ROBERT STEPHEN LIPKA (1945-2013)

Occasionally I may mention my book, Numismatic Rogues Gallery, published on the Newman Numismatic Portal. This story will require a new chapter.

Robert Lipka was born in Niagara Falls, New York, on June 16, 1945, the son of Gust and Stephanie Lipka (1922-2000). They were married on June 30, 1941, and divorced in 1963. Robert graduated from Cumberland Valley High School in 1963 and enlisted in the United States Army.

He must have scored high in his Army intelligence tests. In 1964 he was assigned to the National Security Agency as an intelligence analyst at Fort Meade in Maryland. Part of his job was to shred highly classified documents.

In September of 1965, he walked into the Soviet Embassy in Washington, D.C. and betrayed his country. He volunteered to be a spy and was provided with a camera to photograph documents. He played chess with his Russian handler and left rolls of film at secret locations. For two years he turned over classified documents and received payments of $27,000. He was motivated more by the money than ideology.

He left military service in August 1967 to attend Millersville State College of Pennsylvania. One of his professors described him as a loudmouth and arrogant. He was involved with campus and local politics. In 1968, Lipka was president of the student senate at his college. On November 5, 1968, Lipka camped out in a lawn chair for six hours to be the first in line at his polling place. He said he would vote for Hubert H. Humphrey. He graduated in 1971 and went to work as a teacher at Lancaster Mennonite High School. Later that year he ran as a Democrat for a seat on the Lancaster (PA) city council. He placed fourth out of four candidates.

Robert married Patricia E. Lipka on September 27, 1966. They had a daughter and were divorced in 1974. She complained that he lost much of their money gambling.

He was married to Deborah on July 25, 1981. She was a postal worker. They had two sons and were divorced in 2004. Lipka was a coach for his son's little league baseball teams.

In 1974, he joined the ANA as member R-83221. The following year he converted to life membership as LM-1650.

Lipka was owner of the Liberty Coin Shop in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. In April 1975, Lipka suffered a burglary of three briefcases chained together in his car while attending a coin convention in Manhattan. The estimated loss was $20,000.

In 1975 he began contributing a weekly coin column, Coin Collector's Corner, to the Lancaster Sunday News with the byline of Bob Lipka. He was familiar to editors of the paper because of frequent letters to the editor with comments or complaints. His topics included familiar items in coin columns like market trends, reports of new issues and recommendations of books to buy. He also responded to reader questions.

In 1979, he reported on the murder of two coin collectors a block from his home.

In 1980, he complained about a proposed city ordinance to regulate buy/sell transactions to restrict the sale of stolen property. As happens in many communities, he complained that required holding periods would affect the market for bullion products with frequent price fluctuation. Perhaps as a result of his complaints, the city dropped the requirement to record the names of sellers.

Writing a column is not as lucrative as spying for the Russians. The editor paid him $5 a week. His column was discontinued in the middle of 1983. The columns indicated a broad numismatic knowledge. The quality was good for a local coin column.

Lipka was promoter and show manager for the Lancaster, Pennsylvania, coin shows from 1975 to 1986.

In 1990, Lipka participated in the USA Today Financial News Network National Investment Challenge. He finished seventh out of 3123 participants.

Lipka did not rely on the coin business as his sole source of income. In 1992, he received a settlement of $250,000 from the Lancaster Commercial Travelers Association, a local social club, for an injury sustained during a January 1990 Super Bowl party. Lipka claimed he was struck by a falling gambling table. His injuries included two herniated discs, compression to his spinal cord and numbness in his fingers. He also claimed disfigurement, incontinence and sexual disfunction.

Russian agent Vasili Mitrokhin defected to the British in 1991 and turned over files that included the name of Lipka. The British MI6 forwarded information from Mitrokhin to the FBI. This shows that you can't trust Russian spies to keep their secrets.

The FBI investigated Lipka and sent an agent posing as a KGB officer to interview Lipka. Among his stories, he told the agent that his coin shop was a front for laundering money. Lipka reported that he saw documents identifying President Nixon as a Russian spy and documents revealing the real killer of John F. Kennedy. Not all of his stories were believed.

Lipka's former wife Patricia informed on him and confirmed his spying activities. When he was contacted in 1993, he was described as out of work on disability and weighing nearly 300 pounds. He spent his free time playing the horses at tracks in Pennsylvania and Delaware.

Lipka was arrested on February 23, 1996, nearly thirty years after he quit being a spy. Lipka threatened to reveal secret information if the case went to trial. Lipka accepted a plea deal in May 1997 to avoid a life sentence. He was sentenced to 18 years in prion, assessed a fine of $10,000 and required to pay back $10,000 given him by the FBI agent posing as a Russian agent. Lipka was released from prison on December 8, 2006.

Lipka died in Meadville, Pennsylvania, on July 5, 2013, and was cremated. The ANA reported his death but did not include an obituary. Local obituaries had little other than his dates of birth and death.

The Lipka case was the subject of a book, Fool's Mate: A True Story of Espionage at the National Security Agency written by FBI Special Agent John W. Whiteside and published in 2014. This can be added to the list of books about numismatists on a non-numismatic topic.

The story was recounted in Smithsonian Magazine in November 2016.

When I can find the time, I will be adding a chapter on espionage to Numismatic Rogues Gallery.

To read the complete Numismatic Rogues Gallery on the Newman Numismatic Portal, see:
Numismatic Rogues Gallery (https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/book/634354)

	NBS (coinbooks.org) Web