DELRAY BEACH, Fla. _ Lewis Bennett, who reported his wife missing on the high seas in May, has been arrested in West Palm Beach on federal charges that he stole as much as $100,000 in coins while a first mate on a ship in the Caribbean, according to the FBI and a federal complaint made public Monday.
Bennett and newlywed wife Isabella Hellmann with whom he shared an infant daughter and a condo west of Delray Beach, had told authorities the couple was on a belated honeymoon sail through the Caribbean when he was awakened in the early hours of May 15 to find Hellmann gone and his catamaran taking on water. He was rescued hours later and a four-day search for Hellmann found nothing.
According to the federal complaint, the owner of the ship Kitty R, based in the Caribbean nation of St. Maarten, said that in September 2015, he had bought 617 collectible coins for the equivalent of about $41,000 in U.S. dollars.
The man reported that Bennett had been a crew member in May 2016 when gold and silver coins stored inside plastic tubes were stolen by someone who had broken open the floor beneath a pallet of food. The owner said he did not file a claim because the items were not listed among covered items on his insurance policy.
On May 8, 2016, the complaint says, Bennett filed a police report in St. Maarten about the missing coins, saying they were stolen sometime either on May 5 or early May 6 of that year, when Bennett and the owner were not aboard.
FBI searches condo of Delray woman reported lost at sea
Travel records show Bennett flew from Fort Lauderdale to St. Maarten around March 18 of this year and returned April 8. He and Hellmann then flew to St. Maarten on April 19 for their delayed honeymoon sailing.
When Bennett called the Coast Guard for help early on May 15, the Coast Guard sent a helicopter from Marathon. When the Coast Guard retrieved his life raft, authorities noticed he'd loaded a suitcase and two backpacks on the raft but had taken only one backpack with him when he was pulled off the raft by the Coast Guard swimmer, who "noticed that his backpack was unusually heavy."
The Coast Guard later recovered the life raft and took it to Key West on May 19. Found aboard: a suitcase; a backpack; unexpended parachute flares; buoys; 14 gallons of water; a second ePIRB homing device, and nine plastic tubes which were found to contain some 225 of the stolen coins. That cache alone was worth about $4,200, the complaint said.
On May 23, law-enforcement officials returned the coins to Bennett at his suburban Delray Beach condo before realizing they might have been stolen. When they went to the condo May 23, the coins were still in their evidence bags and Bennett agreed to turn them over.
After the coins' owner confirmed the ones Bennett had were his, that prompted the high-profile, eight-hour June 16 raid of the Bennett-Hellmann condo in Pine Ridge of Delray, the complaint said. Inside, investigators found 162 more coins hidden in boat shoes; those were worth about $26,100.
The FBI said Bennett is set to appear in federal court in Key West on Tuesday.
