At least four gold bars found in the FBI search of Sen. Bob Menendez’s home had been directly linked to a New Jersey businessman now accused of bribing Menendez, the state’s senior senator, Bergen County prosecutor’s records from a 2013 robbery case show.
The businessman, Fred Daibes, reported to police that he was the victim of an armed robbery in 2013, and he asked police to recover the gold bars stolen from him.
Daibes reported that $500,000 in cash and 22 gold bars were stolen, Edgewater, New Jersey, police records show. Police later caught four people with the stolen goods.
To get his property back, Daibes signed “property release forms” certifying the gold bars belonged to him, the records show.
“Each gold bar has its own serial number,” Daibes told investigators in a 2013 transcript made by prosecutors and police who recovered — and returned to Daibes — the stolen valuables. “They’re all stamped…you’ll never see two stamped the same way.”
A decade later, it said, the FBI found four gold bars with unique serial numbers in the Clifton, New Jersey, home of Menendez and his wife, Nadine.
In the bribery indictment against Menendez and Daibes this year, prosecutors included photos of some of the alleged bribes found in Menendez’s home, including four gold bars.
The serial numbers of the four gold bars in the bribery indictment appear to be exact matches to four of the gold bars Daibes certified as having been stolen and returned to him in the 2013 robbery case.
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