Bates Defense Dismisses Victims As Mere Anecdotes

By Anne Trimble

One of the many ironic things about the court-ordered dismantling of Larry Bates' ill-gotten financial empire is that a frequent part of his legal defense was to dismiss as mere "anecdotes" the individual stories of victims created by the deceitful practices of his precious-metals firm, FAMC.

The painful truth of those little "stories" has added up to a cumulative judgment by precious-metals consumers around America that Bates and FAMC are "guilty" of not deserving to be in business at all. That's why Bates was in court in Memphis on Monday as his business and individual possessions entered into receivership.

And in time, those "anecdotes" also will come into play again as a court rules on the $80-million class-action suit brought against Bates and his company by many of the victims of their deceitful practices. Among other things, they materially shorted and delayed deliveries of lawfully ordered gold and silver, defrauding their customers out of a total of many hundreds of thousands of dollars.

To us, these aren't merely "stories" but the true accounts of actual people who were exploited in an evil way. We feel saddened by the number of people whom Bates cheated for many years. We directly assisted several of them understand just how he was cheating them. We guided some of them toward the lawful assistance they needed, and this eventually resulted in the class-action suit.

We are humbled that the Lord picked us to deliver a form of earthly justice to this man and his company who earned so much of their business by pretending to follow "Christian" principles.

Now, following Monday's court process, we are listening to many more "anecdotes" in the form of letters of thanks for the work we have actually done to inform and protect Bates' victims.

"Thanks for all your hard work!!!" read one testimonial that we have just received via e-mail. "You were 'anointed' for this. I luckily got my gold (assume it is gold) [from FAMC] and when I didn't get my silver order after years, they finally sent me a check with an increase as price had gone up. But I am [not sure] what I would have gotten had I actually gotten the silver."

The sad thing about these anecdotes is that even as his business was crumbling around him, Bates still managed to cull more victims. One man we just recently became aware of had actually waited over a year to obtain a check for an investment he had actually made. FAMC had the coins, however the man didn't get his $30,000 from Bates.

And now, sadly, it's looking like he probably never will. That's one more "anecdote" Bates can dismiss.

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Want to find out more about precious metal investing, then visit Anne Trimble's site on how to buy gold and silver.