Counterfeit conviction: Liberty Dollar prosecution.

• Author: Doherty, Brian
• Position: Citings - Bernard yon NotHaus - Brief article

IN MARCH a federal court in North Carolina convicted Bernard yon NotHaus on three counts related to making and distributing counterfeit coins. Von NotHaus faces a possible sentence of six months to 25 years in federal prison because of the Liberty Dollar, a private currency he launched in 1998. His conviction was based on the premise that a minted round of nearly pure silver that is neither the same size nor denomination as any existing f U.S. coin and does not display identical imagery is nonetheless a counterfeit of U.S. cur-rency. In a press release announc-ing the conviction, U.S. Attorney Anne Tompkins described the Liberty Dollar as a form of "domestic terrorism." Von NotHaus, who once ran an organization called the National Organization for the Repeal of the Federal Reserve and Internal Revenue Codes, explicitly advertised his silver product as competition to federal fiat money. He called the Liberty Dollar a "voluntary private barter...