DL Open Thread: Thursday, Dec. 28, 2023

More Delaware Corruption–Courtesy Of Our Lax LLC Laws.  I could muster up more sympathy for the victims were they not using this scheme as a tax dodge:

Court-appointed receiver Kelly Campbell had been overseeing this depleted storage facility of First State Depository Co. LLC for the past year, arriving the previous fall with U.S. marshals and a judge’s order. He and auditors from Baker Tilly checked the coins against records showing around $140 million in gold and silver. Much was missing.

Around 2,100 customers stored gold or silver at First State in labeled boxes, like a bank deposit box. Many were retirees who had been persuaded to include precious metalsin their IRA or 401K accounts. For tax reasons, they needed to store the metals in a secure place away from home, which First State claimed to offer.

“Most of these investors were elderly people,” Campbell said. “They were investing their savings. It’s tragic.”

Campbell’s team recovered $64 million of precious metals from nearly 1,000 boxes and sent it back to the owners.

The rest of the boxes were missing gold and silver worth $76 million. Some were empty; some had silver but none of the listed gold;some were stuffed with paper IOUs. Another 140 customers the receiver identified haven’t filed claims.

Precious-metals storage is one of the niche industries in “America’s Corporate Capital,” Wilmington, Del. Starting in the 1970s, the former Wilmington Trust Co. piled gold bars and 55-gallon drums of silver coins on skids in vaults below its high-rise headquarters on Wilmington’s Rodney Square and tracked them for futures and options traders at the New York Mercantile Exchange and other markets.

Such traders can buy and sell fortunes daily — free of state taxes in Delaware. In the early 1990s, Wilmington Trust boasted it ran the largest private gold and silver depository in the U.S.

First State focused on smaller clients — often individual retirement savers dazzled by pitchmen touting gold as a shelter against inflation and unreliable national currencies. The company got its name onto lists circulated by retirement account custodians who urged savers to consider buying precious metals.

I’m pushing fair use boundaries, so I’ll cut to the chase:

“I know the case very well,” said Doug Davis, executive director of the Numismatic Anti Counterfeiting Association. “Depositories ought to be regulated by the state they are located in.”

He notes that Texas in 2015 passed a law setting up a privately run but state-regulated and -staffed bullion depository.

“There needs to be state-level regulation,” said Campbell, the receiver.

The Phony ‘Research’ Behind Home-Schooling:

Brian Ray has spent the last three decades as one of the nation’s top evangelists for home schooling. As a researcher, he has published studies purporting to show that these students soar high above their peers in what he calls “institutional schools.” At home, he and his wife educated their eight children on their Oregon farm.

His influence is beyond doubt. He has testified before state legislators looking to roll back regulations. Judges cite his work in child custody cases where parents disagree about home schooling. His voice resounds frequently in the press, from niche Christian newsletters to NPR and the New York Times. As president of the National Home Education Research Institute, he is the go-to expert for home-school advocates looking to influence public opinion and public policy, presenting himself as a dispassionate academic seeking the truth.

But Ray’s research is nowhere near as definitive as his evangelism makes it sound. His samples are not randomly selected. Much of his research has been funded by a powerful home-schooling lobby group. When talking to legislators, reporters and the general public, he typically dispenses with essential cautions and overstates the success of the instruction he champions. Critics say his work is driven more by dogma than scholarly detachment.

Ray comes from a conservative Christian movement that sees home schooling as a biblically mandated counterweight to secular modernity.

A community of home-school alumni has arisen in recent years to forcefully reject this form of education. They say their parents ignored entire subjects, focused on faith over academics and were physically abusive. Among these critics is someone Ray knows well: his oldest daughter, Hallie Ray Ziebart, 43.