The Stolen Boat I didn’t Want Story
1976
A true story
Written 3/2011 Re-Written 05/02/2016
Howard Yasgar
In 1976, I was running a small precious metals refining company in Miami.
At the time it was a part time business, that I was doing in the evenings and on the weekends.
I was also doing business with a friend that had a booth at the Miami Jewelry Exchange in downtown Miami.
Because I was the only one doing any precious metal refining in Miami at the time, it wasn’t long before he started sending me all sorts of strange people.
One day a father and son came over to see me.
The father was about 45 years old, and his son looked to be about 20.
After I initially met them, they came by several times bringing me some platinum metal scrap, and sometimes they brought small amounts of gold.
After several months, we became very friendly, and we talked about a variety of subjects.
The Father told me that he was a now a bachelor living with his son in a one family home in Miramar Florida.
He said that he and his son had tried refining precious metals themselves by emptying out their swimming pool and then setting up a small stove to heat chemicals up in the bottom where the deep end of the pool was.
He said they were trying to refine some metals just like I was doing.
He said that by their doing it in the empty pool, it kept the neighbors from seeing what they were doing, however the smell of the acids they were using was stinking up their whole neighborhood.
One evening he stopped by my house and brought me a small quantity of scrap gold and said he wanted to show me something.
He placed on my desk a small ingot of what looked like pure gold.
It weighed about 1/4 lb. I looked at it and I used a simple jewelers method of testing it.
Before I made a more intrusive test, I asked him how much he wanted for it.
He smiled and said he couldn’t sell it to me because I was his friend and the gold ingot was a fake.
I held it in my hand, and it sure looked pretty good to me.
It had the right color and heft to be real gold.
He said he and his son were having the ingots made out of a mixture of metals called jewelers alloy. Then they had a fellow who was electroplating them with 24K pure gold.
He said they said they were selling the ingots to investors that put them away in safety deposit boxes and vaults.
They felt that the investors would never discover that they were not real gold ingots.
It was easy to see how they could do this, as I was almost fooled myself with the sample he brought.
Now after listening to them, I now knew that what I had suspected was correct. I was dealing with real criminals, and con men.
He left that day leaving me with his sample of the fake gold ingot.
As I was a source of income to them, it appears that they considered me as being a friend that they could trust, and not report them.
One day, they came by and we were having a conversation. when I asked them what else they did for a living, and they said their real business was insurance fraud.
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 knew that, I had heard of Insurance fraud, but I never knew it was a real business, nor had I ever met any one who admitted that they were in that kind of business.
I wondered what did they did to make things disappear ?
They said that they drove lots of cars into the canals that were all around Miami.
They said that they had had put so many cars in some canals, that they couldn’t be used anymore, they said some canals were now 5 cars deep.
It was a big problem for them as they had to 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, and 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 ones every week to dispose of.
I told them that I didn’t need any cars, but jokingly I said that if they ever ran into a good legal fishing boat cheap, I would buy it.
About two weeks later, long after I had all but forgotten about the conversation.
I came home about 5 PM and there, parked in my carport was a boat on a trailer.
I got out of my car and walked up to it, wondering what this boat was doing in my car port.
It was a 18 foot fiberglass bowrider type boat on a trailer. It had a 200 horsepower Chrysler outboard engine on it.
It also had several fishing rods onboard and some other stuff.
My wife said she had heard some noises in the carport earlier in the day, but hadn’t noticed anyone putting a boat there.
It then dawned on me that my friends, the insurance fraud guys, had 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 certainly couldn’t ever use the boat, as it probably was already reported stolen, and the police were probably already looking for it.
The more I thought about it, the more nervous I became.
That night I could hardly sleep, worrying about the possibility of the police finding the boat in my carport.
The next morning, I got the fellow on the phone and asked him if he had left the boat, he said yes.
I asked him if f it was legal, did he have papers and if he did, how much did he want for it.
I knew he didn’t, no one sells a boat with fishing rods and other stuff on it.
He said, 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 about it 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 there were 3 fishing rods left leaning against the side of my house.
I never heard from him again, or his son.
You can be sure 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.
I didn’t want to anyone to ever associate me with them, so I was quite happy not to see them again.
Fast forward 20 years later to 1995.
In 1995 I had bought a small building that had been owned by an old friend.
I went to my friends office to talk with him.
His secretary told me that he was in a meeting with his new accountant.
After a few minutes, my friend walked out of his office, his accountant was right behind him.
Boy was I surprised, it was the same con man that was involved with the insurance fraud and had brought me the boat and left me the fake gold ingot.
He was just as surprised to see me as I was to see him. I tried not to show any sign of recognition and he did the same.
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