I'm happy to tip for that work. Was there any case history from the 20th or 21st century?
Thanks for anything you can offer, I'll probably just end up sending it back to you to get one of your pieces.
There have only been a handful of cases decided on this, most were 19th century.
In the 20th Century there were:
U.S. v. Gellman, 44 F.Supp. 360 (D.C.Minn., 1942) - innocent
U.S. v. Yeatts, 639 F.2d 1186 (C.A.Ga., 1981) - guilty
U.S. v. Falvey, 676 F.2d 871 (C.A.Me., 1982) - innocent
In the 21st there is the von NotHaus case, which is not yet case law (the case is still pending, it has not yet been concluded, nor has it been evaluated for appeal). I am confidant that von Nothaus will be found innocent as well, though his life/career has more or less been ended by the last half decade of this malicious prosecution. His project, which began as a philanthropic effort to free money from its shackles and which effort inspired others to follow in his footsteps (including Bitcoin's wise founder) has been thwarted by this misapplication of the law and its heavy hand.
Some of the facts of the cases:
The closes set of facts to ours yielded a positive result for us:
The only case in which an individual who issued his own private currency was ever
directly charged under 18 USC 486 was U.S. v. Bogart. In Bogart, the court made
examination of the legislative intent of the Act of June 8, 1864. The Bogart court
determined that the Act was simply a counterfeiting law that prohibited private coins that
closely resembled circulating United States currency and could mislead the public (even
if such designs were original, but still misleading). Further, the Bogart court specifically
determined that a person who simply issued a private precious metal currency could not
be charged with counterfeiting under the Act of June 8, 1864, and that the Act did not
establish the new, previously unknown crime of issuing private currency.
Gellman is not very applicable and is not much precedent:
The Gellman court mentions 18 USC 486, noting that it bans the issuance of private
currency "as current money". Falvey later cites Gellman on this point. However, the
Gellman observation is really only dicta (not a matter of the decision), as the court noted that the statute was not
applicable to Gellman's alleged crime (selling slugs that could operate vending
machines). The Gellman court's discussion of 18 USC 486 involved no investigation of
the statute's legislative intent, and appears to be a simple quick reading by the court.
Gellman does not reference the prior U.S. v. Bogart, which directly contradicts Gellman
on this matter, on this matter (although, ironically, the Gellman court cites Bogart on an
unrelated matter).
This is also widely divergent set of facts, but still interesting and cites this law:
U.S. v. Yeatts involved a 1981 case where a counterfeiter, charged with attempting to
pass fraudulent historic United States gold coins, maintained that the coins were not
current money, and thus no longer fell within the purview of 18 USC 485, the sister law
to 18 USC 486. Using somewhat dubious Constitutional reasoning, the appeals court held
that, even though the coins were not current money, the law was still applicable under the
Constitution's "necessary and proper clause". Yeatts references 18 USC 486 only to note
that it defines a parallel offense to that defined in 18 USC 485 and one law did not repeal
the other.
Falvey is important with regards to legislative intent which favors us strongly:
U.S. v. Falvey looked extensively at 18 USC 486's sister law 18 USC 485. The Falvey
ruling established the important and frequently cited doctrine that a court may use
evidence of legislative history to govern a statute's reading - even if the statute's current
literal reading would be different without the legislative evidence absence. Even in the
absence of the Bogart ruling, the Falvey decision would provide direct support for using
the legislative testimony from the Act of June 8, 1964's passage to show its intent as a
simple counterfeiting law.
I also have a LOT of background on the legislative intent of this law, and its many minor modifications over the years. If it ever comes down to you needing some expert witness, I have some experience with that as well. We are all in this together.
As it says on the obverse crown of the Bitcoin Specie piece "VERITAS VOS LIBRABIT": the truth will set you free.
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