By David Yates for the Southeast Texas Record

Lawyer Bill Voss has seen two of his colleagues dismissed from the possibility of professional sanctions, but the Houston attorney is still waiting to see if the same will be true for him.

On July 10, Judge Floyd, 172nd District Court, held a hearing to consider a Motion to Enforce Judgment and Sanctions against Voss for allegations he violated a court order in connection with litigation against a Beaumont company that deals in rare coins.

Attorneys for Universal Coin & Bullion and its president Mike Fuljenz filed the motion Nov. 1, 2007, alleging Voss and his colleagues Jason Gibson and Jake Posey defied a restraining order issued by Judge Floyd in March 2007.

The restraining order was engineered to stop Voss from using an alleged list of clients stolen from UCB as a way to drum up clients.

Voss, Posey and Gibson represent dozens of UCB customers who allege the coin company ripped them off. UCB has counter sued.

UCB sought sanctions against all three of the attorneys, but after a lengthy hearing March 7, 2008, Floyd dismissed Posey and Gibson from the motion.

After being rescheduled several times, a hearing focusing solely on Voss was finally held last week.

“This all started when (an UCB) employee left (the company) and talked to Voss,” said Gibson, who represented Voss at the hearing. “Everything flows from (a former UCB) employee talking with Voss.”

UCB alleged that former employee John Rollins obtained a list of company customers and handed it over to Voss, who then tried to engage the customers as plaintiffs in lawsuits against the coin company. (more…)

Coin dealer in prison fights 2006 conviction for $13.7 million theft

By Mark Niquette for THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

The coin dealer convicted of stealing state money in a scandal that helped Democrats recapture most statewide offices in 2006 has appealed, arguing in part that he didn’t get a fair trial.

In the appeal filed yesterday, Republican Thomas W. Noe’s lawyers argue that his conviction should be overturned or that he should be resentenced because his 18-year prison term is too harsh.

They allege that his rights were violated because, among other things, the trial was not moved out of Lucas County, where Noe faced an “overwhelmingly negative media onslaught” before and during the trial.

The appeal filed with the state’s 6th District Court of Appeals in Toledo lists seven major grounds for vacating Noe’s conviction and sentence, including that prosecutors failed to prove each element of each specific charge.

Lucas County Prosecutor Julia R. Bates said yesterday that she had not yet read the appeal, but she insisted that Noe received a fair trial. Although it was a high-profile case, most of the prospective jurors didn’t know many of the details, she said.

Noe, 53, managed a $50 million investment in rare coins and other items for the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation. The investment was shut down in May 2005, and Noe was found guilty of stealing $13.7 million for personal use.

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By JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN for the New York Sun

The federal government’s attempt to stop a group of gold-standard activists from minting an alternative to the greenback is about to face its first legal test.

A dozen people around the country filed suit in U.S. District Court in Idaho this week demanding the return of all the copper, silver, gold, and platinum coins — more than seven tons of metal in all — that the FBI and Secret Service seized in November during raids of a mint in Idaho and a strip mall storefront in Indiana.

The Justice Department had decided that the coins, many of which bear the familiar symbol of Lady Liberty and the phrase “TRUST IN GOD,” were being illegally marketed as government-sanctioned currency, according to the sworn affidavit of an FBI agent.

The creator of the coins, Bernard von NotHaus, who lives in Miami, claims that the federal government is trying to shut down production of his liberty dollars, as the coins are called, because of the competition they pose to the greenback. In recent years, his precious metal coins have outperformed the dollar, whose value has plunged in relation to gold.

The raids in November were the result of a two-year undercover investigation of Mr. Von NotHaus and how he sold liberty dollars. The Justice Department has not followed up with any criminal charges against Mr. Von NotHaus or the regional distributors of his coins.

In the suit filed in Idaho, the various plaintiffs say the federal government has no right to continue holding onto their coins any longer.

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Fifteen tattered $20 bills recovered from the 1971 D.B. Cooper skyjacking sold Friday for more than 120 times their face value at a Dallas auction.

Heritage Auction Galleries said the bills sold for a total of more than $37,000 - two to three times higher than expected.

Winning bidders paid about $6,500 each for two of the $20 bills. The money has the handwritten initials of investigators who examined the bills, which were found buried in sand in 1980.

Another recovered note, a tiny fragment showing only a portion of the printed San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank seal in the design, sold for $358.

Cooper skyjacked a flight from Portland, Ore., to Seattle, claiming he had a bomb. He released the passengers at a Seattle airport for $200,000, four parachutes and a flight to Mexico.

On that flight, he jumped out with a parachute near the Oregon-Washington line. He was never found.

“There’s obviously still tremendous interest in the legendary case,” Heritage President Greg Rohan said in a statement. The gallery declined to identify the winning bidders. (more…)