Liberty Dollars held by collectors subject to seizure as contraband

[Bind]

I do not believe any one thing got him convicted. I believe it was the totality of the evidence that did it. Everything added up.

here is a copy of the case in pdf format

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[westkybitcoins]

I do not believe any one thing got him convicted. I believe it was the totality of the evidence that did it. Everything added up.

But that's just it... added up to what? What was the crime?

Making silver rounds that borrow some common features of coins? That's done all the time, by all sorts of silver mints. It's a non-issue—no one cares. There was clearly no counterfeiting going on.

Creating an alternative currency? Again, it happens all the time. Ithaca Hours, Butte Bucks, REAL Dollars, BerkShares, Salt Spring Dollars and many more circulate in their communities unmolested by federal agents.

Ignoring the (glaringly obvious) possibility of simply being targeted by a biased system for any number of ulterior motives, the only realistic reason for going after Liberty Dollars was some notion of some folks, somewhere being defrauded. In an age where people get suspicious whenever I hand them an older dollar coin or a $2 bill, this seems like a hard sell to me.

I suspect most complaints were from people who greedily took the LDs, no questions asked, because they assumed the offerer mistakenly gave them something with a resell value higher than face value, and who were ticked to discover otherwise. That, or some of the people using LDs were fraudulently passing them off as U.S. legal tender—in which case, why go after the manufacturer instead of the actual fraudsters?

here is a copy of the case in pdf format

Thanks, I'll read this. My phone apps are having trouble opening the file though, so it'll have to wait until later.

[Ekaros]

So does this kind of stuff happen in free countrys?

[SgtSpike]

They're fraudulent because they're called "Liberty Dollars" which is already a product name combination used by the FED. If anything, it's borderline trademark/copyright infringement.

So it's not that it looks just like U.S. money... it's that it shares a name with a mid-1800s coin that most people have never seen or heard of? Funny, I don't recall that being mentioned in the write-up of the trial that I read (it's seriously becoming a nuisance that so many judges ban video cameras from the courts, I'd have paid to see the footage of this trial.)

And a quick question on that point: which is worse, calling your money "Liberty Dollars", or producing and selling silver rounds which look like this



but which are actually NOT really U.S. coins, and calling them "1/2-oz. Walking Liberties," while neglecting to put the phone number and website of the minter on the reverse?

I'm wondering where you draw your line.

That and it wreaks of fraud like a late night infomercial.

I'll concede as to how Liberty Dollars could sound to some at first. Actually, Bitcoins reminds me a lot of LDs in that regard... complete with the whining about how the model is "unfair" to latecomers. But curiously, in both instances, the models that were implemented are pretty much the only realistic way to get the currency off the ground and make it work.

I think this guy is right.  I can see how these coins would be easily confused for the "real" dollar coins.  I would have accepted one without a second thought, just because I handle dollar coins so infrequently that I would have easily mistaken this for the real deal.

[westkybitcoins]

Also, in case I gave anyone the wrong impression, the above photo shows "generic" silver rounds from some unknown (to me) mint. They're regularly sold in the USA, despite the similarity to legal tender American Silver Eagles, and no one thinks anything of it.

Liberty Dollar rounds look more like




But (to try to bring us back on point) regardless of the case, does anyone really think that people who paid for Liberty Dollars and know exactly what they are should have their door kicked in and have their property stolen?

[hugolp]

So does this kind of stuff happen in free countrys?

You are free to choose the television channel you want to watch, not the currency you want to use. Thats for the government burocrats to decide (with guns and for your own good of course).

[Bind]

As a consumer, you have the freedom to use anything you want as currency. All that's required is acceptance among users. Same goes for the business owner so long as the consumer does not take posession prior to payment. If the consumer does take posession prior to payment, then the debt is existing and seller must accept all denominations of the nations current money, but they can also accept other forms of payment as well.

[Fakeman]

I could be mistaken but I seem to remember the promotional material on the website advocating trying to "pass" the coins at the USD equivalent of their face value without necessarily explaining that they were not government issued currency. By early 2008 the 1 oz silver coins were being issued as $50 denominations, far in excess of the market price for silver at that time ($10-20 over 2008) and a little more than even the recently set ~20 year high of $48.XX (it's around $40 today.) It's also worth noting that "associates" got the coins for 2/3 the price. http://web.archive.org/web/20081217005130/http://www.libertydollar.org/

Imagine receiving one of these as payment for something later in 2008 believing it to be a government issued coin and discovering later that the "$" face value was essentially meaningless: the issuer was no longer willing exchange it to USD  at any price (http://web.archive.org/web/20081218121525/http://www.libertydollar.org/ld/faqs/convertibility.htm) and the silver in it was only worth $10, a fifth of the face value.

[FredericBastiat]

The real easy way of resolving this issue/problem is to ask all of the possessors of Liberty Dollar coins and currencies if they want to keep their property. If they want to keep the LDs, then apparently they don't feel they've been defrauded. Maybe they think it's a collectors item or some such thing.

On the other hand, if they truly thought that the LD's they have/had were not the property they expected them to be (some other currency), then they can go sue the guy who sold it to them and attempt to recover the property they exchanged it for.

Finally, and last but not least, perhaps whoever owns these LDs should be cautioned against attempting to claim they are something they're not to avoid the appearance of fraud. But isn't that just being obvious? Misrepresentation of any object as something it is not, in trade, risks a contract breach. Sounds like 'Contracts 101' to me.

How hard was that?

[hmongotaku]

Well if he changed  the wording of that to something else or leave it out, "trust in god" vs. "In god we trust" was TOO similar and fooled senior citizens and mentally handicapped people as well as kids. Erase it and don't call it coins, cuz that is a "coined" word now.

[TECSHARE]

Funny enough my research into "Liberty Dollar" formerly known as NORFED lead me to Bitcoins. I have been following this organization carefully since 2007 before the initial threats and raids. This man was operating this business SINCE 1998 and just now they decide to bust him? This is classic protectionist thuggery by the federal reserve cartel. By the way, NORFED stands for "National Organization for the Repeal of the Federal Reserve Act". Why would an organization dedicated to ending the federal reserve try to emulate & counterfeit its money?  

I know damn well half of you condemning him didn't even read the summarized statement from The U.S. Attorney's office, let alone any actual case documents. If you did, you would see the prosecution CONTRADICTS ITSELF REPEATEDLY and is running a whitewash for the monopolistic criminal cartel, designed to control how we transact with each other thru threats of prosecution, confiscation, and other chilling effects. They tried it once but failed, so they found a new way to railroad them this time. Now a 70+ year old man will die in prison, and for what? Because he dared to compete with the PRIVATE bank known as the federal reserve using COMPLETELY LEGAL barter transactions?

It is kind of sickening to see all the ignorant and the trolls here attack this organization when this very well could be the fate of Bitcoin to be railroaded like this in the near future. I cant wait to see who is next in line to bash on Bitcoin users once they are deemed criminal by our glorious leaders.

How will the carefully crafted partly line sound-byte read then?

Who will be left to speak out for you and your rights?

[westkybitcoins]

Well if he changed  the wording of that to something else or leave it out, "trust in god" vs. "In god we trust" was TOO similar and fooled senior citizens and mentally handicapped people as well as kids. Erase it and don't call it coins, cuz that is a "coined" word now.

Senior citizens? The mentally handicapped? Kids?

Why should this company have been subjected to an extreme standard that no other minter of silver rounds, or maker of alternative currency, would ever be subjected to?

Look at the rounds several posts above, the ones that resemble American Eagles. Do you think fully-functional adults have never mistaken them for real Eagles, sometimes just because they neglected to turn them over?

Doesn't matter. Those things are still perfectly legal, and SHOULD be, because they are still different enough that simple familiarity and/or examination reveal what they are.

Side note: LDs are not coins. Calling private silver rounds coins IS illegal, and it's something neither NORFED nor Bernard von NotHaus did.