I wonder if there is a statute of limitations on suing an estate.

Let’s say he dies in 5 years. 10 years later his children suddenly clearly become rich and can’t explain how. Clearly it looks like he passed the gold to them somehow.

Could the investors then somehow sue his estate then to get the value of the gold back? Or would it be too late?

For all we know he stole money, but not what they thought. Maybe after his time in hiding there’s only a few thousand left and it’s all largely moot anyway.

He’d be more sympathetic if he hadn’t been hiding and suspiciously paying cash for everything for years.

Living out of hotels in Boca Raton, FL and going places via taxis is a win for at least 90% of the world's population.

The rest of the gold was actually recovered after he was originally sued - the downstream owners of the original insurance company that paid out (they get the rights to the recovery when they settle a loss policy) sued and won rights to the gold - they then hired a larger recovery company that successfully recovered the 95% that was left. Kind of crazy that this guy didn't recover more than 5% and shot himself in the foot by trying to steal $2.5M of coins.

The thing about gold is, it’s probably quite easy to secretly leave to your heirs.