Coin controversy
About the article
This is a digitised version of an article from The Cayman Compass's print archive. Occasionally, the digitisation process introduces transcription errors, or other problems.
See the article in its original context from May 1998.
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The swashbuckling treasure hunter is under investigation, suspected of selling counterfeit gold coins.
"There's no way possible," the grizzled man known as Fearless Fisher said this week, stressing each word at his gift shop in Key West's Old Town. "I would have no interest at all in fakes. I find so many real ones."
The Monroe County State Attorney's Office and Florida Department of Law Enforcement swept into Fisher's shop last week and seized 25 gold coins from the display cases.
The shop offers salvaged emeralds, silver and gold that can sell for $15,000 or more. The coins were being offered at about $6,000 each as salvaged from the wreck of a fleet of Spanish galleons that sank off the Florida Keys in a 1733 hurricane.
Two coin experts determined the gold pieces were modernday counterfeits worth no more than $300 each, said Paul Meyers, the state attorney's investigator who is leading the probe.
Meyers said that several of Fisher's customers have also submitted their gold pieces for inspection, and "let's just say we have not received any coins that have been real."
No charges have been filed. And the state has not examined other treasures Fisher has claimed to have brought up from the bottom of the sea, including an iron anchor, silver forks and plates, bronze medallions, cannons and cannon balls and cutlasses. Some of the artifacts went to investors; some are in museums, others are sold via the Internet and in Fisher's gift shops.
Allegations that the shop was selling counterfeits surfaced two months ago, when a man who paid more than $5,900 for a coin purportedly from the 1733 fleet complained that it was a fake.
The coin is real gold but is worth only $272, Meyers said. And he said the state has no record of gold coins being salvaged from the site listed in the accompanying certificate of authenticity. "This is a set up," Fisher said. "For whatever purpose, they're doing this to try to shut me down."
Fisher said he bought the coins from one of his longtime investors and has complete confidence in the man. Fisher said he plans to fly Sunday to a mint in Mexico City to try to find the dies used to make the coins centuries ago.
Having run afoul of the law before, Fisher, a man who once dived deep into the ocean and wrestled an 80-pound jewfish to the surface with his bare hands, shows little interest in what state investigators may have on him.
He beat the state when it tried to gain a share of the treasure he found in the 18th century wreck of the Nuestra Senora de Atocha. He fought environmental regulations that threatened his livelihood. He endured attacks from rivals and dissatisfied investors.
