6/28/06 Phila. Inquirer B02 2006 WLNR 11150320
Philadelphia Inquirer (PA) Copyright 2006 The Philadelphia Inquirer June 28, 2006 Section: PHILADELPHIA
Attorneys get the gold in heist coda By Kathleen Brady Shea, Inquirer Staff Writer Back when the elder George Bush was president, some motley miscreants masterminded a case of purloined platinum in West Whiteland: a nearly $3 million, decade-long heist of precious metal. Deemed by prosecutors Chester County's most infamous white-collar crime, the scheme involved smuggling scrap platinum from Johnson Matthey, an international preciousmetals company. From the late 1980s until November 1996, five employees melted bits into bars, wrapped them in duct tape, stashed them in hollow-handled dollies, and walked out undetected. The ring did not unravel until rare-book dealer Thomas M. Baldwin Jr., who admitted selling $900,000 worth of stolen metal, turned in his sources. The result: seven criminal convictions and a sweeping civil suit that languished long after the last defendant left jail. The lawsuit, filed in 1998, ended preliminarily earlier this month, on the devilish date of 6/6/06. But the participants will speak no evil - a sharp contrast to the often-rancorous court proceedings. In fact, they won't speak at all. According to court documents, the parties agreed not to discuss the settlement terms, which will not be finalized until several defendants accused of buying the stolen metal cough up total cash payments of $900,000, by July 6. The breakdown, according to court records, is a total of $500,000 to be paid by A1 Specialized Services & Supplies Inc., of Croydon, and ABX Corp. of South River, N.J.; $225,000 from Philadelphia jeweler Barry Sable; and $175,000 from Baldwin. Although the parties will not discuss costs, the case generated millions of dollars in legal fees - an amount that likely rivaled the $2.76 million theft of the pricey metal. In addition to more than 20 defendants, some of whom had up to six attorneys billing at
upwards of $100 an hour, Johnson Matthey employed at least three attorneys over the course of the litigation. A separate suit filed against Baldwin by his former attorney, Bruce Alan Herald, details a fraction of the overall accounting. The suit includes a Nov. 20, 1998, letter from Herald warning Baldwin to expect "fees between $50,000 and $100,000, and possibly higher." According to the suit, Baldwin paid $22,588 of the $65,851 he owed before Herald bowed out of the case in mid-2004. The criminal defendants were William David Guthrie, a well-known West Chester bartender; Webster A. Hilton, Joseph Patrick Clark, Gary Edward Burns, and Ricky C. Lee, all ex-Johnson Matthey employees; Victor Gabriel, owner of Skowood's Pool Service in Downingtown; and Dennis B. Walton, then a Downingtown councilman. Mario D'Addezio, another implicated Johnson Matthey employee, is believed to have died in 1995 after crashing an Alfa Romeo in Italy. The sentences ranged from probation for Walton to 11 1/2 months for Hilton. Most of the defendants were also required to pay restitution and were put on probation for 28 years each. The fact that Baldwin avoided prosecution infuriated those who did not. But Baldwin became the lead defendant in the civil suit, which initially named all of the criminal defendants. Walton was dismissed as a defendant in 2001. Also named as defendants were the businesses with which the men were associated and a host of wholesalers, some of whom reached settlements earlier in the case. During the proceedings, frequently punctuated by legal skirmishes, defense attorneys mounted countless challenges, ranging from the timeliness of the suit to the extent of the loss. Two former employees, Burns and Clark, testified that much of the stolen platinum came from metal that was sent to Johnson Matthey from other companies, such as DuPont and Monsanto, for refining, and was extracted before the metal was weighed and inventoried. In his Oct. 4, 2004, deposition, Burns, who began working at Johnson Matthey in the early '80s and wanted extra money "to pay car insurance," summed up the case this way: "Nobody knew there was any metal being stolen, because you can't determine it was stolen if it is not there. It was like the perfect crime at the time because you can't take something if it is not there."