A 61-year-old New Zealand man was sentenced Monday to 4-4.5 years in a Wyoming prison for stealing millions of dollars in silver and gold from his father’s Lincoln County home while his father, then about 90 years old, was away from home in late 2023.
Michael Reps was also ordered to pay $2 million in restitution to his father, an amount meant to offset any sums he’s ordered to pay in a civil case filed in a Nevada court.
He was given pre-sentence incarceration credit for 31 days he’s already served in jail.
It’s difficult to pinpoint the total value of the theft because of fluctuating precious metal prices, though early investigative reports placed it at around $14 million.
Large sums were recovered early in the investigation, according to court statements.
Reps pleaded no contest to one count of felony theft in April and accepted a plea agreement limiting his potential prison term to 4.5 years. He had faced two felonies, each punishable by up to 10 years in prison, and the plea agreement offered to dismiss one of those charges.
Lincoln County District Court Judge Joseph Bluemel told Reps on Monday that he was tempted to reject that plea agreement.
Had the judge done that, Reps could have withdrawn his no-contest plea and gone to trial.
Bluemel was aware of that, and said he would have rejected the agreement anyway if not for the prosecutor noting that Reps’ father, Frank Reps, generally agrees with the terms of the plea.
The case evidence unfolded more like a family drama than an action movie-caliber heist.
Lincoln County Chief Deputy Attorney Ember Oakley called the theft a treacherous, deceitful and calculated breach of a father’s trust, and a “caper” in which Reps may have the “last laugh” yet due to the soaring values of gold since the crime and the father’s assertion that some of the metals are still unrecovered.
Speaking on his own behalf,Reps indicated that he was driven to desperation over fears that his father’s longtime girlfriend was influencing his father. He said there were signs his father was cutting Reps’ disabled siblings off from needed financial help.
In Court
Reps appeared Monday in Lincoln County District Court in Kemmerer alongside his attorney, Ryan Semerad.
Standing more than 6 feet tall, Reps wore a grey suit, black spectacles and slacks. He notified the judge he was having trouble breathing, but could nonetheless make it through the hearing.
He apologized to his father and to the people of Lincoln County, whom he cast as loving and welcoming toward him, his wife, and his kids during their visits.
Still, added Reps, he had no idea when he started taking gold from his father’s home that this case would surface to the criminal level, adding that he was trying to intervene in what he saw as a family crisis.
He said he’d seen signs that his father’s girlfriend of several decades was exerting “undue influence” on the older man, that his father was slated to cut off help to two of the Reps siblings — one with a physical disability and one with mental problems— and that someone had already “pilfered” 1,000 ounces of gold from the family.
“(This was) an isolated matter that I mistakenly thought could stay within my family,” said Reps.
He added that he acted to rescue the money from “undue influence.”
Oakley referred to Terry Reps as Frank Reps’ wife of 40 years, while Michael Reps said the pair have not gotten married.
Unsettled on the different terms, Bluemel referred to Terry as Frank Reps’ “companion” when he spoke of her.
Frank and Terry Reps did not respond by publication time to a request for comment.
By Michael Reps’ account, everything changed with his father once the man suffered severe burns in a 2015 incident.
After that, the older man remained “high functioning,” but seemed to lack his own will, Michael Reps told the court.
“(I) saw a very subservient man,” he said. “Yet when other people show up, my father lashes out at her — it’s the only time he can get his punches in.”
Reps also said no one called him or his siblings while their dad fought for his life, leading him to believe that no one would call him if his dad’s life were on the line again, leaving them powerless to intervene in dangerous situations if needed.
When in 2020 Frank Reps, “in a panic,” told his children that one of Terry’s sons would not leave their home during the COVID-19 pandemic, a sister called in a welfare check on Frank, the son related in court.
Within 90 days of that, Frank Reps made Terry’s son an executor of some of the older man’s affairs, Michael related, adding that he saw signs that the siblings on the Reps side could lose out on their inheritance.
Nah, Says Prosecutor
Oakley had anticipated some of these defenses.
Though she gave her argument before Reps spoke, she addressed his claims by pointing to a frenzy of activity in Reps’ bank accounts following November 2023, when Reps took the gold.
That includes more than $100,000 “just in cash withdrawals,” $730,000 to a crypto trading platform, $9,000 to another cryptocurrency platform, $62,000 to his wife’s accounts and “tens upon tens of thousands” in lavish purchases to these and various other purchases - from events to designer clothes to high-end wines.
Oakley asked why Reps would have enjoyed such exorbitant spending if his intention were to help his sister and brother, and freeze his father’s assets from dubious influences.
She also read aloud from emails Reps sent to his father after Frank Reps emailed his children about the vanished gold.
“Well (f***) you,” wrote Michael Reps in an email to his father, according to Oakley’s statement. “I’ll do fine without the three mill, and (expletive) required to get it.”
Besides being “reprehensible and disgusting,” that email shows that Reps knew he was already due for an inheritance of about $3 million, said Oakley.
“What he didn’t want to do was have to wait,” said the prosecutor.
That Reps would go into his father’s home when he knew he wasn’t there and take his life’s savings shows “treachery, lack of remorse, gross betrayal and repeated deceit,” Oakley added.
“It is unequivocally false that their wealth needed protection from her,” she said of Terry Reps. “She is a respectable, kind and dear wife to (Frank Reps) and he wants that known.”
Oakley asked Bluemel to sentence Reps to between 4 and 4.5 years in prison and order him to pay $2 million, the maximum allowed by the plea agreement.
Probation
Semerad said the prison term length was fine, but asked that the judge suspend it over a three-year term of supervised probation. That means Reps would get a chance at probation, but if he violated it could go to prison for the full term.
Semerad agreed to the $2 million restitution, and he acknowledged the ongoing civil case as well.
The defense attorney reasoned that Reps could “make amends” and pay back anything he still owes more efficiently, and more effectively, from outside prison walls.
He also noted that efforts to seize Reps’ New Zealand properties as restitution, for example, could be stalled with Reps in prison.
Whether sentenced to prison or probation, Reps, who served in the U.S. Marines, would still be a convicted felon and would lose his gun and voting rights, Semerad said.
Reps has a New Zealand conviction for failing to comply with regulations around de-registering businesses, but he has no violent criminal history, Semerad said.
“The public is, always has been, and always will be safe with Michael (in society),” he said, adding that the state has recovered the bulk of the stolen metals, and that a Department of Corrections analyst called Reps a good candidate for probation.
“At its core, from beginning to end, (this is) a family matter,” Semerad said. “It all comes down to this set of assets intended for (care) of the family.”
Appearing via virtual link from New Zealand at a time that would have been 3 a.m. for her, Reps’ wife Amanda McPhee spoke on her husband’s behalf.
“He’s a well-loved and very integral part of our family,” she said.
Reps has been stuck in the United States for months since the sheriff’s office is holding his passport, Semerad said.
No Matter How Old You Are
Bluemel granted Oakley’s sentencing request and rejected Semerad’s.
The law essentially holds that people can use their property how they like no matter how old they are, said the judge.
And Reps, as a clearly intelligent and capable man, could have pursued legal action if he feared inappropriate influence, Bluemel added.
“But you took the law into your own hands,” said the judge.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
