Lakeville coin dealer exonerated
Accuser apologizes for lawsuit
by Aaron Vehling
Thisweek Newspapers
A Lakeville-based coin company accused of scamming an elderly couple was exonerated last month when the accuser withdrew her claim.
Linda Keith of Minneapolis had contacted authorities last year, saying that for most of 2010, BCC Precious Metals and its salesmen had taken advantage of her parents, William and Ruth Naddy, by forcing them to purchase silver and gold coins at high markups and by encouraging them to take out a reverse mortgage to fund the coin-purchasing sprees. She alleged fraud of more than $65,000.
In addition to filing a lawsuit, Keith had told her story to the Star Tribune and contacted the Bloomington Police Department, the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office and the Better Business Bureau.
In a letter to the Hennepin County Court as part of an undisclosed settlement in December 2011, and released in January 2012, Keith apologized for pursuing the lawsuit.
“After further discovery and investigation,” Keith wrote, “I learned my assumptions about the business transactions are wrong.”
BCC Precious Metals owner Leonard Barber and salesmen Robert H. Boyd and Michael D. McNamara “did not cheat my father,” she wrote.
During the suit, Keith had accused Boyd of forging documents associated with coin -sales transactions. In her letter, however, she said that he did no such thing.
Barber said in a statement that “it is heartening that BCC Precious Metals has been vindicated. We always seek to conduct our business honestly…”
In addition to the written apology, the courts also required Keith to pay legal costs for BCC and for McNamara, who no longer is employed by the coin dealer.
Aaron Vehling is at aaron.vehling@ecm-inc.com or www.facebook.com/thisweeklive.
