TMTE Inc

TMTE Inc.—a precious metal dealer is accused of fraudulently extracting $185 million from senior citizens by selling them overpriced bullion. The massive joint action the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission and 30 states announced against TMTE alleged that the Los Angeles-based company had suckered 1,600 mostly silver-haired victims into sinking their life savings into precious metals sold at up to 300 percent of their market value. TMTE—which has variously used the monikers Access Unlimited, TEM, Chase Metals, and Metals.com—cashed in on the right-wing paranoia of the Trump era. Even prior to the CFTC-led case on Friday, a dozen states, including Alabama and Kentucky, had accused TMTE of posing as an investment adviser and bilking senior citizens of their assets. Articles in Quartz last year detailed how the company used a combination of politically themed Facebook ads, talk radio spots, misleading websites, and high-pressure telephone sales tactics to target right-leaning, Fox News-viewing retirees and convince them to purchase gold and silver at hugely inflated rates. These efforts often involved overt biblical appeals, or echoed the rhetoric of President Donald Trump and Republican pundits by invoking the threat “liberals” and the “Deep State” supposedly posed to the economy and to the victims’ personal finances.