Asbury Park secret
safe had $3.5M in gold certificates; now who gets them? Susanne Cervenka,
Asbury Park Press | Published 5:00 a.m. ET May 20, 2019 | Updated
6:13 a.m. ET May 20, 2019
ASBURY PARK - Elaine Palmer
nestled away 13 Civil War-era gold certificates, knowing
at some point the antique money would be a safety net for
her family.
Use them to fix up the family's Asbury Park
home, Palmer told her granddaughter, Lisa Linder. It was
supposed to provide stability for Linder and her adult daughter
with special needs after Palmer died in 2004.
In reality, it wasn't that simple. The home,
at 1602 Fourth Ave., was hoarded and had fallen into disrepair.
By the time ownership transferred to her in 2012 after her
mother died, Linder decided her only option was to sell
the two-story colonial.
She couldn't afford to fix it. She couldn't
afford the taxes to hold onto it either. Plus, she planned
to move to Florida where her lifelong best friend is a doctor.
Linder sold the home to Burke Development
in the spring of 2013. That deal, she said, also included
all of the items cluttered inside.
Unbeknownst to anyone, however, was that
the gold certificates were in a safe that Linder didn't
know sat in the basement.
And no one realized those certificates —
four of which were sold at auction for nearly $3.5 million
— would spark a years-long battle in Monmouth County criminal
and civil courts that centers on one question.
Who owns the gold certificates found in
an Asbury Park basement?
Jury selection is underway in the case of
Keith Schaefer, who is accused of breaking into a safe and
stealing the certificates, and Thomas Surina, a rare currency
dealer who is accused of buying and then selling the certificates,
even though he knew they were stolen.
And that criminal trial has to proceed before
a civil case, which was first filed in 2014, can be heard.
Burke Development, which owned the home as 1602 Fourth Ave
LLC, and the estate of Elaine Palmer are suing Schaefer,
Surina and Heritage Auction, a Dallas-based auction house
that is believed to have sold the gold certificates.
Attorneys for Schaefer, Surina and Heritage
Auction did not return calls for comment. The story of the
gold certificates is based off interviews and court records
filed in the civil case.
Golden ticket
Gold certificates were created
by federal lawmakers in 1863 as a way to accumulate gold
coin in the U.S. Treasury during the Civil War when gold
was scarce, according to the Treasury's Bureau of Engraving
and Printing. Owners could deposit their gold with the treasury
and get the certificate as record of their ownership.
While they weren't actually
issued until after the Civil War, the gold certificates
became easy ways for merchants and banks to move large sums
of gold, according to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.
The gold certificates were
taken out of circulation after the United States moved off
the gold standard during the Great Depression. It became
illegal for citizens to hold gold certificates for 30 years,
until 1964 when collectors were allowed to trade them again.
The certificates found in
Asbury Park were issued in 1882, the fourth of nine gold
certificate series that the U.S. Treasury issued during
the roughly 70 years they were in use.
The certificates can't be
cashed in for gold now, but still can have significant value
as a rare collectible.
A $500 gold certificate
issued in 1882 — one that attorneys believe was among those
found in Asbury Park — sold at an Orlando currency auction
in January 2014 for more than $1.4 million.
At that same auction, three more 1882 gold
certificates believed to be those from Asbury Park sold.
Each were $1,000 denominations. Two sold for $881,250 a
piece while the remaining certificate sold for $293,750.
Less than a dozen of these certificates
still exist, according to an interview Heritage Auction's
director of currency Dustin Johnston gave Heritage Magazine
for the Intelligent Collector in 2013 after the firm announced
the auction of the four gold certificates.
"It's interesting to see how economic
challenges created numismatic rarities, but it is odds-defying
to see a new example turn up, let alone four," he told
the magazine. "The notes in this collection are a once-in-a-generation
discovery."
The house and everything
inside
There were a couple of items Lisa Linder
asked Keith Schaefer to keep an eye out for when she agreed
to pay him $2,800 in spring 2013 to clean out the clutter
so she could sell the house at 1602 Fourth Ave.
But when push came to shove, all Linder,
49, of Eatontown, really wanted were her family pictures.
The only existing photo of Linder and her twin sister, who
died in infancy, was in the house.
There would have been pictures and albums
of her mother and her grandparents, all of whom are dead
now. Linder and her daughter are the only living family
members.
Soon after, Schaefer introduced Linder to
the Burke brothers, who own and operate Burke Development
LLC.
The brothers started Burke Development after
superstorm Sandy when it flipped houses. Bill Burke, a stockbroker,
is the company's president and finances. John Burke is the
vice president and manages day-to-day operations.
Schaefer had done demolition work for John
Burke on previous projects. Schaefer told John Burke about
the house and Linder about a potential buyer.
Linder decided to sell for $34,000. The
Burkes took over responsibility for the items still inside
the house. John Burke said in court records he kept Schaefer
on the job, paying him hourly to clean out the house. Schaefer
also got a $2,000 finder fee.
Linder said she explained to Schaefer that
all of the items belong to the Burkes. She couldn't give
him permission to scrap items rather than throw them away.
John Burke said he told Schaefer all items
in the house were to be thrown in the dumpster. If Schaefer
wanted to keep something, John Burke was going to sign off
on it first.
"I was thinking that if (Schaefer)
found a toaster and he can sell it for five bucks, he could
have the five bucks. If he found an encyclopedia that was
worth 10 bucks to somebody, he could take the 10 bucks,"
he said.
But Schaefer was adamant in court records
that all of the property in the house belonged to him. He
claims Linder gave him everything, however he had nothing
in writing saying so.
"John didn't have to give me permission
to sell anything. It was my property," Schaefer said
in court records.
'Don't touch the
safe'
It's not clear exactly who found the safe
— both Schaefer and another worker claim in court records
to have found the rusty 4-foot-by-4-foot safe — but John
Burke said he was clear to Schaefer about what was to happen
with it.
"When he told me about the safe, I
said, 'Don't touch the safe, and I'll get somebody to open
it up,'" he said.
But on a warm afternoon in May 2013, carpenters
who were working to repair a detached two-car garage could
hear banging noises coming from the basement of the Fourth
Avenue home.
Court records show Schaefer and Justin Byers,
a then-high school student helping on the clean out, took
turns swinging small sledgehammers and prying with crowbars
at the steel safe.
Byers said he didn't know John Burke said
not to touch the safe. Schaefer had been telling Byers all
along that everything in the house was his.
At first, the two men only found hundreds
of canceled checks dated 1942 from Abrams & Son, a scrap
metal company that operated in Neptune.
But Schaefer looked again into the safe.
This time he found a little box with a false door. Thirteen
tannish-gold pieces of paper were rolled up and clipped
to the back of the wood door.
Aside from pinholes in the corners, the
certificates, each more than a century old, were in good
shape, the men said in court records.
Get into my truck, Schaefer told Byers.
The two men drove to Antique Emporium on Cookman Avenue
in Asbury Park.
'What thief takes
checks?'
Rudolph Valentino didn't know what he was
looking at when Schaefer presented him with the gold certificates.
Valentino, who owned the Antique Emporium before dying in
2017, assumed it was Confederate money.
He pointed the men to Tom Surina, an antique
currency dealer who happened to be working that day in his
booth at the antique mall. After some negotiating, Schaefer
agreed to sell Surina the certificates for $35,000 — paid
in seven $5,000 checks.
But Valentino said his "Brooklyn instinct"
told him something was off, according to a deposition he
gave in December 2014. And he told Surina as much.
"I said to him, 'Tom, what makes you
sure that these guys own these bills?' He said to me, he
said they want to take checks for these bills. He said,
'What thief takes checks?'" Valentino said in court
documents.
Byers went back to work cleaning out the
house the next day. He said Schaefer pulled up in front
of the house and handed Byers $2,500, saying the money came
from John Burke as a thank you.
Schaefer said he gave Byers $1,200 to share
in his windfall because the high school student had done
a good job helping him. Schaefer said he never claimed the
money came from Burke.
Byers said he continued working that week
cleaning out the Fourth Avenue home by himself. But when
the week ended, Byers didn't hear from Schaefer. Schaefer
stopped showing up at work.
Byers said he was hoping to continue working
and tried to text and call Schaefer to no avail. Thinking
Schaefer's phone was broken, Byers showed up at Schaefer's
home to ask if there was any more work.
Byers claimed Schaefer came out "ranting
and raving." Schaefer said the money was his. Go ahead.
Tell John, Byers said Schaefer told him.
Confused, Byers texted John Burke.
"I think I put, 'Hey, John, did Keith
tell you what we found in the safe," Byers said.
John Burke called him immediately. He only
knew about the canceled checks. The certificates weren't
Schaefer's to sell, John Burke told Byers. They were stolen.
John Burke reported the alleged theft to
Asbury Park Police Department in late May 2013. Monmouth
County Prosecutor's Office charged Schaefer and Surina,
and a grand jury indicted them in January 2016.
But in the interim, four gold certificates
that the plaintiffs claim are the same as those found in
an Asbury Park basement went up for auction.
Heritage Auction announced in June 2013,
less than a month after the Asbury Park certificates were
removed from the safe, it was putting up for auction four
very rare gold certificates.
'I would have gotten
them out'
Linder said she wasn't thinking of the gold
certificates her grandmother had mentioned years earlier
when she sold the house. When her mother told her they were
in a safe, Linder assumed she meant a bank safe deposit
box.
In fact, Linder said she didn't know the
safe, which was tucked beneath stairs in the basement, existed.
Linder said she was terrified of the basement in her grandmother's
home. She avoided going down there. If she had to, she was
running in and out.
"I would have gotten them out before
I sold the house if I knew they were there. I would have
gotten them way before," Linder said, according to
court records.
The gold certificates, she said, would have
allowed her to set up a trust fund that would provide for
her daughter if anything happened to her.
But she believes that the gold certificates
now belong to the Burkes. She sold everything inside 1602
Fourth Ave. to them. That included the safe and the certificates,
she said.
The Burkes, however, have agreed to share
some of the gold certificates' value with Linder if they
every recoup them.
Ultimately, all Linder recovered from the
house was a ceramic turtle that belong to her grandmother.
The family pictures and the albums were all thrown away.