| | Phil Osborn:I've mentioned here (RoR) before the similar raid of Anthony L. Hargis and Co ... I also have a few of the Liberty Dollars - purchased at ALH&Co. long before Ron Paul was put on the face.
Michael M.: Hargis and his "Liberty Dollars" is not affiliated with NORFED and their "Liberty Dollars."
Did I say that they were? I have my own major differences with Hargis, but for a long while, his was one of the most promising libertarian alternative enterprises working for a libertarian utopia. At times, people affiliated with him or his business would leave an offer on his business desk for coins for sale. That's how I acquired the Liberty Dollars - which have stamped NORFED on them. They're very pretty, BTW, and worth considerably more than what I paid for them.
About the Hargis Case:
http://www.usdoj.gov/tax/txdv04785.htm
Yes, that's the position of the Feds, the same people who came in with a huge swat team around 1992, based on the fact that a customer of ALH&Co. was found carrying thousands of dollars in cash, along with violating several minor ordinances. She was fleeing a boyfriend in a bad relationship and had requested the cash on an emergency basis. The authorities automatically assume that anything over $400 is drug money and siezed her savings - and her car - on that basis, and then discovered documents tracking the cash back to ALH&Co. in Fountain Valley, the OC. Naturally they then conducted a raid like something right out of The Untouchables, machine guns, flak jackets, the whole nine yards, bursting through an unlocked door into an office lobby filled with customers in suits doing such criminal business as buying gold or items from Hargis's health food racks. Hargis took them to court and got everything they seized back.
See my more extensive coverage, based on a quarter century as an ALH&Co. customer by googling on ' "Phil Osborn" Anthony L. Hargis & Co. .' I recommend "A Case Study in the Present Danger."
More from FindLaw (edit/search for Hargis):
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=7th&navby=case&no=973148
Note that in the above case, Hargis is not accused of doing anything wrong. He simply accepted money to be placed into an account, denominated in gold or dollars, and then wrote checks for his customers to pay various expenses as they requested. It was not his business to inquire into why they were using him for the transactions, nor does the law require in general that a business person investigate his customers to ensure that their money is not stolen or the results of a crime.
My experience was that I was encouraged by Hargis's office workers to make out "transfer orders" for my utility bills, for example, which would result in checks being cut for a bundle of such bills, sent as a single combined bill to the power, gas, or phone companies. Hargis made a small percentage on each transaction, which came out to less than the postage and effort of mailing for the customer. Other customers were out of the country at times, using Hargis as a means of ensuring that mortgage payments, ect., got taken care of in a timely fashion.
As I've stated elsewhere, I'm sure that many of A.L.H. & Co.'s customers were in agreement with his stated positions in opposition to the income tax and the Federal Reserve System, and it is likely that some of them were using his services for concealment of assets against the feds. However, none of the 1,100 customers who the IRS accused when they siezed his assets were actually charged in that connection.
The trick is to sieze all of someone's assets so that they cannot afford the legal expenses to fight the case and then just sit on them. The IRS and other Federal agencies now have the power to sieze just about anything they want under any pretext and then wait for you to sue them and prove that you are innocent of any crime in order to get them back. So they made all kinds of unsubstantiated claims without ever naming specific persons, crimes or evidence, and then grabbed the money on the basis of those claims and ran.
In most cases, if the defendant has a good case, the authorities will bargain with them and only half of the assets will be stolen, in return for an agreement not to sue in court. In Hargis's case, they definitely want to make an example, and I see little liklihood of any easy victory.
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