Section: NEWS
Of The Post-Dispatch Staff
Violin and rare instruments dealer Keith Bearden, handcuffed and escorted by federal marshals, was back in St. Louis on Friday for the first time in nearly a year. He faces federal charges that he swindled friends and customers of more than $2.1 million.
Bearden and his guards flew more than 6,000 miles by commercial airliner from Tokyo, where he had been kept in a Japanese jail for 11 weeks awaiting extradition. He arrived at Lambert Field Friday afternoon and was taken to the U.S. Courthouse downtown.
Dressed in a dark suit and a gray, collarless shirt, Bearden, 42, appeared older and heavier than he does in photos from just a few years ago. His mother, an aunt and brother-in-law were in court to see him.
"He has a tremendous amount of family support," said his lawyer, Scott Rosenblum.
Bearden is expected to plead not guilty Tuesday and ask a judge to free him on bond until his trial on fraud charges.
Bearden did not fight extradition and was glad to be back in the U.S, Rosenblum said.
In the Tokyo jail, Bearden was kept in solitary confinement and was not permitted to sit in a chair or stand in his cell, Rosenblum said.
Bearden was required to sit on the floor and was allowed to read until guards told him to go to sleep, Rosenblum said. Once or twice a week Bearden could shower and exercise.
"It was not very humane conditions."
Bearden left St. Louis last fall, telling associates he would soon return to run his rare instruments shop in Shrewsbury. Instead, he remained in Tokyo.
He was still there June 13 when police arrested him. Unknown to Bearden, a federal grand jury here indicted him April 10 on 14 charges of wire and mail fraud. The indictment was suppressed until his arrest.
Rosenblum said his client had not fled from an FBI investigation.
"As soon as he was indicted, he was anxious to return to defend himself," Rosenblum said.
Bearden is accused of swindling more than 21 people in the St. Louis area, across the country and in Canada.
Some are musicians with the St. Louis Symphony who have known him since the 1980s when he operated a small shop next to the Symphony and painstakingly made violin bows by hand.
Some victims are wealthy. One was the estate of the late Stanley J. Goodman, former head of the May Co. and one-time chairman of the Symphony. An accomplished violinist, Goodman knew and liked Bearden.
Other victims are musicians who saved for years to buy the expensive instruments they needed to hold jobs with symphony orchestras.
According to the indictment, Bearden got musicians and others he knew to invest in rare instruments. He claimed the instruments had been consigned to him and that he had buyers lined up, the charges say.
Bearden took thousands of dollars from his victims, though he never intended to give them the instruments or return their money, the U.S. attorney's office said in a statement.
David Visentin, who earns about $24,000 a year playing in the string section of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra in Canada, said Bearden swindl ed him of his life's savings: $290,000.
"On the surface, this is about money," he said. "Yet (the victims) are people whose lives is music. It just happens that they play instruments which are valuable. They way things have gone and the loss of the inst ruments has caused a lot of hurt."