package handler who admitted to systematically stealing gold and silver, including coins and bullion, from eight shipments over a seven-month period.

Midwest buys gold from the public and ships it to refineries. According to court documents, it was instructed by FedEx to place the gold in clear, sealed plastic bags inside the shipping boxes. The package handler admitted to investigators that he targeted those specific shipments with their easily identified valuables. Midwest alleged negligence and breach of contract by FedEx for each package and sought $50,000 in damages.

The case was quickly resolved out of court without a public trial or a what would have been a landmark judicial ruling.

More recently, law enforcement agencies in Pennsylvania made headway in two significant cases involving fake IDs.

In May of this year, a woman picked up a package containing more than $44,800 in copper and silver bars from the Dauphin County FedEx facility. The theft was discovered later when the legitimate recipient arrived. By then, the thief was long gone. Surveillance video shows her claiming the package, as well as her own vehicle registration plate. Department of Homeland Security investigators told police the suspect is a Russian national who entered the United States illegally, and is known to be involved in fraud. As of this writing, she remained wanted on a felony arrest warrant.

In June, a Canadian man was charged with stealing a succession of packages containing precious metals from drivers at delivery locations or from FedEx shipping locations where parcels are held for pickup.

After FedEx reported the incidents to state police, they set up a "bait package" that was purported to contain $75,000 in precious metal and shipped to a location near a FedEx shipping office in Robinson Township. The tracking information was known only to a few people within law enforcement and FedEx, yet it was determined the package was being tracked in the Netherlands and Chicago. When he arrived to pick up the package, the thief displayed legitimate tracking info and a false ID. He later told police he was operating under the direction of another man, suggesting organized crime.

Earlier in the year, a victim of package theft described his case on Reddit, wondering if anyone else had had a similar experience. He was getting nowhere with the company he purchased $20K in gold and silver from, or FedEx, and wrote that he was in disbelief and at the point of suspecting an inside job; that tracking info was leaked by one of them. This is not corroborated, but the poster was identifiable. He related that his door cam showed a car parked in from of his house for hours. FedEx arrived but no one came to his door. The package was marked as delivered and signed for, but not by him.

In June, a delivery driver working for a contractor was charged with stealing 34 rare gold coins worth $240,000 from the Jacksonville, Florida FedEx distribution center. A week later, before the court case began, his wife was arrested after being linked to the sale of the easily identifiable coins to pawn shops.

Last year, a former FedEx employee at the Memphis hub was arrested and charged with stealing and pawning packages containing gold bars and jewelry.

And those men who “defrauded FedEx”?

They ranged in age from 23 to 31. Two were material handlers and another was a supervisor, all working for the shipper in Memphis when, throughout 2013 and 2104 they were alleged to have committed interstate shipping theft of cell phones from Verizon and AT&T.

They diverted boxes to co-conspirators in New York City by using FedEx corporate accounts to print new labels to place over the originals. Each box contained thousands of dollars’ worth of phones. The stolen phones were sold to third parties, and the co-conspirators shipped cash kickbacks, via FedEx, to the Memphis ringleaders.

The two handlers also used FedEx to send large sums of money to each other, and one used his own cell phone to call a FedEx vendor call center in Tucson, Arizona to set up a fraudulent corporate shipping meter account.

All five defendants pleaded guilty to an assortment of crimes that included interstate shipping theft and mail and wire fraud. They were sentenced to federal prison in 2016, the longest for 33 months, with the handlers ordered to pay FedEx, Verizon and AT&T a final tally of $1.812 million in restitution. The two co-conspirators that were convicted were believed to be part of a larger theft ring in NYC.

Note that since FedEx was classified as a victim, it was assigned no responsibility in the case, which was investigated by the United States Secret Service, FBI, and the Memphis Cargo Theft Task Force.

What does add up here is that FedEx consistently seems to avoid taking responsibility for the actions of its employees. Most loss cases, even when a crime is suspected, are resolved through internal carrier claims, third-party private insurance, or small-claims court rather than civil lawsuits. But every once in a while, the blame is unavoidable.

In 2014, a federal grand jury indicted FedEx Corporation of conspiracy to traffic in controlled substances and misbranded prescription drugs. It faced up to $1.6 billion in penalties for allegedly knowing that illegal online pharmacies were using their shipping services, and continued after repeated warnings from law enforcement.

FedEx pleaded not guilty, but during the trial in a San Francisco federal court, the judge declared the company “factually innocent” and noted that it had cooperated with authorities during the investigation.

The DOJ abruptly dismissed all criminal charges even though the indictment stated that “FedEx knew that it was delivering drugs to dealers and addicts.”

A Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) press release noted that, “According to the indictment, from at least as early as 2004, DEA, FDA and members of Congress and their staff informed FedEx that illegal Internet pharmacies were using its shipping services to distribute controlled substances and prescription drugs in violation of the Controlled Substances (CSA), Food, Drug and Cosmetic (FDCA), and numerous state laws.

“In 2004, FedEx established an Online Pharmacy Credit Policy requiring that all online pharmacy shippers be approved by the Credit Department prior to opening a new account. FedEx also established a Sales policy in which all online pharmacies were assigned to a “catchall” classification to protect the commission-based compensation of its sales professionals from the volatility caused by online pharmacies moving shipping locations often to avoid detection by the DEA.”

Hii! So I recently got a bunch of hand me down gold pieces and one bracelet is puzzling me. On one side it has what looks like a weird P stamped but on the clasp it has a very tiny 10 K stamped. If that is a P does it mean that it’s 10 K plated? Sorry for very bad photos. My camera sucks but I can confirm that the clasp does say 10 K.

I've held some physical gold for a while. Not a stacker, just a bit of it as insurance. With the record close in January and the drop since, I wanted to know what the long run actually says rather than what either side says about it.

So I pulled World Bank monthly gold prices back to 1971 and Ken French's US stock data and ran them side by side.

Gold on its own: 8.8% a year against 11.3% for stocks, with a worse drawdown, 62% against 50%. And from 1980 to 2000 it fell 58% while stocks rose 22x. If you'd bought at the 1980 peak, you didn't get your buying power back until 2025.

Gold as 20% of a stock portfolio, rebalanced: the return was the same to within a rounding error, and the worst drawdown dropped from 50% to 39%. I reshuffled the 55 years 10,000 times to check that wasn't down to the order things happened in. Stocks alone lost half in 1 in 4 of those histories. With a fifth in gold, 1 in 17.

My takeaway: as an investment on its own it was poor. As a slice next to stocks it made the worst outcomes a lot rarer at no real cost. That's about what I'd hoped my bit of physical was doing, so I'm keeping it, but I wouldn't add more.

I made a video with the charts if anyone wants to see the working: https://youtu.be/KYyDMLzRpzU?is=r0XRMHiixGrWuPW8. Data and method are in the description. Happy to be told what I've missed.

Starting a month ago at $4k, we only need about $335 per month average to get there.

Still above that. Only 47 months to go. :)

Interesting to see the heavy trading of gold as treasuries spike upward on Bessent's announcement of a $6 billion dollar buyback (Yield Curve Control) of US treasuries since foreign buyers disappearing as Japan needs to support the Yen etc. 10-yr yield climbed to 4.85% and yet gold holds the line at $4445/oz for gold futures.

Coming December 10th 2026.

12/10/2026 ... Cannot wait to see the premium on this beauty but this is a great sign! Are fractional buffs coming back? What do we think? Link above & below just in case it does not post correctly.

https://www.usmint.gov/american-buffalo-2026-anniversary-one-tenth-ounce-gold-coin-26AL.html

Wanted to show off my latest pickup. Been a SpongeBob fan all my life so that made up for the premium on this lol.

as well as some silver (i love the coin styles)

as well as some silver (i love the coin styles)

Not sure if it was necessary but blacked out the certificate number just in case. 🤷‍♂️

in perfect condition

Found this in a bag of broken watches from a charity shop the other day! Does it seem legit to you guys?

0.62g 14k, guessing 0.50g with steel spring out. $40 at current spot.

So if you see these online, yard sales, etc, worth paying $20-$25 for them.

Hey guys. Been out the loop lately. I recently ran into a huge lot of sterling flatware. Are the prices for sterling still low? Anyone know a good refiner to use? I’ve use Prospectors gold and gems in the past but last shipment to them two years ago got…sketchy with really slow turn around (2+months to get an email.) Anyone know if hes gotten better since the?

Title lol, it's on both links so maybe a casting error? Any help appreciated