Woman pays grocery bill with $ 20 gold pieces. Theft or ignorance most likely?

Woman Tries to Use Gold Double Eagle Coins to Pay Walmart Bill

Or forgery. The article doesn’t say whether it’s been confirmed that the coins are really gold, and/or are really double eagles.

ETA: Though if they were forgeries, I’d normally assume that the forger would find some more lucrative and less attention-grabbing way of passing them off…

Each. Even in circulated condition, they’re worth around $1500-$2000 each, for common dates. But the coins pictured in the article are dated 1933. The coins minted that year were never put into circulation; the few existing specimens are worth millions . . . unless, of course, they are counterfeit.

It was theft.

http://www.thespectrum.com/article/20090403/NEWS01/904030334

Theft or ignorance? I’d say both.

That’s a lady? I don’t think it’s female much less a lady.

There was a guy who was fired from the Montclair Post Office so he robbed it and stole some postal money orders, which he then used to pay his past due rent. His landlady turned him in.

He also used a gun and shot six people, five who died.

That is beyond the idea of “ignorance.”

I know about a guy who robbed a bank to pay his rent. His getaway car was a taxi.

Yeah, he was caught.

Purgatory Corrections Facility?

How macabre/appropriate.