A Seattle bankruptcy judge put Northwest Territorial Mint’s finances in the hands of a trustee, rejecting the owner’s proposal to hire a restructuring expert instead as the company faces thousands of creditors as well as a large jury verdict in a defamation lawsuit, the Seattle Times reported yesterday. NW Mint has operations in Washington, Nevada, Texas, Wisconsin, Hawaii and Virginia, with 237 employees, its court documents say. According to the defamation-suit judgment, NW Mint is on the hook for $12 million, while company owner Ross B. Hansen is personally liable for $25 million. The hefty defamation verdict stems from an obsessive online smear campaign by Hansen against Los Angeles real-estate developer Bradley S. Cohen, and the developer’s equally determined counterstrike. Papers filed in the suit detail how Hansen ordered NW Mint employees to help set up a series of anonymous websites targeting Cohen. The acrimony apparently started when Cohen sued the mint for polluting an Auburn warehouse it leased from him. Cohen won and collected a $3 million judgment.
