Topic: Liberty Dollar Sentencing scheduled (Read 7089 times)

There are hundreds, thousands of people that have suffered from the civil forfeiture in this case that may also get theirs back, BUT... The procedure is arduous.
I've contemplated buying as many of the Warehouse Receipts as I could find to save folks from having to undergo the crazy hoops that you have to jump through.  Time is running out though.  The government has some sticky fingers.  

Not much chance of that.
He was a Reagan appointee, and is too close to retirement to be considered in a Democratic administration.


What is amazing is the civil forfeiture laws in the US.  The government can take anything away.

In fact, just a few days ago Obama issued an executive order that could be used for taking things like forums such as this and all its assets if they suspect there may be someone doing anything malicious, because national security.

It empowers the Secretary of the Treasury for example, some very broad powers,
Civil forfeiture lets the particular government offices to take most anything, and use it as however they like, even without any actual crime being committed or even alleged.  They can break in, take what you have, and spend it how they like, and it is legal for them to do that.

So when someone like Judge Voorhees provided some measure of ethics to this ruling, it doesn't win him a so many friends in the administration.  He really split the baby on this.

Rule of law is great, only in so far as the laws are great.

It is amazing that he will actually get the precious metals back as well. The judge in this case would be an asset in a higher court. The original conviction was an absolute travesty though.

In a political case, the so called "justices" are not on the side of the justice, rather on the side of statists, because they pay them and put pressure on them.

The hydra has many heads you know...

I am sick of the crap that the USA keeps dishing out made up laws just to line there pockets and get there ways just so they can do the same exact things. Wrong just wrong!

Yep, childish and dishonest seems right on the mark for you.

1) It is money, just as much as anything used in trade is money.  It is not "current money" which is a term of art with a special meaning.  It means specifically the current set of bills and coins issued by the government.
2) There is no law against trading a piece of silver for a hot dog.  Is it also illegal to be circulating hot dogs?  The prosecution fabricated both law and facts to get the guilty verdict because of the vast store of silver and gold they hoped to seize.  This is a case of attempted government theft, only partially averted.
3) They hoped to claim fraud by showing that he didn't have the backing for all the gold and silver warehouse receipts, showing up in a sedan to take out what was claimed to be many tons of gold and silver (it was in fact precisely that and there was no fraud).
4) Your evidence for it being illegal is the government's claim that it is illegal rather than either the law or the facts?  By this logic everyone is guilty as soon as they are accused?
5) Change what law?  None of this was illegal.  It was a spurious claim made by government officials hoping to use the forfeiture laws to line their pockets.  At the sentencing hearing the former head of enforcement for the US Govt for Forfeiture testified ON BEHALF OF THE LIBERTY DOLLAR against the prosecution.  The prosecutors in this case here belong in jail for their use of government force to attempt to ruin the life and reputation of one of America's great living heroes for monetary freedom and liberty.

You sir, are simply uninformed and parroting the government's shit storm.  

"The Justice Department asserted that von NotHaus was placing gold, and silver coins, along with precious metals currency into circulation with the purpose of mixing them “into the current money of the United States.”. In short, the government accused von NotHaus of counterfeiting."
http://libertycrier.com/bernard-von-nothaus-architect-liberty-dollar-sentenced/

I've seen the video where this fellow passed a Liberty Dollar off to an unsuspecting street vendor as money. Apparently, doing so is counterfeiting. Where is this injustice you claim? If you don't like the law, change it. OP's hyperbolic anti-government ranting is childish, not to mention dishonest.

It's not actually, as long as any issuer is issuing to US citizens regardless of their location they are automatically subjected to US regulation.
And as we have seen in the Liberty Reserve saga the US can come out and touch you in many different jurisdictions.

What's the "us" that's getting barred here? They're talking about a law about metal coins.

Congress can make laws.  That isn't the issue so much as the misapplication of laws congress has already made.

In United States v.Gellman, 44 F. Supp. 360 (D. Minn. 1942) the court went further and said that Congress had such a law that bars us if 1) it is for use as current money and 2) competes with US currency. 
The Voorhees LD ruling cites this case authoritatively.
This is a mistake of law created by merging two different statutes + a bad precedent.

It could apply to Bitcoin if this mistake of law propagates.

IANAL and I hate to nitpick but reading the judgement nobody seems to be saying that that government has a constitutional monopoly on money creation. What the court ruled was that the government has the constitutional power to grant itself a _statutory_ monopoly on money creation - in this case specifically metal coins intended for general circulation. (That last bit is presumably the difference with the collectible replica cases.)

Applying it to our situation, I suppose it also means that Congress could pass a law banning bitcoins if they wanted to. This law would be dumb and probably ineffective, but it would be constitutional. But did anyone ever doubt that in the first place?

Another reason to hate the US government. They just keep piling it on themselves.

The prosecution made the claim, but they weren't able to find anyone of the 250,000 folks that had any who had suffered as a victim of this.

The truth is pretty much the opposite of what the prosecution claimed.  In every speech, in every discussion, in every communication of any kind, he made great efforts to DISTINGUISH the Liberty Dollars from US Coins.  He wouldn't even call them "coins" and if you did, he would yell at you.  The prosecution was totally full of shit.  The jury just swallowed that shit, but the judge could at least see through it.  

Yeah sure, mixing in with your other change and getting a quarter ounce of silver and mistaking it for a quarter dollar would nark you off.... up until the moment you realized that you had a quarter ounce of silver.

No one was pretending that Liberty Dollars were US dollars either. 

In the CFR's document describing how they are going to try to globally regulate Bitcoin using the IMF, they mention the Liberty Dollar precedent.  The tragic guilty ruling that was a horrific miscarriage of justice is still on the books.  That is not such a good thing.  I am happy that Bernard gets some of his life back, and maybe some of the seized gold and silver (one can hope) will be returned.

Read the court filing:
http://www.gata.org/files/VonNotHausOrder-Nov-10-2014.pdf

Apparently the prosecution persuaded the court that they'd had trained people to do things like mixing Liberty Dollars into change and dropping it into their hands so they didn't notice, and telling them things like "This is the new $10 silver". The court also decided that making coins while intending them to be used like that counted as counterfeiting as the law defined it.

I can't say whether they really did that or whether the court's reading of the law is right, but if they did it doesn't actually sound like a victimless crime: If I thought I was getting normal US Dollars in change I'd be narked off if I was really getting 10 US Dollars worth of silver which I then have to work out what to do with, and even more so if I was getting what they seem to have been pushing here, which is a coin with less than 10 US Dollars worth of silver in it.

Obviously none of this stuff applies to bitcoin because nobody's pretending bitcoins are dollars, and neither does the other thing they nailed this guy for which was minting metallic coins, which Congress has apparently passed a daft-but-constitutional law against.

A number of folks have approached offering to capitalize on the fame/notoriety of Bernard von NotHaus.  The man is truly a national treasure.  Even Judge Voorhees acknowledged in his ruling that there was no evil intent in anything that he did, and that it was in the best interests of the people that he be free.

If you know anything about him, he will avoid even the APPEARANCE of doing anything like a scam, much less any ACTUAL scam.  It is unlikely that launching yet another branded alt coin is the next step in his journey.

When the government came to seize the assets in the vaults that were backing the Warehouse Receipts for the silver and gold, they never imagined that it would be all there, with a full and detailed accounting for each and every single Warehouse Receipt ever issued.

The evidence?  They came in a sedan to seize it, it took a fleet of armored trucks to ultimately move it.
Just because the government vaults are a bare faced sham, doesn't mean that private money can't be done honestly and with integrity.  Anyone involved with Liberty Dollar was only enriched by such involvement, there were no victims (except the federal government's pride for assuming it was a fraud and being completely wrong about that).

That's not bad at all. So Judge Voorhees has fulfilled the desire of the powers in charge (who made it impossible for him to acquit Bernard), and still effectively discharge him. A very philosophical judgement indeed.

So there is a difference to Stalin's legal system after all 

does Liberty Dollar have a crypto yet?

I'm going to get me some id showing i was born in 46, just in case.

In all seriousness, this is great news.

His age had to factor into it. I don't think many of us young'ns would mind home confinement, if we could work at home and get groceries and toiletries delivered, so we'd be thrown in prison.

http://gata.org/node/14812

Zero prison time.

11:30p GMT Tuesday, December 2, 2014

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

We have it only through a reliable intermediary that Liberty Dollar founder Bernard von Not Haus, oonvicted(sic) rather strangely almost four years ago of counterfeiting for issuing silver coins worth more than the originals they were supposed to be imitating, received a lenient sentence today from Judge Richard Voorhees in U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina -- six months of home confinement and three years of probation.

It's said that the judge observed that von Not Haus' motivation with the Liberty Dollar was philosophical rather than criminal. It's also said that the judge ordered the federal government to return to its owners the millions of dollars of metal held by Liberty Dollar for its clients.

A lawyer representing GATA appeared in court today to argue for leniency for von Not Haus.

More as it becomes available.