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