The Wearehouse recently hosted a well-attended debate featuring advocates for cryptocurrency, precious metals, and fiat currency. Jeremy Kauffman from LBRY represented crypto, Silver Dave from Local Silver Mint represented precious metals, and Jay Noone represented fiat currency with his tongue firmly planted in-cheek. Here’s the full video:

A couple of years ago, the New Hampshire Goldback was created after the original Utah Goldback proved incredibly popular at the 2020 Porcfest. A gorgeous, spendable, interchangeable type of gold money available in denominations as small 1/1000th of an ounce of 24 karat gold, the NH Goldback has taken the NH freedom community by storm – giving even cryptocurrency serious competition.

Now, the company behind the Goldback, Alpine Gold, has launched its first physical branch location and they chose Manchester, NH!

I decided I needed to see it for myself, so I set an appointment with Adam Van, the manager, and got him to answer all my questions about the services they provide the community, and the entire eastern portion of the United States. It’s pretty cool – watch the interview here:

Give them a call at (801) 770-2565 x1201 and stop in to see for yourself.

A few weeks ago, 70 state reps voted to end drug prohibition entirely and last week, 90 state reps voted to end prohibition on dimethyltryptamine (DMT)! Here’s the full video from the house floor featuring reps Jason Gerhard, Matt Santonastaso, and Jonah Wheeler speaking in favor of the bill, HB 216, which sadly lost 274-97. However, 26% is a good first try.

Clearly, younger state reps understand the urgency of ending the insane war on drugs and as the older prohibitionist reps die off and are replaced by free staters as our number and influence increases, we will be ever closer to ending the madness of drug prohibition in our lifetime.

Mr Bitcoin Tours NH Liberty Forum 2023

Did you miss New Hampshire Liberty Forum 2023- the premier liberty conference put on by free staters taking part in the largest migration of folks looking to create a freedom friendly environment somewhere in the world? Mr Bitcoin didn’t miss it and it was a blast. People from all over the US and some even from around the world attended New Hampshire Liberty Forum 2023. Free staters got to meet new movers and greet those working on moving. Mr Bitcoin did a tour of the exhibit hall before crashing a talk on, lets be honest, who remembers on what now. I guess that’s what happens when Mr Bitcoin enters a room!

 
 

http://freedomdecrypted.com/public_html/other-content/mr_bitcoin_tour_of_nh_liberty_forum_2023.mp4

Mr Bitcoin Tours NH Liberty Forum 2023
 
 

There were lots of vendors and exhibitors attending from around New Hampshire including the New Hampshire Independence PAC, Porcupine Real Estate, a bunch of porc vendors like freestate.app (a directory of porcupine businesses) which had a great set of porc-merchandise, ThinkPenguin (a free stater led computer retailer selling GNU/Linux systems that put you back in control), Goldback (not gold-backed, but an actual gold infused bill), a learning resource center (showing off awesome 3d printing tech), and many many others.

A short list of the many well known activists, reps, and leaders attending Liberty Forum in 2023:

Carla Gericke is an author, activist, and attorney. Born in South Africa, she immigrated to the United States in the 1990s after winning a green card in the Diversity Visa Lottery. She became a U.S. citizen in 2000. Gericke practiced law in South Africa, and California, working at Apple Computer, Borland, Logitech, and Scient Corporation. Gericke is President Emeritus of the Free State Project. In 2014, she won a landmark First Circuit Court of Appeals case that affirmed the First Amendment right to film police officers.

Jeremy Kauffman is an American entrepreneur and political activist known for founding and leading LBRY. LBRY is blockchain-based decentralized solution to file-sharing and payments. It’s a potential threat to censorship and a YouTube killing alternative that the SEC has been aiming to kill through civil litigation for the past ~5 years. Jeremy Kauffman also ran for US senate in 2022 with various humorous advertising campaigns such as corruption for the people, war is gay, and other similar slogans. He is a vocal supporter and activist within the Free State Project, a migration movement designed to move 20,000 libertarians to New Hampshire. Jeremy Kaufman is also on the board of the Free State Project.

Ian Freeman Is a leading activist in the greater libertarian migration movement to New Hampshire. He co-hosts the leading nationally syndicated libertarian ran radio show Free Talk Live. Ian Freeman is well known for his activism in New Hampshire and most recently cryptocurrency activism educating people on how peace can be achieved through undermining government fiat currencies and thereby violence around the world. He’s faced off against the governments on numerous occasions, but more recently been targeted by the feds for calling them out on recent atrocities on air. Ian was indirectly targeted through co-host and activist Nobody (formally Rich Paul) in a 2012 FBI led “drug” investigation, in 2016 via a smear campaign and FBI raid intended to allude to heinous crimes despite no charges or evidence, and then again Ian and Free Talk Live’s studio was raided in 2021 over the bastardly crime of selling crypto without a government permission slip (humorously legally according to the lawyers, after 20+ charges were dropped a several convictions are to be appealed).

Jason Sorens In July 2001, Sorens published an essay titled “Announcement: The Free State Project”, in which he proposed the idea of a political migration, where 20,000 libertarians would move to a single low-population state (New Hampshire was selected in 2003) to enable a stronghold for libertarian ideas to gain a foothold. Participants then signed statement of intents declaring that they would move to New Hampshire within five years of the drive reaching 20,000 participants. As of February 3, 2016, 20,000 people had signed this statement of intent—completing the original goal. As of the 2022-2023 term 50 free staters have been elected to the 400-member New Hampshire House of Representatives and each year more and more liberty-activists move strengthening free stater representation. Free staters are those people who moved for the Free State Project, but traditionally not including those who did not sign and those who already lived in the state. Another ~50 or so liberty or liberty-leaning representatives are also represented in the New Hampshire state house.

Mark Warden Mark has nearly 20 years of experience in the real estate industry and markets his business Porcupine Real Estate to free staters looking to move to New Hampshire. Mark not only donates a percent of all his commissions to the Free State Project and other liberty-oriented organizations, but he also is a property owner, investor and landlord with multi-family properties in New Hampshire and he invests in other small, New Hampshire-based businesses. Mark is also a liberty activist, working to bring “Liberty in Our Lifetime” to New Hampshire. Mark is on the board of the Free State Project and was a state representative from 2018-2022.

Matthew Santonastaso Matthew Santonastaso a free stater, state rep, and activist who sponsored House Bill CACR32- a bill that would let the people of New Hampshire vote on and declare independence from the United States and proceed as an independent nation. Matt is also the Political Director for the New Hampshire Liberty Alliance.

Jason Gerhard A man with one of the most inspirational stories. Jason moved to New Hampshire over a decade ago and for his support of tax protesters Ed and Elaine Brown he served over a decade in a federal penitentiary. Upon release Jason moved back to New Hampshire to partake in the Free State Project and in 2022 got elected. Jason is well known for introducing bills that could help protect those in New Hampshire against violent gangs calling themselves the state.

Yury Polozov Yury grew up in Russia and came to the US legally, in search of the American Dream and earned citizenship. Having seen the devastating effects of socialism, Yury is dedicated to vigorously defending economic and civil liberties for all New Hampshire residents.

You can find many more leading activists, representatives, would be representatives, and other speakers at:

https://www.nhlibertyforum.com/speakers

Despite spending a dozen years in federal prison for helping tax freedom advocates Ed and Elaine Brown in 2006, Jason Gerhard is still taking on the evil IRS. Now a NH state representative, Gerhard filed a House Resolution, HR 16 that -if passed- would officially ask the IRS three tough questions:

1. Where is the word “income” defined in the Internal Revenue Code?
2. Where in the Internal Revenue Code is it written that the average American, who does not exercise a federal privilege but simply trades their time for money, is liable to pay the federal income tax?
3. Why have numerous Internal Revenue Service publications, directors, and members of the United States Congress, among others, stated that the income tax is “voluntary”?

Unfortunately, the state house voted 283-60 – full roll call here – to kill the resolution. Thanks though to the sixty reps who voted for it, including Keene’s Jodi Newell. Here’s the full video from the house floor discussion and vote:

Nearly 20% of those voting on HB581 yesterday in the full New Hampshire house session, voted for ending the insane war on drugs ENTIRELY! The bill came out of nowhere, filed by rep Matt Santonastaso with little fanfare or press attention, despite the epic attack on the War on Drugs it represents. The public hearing came-and-went with little support, or opposition.

Yesterday, at the full house session, the bill came up for a vote and reps Santonastaso and Jonah Wheeler made excellent speeches in favor of ending the failed war on drugs, while Terry Roy who positions himself as a incremental drug reformer used fearmongering language to scare the reps into voting to continue the destruction of our neighbors’ lives. They then voted 286-70 to kill the bill.

Here’s a link to the full roll call showing exactly how all the representatives voted. Kudos to the brave 35 Republicans and 35 Democrats who did the right thing. Sadly many “A+” rated “liberty reps” voted to continue the drug war. What were they thinking? Anyone with a “Yes” vote on the roll call voted to kill the bill, so feel free to reach out to them and ask why. You can watch the full hearing here:

We’re not happy about it, but the jury has spoken. I was found guilty of all eight non-violent, victimless charges I faced at trial in December. Though we are going to appeal all eight counts, I have to be sentenced before the appeal can be filed. The prosecution is asking for upwards of 20 years, however no charge has a minimum sentence, so in theory I could receive time served for the 69 days I’ve already done and then some amount of probation or home confinement in lieu of prison. It’s all up to the judge.

If I have had a positive effect on your life, perhaps you’d consider writing a letter to judge Laplante to explain why you think I should remain out of prison. What kind of benefit have I brought you and the community as a whole? Why does putting me behind bars cause more harm than leaving me out in productive society? These are some of the things you may want to focus on in your letter.

While you likely have strong feelings about the FBI, the prosecution, or the jury in this case, none of that will be relevant to the sentencing hearing, so leave out your opinions on the process, please. While I have my critiques of the prosecutors, I’ve said along the way that I was surprised at how fair Joseph Laplante was, so I’m optimistic. He’s been thoughtful, is capable of changing his mind, and played things fairly evenly during the process.

Please address your letter to “The Honorable Joseph Laplante” or “Judge Laplante”. You may want to talk a little about yourself and what you do for a living and what you have done, especially with regard to any military or government work.

You are welcome to send a draft to me via email at ian at freetalklive.com or if you are confident in what you’ve written, send a signed original via snail mail – include your contact info – to:
Ian Freeman
63 Emerald St. #610
Keene, NH 03431

Please don’t delay as we need these well in advance of the April 14th sentencing date. Thank you.

Last week at the state house, liberty activists spoke on various bills in front of the Criminal Justice Committee including:

• HB 581 – would end the entire War on Drugs by striking RSA 318-B completely.
• HB 360 – would end prohibition of possession and apparently also growing and selling of cannabis by anyone over 21.
• HB 328 – would legalize possession of possessing hallucinogens including LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, and peyote for people over 21.
• HB 470 – would legalize possession of drug testing equipment.

HB 581 – Finally, after years of compromised legislation trying to slowly scrape away at drug prohibition, one brave state representative, Matt Santonastaso, has put forward a bill that would in one fell swoop, end the entire War on Drugs. Sadly, only Bonnie and I came out to support Rep. Santonastaso and testify in favor of this epic legislation. We need more reps willing to take a risk with their “political capital” and actually put forward principled bills like this. Sure, it has no chance of passing, but the conversation needs to happen, and it needs to keep coming back and growing in its support. We also need bills to do other principled things like end government schooling, abolish the liquor commission, and abolish the state police. Hopefully we’ll see more liberty reps step up to the level of Matt Santonastaso in the coming years. Here is full video of the hearing:

HB 360 – One of several cannabis-related bills in the session this year, HB 360 is probably the best one I’ve seen as it does not contain any provisions to tax or regulate cannabis. It simply removes it from being a prohibited substance, although only for those over 21. It’s overall a great bill and would be awesome if it passed, though another bill that has taxes and regulations has the support of the house minority and majority leaders, so don’t get your hopes up. That said, it’s good to see the ideas discussed. Here’s full video of the hearing:

HB 328 – This straightforward bill creates an exception for people over 21 to be able to possess “hallucinogenic drugs”, which the statute defines as, “psychodysleptic drugs which assert a confusional or disorganizing effect upon mental processes or behavior and mimic acute psychotic disturbances. Exemplary of such drugs are mescaline, peyote, psilocybin and d-lysergic acid diethylamide.” Derek Januszewski of the Pachamama Sanctuary came out to speak the truth about these substances. Here’s full video of the hearing:

HB 470 – Possession of drug testing equipment is currently a crime in New Hampshire, which means people cannot legally have their drugs tested for purity, to ensure they are getting what they think they are buying. Drug testing equipment is harm reduction as it reduces deaths and serious overdoses. Even New Futures, who normally opposes legalization efforts, supported the bill. This is a good bill from the left and should receive the support of the liberty reps. Here’s full video of the hearing:

If you want to help rate pending legislation, please join the New Hampshire Liberty Alliance. You do not need to be in New Hampshire to help with this important task.

Last week at the state house, liberty activists spoke on various bills in front of the Criminal Justice Committee including:

• HB 216 – would end prohibition of DMT, dimethyltryptamine
• HB 144 – would restore gun rights to non-violent ex-felons
• HB 31 – would end prohibition of blackjacks, slung shots, and metallic knuckles

HB 216 – would end the prohibition of dimethyltryptamine aka DMT – filed by heroic 100% liberty rep Matt Santonastaso of Rindge. Though last year the criminal justice committee recommended to kill the psilocybin decrim bill, we once again patiently explained to them the religious use of a different chemical, DMT. Derek Januszewski, founder of the Ayahuasca church based in NH, “Pachamama Sanctuary” spoke in detail about his experience administering the potent hallucinogenic tea to thousands of willing people on a spiritual journey. Other ministers from the Shire Free Church and Church of the Invisible Hand also weighed in. The only person opposing the bill was a goon from the State Police, who trotted out the usual fearmongering about driving while impaired. When questioned by a younger state rep named Wheeler, the statie couldn’t answer to what extent any hallucinogens were involved in traffic accidents. He instead claimed he’d look into it for the state rep. Full video of the hearing:

HB 144 – would restore gun rights to nonviolent ex-felons in NH – filed by newbie liberty rep Jason Gerhard of Northfield. Gerhard spent more than a dozen years in federal prison for bravely standing with tax freedom advocates Ed and Elaine Brown. He never harmed anyone and neither have a ton of people who have been saddled with the “felon” label for the rest of their lives. Gerhard’s bill would restore non-violent ex-felons’ right to bear arms in New Hampshire. Full video of the hearing:

HB 31 – would end prohibition on blackjacks, slung shots, and metallic knuckles – filed by multi-term liberty rep James Spillane of Deerfield. Though knives and guns are legal to openly or concealed carry in New Hampshire, for some reason it’s prohibited to carry or sell 19th century weapons like the blackjack, slung shot, or metallic knuckles. Spillane’s bill would end that ancient prohibition for greater weapons freedom in New Hampshire. Full video of the hearing:

Sisti Informs Us The Fight For Peace Will Continue After Today’s Guilty Verdict On All Counts In Crypto6 Trial

I have some unfortunate news to announce. It saddens me to no end. I don’t know how to continue, but I will. As we all know the state is pure evil and lied, deceived, and manipulated there way into achieving a guilty verdict in this case. It isn’t over yet though. Ian’s a fighter. Ian and attorney Sisti will be appealing each and every count.

If nothing else comes of this Ian’s sacrifice will hopefully still lead to something wonderful. A reinvigoration to keep fighting. Ian’s been working at bringing peace, freedom, and love to New Hampshire for a decade and we’re not that far from achieving victory.

The Free State Project and greater migration movement grows day by day, week by week, and year by year. We don’t win every battle, but every battle brings us a little closer to achieving liberty in our lifetime. It’s because of people like Ian Freeman that New Hampshire will be free one day. There will be a place for people who strive for peace to call home. It may not be achieved today, but it’ll be achieved none-the-less. It’ll be achieved in our lifetime if I have anything to say about it. We’re 8-10 years away from having real control over the state. Further out maybe even independence from the goons that call themselves the federal government.

The government may be able to take out Ian Freeman in physical form, but they’ve already lost the war for peace even if they don’t know it yet. Over the past several years we’ve seen this state go from 20 to 30 to 40 to 50 free stater state reps about every 2 years (not including another ~50 liberty friendly reps). Each and every year since I moved to New Hampshire in 2016 there have been a record numbers of new movers. Just a few short years ago it was so very hard to see a free state. I can’t say that any more and it’s in big part thanks to Ian Freeman. Thank you Ian.

http://freedomdecrypted.com/public_html/other-content/ian-verdict-guilty.mp4

Crypto6 Day 10: Closing Statements

~20 Crypto6 Supporters Out In Support

Name: Mohamed Aly

Q Do?

A Curry Indian Restaurant Owner & Operator

13 years

Prior to NH lived in NY

Moved from NY to NH

Q Do you know Ian?

A Yes

Problem in Keene no Mosque

Q Do you recall the year you met Ian?

A Yes, a couple

We were looking for prier and Ian also has a place that is church and that how I met him and he help us out

So he let us set up Mosque in Church

7-8 months there

Q That was through his church?

A Yes

I open’d restaurant and I was suffering and I mentioned to Ian and he helped me with bitcoin and get more business.

Q Did he charge you for this?

A No!

He gave free tablet and helped with setup. It brought in business.

Q Do you consider Ian a man whose got integrity?

A I don’t know but with me he got friends to help me

Prosecution cross examines

Q Preached there for 7-8 months, Will Coley was Imam?

A No Imam

He converted to Muslim

[the above was a little confusing because Will Coley was the Imam of the Mosque during that year in which the Mosque came to be and was operated, but had to leave and shut it down due to his family needing to take care of sick father far away, but he may mean they didn’t have a Imam at the time or that they don’t have a Imam now nor a Mosque, and this was never clarified by either side, but also doesn’t really matter that much as he did clearly testified to the church donating the space for a Mosque to the minority Muslim community, it could also be he just ?didn’t remember? as this was quite a few years ago now]

Q Was he selling bitcoin in name of Mosque?

A No no idea

He said he could help with bitcoin

New witness

Name: Paul Nigg

Q Where live?

A Newton MA

Former assistant dean

Q What was contact with Ian?

A At height of lock down freeman called about my mother

Q Topic?

A My mother had been defrauded and he was trying to return money

Q How many contacts?

A 2 times and 3 months

Even when we ran into blocks he tried to overcome them

Q How much did your mother lose?

A $11,000

The money was money to help a disabled aunt

Q Multiple texts and phone calls?

A Yes many many texts and a few calls

Q Was he capable of getting the money back?

A Yes

I told him he should deduct postage and associated costs. It was less than $100.

Q He charge you?

A No, no fee

Q What happened?

A Someone convinced my mother to transfer money and we don’t know that is and it ended up in Freeman’s business.

Prosecutor cross examines witness

Q Not personally involved?

A No

Q Based on what mother and freeman told you?

A Yes, but I had picture of drivers license

Q You don’t know his account was frozen?

A No, but a bank closed his account

Q Mr Freeman didn’t lose any money on this transaction?

A I don’t know

Q He didn’t send any bitcoin?

A Right

[this is kinda misleading because the guy doesn’t know if Ian sent any bitcoin to the scammer and it could be the case that he sent the churches bitcoin to the scammer]

Defense redirect

Q $11,000 sent?

A Yes

Q Freeman contacted you?

A Yes

[notice how it wasn’t the bank that contacted him or his mother, but freeman]

Q You got money back?

A Yes, minus what I told him to deduct for his costs was almost nothing

Defense rests

And the closing statements begin!

Prosecutor

Plenty of excuses from Ian Freeman, but most of all that he is somehow not responsible because the feds can’t find the scammers.

[it’s going to be hard to not comment on every other word here because every other word is a lie or a manipulation that comes out of the prosecutors mouth during his closing statements, lets start with word 3, Ian didn’t make excuses for his actions, but he did explain what was actually going on rather than just conjecture about it like the prosecution and allude to wrongdoing of one kind or another, and why would Ian Freeman be responsible for the crimes of another individual who he had NOTHING to do with???? He never used the feds not being able to find the scammers as an excuse to his own behavior, but rather to point out the immoral behavior of the feds and the lack of integrity those who were persecuting hold]

You know it is hard to find scammers

[or maybe you’re just lazy and incompetent because Ian Freeman and the church recorded IDs of the scammers so you DO have something to go on if ever even bothered to ask, and other law enforcement actually DID ask and Ian Freeman DID assist them in tracking down the scammers in those incidents]

Freeman charged high fees

[no he didn’t, the church charged market rate or below market rate even, and the thing that increased those rates over time was the governments crackdown on bitcoin, so it’s actually you ass holes who are to blame for the “high fees” among non-high-volume non-exchange sellers of crypto]

and scammers wouldn’t want to pay that but they did because anonymous bitcoin hides their tracks

[your own witnesses testified to the fact bitcoin isn’t anonymous and these scammers weren’t anonymous either and you know why? It’s because the church has a policy of doing KYC and has the IDs of the scammers and you introduced that evidence and so even if you can claim it’s pseudo anonymous it’s NOT in this case]

Freeman was offering an important service that scammers needed and they paid him a pretty penny for it

[not more than market rate they didn’t]

He is the one who makes the scammers hard to find.

[this is an outright lie because Ian recorded the IDs of all his customers so that in the event a scammer got through the KYC he could provide law enforcement or a private investigator with evidence and trail to go, the church was not the place to go to for anonymous bitcoin or pseudo anonymous bitcoin]

He intentionally setup the business to help scammers

[it’s NOT a business as was already proven, it was registered as a church with the state and the dbas are NOT churches in their own right, merely other names for the SAME entity, any other entity was run by another person that WAS NOT IAN you moron]

He paid less than 1% for his bitcoin

[again, not his bitcoin, it was the churches bitcoin, and the church had a board of directions which has had different people on it over the years]

He then sold it for big fees. 14% at kiosks and 10% on Telegram. Up to 21% on localbitcoin.

[these are NOT big fees and they’re higher than the rates in at least the vending machine than I paid in the early days of the machines before there was a crackdown on bitcoin, I was paying 8% from the churches machines, not that I bought bitcoin often, but I did at least a couple of times, the government regulated ATMs in nearby MA actually charge 20% hmmm now whose ripping people off… can we say GOVERNMENT, and as far as the 21%, that actually makes sense, and it was probably even higher than that in SOME instances if these #s are being pulled from the entire pool of folks you charged in this case, and the reason is because if you take money via credit card or paypal or similar you’ll lose that money and its super high risk, but it’s probably also the case that these people are buying relatively small amounts of crypto by comparison to people paying via a wire transfer or cash deposit at a bank so that actually makes a lot of sense, and remember that this is NOT the profit, as there are costs to this as high as 6%, because of things like credit card fees, paypal fees, venmo fees, etc which once you take that into consideration it’s close to 14%, not 21%]

“You won’t see freeman walk arm and arm with scammers” Sisti said, no he’s too smart for that, but he did with a wing and a nod:

“Do not tell our staff why you want to buy our crypto”

[that’s not a wink and a nod, that is a security issue because if someone is told that they’re dealing drugs you’re at risk of charges if you go through with the sale, but staff at a restaurant or similar place aren’t going to be able to stop the transaction from going through, potentially making them victims of government abuse just like you are doing in this very case ass hole]

No questions no matter how vulnerable the victim appeared to be.

[this outright false as was shown by the fact the church had a policy of calling people who appeared to be potential victims]

Not everyone was a criminal who bought bitcoin, but the big ones, the repeat ones absolutely.

[really? You showed us something 8-9 victims during this entire case and while it appeared there might have been a few who were scammers who used a few different people to deposit money it was also the case that the church only received a small amount of the overall amount lost by the victim meaning even had the church caught it the scam wouldn’t have stopped the victim from losing money]

Not a single witness testified they bought them for themselves.

[this is another outright lie, as Dale Chapman testified for the defense that Ian Freeman helped her buy bitcoin from the churches vending machines for herself, and while not for monetary reasons, but rather technical learnings she would have done well over the past 5 years that she’s been holding crypto]

At that midnight nightcap he spilled it. If you fall in love with a guy from Africa I can’t stop it ya gona do what ya gona do.

[really, this is “spilling it”, Ian was stated facts. Just like you can’t stop these scams from happening neither can Ian Freeman, neither can your precious regulated financial institutions which also let all these scams go through and unlike the church the banks actually are regulated]

1. Money transmitting business constantly transmitting bitcoin

[no, because bitcoin doesn’t move from one state to another or from one country to another, and it was the churches bitcoin, not someone elses, which is VERY different than walmart taking someone elses value and sending it to some other location or moving it to another person, the church isn’t moving anything on behalf of another, the church is only figuratively moving it’s own thing to you]

2. Business effective interstate commerce

Accepted money from out of state/country

3. Unlicensed

He did not register

[he had no obligation to register because part of the statute says it’s for people making a profit, not for those doing it for charity and your own witness testified that there are exceptions and one of those included an example of someone not making money off it doing it once]

Conspiracy

Involves more than one person.

Rietman knew he needed license and still helped Freeman.

[No he didn’t. He testified that he would need a license if he setup his vending machine business differently than that of the church.]

Money laundering conspiracy

Agreement to launder money

Wink and nod is all that is needed and freeman did that with undercover agent that told freeman he sold drugs and then sold undercover bitcoin.

[except that he didn’t, he explicitly told the undercover he couldn’t do business with him, that he wouldn’t do business with him, and the undercover than went around freeman to a vending machine without freemans permission and bought crypto at a rate higher than when freeman wanted his ‘business’]

Money laundering count

Sisti will tell you freeman “did not engage in transaction” with undercover but he did

[no, this is an outright lie, he didn’t, and the evidence proves it, he went to a VENDING machine, didn’t tell freeman he was doing it and freeman had no means of stopping him]

Tax evasion

He had income weather he likes it or not.

He blames everyone but himself

[what a crock of shit, under the IRS’s own website he owed nothing because he didn’t even have to file let alone pay taxes unless there was some other side gig that he was doing for money which wasn’t the case]

Defense closing statement

Good morning.

I have a bit to suggest: Be objective, rational, reasonable. Ian and I appreciate your service. It’s not the time to be hanging around a court there are a few services that are important most and jury service its a service we appreciate.

Proof beyond a reasonable doubt is the highest in the world. Presumption of innocence. Ian didn’t have to take the stand. He could be found not guilty just by lack of evidence.

He said I made absurd arguments.

[pretty sure he’s referencing the prosecutor above]

But one thing I ask you not to do is speculate.

You can’t go home wondering.

The prosecutor cherry picked.

Do you know how many transactions Ian has gone through?

6,000

Most folks we did not get to ask questions.

People over 65 are too old to be interested in bitcoin is just insulting.

You know what else is insulting is we didn’t see Aria.

She didn’t testify that she conspired with Ian.

The people we had up here had integrity.

Renee wanted to change plea.

Chris he said he wanted to start business, but it was different, and he said “I don’t have inventory so I would be a transmitter”

Saying it’s simple is a red flag and that is what the prosecutor said.

Innuendo from a podcast you can pick up on from anywhere in the world? Really?

What is he really doing?

He is warning people of scams because he knows of scammers.

You don’t have to bitcoin to be scammed. People use gift cards every day.

The church wasn’t an illusion to Mohammad.

That’s not a scam, not an illusion.

If they are going to paint that church is a scam they should bring in someone with an opinion.

Why not? Because they don’t want to face the fact.

No you don’t need a shrine, you don’t need bells.

It has a mission, it does community service, it does charitable giving.

In fact the church sometimes has higher ideals than others.

The innuendo was throughout the closing.

You will hear instructions from the judge and if you follow it you will make the right decision.

The reality is anyone and everybody knows Ian as a good guy.

He is not flamboyant, he doesn’t drive a fancy car.

He lives in an humble abode.

He knew the FBI knew about it for years.

He didn’t throw the computer in the river.

You know they have been observing him for years.

They know he was non-violent, they knew all of them were non-violent.

He had a peace flag hanging up.

That morning 5 people got a 6am wake-up.

Plays security video

[the below video is an edited version of the copy played, the music included in this below copy was NOT played for the jurors]

Thats the face of this investigation.

It’s exaggerated, jumps to conclusions, an over reaction.

And you know what, it just damn mean.

Two bearcats, battering rams smashing through property doors windows.

If you want to start calling names.

You can do that pretty easily.

That is not where Osama bin Laden lives.

That is not where some arms dealer lives.

Why would they do that?

Why would they target him?

Maybe they just don’t like him

Officer safety?

I bet in middle of night Bonnie doesn’t forget that.

I bet Nobody doesn’t forget that.

I know Ian doesn’t forget that.

I don’t want to bad mouth these agencies, but you saw it. It was just despicable. It was misguided. Just like this prosecution.

When we are done you are the boss.

There is a defense for each charge and you have to go back and figure out if there is guilt for each charge.

Unlicensed MSB its not.

What you heard is sub-accounting 101.

His gains haven’t been examined.

Ian says it’s a church.

Ian says it’s a reinvestment in the community.

When you re-buy bitcoin you aren’t making profit you are simply reinvesting the churches assets.

They don’t examine like a business.

They want you to go home wondering.

Money transmission means money transmission. One place to another, one person to another.

Ian the only one in the court probably said doesn’t move.

It’s complicated.

It is not an entity.

It is formed and destroyed.

But this isn’t our burden, this is their burden.

They didn’t bring in a blockchain expert.

If they didn’t do it then it’s their fault.

License requirement is for a business, it’s not a business, it’s not transmitting its not required.

Ian initially thought FinCEN document was a scam.

Did anyone take the stand and say yes we’re in the business to transmit funds? No. Did Renee? No. Did Rietman? No, he said he would if required.

There is no agreement there is no conspiracy.

They throw things up and hope something sticks.

There were thousands of positive feedbacks.

They want you to think they were all scammers.

They want to make it evil.

They are asking you to speculate.

They sure would like to have evidence but they don’t.

The innuendo that freeman sells at a higher rate, cute, but did they bring any other vendors selling on localbitcoin or Telegram in? No.

If they want to say he is selling at a higher rate bring someone in to prove it.

They want you to buy in.

But that isn’t your job, but to take what was said throw it into crucible, examine, and see what is true.

How many other people sell on telgram, on localbitcoin? thousands

It’s an open market dozen and dozens and hundreds of other vendors.

Buy they brought in none.

You are not going to bring in itbit with millions of users and compare it to Ian Freeman with mere thousands.

Real criminals if you will destroy computers if they want to continue, but Ian knew since 2018 and he didn’t.

He keeps his records, he has nothing to fear because he wasn’t doing anything wrong.

The banfoon of the undercover agent tried, but Ian still refused.

They want to say because he refused he is guilty.

How about because he refused he is innocent.

Yea it’s there I can’t tell you you can do that.

And the undercover says OK.

The machine is 30 miles away and goes and pumps in $20,000 of your money and Ian doesn’t know what he is doing.

If he was buddy buddy why didn’t he cut him a break? He did before.

They are telling you he can remotely control it, did he do it then? No

How many times does someone have to refuse business?

They are saying because he has invited the guy to a party months later he is guilty?

He didn’t get angry at the guy. He just couldn’t do business with him.

They got a wagon without a horse.

The money laundering charge is a joke.

Money laundering conspiracy.

Bring just one person in.

But people they bring in say no that didn’t happen.

Income tax evasion 2016-2019.

Kinda interesting.

Half hour and we come up with

How much does he owe and could he owe no taxes? Maybe not

How can this be tax evasion when they don’t even know if he owes taxes?

Unlike the rest of us Ian didn’t get a letter and an opportunity to explain he was a church that he does not owe anything.

Does he want to pay taxes? No. Does anyone? Hell no

But I betchas all others to explain

Here there is no invitation

Don’t give me a standard deduction

How much is he worth?

No one knows because they never asked him to come in

I don’t get to stand up again like the prosecutor.

I can’t get up and refute what he says but you do.

I’m asking you to stand up to mr a frame

Don’t rush it

Don’t do him a favor

no time to give the government a gift

Thank you very much for your service.

Prosecutor responds

Don’t do government a gift the government doesn’t get anything from convicting freeman.

Church, but entry to his house

It’s irrelevant, swat team doesn’t matter

mr freeman is anti government

He has weapons

People rents rooms in house

[you know what makes people anti-government, it’s people like you]

The weapons were there for anyone to use

[no they weren’t, they were Matt’s weapons in Matt’s room, and no one would have used those weapons for violence and you knew that going in]

He said we cherry picked

You saw every single photo in Telegram folder

[umm yea cherry picking because you didn’t take a random sampling of everything, you selectively picked a folder that happened to have for reasons unknown to everybody a group that leaned in one direction, which might have been because those were savings of people who were getting extra scrutiny]

He didn’t throw anything away

Well it was encrypted

[it was a weak password that you could crack in a matter of weeks don’t give me that crap, it’s not like you did a live forensics on it and extracted a strong password to gain access, it would have had to have been less than 8 characters non random]

And he didn’t save all Telegram chats

[I am really curious what the hell that even means, you can delete chats, but so can the other person… seems like an attempt to mislead the jury]

He says he is not transmitting

It’s not a fancy word

It goes up and it goes down its transmitting

[wow- that’s the worst definition or explanation of transmitting that I’ve ever heard, I don’t even know I’d try that with a 3 year old]

Ian said license requirement letter was a scam.

You heard his own words say

He said something interesting.

He said a word I’d never heard before called social engineering. He explained it.

We didn’t put it in any evidence about higher fee, but we did with kraken.

[except this is manipulative and misleading because you are comparing him to an f’ing exchange not other comparable vendors]

 

Ian Freeman, the government’s “kingpin” of the Crypto6 takes the stand

Crypto6 Day 9

The day’s finally here! The defense’s evidence and witnesses get to testify and be introduced.

Defense goes first

Name: Keith Murphy

Lives in Manchester

Owns a restaurant and bar, aka Murphy’s Taproom since 2007

Murphy’s been in the industry for 30 years.

Q Physically type of spot?

A Southern New Hampshire university, 60% alcoholic beverages, 40% food, types of crowds depend on what is happening accrsoss the street due to the arena.

Q Is the front of the establishment glass?

A Yes, showroom style windows

Q Regulated by liquor commission?

A Yes, they come in from time to time

Q Law enforcement?

A Yes, but we never have any fights or problems

Q Do you take bitcoin?

A Yes, since 2013.

I was approached around 2013 and someone said they could put a machine in my lobby.

Q Do you know who?

A I believe it was Mr Freeman

I didn’t dabble in bitcoin yet

Q What decade?

A 2013 I think

Q How long have you had a machine in the business?

A 9 years

Mr Freeman’s machine was not the first machine though. The first one in had problems.

Q And Mr Freemans?

A No, very reliable.

After it’s initial placement I did not see Mr Freeman, but someone would come in and empty the machine monthly.

Q Where was it?

A In the lobby

Q Was it used frequently?

A Yes

Q Any issues or complaints?

A No

Q Anyone ever have an issue with the fees charged?

A No

Q Any complaints about errors in amounts given?

A No

Q Any regulators have an issue?

A No, not until the day it was taken away

Prosecutor’s turn:

Q What was the financial arrangement?

A We’d get a percentage of the fees to cover internet, space, etc

Q You didn’t have much interaction?

A I didn’t touch it

Q Do you know what this symbol is?

A No

Q Do you know what this sticker is covering?

A No

Q Did you have any conversation if it was regulated?

A No

Q No idea how it was operated?

A No

Q Did other people pick up monthly?

A Yes

Q Are you aware of a police compliant involving the machine?

A No

Q In 2019 did the manager tell you about a scam involving $5,000?

A No

Defense Redirect

Q Would I be right in saying you were not approached about the legitimacy of the machine?

A That is correct

Prosecutor asks some more questions:

Q Did you need permission from liquor commission to put the machine in?

A No

New witness

Name: Max Santanastaso

Q Where do you live?

A Winchester, NH

Q How long?

A 6 years

Q Education?

A MA and tech school

Q Were you in the military?

A Yea, Army

Q Do you know Ian?

A Yes

First heard of FTL, then met Ian at nightcap after moving to Keene

Q What is nightcap?

A Just a nighttime event. I just happened to walk by after getting some pizza.

Q Subject of crypto meetups?

A Once sold crypto to Ian

Q How experienced with bitcoin are you?

A Not very

I got some I didn’t really want and I offloaded it to Ian

Q Ian ever help you?

A No

Q Is Ian involved in church stuff?

A Yes, events, protests, etc

Q How well do you know Ian?

A Pretty well

I follow Ian because he had integrity

I find people with those qualities important to me

Q Reputation in community?

A Good

Prosecutor cross examines

Q When asked how many times you met up with him New years even and crypto meetup?

A Yea

Q Your knowledge comes from show?

A Both, but majority not in person

Q Did you make profit from sale of crypto to Ian?

A No

Q I got what I was given

New witness

Owner Of Little Zoes Testifies For Ian

Name: Edward Frster

Little Zoes Owner

Anthrum NH

Q You have had contact with Ian?

A Yes

Q What do you do?

A I own a pizza place

Q How long have you owned it?

A Since 2011

Business is good, it’s called Little Zoes, at the Center Of Keene

Q How did you meet Ian?

A I don’t recall exactly, but we went to Porcfest to sell Pizza and there were a # of people. Ian was one from Keene that I met. I learned about bitcoin at the event. Ian was extremely knowledgeable about a lot things like how to incorporate it into the business.

We have a system where money is printed and has no value.

I like the idea of crypto.

We use all kinds of money.

We exchange value in all kinds of ways.

Q Was his knowledge free of charge?

A Yes, in fact he felt bad that he gave me bad advice once when I lost a few hundred dollars and he replaced it. Lots of shady people out there in the world. He’s a good respectable guy.

Q How is his reputation?

A Nothing negative. Pro freedom.

Q Honesty? Trustworthy?

A Never heard anything bad

Prosecutor goes:

Q Did he approach you?

A No, others did ask me to take crypto at Porcfest.

I leaned a lot from Ian though.

Q Business a formal relationship?

A Yea, but when I did not understand. They held bitcoin meetings at my restaurant occasionally.

Q Didn’t tell you about bitcoin selling business?

A No

How does one sell bitcoin? I thought it was an exchange.

Defense

Q Did he provide you solid advice?

A Yes, he was out for everyone to be successful, but his own. I’m shocked we are even here.

New witness

Name: Adam Mosher

Lives in Newport

Small restraunt owner

Taco Beyondo

[best burritos in New Hampshire, hmm scratch that, the world]

Q When did you get to know Ian?

A Last 4 years

Q A bunch of people came in who were super respectful

We accept crypto

Q When did you start?

A 2018 or 2019 maybe

Q Did that come to your attention through Ian?

A Yes it did

We got a tablet that was provided and crypto went to phones wallet

Q If you had problems?

A I’d call Ian and he’d help out

Q Any charge?

A No charge

Always seemed like a straight up kinda guy

Prosecutor asks some questions:

Q Your business successful?

A Yes

Q Ever have bank accounts shut down?

A No

Q He was customer?

A Yes

Q Professional?

A Yea, I mean outside too

Defense asks some more Qs:

Q Your interest is money mainly?

A Yes

Q Ian open’d door?

A yea

Q Did he teach you?

A My staff more, but yea

Q He charge you?

A no

Q He pay with crypto?

A He has, but I don’t know what he usually does as I work behind the scenes in the kitchen

New Witness

Elderly Lady Who Was Kind And Testified On Behalf Of Ian After Receiving Crypto Assistance From Him For Years

Name: Dale Chapman

Lives in Amherst, MA

Retired Spanish teacher

75 years old!!!

[she looks really good for 75, I know her through crypto meetups, but didn’t know her age, and I didn’t realize she was elderly]

Q Do you know Ian?

A yes

Q How did you get to know Ian?

A In 2012 I could not find anyone who knew anything about bitcoin and at some point someone recommended I check out a meetup in Keene.  There were different people, but a few regulars.

Q Who did you get most advice from?

A I asked everyone. Ian taught me how to use a vending machine.

Q How many meetups?

A Since 2016 or 2017 every 2 months except in the winter. 5 times a year maybe.

Q Who had most advice or knowledge?

A Ian had the most knowledge, but did not push his knowledge on me.

He is the guy I would want to go with when I had questions because he would always go out of his way to figure out my macbook which no one else knew either.

Q Did he charge you?

A No, and funny you should ask because others offered to help for $150 / hour

Q Was it good advice?

A Yes, but since this case started he hasn’t been able to help so I’m still stuck.

Q What is his reputation in the community?

A Well, I’m not from Keene, but he is respectful and civil.

Prosecutor asks questions:

Q Ever deal with localbitcoin?

A No

Q Ever buy from him on Telegram?

A No

People helped me setup Telegram

Q Did you pay fee?

A I don’t know

I don’t use it for money, but because I wanted to learn the technology

Q Anyone help at home?

A There are a few, but the Keene group is way more helpful

Defense goes:

Q Any complaints about the vending machine you used?

A No

Prosecutor asks some more questions:

Q Do you know if regulated with government?

A No, don’t know if it is required

Carylin Urbanski, Owner Of Kirby’s Qs in Alstead NH Testifies

New witness

Name: Carylin Urbanski

Langdon NH

Software Consultant

Barque Business in Alstead

6 years

Q Do you know Ian?

A Yes, socially

He’s a good customer and we have friends in common

Ian would bring a lot of business to our restaurant and he helped get us on the map for bitcoin.

Q Is he someone you relied on for advice?

A Yes, and it was not his product

Q Was he knowledgeable?

A Yes

Customers would come in because we took cryptocurrency

Q Did he ever charge you?

A No, super generous too, he’d even give people free crypto

Q Is he charitable?

A Yes

Helping move, get established, other charities

There was a case after my husband died where he offered to help if I needed anything

Prosecutor asks some questions:

Q Do you know what he did for business?

A No, just that he promotes bitcoin

Q He had resources?

A Yes, correct

Q you don’t know where his money came from?

A I’d be uncomfortable asking anyone that

Q How much time did he spend helping you?

A 5-10 hours

100 Nights Director in Keene Testifies About Donations From Shire Free Church

New witness

Name: Linda Cambiar

Lives in Keene, NH

How long? Since 1976

What do you do? Executive director of a homeless shelter

Q Busiest week of the year?

A Yes, very

Q 100 nights?

A Founder setup to be open during 100 coldest nights of the year

It’s now 365 nights, but the name 100 nights is hard to change

Q You know Ian?

A Yes

Q When did you first meet?

A I started in 2013 he had been donor since the shelter was first started. One of the original donors in fact. Little help in the early days so I got to know Ian.

Q What is this?

A It’s a little app called Little Green Light that shows donators contributions. This is Ian’s history.

Q Giving for over a decade?

A Yes

Q Last contribution taken out just a few days ago in fact

A Right

Q So this is a regular donation from church?

A Yes

Q Info on shelter?

Permanently 36 beds

Provide a resource center

Laundry, showers, transport, case manager for those who we might be able to help get back to a normal life

Q Big deal?

A Yes, all over

Q How well do you know Ian?

A Not very well, but know of church

Q Those are straight gifts, the church gets nothing back?

A Right

Prosecutor asks some questions

Q Regulated in New Hampshire?

A Yes

Q Do you make sure you comply with the law?

A yes

[this prosecutor as all prosecutors are is a manipulative piece of shit as he’s suggesting that because the church isn’t registered as 501(3)c and presumably the shelter is that the church is somehow breaking the law when it’s not as churches are not obligated to register even though they can under the IRS’s own rules]

Q You file forms with the IRS?

A Yes

Q Charitable trust with state?

A Yes

Church donating since 2014 shown on screen

Things to note: Church sponsored masquerade ball put on by the shelter to raise money for the shelter for $1000 in 2014. The church also donated a substantial amount via a partial bitcoin which was auctioned off.

[that is the founding of 100 nights, but the church pre-dates this, but this is 2-years prior to any accusation of the church or Ian selling crypto- yet the church was supposed setup to be a money laundering operation for scammers according to the prosecution, it makes no sense, and had buildings and assets donated to it and started donating and doing good work in the community prior to 2016, including advocating bitcoin not bombs]

Q Asking $10 in may, in aug… repeats

[appears to be trying to suggest donations are insignificant which is sort of true if this was the only thing the church was donating to or doing relative to the revenues being generated from the sale of crypto but it wasn’t]

A yes, yes, yes, yest repeats

Q $120 in 2018?

A Yes

[this goes on for a bit going through each $10 donation for the entire length of time the church donated, which is insulting because the church made other larger donations at various points to the shelter, but because most of them are $10 / month it comes off as if almost nothing has been donated by comparison to what the church brings in from the sale of crypto]

Q Do you disclose donors?

A Only if over $5,000 yr

Q Did you get 5 million?

A No, we just got over 1 million this year for the first time

[the prosecutor  is asking this unfair question because the incoming amounts to bank accounts  adds up to millions even though the fees from it doesn’t add up to this… so by implication the prosecutor is misleading the jury into thinking the church is donating some trivial amount and Ian is pocketing the money]

Defense asks some more questions

Q He’s given a total of $6,400?

A Yes, and he donated to auction too

Q What was that?

A It was part of a bitcoin

[which I don’t know what it was at the time of the donation, but it was probably not nothing]

Q Is it fair to say he has been a consistent donor?

A Yes, we appreciate every penny

Prosecutor

Q Since 2010 he has donated $6,400 right?

A Yes

Defense

Q That was the cash aspect, not the bitcoin?

A Yes

New witness

Name: Ian Freeman

Judge speaks

“no one can require you to testify”

Not even your lawer

Q Is it your decision?

A Yes

Q Have you consulted with your lawyer?

A Yes

Defense

Q Born?

A Flordia

Q How long in Florida?

A 26 years

Q Education?

A Mostly government school and a gifted school

Q When did you leave Florida?

A 2006

Q What did you do?

A Free Talk Live

It’s a show that today airs on 180 radio stations. It’s been on continuously since 2002.

Q Do you get sponsors?

A Some and grateful, not glamorous

Q What is your opinion of talk radio?

A In Florida shows didn’t allow people to talk who had a difference of opinion. I did not like that so my show is open to people to call in about anything they want.

Q When did you hear about bitcoin?

A I think it was 2011 and someone called into the program, we were a bit skeptical at first.

Then later we had a meeting with a guy Gavin and we went to a Taiwanese restaurant and he answered every question I had and I got it.

Q What is vision?

A Going back to history governments have been clipping edges off gold and silver coins to debase their money. The government does that today, but through other means. The government has been inflating our money. Satoshi created this thing that doesn’t rely on this. So when the government prints more dollars you have more dollars chasing for the same amount of goods.

A lot of us noticed this and Satoshi did something about it. No one had any idea it was going to take off. But someone bought pizza with it in maybe 2010 and that was the first time it had a value. At first it was worth zero up till this point.My show had an advertiser memory dealer who was probably a millionaire at this point. He wasn’t likely to sell to our listeners, but wanted to support us. He heard a call about bitcoin on the show. He then bought a large amount of coin.

He already pouring dollars into the show for adds, but he asked if he could pay in bitcoin, and I said well, we need dollars to pay bills, but how about we take 10 or 15 percent in bitcoin from you.

Q So what is it worth now?

A $16,000

Roger is still an advertiser to this day.

In 2013 we founded the shire free church because we were a show focused on a moral message. I donated everything I had to the church. Around this time I had opportunity to spread bitcoin and it met with the churches mission. We are not a profit seeking entity but when bitcoin is sold money is brought in. The dollar and euros and such is immoral. It is used to go to war. The Church mission is to foster peace through any means necessary.

Q When was first bitcoin machine?

A My friend was running a thrift store at the time the machines were not expensive maybe $1000 so we got one.

Q How do you stock it?

A Well, we already were getting lots of bitcoin, but we did start buying it when stocks got low. We operated a hot wallet which is our own bitcoin. It keeps things simple.

Q When you first started church how well off were you?

A At that point I was already pretty well off as the price of bitcoin had already gone up when we founded the church. I donated everything I owned including a $200,000 home I owned to the church.

Q Do you own a nice car?

A No, always used and no cars now. I drive church car.

Q Any foreign bank accounts?

A Yes, but only because US banks don’t like bitcoin

To me every account I opened was a church account.

Q Do you draw an income?

A No, the church sustains me. I have a parsonage. The church pays for car and gas. I do what god calls me to do which is peace. I’m sure people have heard of radio or TV ministries. That is what I do and lots of others.

Q What about Uganda?

A We tried to help a man start an orphanage by giving him a ton of money. The state department denied him a visa or we would have had him here.We did some ads with Monadnock Shopper which was a bit of an educational initiative. I would give $50 away to anyone who contacted me and entered them to a contest for $500 and donating to local charities.

Q Community service?

A Yea, we certified community service for people have done volunteer work for the court. A couple years after vending machine someone introduced me to localbitcoin and this matches with church mission. So I started doing it.

Q How did it work out?

A Other than the occasional scammer great

Bitcoin is irreversible. So if you encounter a scam artist you can’t claw back the money. Scammers were minority, but were a problem so have to have system to stop it.

At first you would see a car payment that obviously wasn’t the churches so I put in stronger security requirements. This included ID. But then people started doing man in the middle attacks where they’d get someone else do a deposit. We did stop some scammers from scamming older people. We make people write what they were buying to stop it.

Another scammer once deposited cash then verified with me, but after went back into bank and claimed they made a mistake and the bank then gave the person their money back. This was the banks error. It’s also what you call a social engineering.

Now no matter what security you put in place you can’t stop all scams.

Q If someone was scammed what would you do?

A Well, if we got wind of a scam we’d stop it.

Over time we started using a commercial product that let me look up phone numbers and verify the # I was given was in fact the buyer and this enabled me to catch most scammers.

Patrick Brown was a case where Patrick lied to me. He said there was no third person. Banks would never tell us why they closed accounts. But one bank did and that was Patrick Brown victim. Patrick Browns bank called my bank to try and get money back. I spoke for 30 minutes with agent to try and help. This was not the only time we helped law enforcement.

Another man in the middle scam we were able to detect and stop. At localbitcoin we got trade, did KYC, got government ID, she jumped through hoops, she went to bank and did the deed. When I got picture of receipt something was off. It was a scan of a copy of the receipt so I would not complete the transaction. Police got involved and between them and the attorney we got the victims money back.

There was another case with a romance scam detective Yip and there we provided what evidence we could.

Q Why name on account?

A So for Reneee she was an old friend who needed assistance so I trained her on selling bitcoin. She had her own acounts for that purpose. Aria had her own church and we lent her some funds to get started. She was not in bitcoin as long so we helped her get started. Sometimes she could not work so I helped with her account with her permission.

When an account was frozen we were not usually told why. 98% of the time we would be vindicated, but they still would not want to do business with us and would close the account. They would cut us a check because we had evidence we were right. We only lost one case and that was because multiple banks pulled the money back. There were about 6,000 transactions, not 6,000 users, but mostly because some buyers had more than one transactions with us.

Q What # of complaints?

A Very few.

50-75 suuposed victims out of about 6,000 according to the prosecution.

If someone believes they love someone they will lie. I have even said to people “have you ever met your husband”. Some scams are really hard to defeat.

Q How did you meet this guy?

A The guy did repeated transactions online.

A You did not know him?

A No

It seemed he was aware of crypto movement in New Hampshire and that was his basis for coming out. I met him at our meetups. He did good job of making himself appear as though he believed in liberty.

Q Up to then had he indicated any crime?

A No, not till a nightcap meetup.

He had said he was a used card dealer in Albany. I did not have a conversation with him about drugs, but I did overhear it. That was a red alert. He was a cop or a moron. Basically I was well aware that the government does these operations and that I was being investigated. I knew they would try this because they always do. I figured he was undercover even though in the chat I said I didn’t think he was because I wanted to see what he’d do next.

Q So you said no way?

A Right

I said knowingly because I knew the law and they do the same thing. What was unusual here is he was never able to meet me alone. In other cases he probably intimidated people into selling him crypto. He looks like a mob person so very intimidating to most people.

Q So he brings up thirsty owl vending machine after this?

A Yes, and I said Ok

Q So you had no idea that he was going to vending machine?

A Right

Q So he went without your knowledge?

A Right

I see reports of people buying, but not who is buying

Q There are no cameras?

A No

Q There was nothing you could do to stop him?

A What should I have done? Tackled him? We don’t have anybody there.

Q Did you agree to launder money?

A No, I didn’t and wouldn’t do that

Q Muslim community?

A Will Coley who is an imam asked if there would be space available to help with a muslim community. I said yes we had a building we could contribute. This was an actual mosque.  We also had the bitcoin embacy and its hard to find classes in the real world so chris give classes.

Q What is a trade name?

A It is just another name for the same entity. So the NH Peace Church was just another name for the Shire Free Church.

Q Purpose of the trade name?

A Banking purpose

Q Church Of The Invisible Hand?

A Two seperate things. It has its own beliefs.

Q Reformed Satanic Church?

A Another thing.

It doesn’t mean believe in the devil.

It got to a point that I gave localbitcoin small stuff to help.

The Crypto Church is also the Shire Free Church and has a board of directors.

Churches are not corporations. In legal land you can get a tax ID even though you don’t pay taxes as a church.

And you get this because without it you can’t get a bank account.

The IRS has the #. The IRS did sent a letter in Spanish and it asked for updated address. I saw no reason to respond.

Vending

Q The ones church operated what was your understanding of obligations?

A We hired a lawyer, Seth Hipple, to tell us what we needed to do. It turned out nothing.

Q Is bitcoin transmitting?

A No

The words are used to communicate, but it’s not what is actually happening. You can’t cook the books is the one benefit. Unspent transactions output. When it is spent it doesn’t move at all. It stays in the same place.

Q The bitcoin in your machine were owned by the church?

A That is correct

Q So it’s not owned by a business, but a church?

A Right

Q You see the FinCEN letter?

A Yea, it came into a sort of catch all email account and it looked like a letter sent to all venders. I was suspisious of it because when a government agency wants to communicate with you they send you a physical letter or possibly certified mail even. I thought maybe it was even spam.

Q What age range?

A All ages. They probably skipped other folder because it had more people of all ages in it.

Q Any basis for government average age?

A Not at all, but it’s true older people tend to have more money.

Q Any bank unusual?

A Yes, one actually. There was one bank that a manager contact infor was included with a letter about closing an account. So I asked him why. What I learned from a meeting with him is that banks have to understand the nature of the activity.

I called every bank in Manchester and asked about bitcoin and every one said no.

Q Quotes for investment?

A Yes because it’s best investment

Q Rare coin?

A So what makes bitcoin value is its rarity. There will only ever be 21 million coins produced.

Q Donation?

A Everything we did was for the benefit of the mission of the church. The terms of trade said it and elsewhere and should have been known by all buyers.

ftl_ian feedback

I achieved pro level status at localbitcoin based on volume and was concerned about ratings.

church.shiresociety.com has the church’s mission statement and other information about the Shire Free Church I am a minister of.

Ian Reads off the mission statement of the church:

Declaration

The Shire Free Church offers a sanctuary for those seeking an escape from state churches. The Shire Free Church is an interfaith, diverse group of people who may not share identical theological beliefs. As a member in or minister of the Shire Free Church, you are a sovereign individual and may be the faith of your choice whether it be Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Daoist, Jewish, Quaker, etc, or following your inner light. Monotheists, polytheists, pantheists, panentheists, and atheists are all welcome, as long as you are peaceful. The Shire Free Church was organized in Keene in the year 2013 and serves all of the Shire.

Mission

We don’t claim to have all the answers.
We are open to all peaceful people.
We want to learn from each other.

It is our mission, inspired by God, Allah, the Universe, and the inner light – to foster peace. We understand that in order to have peace in the world, one must have it inside oneself first – the “purification of the soul”, as our Muslim friends call it.

Unification in Diversity – A Statement of Beliefs

What unifies the Shire Free Church and its diverse members is peace, love, and liberty. There are many paths to God – one for every individual. The Shire Free Church does not define a specific path beyond those parameters that must be your foundation: peace as your way, love as your guide, and liberty as your light.

Maxim:

“Be the best you can be and harm no other in his person or property.”

Virtues:

Compassion Forgiveness Empathy Humility

Honesty Kindness Patience Personal Responsibility

Productive Work Self-improvement Thinking

Visiting and Joining the Shire Free Church

The only requirements to visit or join the Shire Free Church are that you are of peace and do not advocate the use of force to achieve social or political goals. In order to join the Shire Free Church, you must be a signer of the Shire Society Declaration. There are no requirements or induction rituals. You need not ask permission from anyone in the church – simply make the decision to be a part of the Shire Free Church for yourself. You may stay a member as long as your words and actions show you are of peace. To this end, each Shire Free Church member may decide the validity of any other claimed member based on their word and deed.

Ordination of Church Ministers

Shire Free Church ministers have full control over their churches, church projects, and parsonages. Our structure is non-hierarchical. The Shire Free Church is a private group that welcome interested people who meet the moral qualifications to join as stated above. To become ordained, you must be a signer of the Shire Society declaration as well as agree with the mission and statement of beliefs of the church. To receive your official Ordained Minister card, please reach out to existing ministry via the contact information below.

Contact a Minister

You can contact a minister by using the Shire Society forum.

Church Locations

You may be a member of the Shire Free Church regardless of your physical location, but it is recommended you move physically to the Shire in order to secure more of your liberty with like-minded brothers and sisters.

The Shire Free Church exists wherever its members gather. Currently, ministers have parsonages in the following locations:

• Keene: Click for blog posts from Keene ministers. Shire Free Church: Monadnock is also part of the Universal Life Church.
• Manchester
• Tilton

Special thanks to our friends at the Peaceful Assembly Church in Grafton. In memory of PAC’s pastor John Connell, whose inspiration was critical in forming the Shire Free Church. Thank you, John.

Q Is this common theme since inception?

A Yes

Q It lays out how to contact minister?

A Yes

Q When put out?

A 2013

[notice that this is ~3 years before the governments accused Ian or the church of committing any crime via the way of selling bitcoin, if the church was setup for the purpose of money laundering it’s insane to think that it was planned out 3 years in advance of the crime, before Ian even knew how to sell bitcoin, and likely before the first vending machine existed]

Q If anyone wanted to know about church they could have looked at website?

A Yes, or called radio program even

Q Awakened in early morning hours of March 16 of 2021. Agent said there is supposed to be a call out. Do you recall that?

A No, and my friend who was awake heard nothing either

First thought was teens threw a brick at the house because our peace flag has been ripped down a number of times over the years. What I found in my robe was a drone flying through my window. I requested my girlfriend could put on a robe cause she was completely naked.

Q 4 in home?

A Yes

Q Matt a gun owner?

A Yes, licenses gun owner

Everyone was detained

Q Why did they destroy cameras?

A It looked like they were up to no good and hiding what they were doing

Q Did anyone explain why?

A No

Tax evasion

Q You receieved no letters right?

A Nothing at all

Q Anyone ever call you?

A Not at all

Q File anything?

A No because under the IRS rules chuches don’t pay taxes or have to file anything

Q At any point were you trying to do anything illegal?

A No

Q Anything illegal?

A I may have smoked some canibis

Prosecutor

Q You call yourself a minister?

A That is correct

Q Did you write it?

A Yes, with some others

Q Banks research people?

A Yes, it would seem to be step 1

Q You have people call into your show?

A yes including undercover agents

Q You talk about current events?

A Yes, and theology and other topics

She lists topics on one nights show

Q Parsanage at 73 Leverett St?

A Yes

Q You bought and donated to church?

A Yes

Q You tried to get property tax exempt?

A Yes, it was rejected, and to try and sue was the only option. We didn’t have the funds at the time.

Q Does the church pay for gas and clothing?

A Yes, it does

Q And when you travel?

A Yes, but only a couple events

Q And the church is how you make money?

A No

Q It’s donations that make it possible to get food

A Of course

Q Did you give a substantial amount to chairty?

A That would depend on what you consider a lot, but yea

Showing building with Mosque inside

[at this point things stop and the government admits to monitoring the radio show and the judge says he would have too, as a former prosecutor]

[the prosecutor wants to play the Free Keene video of Will Coley incident with City Of Keene government, but the judge appears to deny it for reasons unknown, probably because it wasn’t provided to the defense correctly, see below for your pleasure]

 

 

Q Your church donated to a Uganda orphanage $35,000?

A Sounds about right

Q The percent commision of this sale is about what donated to the Uganda orphanage, right?

A About, yes

FinCEN letter

Prosecutor

Q You testified you got FinCEN email

A Yea

Q Prior you had your lawyer write a letter?

A Yes

Prosecutor brings up tax exemption for church document

Golden rule

“Do not tell our staff why you want to buy cryptocurrency”

Prosecutor going through photos and asking you think this person is legitimate customer?

[answer is yes for all]

Defense

Q Feedback are important?

A Very important

Q You had highest feedback rating on site?

A Yea

Q Did anyone complain?

A No

Q Any negatives?

A Yes, but from scammerss, “you require too much verification”

Q Did banks stop any transaction?

A No

Q What did you think of FinCEN letter?

A It was scam

Q Did any one follow up?

A No

Q What did you understand your status to be?

A Registering as a 501(3)c actually restricts what a church can do so the free church movement is a movement of churchs to can this status. Donations to any church can receieve tax free money even if they don’t register under 501(3)c status.

Q Why the sign?

A We didn’t want a store employee to be in an acwaked position if somone told them of a crime. It was to protect everyone because pivacy matters.

 

Ian, by Joa from Breaking The Flaw

Today was a short day with about a dozen crypto6 supporters making it to the trial, but not terribly unsurprising as people showing up late didn’t get to see anything and many can’t make an entire day due to work and other obligations. So over all a decent turnout. The complete summary of the days events are posted below in full.

The prosecution tried to undermine Ian’s credibility through a dirty joke involving Renee being a dominatrix taking money from boyfriends from all over the country. No, she didn’t do that, but that was the point the prosecutor was making. Keep in mind that other witnesses also testified that Ian consistently said never to lie to the banks.

There was some question as to whether or not Renee was pressured into taking a plea deal through threats of 8-10 years in prison should she not.

It is revealed by Renee that the reason for the church outreach was that bitcoin undermines the governments ability to to go to war or do evil stuff. The money was not raised for a profit, or business, but for charitable cause.

The most interesting thing that happened though was the defense brought up the fact that the prosecution couldn’t prove that a bitcoin transaction was money transmission. You can have a transaction without transmission occurring. I can buy land and there is a transaction involved, but that land can’t be transmitted.

Continuation Of Renee’s Testimony

Prosecutor

Communications from chat show Renee and Ian were discussing how to make a bank happy

The prosecutor is using  a joke about Renee getting cash deposits from boyfriends she’s got all over the country in an effort to undermine her/Ian’s credibility.

From a chat log they show “We’re not registered”

Q Did you understand that to relate to your operation?

A Yes

Audio from chat played talking about another case where someone is convicted of a similar crime for selling crypto even though they did register with FinCEN

Q Did Ian have ability to see money being put into the vending machine?

A Yes

Q What does ‘major wale’ mean (from chat)?

A Someone was filing the machine with money

From chat log: “26% of machine”

Q Is that the percentage of the vending machined filled with cash?

A Yes

Q At this time were you just doing CVM connections for Mr Freeman?

A I think so

Defense

Q This Murphys is Murphy’s bar in Manchester?

A Yes

Q Do you know how long it was there?

A A year maybe I think

Q How often did you pick up?

A It was a weekly thing

Q Was it open to the public to use?

A Yes

Q How big was the machine?

A It was a foot and a half by two feet

Sticker on the door said it was there

Q The owner knew it was there, right?

A Yea

Q Ever hear any complaints from the owner, law enforcement, or anyone?

A No

Q What did you do?

A Walk in and put cash from machine in bag and walk out

Q Anyone stop you and say what you were doing was illegal?

A No

Q Any police officer walking down the street could see it, right?

A Yes

Q Can you explain plea deal?

A 8-10 years in jail was the potential sentence I was told if I took it to trial so the logical thing to do was to take a plea deal and get no jail time, but would be a felon for the rest of my life.

Q Who said 8-10 years?

A The prosecution

Q Do you think you did anything illegal?

A No, neither that or anything wrong

Q Why then take a plea deal?

A I was just scared

Q Never conspired or did anything with Ian that was illegal?

A  Yes

Q Why buy and sell bitcoin? What was mission?

A To keep as much money as possible out of governments hands because they do evil stuff with it.

Q Was this a church mission?

A Yea

Q Was anyone being scammed?

A No

Q if you thought someone was being scammed what would you do?

A We wouldn’t sell to them

Q Did you purposely engage in money transmission or anything unlawful?

A No

My understanding is it was not a business

Q Did Ian force you to do any of this stuff?

A No

Q You could stay with Ian a do this money thing or not right?

A Correct

Q Can you tell people about Ian’s lifestyle?

A He lives a modest lifestyle, definitely not a life of the rich and famous

Q What does he drive?

A Rev 4

Q So an older used car?

A Yes

Q So you called him rich because he doesn’t have to beg and scrape for money?

A Yes

Q Do you know where church money went?

A Yes, homeless shelter and other stuff

Q Do you know what he preaches?

A Yea, always show people bitcoin wallet

Q Does he charge it?

A No

Redirect from prosecution

Q Was one of the questions at sentencing that you lied to banks?

A Yes, because I was compelled to do as part of plea deal

[Renee asks for her lawyer]

[testimony resumes w/o consultation with lawyer as you can’t talk to your lawyer during testimony]

[The prosecutor doesn’t like the truth and appear to be threatening her with perjury via intimidation for revealing the system is rigged]

Judge says:

You can’t consult with counsel while testifying, but council wasn’t properly “in” the court due to COVID and tech issue which is why we recessed to the jury.

Q Why did you tell the judge laplanet you were guilty was that a truthful answer?

A Yes

[effectively she is forced to lie because if she does not they can charge her with perjury which is messed up because you are required to perjure yourself to get a plea deal effectively]

Q Were you represented by a lawyer during the proffer?

A Yes

Q After consulting with your lawyer you accepted the plea deal?

A Right

Q you had agreed to open bank account and sell bitcoin for Mr Freeman? And that it was unregistered?

A Yes

Q You did it for church outreach?

A Yes

May 16, 2020 signal conversation

Renee:

So my option is limited work or have attention brought to myself

I’d like to make the most amount of money with the least amount of risk

Q So you did church outreach and you were paid for it?

A Yes, both things are true

Q You told…

A I don’t really trust Melanie Neighbours so I don’t know

Q You yourself said Mr Freeman was rich

A Yea

Cross defense

Q you don’t consider Ian a wealthy man?

A No

Q Not at all?

A Yea

Q Then you said he was only rich by comparison to you being really poor?

A Right

Q Was this a super pressure situation?

A Yes

[he’s referring to why she took the plea deal]

Q Why did you switch lawyer?

A I hope to change my plea

Q Your intent is now to withdraw?

A Yes, if I can

Q Did you conspire to do anything illegal?

A No

Q Did you take plans to make sure were legal?

A Yes

Prosecutor asks some more questions

Q Were you a dominatrix?

A No

Q Wasn’t true right?

A Yea

[they’re referencing the joke about her being a dominatrix and having men all over the internet depositing money into her account]

Defense goes again

Q Did any bank lose any money?

A No

Prosecutor again

Q How do you know that?

A I was told that by the prosecutor

[this was hilarious as they used their own words against them, and this was 100% true, the prosecutor in two difference sentencing hearings said that there were no financial losses by the banks and this was part of the reason for the sentence given]

Defense again

Q The banks gave you your money back when they closed your account, right?

A Yes

Q No restitution was ordered at your sentencing, right?

A Right

Judge Speaks

Prosecution rests it’s case.

Prosecution has the burden of proof.

Tomorrow the defense can, but doesn’t have to put on a defense.

Defense makes motions on money laundering charges

Refer to heroin dealer

Asks to dismiss

Interaction was rejected after Ian learned of illegal activity.

He said he could not agree to sell bitcoin to the undercover agent.

He did not aid or accompany or encourage in any shape or form and did not give discounted rate to the undercover.

Prior to knowing the undercover was a drug deal Ian gave a 10% rate to the agent. After refusal the agent got the normal 14% from the vending machine.

This is not circumstantial evidence, but direct direct evidence.

No control over that vending machine the undercover used.

There was no evidence presented that Ian even knew the guy bought crypt at the machine.

Prosecutor responds

Our view is that he is not refusing under all circumstances, but it has to be low key.

It was a wink and a nod situation.

Evidence is sufficient to get past rule 29.

[this is crazy because that was never said or clearly communicated, and he outright refused in actual words]

Judge speaks:

Can he even monitor from Keene, yes, but does he even know?

Prosecutor speaks

He is watching

[except he isn’t, he is only alerted when money is going into the machine and how much, not who, and even that depends on him paying attention to those alerts on his phone/his phone having connectivity and at the time he probably didn’t have connectivity as he was driving back from Taco Beyondo where the is poor cellular reception between Hillsboro and Keene, but even if he got an alert he wouldn’t have seen it because he was driving]

Judge speaks

Active and seeing watching getting cash is different than seeing undercover do it

Defense speaks

Agent didn’t say he was going to do it

Tax Evasion

Whether or not he even owes government taxes.

This is a joke.

He was never asked for documentation.

There was no exploration into profit or loss.

It was all speculation.

No falsifying documentation occurred.

He didn’t do anything.

The IRS agent just did a standard deduction.

No overhead, not take, not charitable deductions.

Nothing.

Or even that he is a non-profit.

It’s all a myth.

We don’t even know there is other money.

You can’t just make up it up and they did.

Prosecution speaks

She looked at locatbtc records and case for each trade over above standard costs.

Chat from localbitcoin

Judge speaks

Income proven, but was he required to file “not owe anything” is concerning.

I need law on this, not just testimony.

Defense speaks

Look at the actual exchange: “may not owe any taxes at all”

It would also have to be wilful and intentional.

It’s like a “gotcha game” here.

Never sent letter or even tried to get contact like they normally do for everyone else.

[remember the IRS agent testified that they were out to get him and didn’t follow standard procedure because of it]

Judge talks

The evasion charges seem unusual giving no prior contact occurred based on my experience as a judge and former prosecutor.

Money transmission

Defense speaks:

They didn’t show any evidence of transition.

No blockchain evidence was shown.

Does it even transfer?

Is it actually a transfer?

Devoid of transfer evidence.

I hope we are not leaving it to the imagination of the jury.

They are not in money transmission business.

They didn’t claim to be a business.

They claim to be a church.

But transmission itself is a bigger issue.

No testimony as to what transmission even means in relation to this case.

They are worried as to what a wallet is and that hasn’t even been defined.

Prosecution speaks

Money transmission someone explained it.

What wallets were.

FinCEN testified transmission of crypto is money transmission.

And evidence those transactions happened.

Judge speaks

What we didn’t get

What evidence do we have tying his wallet to anyone in this case?

Defense speaks

Proved transactions not transmissions.

It is the act of transmitting that is in question.

Judge speaks

Ok, it is the understanding of it that is the problem

I’ll take it under advisement

End of Day 8

Attorney Sisti Cross Examines Government Witnesses

[Day 7 below has been updated, you can skip to the part where we left off if you’ve already read the first part of the story]

We learned today that Erin Montgomery the supposed leading blockchain analysis expert for the FBI who was disqualified as an expert wouldn’t be testifying at all, not even as a non-expert ‘witness’!

We also learned that the FBI misled the jury about the average age of people the church sold bitcoin to via selectively picking out older folks from a Telegram folder on the church’s computer that was seized and getting an ‘average age’ thereof from this selected pool.

We learned about some of the scams, the feds trying to paint Ian as having partaken in a scam against a bank where the bank lost no money and was in fact authorized to speak on behalf of Nobody in the effort to recover money for the Church Of The Invisible Hand.

We discovered the government was very uncomfortable about talking about the misdeeds they committed the day of the March 2021 raid as they damaged cameras, failed to comply with warrant requirements that they announce themselves before entering, and so forth. They were not authorized to conduct a no knock raid like we had all assumed originally based on the mere fact the didn’t and no knock raids have become the norm despite that they’re only supposed to be utilized selectively in particularly dangerous circumstances.

We learned the FBI is trying to claim that they had to seize Ian’s computer in order to get photos to investigate scammers when in fact they could have just asked for them, like OTHER law enforcement agencies did.

It is shown that Ian and the church have a policy of investigating transactions that might involve people being scammed and that he called one such victim. It’s the case other victims were called, but that’s for another day. Ultimately we learned no amount of procedure will ever fully stop a determined scammer. As neither the church’s own efforts nor the banks stopped any of these victims from getting scammed.

Day 7

~10+ supports turned out

FBI agent from other day continues…

Cross examination by defense

Q You went through 1% of transactions?

A I don’t know

[it was wayyyy less than 1%, it was more something like less than 0.013333333 based on further testimony]

Q You only went through Telegram photos?

A Yes, that is where the 59 were from

Q Your job was to jut select specific photos?

A Yes

Q For ages, you skipped out on people?

A Yes

Q You didn’t go through and testify to all of them and for some reason you skipped over some, why?

A I don’t know

[isn’t this a big red flag that the government is up to no good? remember that they are trying to get the jury to believe Ian worked with scammers to launder money and preyed on elderly folks in the process despite every one of the governments witnesses testifying to the fact he didn’t know the scammers and there was no reason to believe he worked with anyone on anything in this regard]

Q In your limited sample there was an active investigation in regard to one person, what was going on?

A We can follow up with info from computer

Q The info came from Ian’s computer right?

A Yes

Q That is where you got the ID right?

A Yea

[so they’re admitting here that if it was not for Ian doing know your customer the government would be able to ID and identify the scammers at all]

Q You would not have that if not for Ian right?

A Correct

Q Were you able to follow up with general fellow?

A Jeremy Harmon, no

Q Wasn’t he a scammer?

A Yes

Q Is there any info Jeremy Harmon ever met with Ian?

A I don’t know

[aww did you even investigate this case? how can someone be so incompetent or ignorant? ohh that’s right, they work for government]

Q Fredrick Dryer claimed to be in oil?

A Yea

[Fredrick Dryer is the scammer]

Q She lost a lot money and was in contract for a long time right?

A Yea

Q Any contact with Ian?

A No

[ok, so there is confirmation that the scammer has had NO contact with Ian in person or otherwise]

Q He is still in contact with victim, right?

A Yea

[they are talking about the victim I believe still being in contact with the scammer, yes, you heard that right]

Q Was it you who said you didn’t want to follow up with the scammer?

A Not exactly what I said, but in a manor of speaking

[trying to wiggle out of it because it makes ya case look bad, you don’t really care about the victim at all]

With info recently provided we are going to follow up

[what he means is because they were called out the prior day on this they did some immediate ‘deciding’ to do something or to claim to be planning to do something now that the public gets to know they never intended to investigate any of the scammers, remember the FBI had Ian’s computer for many years, so they had plenty of time to investigate the scammers]

Q Dryer is guy who took money?

A Right

Q Ian is not the scammer, right?

A Correct

[and case begins to fall apart even more]

Q Are you pursuing William Millers?

A No

Q In Miller case are you investigating scammer who of which there was ID for?

A No

[remember, all of these scammers can be ID’d explicitly because Ian and the churches policy of doing KYC and then retaining that information for YEARS, this was done because it was warranted and reduced risks like this while still being as respective of peoples privacy as feasible for the types of transactions occurring]

Q Scamming happens with and without crypto right?

A Yea

Q None of the investigation appears to have cut off scam, right?

A I think banks stopped some scams

[aww ok, that isn’t the result of the investigation you’re doing though, but ok]

Q Some banks let 4 transactions go through right?

A Yea

[ie even red flags don’t stop banks from cutting off a customers ability to do the transactions, but it’s not even clear these were red flags as the only basis is a customers age effectively, and some old people aren’t mentally incapable of making their own decisions, which was pretty much what appeared to be the cases here even if they ended up making poor choices]

Q She transacted business for $240,000 and $210,000 and nobody raised a concern, is that normal?

A I’ve seen various actions

Q Nobody questions on Jerry transaction either right?

A Yea

Q The only one who questioned it was Ian, right?

A I can’t recall

[how convenient, the banks didn’t question any of the transactions, but Ian did, and took steps to try and stop it if it appeared to be fraud, failing to defeat fraud happens because scammers are often good at what they do]

Q None of the banks checked, but Ian did, you aware of that?

A I did not sit in on her testimony

Next the government plays some audio of a recorded phone call.

Freeman on Nobody call to Bank Of America call and Ian on Bank Of America Call $350,000 return thereof

Freeman made first call, audio played out of order

Nobody made 2nd call

Q Do you know if nobody authorized Ian to speak on his behalf of nobody?

A No

[they are trying to suggest that Ian’s committing fraud when talking to the bank because he gives Nobody’s name when he calls in the assistance of Nobody in the recovery of church money]

Q Did you know the bank did return the $350,000 on that account?

A No idea

[did the FBI even investigate this case?]

Q 2nd call was in pursuit of additional $40,000

A No idea

Q Do you know no bank lost any money on this?

A I don’t know

Q After 5 years you would think you would know, right?

A It was handled by another employee

[how convenient, they just have so many agents that you can’t actually question them about anything]

Q You watched swat team film?

A First time I saw it was in court

[might be a good time to direct people to watch the security footage video themselves]

 

 

Q Special swat gear, you use cameras right?

A Just started using them

Q Where are cameras supposed to be used?

A I don’t know

Q Will you be surprised to hear cameras were attached to helmets in raid of Ian’s residence?

A I don’t know

Q Is there a reason they would not want to record?

A No

Q Any videos of swat team we can show jury?

A Not that I know of

[again how convenient of it for the government to lose footage like that, fortunately there is some video from security camera footage prior to the government conveniently ‘disabling’ the camera, or maybe I should I more accurately describe it as physically destroying the cameras]

Q What is that in the video?

A Bearcat

Q What is that?

A 2nd Bearcat

Q What is guy doing?

A Throwing something, in my experience a flash bang grenade

Q Did you see any one warning people in house?

A I can’t speak to that

Q Did you see people hiding?

A I wouldn’t say that

Q You did not see anyone approach, right?

A No, I didn’t

Q Flash bang grenade, right?

A Yes, based on my experience

Before someone enters the house there should be a knock and announce

Q Do you see Bearcat with battering ram and broken window attached?

A Yes

Q Beatcat obviously entered house right?

A Yes

Q What is that on the helmets?

A Goggles

Q What is mounted on top?

A Night vision goggles

Q Any cameras?

A I can’t tell from that frame

Not the case agent at the time so I don’t know

[he knows, he just doesn’t want to answer, he’s watching the video remember]

Q Any inquiry into means of entry when you became case agent?

A No

Q What is that?

A An aerial drone like thing, it is used for clearing spaces to avoid agents being harmed

Q for surveilling right?

A Right

Q Someone saw it right?

[he’s referring to the video as it’s being piloted from afar]

It wouldn’t be useful if no one was watching it right?

A No

Q Who is that guy?

A Nobody

Q This fella?

A Mathew Roach

Q Was he charged with anything?

A No

Q Of course that is Ian

A Yea

Q Did anyone resist?

A No to my knowledge

Q Who’s this?

A Bonnie

Q Bonnie is married to Ian?

A I believe so

Q She charged?

A No

[#2 has a body cam according to state rep who came out to support Ian in the Crypto6 trial]

Q What is this?

A He appears to be taking camera down

[pretty sure this is where he’s physically destroying the camera, not carefully taking it down as it might sound from his wording]

Q He doesn’t want people to know what he is doing?

A It’s for officer safety

[of course it is, everything is for officer safety, why didn’t you just drop a bomb on the place, wouldn’t that have been safer than risk officer safety by going in? ohh I remember why they don’t do that now… in the 1980s they actually did drop a bomb on a black activists house and the public was absolutely outraged that they haven’t done it since as far as I’m aware]

Q Did you ever replace it?

A I can’t speak to that

[I can speak to this, the answer is no, WE replaced the windows and the doors and cleaned up the multiple buildings that the government destroyed and damaged, though I’ll admit now that it appears that one person who helped with cleanup may have been an informant or deep undercover gent… maybe more on that to come… maybe not… haven’t yet decided given they are still deep undercover and sometimes it’s best to keep your enemy’s closer]

Q What is this?

A End of Bearcat

Q Do you know what it is approaching?

A Porch

Q What is it doing now?

A I can’t see

[liar, it is ripping out a window clear as day, see video above, you’d have to be blind not to see what the bearcat is doing]

Q Did you know how many agents were there having taken over the case?

A I don’t

Q So the only reason we know anything was because of Ian’s security footage right?

A yea, this was recorded by Ian’s security cameras

Q Lots of money coming into church accounts, right?

A Yes, money went into different accounts

Q Money came into and out of accounts, right?

A Yes

Q When you raise money have to exchange right?

A yes

Q You aware he purchased bitcoin, right?

A I’m not aware of that

[how can the case agent not be aware that the main target in his case purchased bitcoin???? in a case that surrounded bitcoin and of which other agents have testified to????]

Q They were purchased by Ian or the church right?

A Right

it was his property

[ohh now he amazingly remembers all of a sudden what this case was about]

Prosecutor cross examines

Q Freeman used money to buy bitcoin to and then sell it?

A Right

Q Did we show records from Kraken?

A Yea

Q $280,000?

A Yes

Q How much?

A $240,000

Q Under 1% fee?

A Yea

[they are trying to show here that the fees the church charged were excessive and only possible because of some sort of criminal activity even though they were in line with market rates the entire time or a bit below them even, an actual exchange is going to have the volume and so the fees are going to be low, a vending operator is going to have higher costs because they maintain the machines, collect physical case, have employees, need to rent space from business owners for each machine, etc, and the same applies to sellers online for a various of other reasons, like banks not wanting to do business with you because they perceive you as a competitor or being too risky, and that doesn’t mean crime, as some banks can and probably do specialize in high risk clients, but they also charge more for providing such services, and in fact most banks charge a fee simply for having a cash deposit account and receiving large amounts of cash or cash over a certain amount for any account for that matter]

Q What did Ian charge?

A 10% fee

[it’s humorous that they are trying to make Ian out to be a criminal over what is literally just regular capitalism, or in this case really a charitable project]

Q Search, what did you testify about?

A Interviews, cell phone, computer

Q Most on?

A Cell and PC

Q Where was PC found?

A Mr Freeman’s residence

[pretty sure it was found in the studio, but ok lets go with that]

Q Did Sisti ask a single question about interviews?

A No

Q You have background in swat?

A Yes

Q Point?

A Officer safety

Q Always use same tactics?

A No, it depends on the situation like if there are weapons inside

[that’s curious considering you raided in 2016 and didn’t take similar action then]

Q As far as swat tactics are concerned what is the purpose?

A Just amount of force to ensure you are in control

[that is funny considering they testify at some point it is to use an overwhelming amount of force]

Q Any shots fired?

A No

Q Any one hurt?

A No, not to my knowledge

[liars, there broken window injured Bonnie in the raid and she ended up with bloodied feet because they made her put on shoes with glass in them]

Q Were objectives obtained?

A Yes

A picture of matts room is shown on screen

Q What is this?

A High powered weapons and several types of riffle

3 pistils, ballistic helmet, vest

Q Where did picture come from?

A Matt Roach’s room

Q On day of search?

A Yes

Q Does room matter?

A No

They could be used by anybody

[note: if only Matt has access to Matt’s room which I’m 99.99% sure is the case here how does anybody get access to these weapons?]

Q Sisti asked you about banks stopping transactions?

A Yes

Q Was the bank ever told it was to buy bitcoin?

A No

Q Would he tell buyers what to tell banks?

A Yes

Q Did he say for bitcoin?

A No

Q Did he say for something else?

A Yes, church donation, investment, or rare coin

Q Do you know if defense told truth about Nobody authorized right to speak on his behalf

A No

[yea, except the problem is the burden of proof is on you guys to prove that something illegal was happening and you’re not providing any such evidence, but are trying to imply through deceit and lying that people were up to no good]

Q Did banks close many accounts?

A Yes

[and did they ever tell Ian or the church or anybody why? because ian later testifies only 1 bank ever told him why and it wasn’t because he was committing a crime]

Q Did banks say he was money service business?

A Yes

[this is false, the only financial institution that said  they thought he may be a money service business was a small credit union and when he protested with a legal letter and other evidence responded to him with their belief was he had strong evidence to show the MSB rules didn’t apply to him even though they still did close his account]

Q Did they say he has to register?

A Yes

[this is misleading because they didn’t really say what he had to do, but said more like what he probably needed to do, and that was without having more knowledge or full knowledge of everything, aka the Seth Hiiple letter saying his church wasn’t required to register under MSB laws, etc]

Q Did Mr Freeman provide passport for fraudster?

A No, we had to seize it

[they didn’t ask for it! How would freeman have ever even known they were investigating when they didn’t ask or say they were and were in fact NOT investigating until the defense called out the FBI for NOT investigating the scammers during the trial??? if anyone wonders why we call these FBI guys liars and thieves this is a perfect example of why that is]

Q What was break in case?

A A victim got a screenshot

[Remember that if they had contacted the seller of the bitcoin, aka Ian/the church they could have had access to the IDs of the scammers, but it’s because they were NOT investigating the scammers EVER till the trial started and the feds got called out for not investigating the scammers that they purportedly started investigating the scammers. Rather what they were investigating for the past decade was Ian, the church, Free Talk Live, for the reason of political persecution. The feds don’t like the Free State Project and have numerous active open investigations on Free Staters of which 2 out of 8-9 that exist are more publicly known and disclosed to exist, but evidence of other investigations exist, aka the main known ones include the LBRY case with Jeremy Kauffman and the Crypto6 case, but of course the main thing they don’t like is being called out 365 days a year on nationally syndicated radio for doing really terrible stuff like distributing pictures of children being raped, encouraging distribution, and increasing server capacity thereof, for calling that out the feds raided FTL studio in March of 2016, just two weeks post a show where Mark Edge called them out on it in what was known as the playpen case, and that raid of FTL in 2016 there were no charges because the objective was to smear Ian and undermine FTL. The supposed connection made no sense as the suppose connection to playpen was a year old case where they had already sanctimoniously raided because that is STANDARD protocol, else those who actually committed crimes would be able to destroy evidence, so it made no sense to raid a year AFTER that unless the real objective was to silence a nationally syndicated radio show of which was the only mainstream non-technical outlet to cover the case where the FBI f’d up at all.]

Q What is challenge to investigate?

A Fake names, overseas, fake phone #s

Q Following the money is a challenge?

A Yes

Q Why?

A Bitcoin is hard to trace

[it’s a public blockchain- tracing it isn’t the problem like it might be with privacy coins, it may not be evidence usable at trial, but it is usable to investigate and get warrants to conduct raids]

Q Who changed money to bitcoin?

A Mr Freeman

Just so we don’t have any misunderstanding we will go over photos we missed again.

Q Average age?

A 59

[this is again misleading because they selectively picked out pictures of older folks to get an older average age]

[the prosecutor goes through the folder showing the younger people now that were skipped over given they were called out by the defense for skipping over those young people]

[we should also remember here that banks didn’t stop or even red flag these transactions, but even if they red flag a transaction it doesn’t mean they have to stop the transaction from going through as the governments own witnesses evidenced via the credit union fraud department testimony]

Defense cross examines

Q All were under 59 right?

A Yes

Q They were the ones left out yesterday?

A Right

Q Kraken $280,000 purchase, fee attached right?

A Yes

Q When buying always trying to buy at lowest price?

A Yes

Q Nothing illegal about buying?

A Right

Q Do you know where money goes?

A Fostering peace

Q Do you know about homeless, orphanages, etc?

A I heard about that in testimony

Q In regard to excess money you don’t know where it goes?

A No

[ok, so they can’t claim this given that they’re seizing the money and freezing the accounts, they have the bank records, etc. they do know where the money goes because if they didn’t they couldn’t seize what they did]

Q Regarding swat factors include

– bars on windows

– history of violence

– whether or not know of advocating overthrow of country

None of this is true in regards to Freeman, right?

A I was not part of any of that

[again, how convenient that they can’t provide FBI agents that can testify to everything, but only that of what benefits the prosecution]

Q Anyone give you a memo why they had to be violent with a peace church?

A No

Q Don’t you think anyone there had the hell scared out of them that night?

A I can’t say

[really????]

Q Did anyone ever know if he had violent background before search?

A I don’t know

Q No one ever resisted, right?

A No

Q You guys were investigators right?

A Yes

Q In regard to Nobody you didn’t ask Nobody?

[I believe he is referencing the call to the bank were Ian Freeman provided the name Nobody when asked about the account he was calling about that they tried to make it sound like it was some sort of fraud in play by Freeman, when in fact it was authorized by Nobody that Freeman could speak on his behalf]

A No

Q No money was lost to bank with Freeman speaking for Nobody?

A No

Prosecutor questions agent

Brings up conversation where Renee says Ian is rich

[not much actually said, they’re just trying to re-iterate that Ian is “rich”]

Defense cross examines agent again

Q What does Freeman drive?

A I don’t know

Q Does he live in a mansion?

A I don’t know

[really? come on, you investigated this guy didn’t you??? Freeman has a parsonage and lives in one room of a duplex with the first floor containing a ministry radio studio, and one of the rooms on this side of the duplex is rented out, and the other side is also rented out by the church, as is are other church properties, but there is one church property where a portion of it is also used for church activities as well elsewhere though]

New witeness

Name: Rebecca

Kentucky- lived there for 20 years

59 years old

Employed school cafeteria worker

She worked at walmart prior

Not maried

Previously was married for 38 years

Has 1 child

Why not married? Divorced after physical and mental abuse

Q You join match.com?

A Yes

Jerry Flowers

Q How did that start?

A He reached out and then I

Q Then?

A He asked me to join Telegram

Q Did you know what it was at the time?

A No

Q What is it?

A Like text messaging

Q How often?

A Every other day

Q Talked about what?

A Kids, life

He lived in Mobile, Alabama and traveled a lot

Q What was intent?

A Companion

Q What happened?

A He got sick and needed money for doctor

Q He needed you to send him money?

A Yes

Q Why?

A I was vulnerable

Q How?

A Go to bank and wire money

Q How did you know where to send it?

A He would tell me

Then he went in hospital

Then I got nervous

Q How long?

A Weeks

Q You got nervous?

A It scared me, I never did that before

[I think the gist of this testimony here is she was thinking twice about having had sent a large sum of money to what is a complete stranger]

Q Was it sent to flowers?

A No, different people

Q What way?

A Bitcoin

Q How did you know how to do that?

A Via phone calls from flowers

Q How did you know who to send it to?

A First time it was to freeman

Q Did you know what freeman did?

A Yea, bitcoin

Q Did you sent photos to flowers?

A Yes

Q Is this your drivers license?

A Yes

Q Did you know what ftl_ian was?

A No

Q You sent to flowers?

A I did

Q Did you have bank account at US bank?

A Yes I did

Q Can you see amount of wire?

A Yes, $20,000

Q is this your handwriting?

A Yes

What was written:

“I Rebecca authorized and completed a wire transfer in the amount of $20,000 for purchase of bitcoin from ftl_ian on Telegram. I understand this transaction is non-refundable”

Signed and dated by Rebecca

Q When you were doing wires were you communicating with flowers?

A Yes

Q Did Mr Freeman ever call you?

A Yes, he called and confirmed I wanted to do transaction

Q Did he ask what bitcoin was?

A No

Q Before today had you been to New Hampshire?

A No

[this is referring to wire to NH Peace church ian b feeman dba nh peace church , where dba stands for doing business as]

Q Ever get any of your money back?

A No

[aww you signed that you understood the transaction was non-refundable why would anyone think they’d get their money back???]

Q How did this effect you?

A It ruined my life

[I ran out of time to finish typing up the summary of day 7 initially, so it was previously half published. It’s not complete and here is the rest of the story below:]

Defense asks questions

Q Born in Kentucky?

A Yes

Q Ever see Mr Flowers

A Tried, but didn’t work out

Q But some Telephone conversations?

A Yea

Q How long?

A Aug 2020 to 2021- quite a while

Q You did this from your bank?

A Yes

Q Of 25 years?

A Yes

[I think they mean they had a banking relation for 25 years]

Q How many wires?

A 8-10

Q Any teller ever say anything about you authorizing this kinda money going to Mr Flowers?

A Yes

Q What did they say?

A “Are you sure about this?”

Q And you did it anyway?

A Yes

Q Ian actually called you right?

A Yea

Q Ian didn’t know you either right?

A Right

Q Ian had to make an affirmative act, right?

A Yea

Q He didn’t do anything with transaction until you authorized him right?

A Yes

[basically this confirms that the banks and Ian / Shire Free Church was doing the same thing as the banks as far as KYC was concerned and in reality more than what the banks were doing because the church had a policy of actually asking several questions to weed out suspect scam transactions]

New Witness

Name: kate Eyeryan

Employed paso trust company

compliance officer

regulatory watching infrastructure company and exchange for crypto

users to buy and sell crypto

example bitcoin, litecoin, etc

Q Any other name?

A itbit

Q Open to public?

A Yes

Q Types of customers? individual & businesses?

A Yes

Q Create account on exchange?

A Yes

Q Charge fee?

A Yes

Q Structure?

A Fee when you buy bitcoin and dependent on if you are exchanging larger amounts we have lower fee amount. Highest fee amount? 35 bips or 1/100 %

[what they aren’t clear on is this doesn’t include withdraw fees as they cater to traders, not people who want to spend their crypto so they make money on different things than the sellers of crypto, not to mention volume]

Q Is paxos regulated?

A Yes

MSB

Q Who with?

A FinCEN

Q Bank secrecy act apply?

A Yes

Q Types of regulations?

A Program to ID and report suspicious activity

[remember that the church isn’t a MSB, it’s not required to follow these rules, but you also need to remember that the church is reliant on a regulated financial institution to receive funds from customers and that entity does have to follow these rules, but the church despite this is taking steps to stop scammers and in the process doing KYC, requiring IDs from all parties that are part of a transaction, so the church also has a program to ID and deal with suspicious activity of its own and the government even showed the policies of the church as evidence on screen]

Q Collect?

A ID in line with KYC, nature of activity, then if we have reason to suspect scam/fraud we red flag it

Q What is an example of activity outside of a users profile?

A Spending more money than expected

Q How do you create accounts?

A Log on to site and provide ID and personal info

Q Risk ratings?

A based on a variety of factors

Q Example of low risk user?

A Individual operated in low risk, in a country with firmly established AM2

Q AM2?

A Anti-money laundering laws

Q High risk?

A Working in high risk business

Q MSB aka money service business high risk?

A Yes

Q Does Paxos offer accounts to unregulated MSBs?

A No

[remember that the church isn’t a MSB under the governments on laws on defines a MSB]

We will reach out with supplemental questions if unsure

Q Do you ask questions over life time of account holder?

A Yes

A refresh is done based on a users risk rating. This is to make sure profile has not changed over time. If we have questions we ask clarifying questions since last inquiry.

Q Does volume matter?

A Yes, we may ask for more information from the user

Q When you reach out every time do you use the same script?

A Don’t know, but standard template and tailored questions

[the church has a policy of calling customers too when a customer is conducting higher trade volumes and asks more questions not unlike what itbit is claiming they do for higher risk customers]

Q Third party transfers allowed?

A No

[this isn’t actually the same thing as as an agent being involved, but… not illegal anyway… rather it is merely higher risk…  and not something the church did except occasionally with good customers and they actually played an audio clip from FTL where Aria said her church didn’t do them and Ian said his didn’t do it that much either except for good customers on an occasion]

Q If a customer is too risky what do you do?

A Close account

[notice that this doesn’t mean the person is doing anything illegal, it’s just what the government is saying you have to do, if you are in a risky, but legal business good luck keeping a bank account, itbit account, or any financial account, and the government has effectively locked out or created a world of unbanked individuals and businesses through this … for example those employed in the sex industry currently or in the past even 20 years ago can’t open or maintain a bank account for long.. it doesn’t mean they committed any crimes as the prosecutor is trying to claim, but that said unbanked individuals include the poor, or people not making much money and it’s often because of fees charged when there is little or no account activity, such as there isn’t a regular paycheck going in and money coming out]

The prosecutor shows an itbit application for the Shire Free Church from 2013… although it’s signed in 2016.. probably actually 2016

[it looks like everything is honestly stated and correct on the application based on my first hand knowledge of the church]

Q In 2016 same general field?

A I worked for the US treasury?

Q What for?

A Office for terrorism

Q Were you familiar with field at time?

A Generally, not specifically

Q Do you know if size of business mattered in 2016?

A No, it does not

Q Part of account opening?

A Yes

Defense Cross Examination

Q Do you know how much went through pax in the last hour?

A No

Q Would you be surprised if I told you it was $8 million dollars?

A I couldn’t tell you, it’s all relative

[you couldn’t tell us if you’d be surprised? hmm]

Q Where would you place your company?

A We are growing but small company

[so the church isn’t even a company by your standard then…  hmmm]

Q You aren’t taking risk right?

A No

Q You can’t explain fee structure?

A Right

Q With regard to application it has the a real name, information, and purpose, etc right?

A I don’t know details of this application

Q Do you know if user immediately started using account?

A I don’t have information on that

Q What was the purpose of the follow up email?

A We needed more information

Q Date of follow up form?

A 2017

Q Did you examine documents?

A Yes, to prepare for testimony

Q Do you know of explanatory letter from Ian and the church?

A Yes

Q The Martin and Hipple letter?

A I’m unsure of the firm

The defense lawyer puts the letter up on screen which advises the church of its legal status

Q Have you seen this Martin and Hipple letter?

A Yes, in context of reviewing case

[prosecutor is trying to stop testimony as it makes his case look bad, real bad, the church was advised it was not a money services business and therefore NOT required to register with the federal government and it wasn’t regulated under the state law either]

Martin & Hipple Letter Advising Church That It’s Cryptocurrency Activities Aren’t Regulated By The Federal Government

The Hipple letter states the church is neither a money service business nor a money transmitter “under state or federal law”. It has no legal requirement to register. The letter concludes the church is NOT a MSB under federal law.

The letter references banking department testified organizations that are churches are not money transmitters.

It is not an ATM, but a vending machine. Though the activities are not specific to vending, but sale of crypto from ones own wallet.

Not all machines have the same software.

The machine holds it own bitcoin, and we don’t regulate that. This part is from the banking department of New Hampshire testimony prior to New Hampshire passing a law that removed the authority of the New Hampshire banking department from regulating cryptocurrency businesses. Despite for a short time it had the authority to regulate the state authorities never did.  To watch the video click the play button below. The most interesting part is in regard to the Shire Free Church’s vending machines and cryptocurrency sales. The state and federal law are nearly identical on this issue and would be the same. Start watching from 16:41 to get a good understanding of why the way the vending machines are setup and the way in which the church sells its crypto is not regulated at the state or federal level.

 

 

The main take away from the testimony was that not all the machines have the same software or setup and in the example the machine holds its own bitcoin, and the state doesn’t regulate that. It’s no different than buying a kitkat from a vending machine.

If it holds anothers bitcoin or connects to an exchange then it is a money transmitter. If it does not sell that of others bitcoin then it need not be registered under New Hampshire law. And remember this is the same or very similar to the federal law’s wording.

Q Did itbit follow up with Seth Hipple?

A I don’t know

Judge Speaks

#1 not a case on advice defense

#2 federal law not NH state law

[keep in mind that while #1 is correct it does evidence that the lawyers don’t all agree on what the law is, and #2 the letter refers to both state and federal law, so it’s relevant even though the part about state law is not]

 

New Witness

Name: Nancy triestrl

Lives in Indiana

Lived in Michigan

Widow

Children 4 + 4 step children

Semi retired

Mariot Hotel

Home Caregiver

70 years old

[remember that this is now, not the age at the time of the scams occurring, a number of years have passed so these individuals are older than they were at the time of these incidents, maybe still not young, but not as old either, and they were selectively chosen for the sake of arguing the case, in this case it appears she was 66 at the time of the scam]

Q In 2017 you met someone online

A Couldn’t leave house for 6 weeks

Q You met man online?

A Yes, Mr Gray

Q Text back and forth 3-4 years

Q Ever meet in person?

A No

Q What did he do?

A Oil rig boss

Q Ever explain why he never met?

A Always had a reason

Q He asked for money?

A Yea, first it was a gift card for netflix

[yea, bitcoin isn’t the #1 way people get scammed, gift cards are frequently used, and prepaid visa cards are another example, and all of these scams used other methods exclusively before bitcoin even existed]

Q How much did you send?

A $16,000

Q Did he ask you to use bank account?

A Yes

Q Did he ask you to open back account for him?

A He may have

Q He asked you to buy bitcoin?

A Yes

Q Did you know what bitcoin was at the time?

A No

[yup- this was not uncommon at the time and why terms like rare coin actually make a lot of sense]

Q Require photo?

A Yes, when transferring money to Mr Freeman

Q Do you know what Telegram is?

A Yes, a wire transfer

[this was funny because a telegram was never a wire transfer, it is an instant messaging application, but prior to that it was a messaging service before computers existed, the reliability of these witnesses is less than stellar]

Q Do you know Ian Freeman?

A No

Only spoke 1 time

Q What did he ask on phone?

[these individuals don’t generally have an accurate recollection of what was said in these conversations because they happened years ago while Ian knows because the church has different scripts on the types of questions it would ask and multiple questions to weed out scams]

A Asked my name and said he was Ian Freeman and then asked if I was buying bitcoin and said he was just calling to make sure.

Q Why did you stop sending money to Gray?

A I was tired of the bullshit

If I didn’t fill out the form he’d make me do it again.

Q Did you ever get paid for this?

A No, I don’t even know what they are

[then why did you freaking write you were buying bitcoin from ftl_ian on the receipt???? talk about being willfully blind]

Defense Cross Examination

Q Dealt with this Anthony for how long?

A 5 years

Q Did you have picture?

A Yes

Q You don’t know if it was him?

A No

Q This whole thing was an absolute disaster?

A Yes

Q How much did you lose?

A $16,000 personally

Q Quite a few transactions right?

A $20,000 or more

Q These transactions happened at same bank right?

A Yea, most anyway

Q Quite a few transactions at Chase bank?

A Yes

Q They knew you well?

A Yea, they knew my husband died

[that is far more than Ian would typically know or be able to reasonably know]

Q Did they ever have a concern?

A No, they just shut my account down

Q You don’t know Ian, but someone saying they were Ian wanted to confirm you were sending money?

A Yes

Q He was the only one who called you and was concerned?

A Yes

New Witness

Name: Darlene Lacac

Supervisory accountant for FBI

1 yr in position

30 years prior forensic accountant

Q What is it?

A Review and analyze financial records

Q Education?

A BA, Masters certified public accountant

Q How many cases?

A ~200

Q You do Ian’s case?

A Yes

Q Role in it?

A Review financial records

Q How did you obtain those records?

A Through a legal proccess

Q How many accounts did you review in this case?

A 50

[these weren’t all Ian’s accounts despite the claim because the prosecutor is mixing accounts of different entities together and calling them all Ians when they’re not, only some of them are directly connected the Shire Free Church and others are not, imagine if they took your entire family and added up all those accounts and claimed they were yours just because you had some checks between family members? well, that is what they did here, or churches or people with associations to each other]

Q In this case did you review bank accounts in the name of Ian Freeman?

A Yes

Q And others?

A Yes

James baker (this is Aria, she’s trans and this is her legal name, not the name she goes by)

Shire Free Church

etc

Q Did you put this information into a spreadsheet?

A Yes

They now show the spreadhseet

It has a total of 50 accounts with account #, bank, holder, period, credits, debits shown

A summary of deposit sources is shown on screen

Oct 2016 to May 2017

Deposit Source, count, total deposited, percent of total

Summary of Payee Summary

Payee, count, total pd, percent of total

[Basically what we’re seeing is the churches and individuals thereof bought a lot of crypto]

[interesting note: the city of Keene got their cut]

[also interesting is that Robin Hood good a donation from this account which makes a lot of sense given the church must have donated to that peace outreach effort]

91% of money went to buy crypto church

Q Is this personal or business account?

A Personal

[this is a misleading question as personal accounts are often used for business, and most sole proprietors use personal accounts, business accounts simply have different features, and it’s not lying or misleading to have an account like this, and in fact you only have the options of a personal or business account typically so no church is going to have a church account, they’d likely have a business account even though they aren’t a business, same as would a non-profit, but again it’s not always the case as just depends on the need]

[this is where we lean they opened a personal account for a sole proprietor doing business as NH peace church, or really a church in this case doing business as NH peace church]

[one other thing to notice is all these spreadsheets show the banks made money off the churches transactions, yet the church profited not a penny as a non-for-profit charitable organization]

Q What are the locations from which deposits to church account were made?

A From all over the country

[b/c of 8 people getting scammed out of 4000 transactions through no fault of Ian they want bitcoin banned… and this # we later learn is actually 6000 transactions, not just the ~ 4000 Ian did because the other two did another 2000 between them of their own they are trying to merge all together]

Defense cross examination

Q # of bank accounts a lot of money went to churches and Ian Freeman?

A Yes

Q Money goes out seems to go to crypto currency exchanges right about the same % as in

A Right, they go to the exchanges

Q Money was not going to the purchase of real estate or yachts or anything like that?

A Right

Q Only 1 account out of country?

A Yea

Q It still exists do you know that?

A I don’t

[the humorous thing is the banks never lost a dime and Ian and the churches won every case when an investigation did occur because they were taking the proper precautions and doing KYC and so forth and taking every reasonable step even more so than the banks were doing]

New Witness

Name: Thomas Konlly

Employee assistant secretary of state of New Hampshire

Responsible of all business in New Hampshire

Q How do I start non-profit?

A Two proccesses

Articles of agreement states name purpose conditions for membership

[this is misleading because a church doesn’t have any obligation to register as a non-profit under the law, but many do, but if you do not you are still exempt for taxes, and if you do you are exempt, but have more paperwork to file]

Q Fee to state?

A Yes

Q Purpose?

A Determine if name is available, document is complete

Q Do they investigate?

A No, not at all

Q What else might I file?

A Non-profit report once every 5 years

Q Certificate for crypto church of NH?

A Yes

Q What generates secretary of state of this individual

A Online

Q Does any investigation occur as to what entity does?

A No

Q What does this trade doc represent?

A Church can file a trade name too

Defense Cross Examination

Q They weren’t hiding from state, right?

A Correct

Q They did exactly what they were suppose to do, right?

A Correct

New Witness

Name: Colleene Rahahau

Work: IRS, taxes

Revenue Special Agent

Compliance with tax law

How long in program?

8 years

BA in Forensic Account

Before this was a revenue agent

Q Audit of tax payers?

A 100s

Q Ever do those who did not file?

A Yes

Q Familiar with revenue code?

A Yes

Q What years did Ian owe?

A 2016-2019

Q What did you determine?

A No filing in those years

Q What did you review?

A Records from localbitcoin

Q You calculated how much money was made?

A Yes

Q You used that to figure out a schedule of taxes?

A I did

Taxes Due

2016: $19,182.65

2017: $66,033.55

2018: $56,174.30

2019: $140,198.28

The total amount came to: $281,588.78

[I made sure to copy these #s perfectly]

Q Based on how many trades?

A Near 4,000

[kinda funny considering they claimed he did more like ~6000 in total based on the merging of the churches into “Ian Freeman”]

[they also used excel which is a proprietary software program from Microsoft which has bugs in it and doesn’t always calculate the right answer, where is the source code for this??? If it has to meet the governments own definition like that of bitcoin then it should be thrown out just like the blockchain forensic ‘expert’ who couldn’t qualify because of the proprietary tools she was also dependent on, and while she can do it by hand she obviously isn’t. she should be forced to hand calculate everything and show us her work!]

Q You gave him benefit of doubt?

A Yes

Correctable taxable income

2016: $54,303.06

2017: $184,872.30

2018: $165,243.09

2019: $387,993.61

Defense

Q You audited 100s of cases?

A We don’t start off with people owing anything, we schedule a time to meet with someone

Q So it doesn’t usually start in federal court?

A For civil purpose correct

Q No letter for 2016

A Correct, in general program

Q And that holds true for all the years right?

A Yes

Q 2018 didn’t send out letter about taxes, right?

A Not to my knowledge

Q In fact you never told him in 2020 or 2021 either?

A No to my knowledge

Q All you did is come up sales

A Correct

Q He could owe nothing even, right?

A Right

[gotcha, if he could owe nothing than how could he have evaded taxes that he didn’t owe???]

Judge announced he is suspending trial by 1 day

Wrapping up before holiday

Likely off Friday too

This was down to Renee and lawyer coming down with COVID humorously.

[ I also got sick, so it was good that they killed enough time for me to recover so I could report it all !  But let me explain the humorous part, so some of us were objecting to having to wear masks that don’t work against COVID, and they wouldn’t allow the witnesses to wear masks, so the very people the government relied upon ended up with COVID resulting in a delay… not that the mask would have changed any of this… I did wear a mask and I still got COVID remember… and so did the lawyer… I don’t think anyone else got sick mask or no mask]

 

Joa from Breaking The Flaw Crypto6 Jury Drawing

Today we get further confirmation from the governments own ‘victim’ witnesses that Ian’s not involved in scamming in any shape or form. We try and follow along with what the governments dirty tricks are and what the point of introducing certain audio and video clips are. The government touches on an “international” bank account, a threatening FinCEN letter, and a letter from Attorney Seth Hipple advising the church it’s not required to register as a money services business under state or federal law. The government has been kind enough to submit these documents to the docket for us so everyone can read them for themselves.

Also take note that the trial has been on hiatus due to Renee and lawyer falling ill, but it is planned to resume Monday December 19th at 9AM. The defense should begin introducing it’s own witnesses and evidence and likely get way more interesting. The trial is open to the public and supporters of the Crypto6 are highly encouraged to attend. The address of the courthouse is: 55 Pleasant St, Concord, NH 03301. Also note that you don’t have to come for the full day. It starts at 9AM and there is usually an hour for lunch with a conclusion of the trial day at 5PM.

Crypto6 Day 6

FBI agent from prior day takes the stand again and prosecution continues questioning the ‘witness’…

Crypto Church Of New Hampshire Questions

Certificate of invisible hand trade name document on screen

Certify’s nobody is certificate to do business as church of the invisible hand

NH Peace Church

7/22/2020

Document shown on screen: Trade name registration for NH Peace Church

Certificate of registered trade name: NH Peace Church

Showing drivers license and passports of Renee, Nobody, and others

[The ‘expert’ refers to “Word documents”, but humorously these are actually LibreOffice documents in a different format being shown on a computer that merely is associating them with Microsoft Word, yes, this is who we are suppose to be relying on tell us Ian’s guilty of some not-very-clear ‘crime’, all the while exposing their own ‘victims’ to ‘identity theft’… I’ll quote the word ‘identity theft’ as this is actually a fraud against another, not the individual whose identity has been used and moves the blame  or really liability from those accepting said documents to other parties primarily being the victims]

List of folders with bank names shown

~ 15 banks

GFA Letter

Suspected fraudulent activity, froze account, colleene

Has determined account has been used to exchange virtual currency for real currency

You may be a money transmitter

Document shown on screen: International Bank Application Ian Filled Out

International Bank Account Application

Q Does it say profit from bitcoin sales?

A No

[humorous cause it does say church investments which would include bitcoin ‘profits’]

~ 16 exchanged listed in folder on Ian’s laptop on screen

[really it’s the church’s laptop, there exists a double standard here and depending on when it is convenient for them to say it’s Ian’s laptop or the church as both have financial implications in legal land]

Showing church policies on screen

[verification and KYC policies which are done with intent to stop fraud, whether or not it works, these are the governments own rules for what banks have to do even if they’re not technically applicable to the church’s sale of its own bitcoin]

Shows document on screen which banks church has “broken up” with

~22 banks listed

~7 rejected in advance

~6 active banks

Exchange statuses

Ian OK at ~7

Colleen OK at ~1

~9 denied or canceled

[remember that what a bank can legally do or the risks thereof is not the same thing as what you can do as a customer thereof, so for instance, you might have worked in the sex industry 20 years ago, nothing illegal about that, it’s not illegal for you to open a bank account, but banks will likely cut you off because the banks have been threatened by a bureaucrat at the federal level via a letter sent to all financial institutions, this actually happened not that long ago, and as a result all financial institutions in the US cut off anybody connected to the sex industry- the letter used words like “sex trafficking”- but that’s merely code for anything connected to sex, you opening a bank account, them closing it, and you repeatedly doing this at other banks doesn’t make you guilty of a crime, and the banks generally don’t tell you why they are closing your account for liability reasons]

Now looking at downloads folder on screen

Third folder down is KYC folder

Q What is that?

A It stands for know your customer

[I wonder how she knows what Ian’s intentions were for that, though it’s almost certainly a correct interpretation of what he intended, you’d think they’d need to have Ian up on the stand to testify to it, not some third party]

Q What is the last folder?

A Telegram desktop

Ian recommendation file

Showing (Melanie Neighbours Tax Planning & Preparation) Unsigned/recommendation/certification of asset document

KYC Telegram folder shown on screen

This folder shows a list of peoples names with KYC documents in them

[yes, the government is exposing these people and putting them at risk of ‘identity fraud’ during the trial, none of it is censored, or more honestly the government is aiding fraudsters who need ID information like this in defrauding others]

[FBI agent is confirming what is found in KYC folder contains ID of people who testified as “victim” witnesses at trial previously]

Q Did you go through all photos of all people?

A Yes

Q What was the average age?

A 59 from 2020

[there were 4,000 transactions, and these was a TINY fraction, call me skeptical, it’s not clear if these were folks that the church was calling to do verification with which would also have bumped the age of these folks up, but even if it was the average age of those conducting 4,000 transactions suggests that you’re not allowed to do sell bitcoin to older people which just sounds crazy- you’ll note later though that the ‘red flags’- a government term doesn’t actually mean you have to stop a transaction either so if these are people who were ‘red flags’ and the church did do business with them after a phone call that would be identical to what the banks procedure if not more than what financial institutions do]

Q You found Patrick Brown folder empty when you got it?

A Yes

[thinking about this a bit this is what I’d probably consider remnants, just not in it’s better more obvious form, but basically it’s partial data left over after some task has been performed and only gives you a partial picture of things]

[It’s curious to note that it would appear they are trying to point out that Ian missed or lost records or something happened to KYC records assuming they’re not just stored somewhere more permanent elsewhere of ONE ‘victim’ which is interesting because later we also see the banks have lost data as well yet the government doesn’t make them out to be scum]

They are going through dozens of picture IDs to show the various ages of some of the people, but not all of the people in this folder

Of those they are showing it appears to be those in the 45-70 age range mostly

[something else to note here is that they are not all victims and there is nothing suggesting that these are all victims… rather the government is trying to show through implication of the fact that this folder had a lot of older people in it that Ian is somehow guilty of targeting older folks and working with scammers]

[weird fed church photo on screen in one folder but out of place, how did it get there? presumably it ended up there by accident, but it’s curious mostly just in that I’m not sure what federal incident the photo comes from, there have not been that many, but I guess there have been some other incidents particularly if it’s quite dated]

[it’s very apparent that the prosecutor is trying to convince the jury buying bitcoin as an older person is illegal or should be]

Q Anything else you noticed?

A Buying on behalf of another

Playing audio exhibit from FTL

[unfortunately I wasn’t able to capture the episode this came from, it’ was a VERY brief cut of a show, clearly intentionally misleading although I’m not sure what it was suppose to show exactly]

Ian, Aria, Matt, and a caller talk about the Nigerian scammer

Ian “So you got hit for over $16,000?”

Ian “What was going through head?”

Caller “Never said to write no refunds”

Talking about man in the middle attack

[I’m not clear if this was someone who got scammed by someone pretending to be Ian online or what the case was, but I think that might have been what happened here, and the misleading part on the prosecutor’s side might be that they want the jury to think Ian was somehow actively partaking in scamming people and then talking about it on air with the victim of his scam?]

[I mean, it seems like what this should be showing if played and explained in context is that Ian is aware of and warns people about these sorts of scams, but this isn’t the defense playing this, it’s cut up by the prosecution with some sort of specific intent]

Good client bought on multiple occasions and was buying for good friend

All hoops for know your customer were jumped through

Ian “I generally don’t do third party trades either, but this was a good customer”

[aww maybe the objective here although poorly explained to the jury is the “third party trades”]

Q Is this what you saw?

A No

[this audio is undated, maybe third party trades became more common? it’s not like we have a ton of third party trades evidence here by the prosecution though anyway given only a small small percentage were shown of the ~4000 transactions]

[something else to point out is people don’t start getting social security until 62-70 depending on different factors and the average age was 59 according to the governments own math]

Q Was this person asked why they had so much cash they wanted to turn into bitcoin?

A No

Q Where was all this?

A On Ian freeman’s computer

[again, wrong, it was the church’s laptop, how can someone testify to something they don’t even know the answer to and while this may not be useful to the defense I’d still love to have asked the question what is your basis for claiming this is Ian’s laptop? it’s presumably the user name ftl_ian, but if that is the case then if I create a user called FBI can I claim it was the FBI’s computer when they seize it as evidence and try to use something on it from my house? the other thing is I’m pretty darn sure there were other people who touched that system here and there and I think this comes up somewhere too which begs the question how did you do determine who was the person who actively created a given document? etc]

Q How many did you interview?

A 30-40

[that’s a pretty big gap… ya think you might be able to do a little bit better than that as far as narrowing down the #?]

Q Did any not have third party involved?

A No

[so you selectively looked then… hmmm if you only look at x you’ll only find x, and I’m also curious what is mean by third party here exactly hmmm]

Q Are you trying to investigate one of the people in the Telegram folder?

A Yes

Q What makes this one different?

A We have his true name

[correct me if I’m mistaken, but don’t you have the true name of everyone? aka that is what is happening with KYC after all.. you’re getting a picture of both the ID and the ID next to the person for all persons in the transaction… and isn’t this the result of IDK Ian doing KYC and the church having a policy thereof which I think you already testified to here at this point in the trial ]

Q What has been different in these types of scams?

A Fake name, no ID

“in this case bitcoin clouds the money even more”

[but he got ID!!!!!! so lets get this right… he used a fake name and had no idea between the victim and the scammer, but the church got ID and it was a result of the raid and the church doing KYC that you got the ID? right? right ?]

A 2019 audio clip of free talk live is played

Ian “this show is generally got an older audience”

Ian “and also unfortunately the age of target scammer”

[it seems very much like they are trying to pull stuff out of context and are trying to suggest the church’s objective is to scam older folks]

Q What is in this folder?

A Signed agreements for assistant positions, termination agreements

On screen is an agreement between shire [free church I presuming?] and aria [reformed satanic church I’m presuming] for loan of $72,000, 50 BCH to spread crypto

A similar agreement is also shown that is signed between the shire free church and nobody

Play two related audios from BoA recorded call

[aka for quality and assurance purposes this call is being recorded … or something like that!]

Nobody: My first and and last name is nobody

Nobody: Actually fnk nobody

Nobody: Church of the invisible hand

BoA representative: How can I assist you?

Nobody: I’ve got an ongoing dispute with the bank for some time, you shut down account

Nobody: You still owe us $40,000

Nobody: Your belief is our customer defrauded someone else

Nobody: I would like a police report and full accounting of what happened with the money

Nobody: It has to come back or be explained

BoA representative: Ok awww….

[speechless]

Nobody: I do have a claim #, let me find my reading glasses

Nobody: I got church treasurer on the line

Ian: I got reference #

New witness

Name: Dannela Virel

Q Live?

A Portagon, Fl

Q How long?

A 30 years

76

2012 retired

widow since 2018

financial flanner

Q Dec of 2014 were you on a dating website?

A Match.com

I met Jerry Harmon and he worked on oil rigs

He lived in Raleigh, NC

We would Skype and text

Skype video site in beginning and then telephone calls later

Q Was an actual person on Skype?

A Yes

Yes, same voice as in video

Q How often?

A Several times of day

Talked about children, what he did in his time off, etc

Q You spoke to family too?

A Yes

A women claimed to be his sister

Q Did you make arrangements to see him?

A Yes, but when arrived was told to go to Alexandria, Virginia

Q Did you see him during your trip?

A No

Q Did he send you any gifts?

A Yes, but he didn’t know about them so it must have been someone else

[very bizarre, you’d think she’d just have said no if she knew they weren’t from the guy]

Q He’d send you photos of himself?

A Yes

Q His oil rig broke and asked me for money? Did you send money?

A Yes

I sent him wires from bank. I was given detailed instructions on where to send and what to put on the paperwork as dictated by Mr Freeman via Harmon.

Q What kind of photos were sent?

A Myself and ID/documents

Exhibit on screen of victim with ID shown

[aka the scammer’s victim, they’re not saying Ian scammed anyone, just that he worked with scammers, of which they have provided no evidence, and the governments own witnesses all testified to the fact the scammers didn’t work with Ian]

Q What did you send?

A I sent a photo to Mr Harmon

Q What is this photo?

A Wire transfer document

Q What does it say?

A I authorized….

[this is just a standard disclaimer that the church requires the deposit of cash or in this case the wirer of the funds to put on the receipt to ensure that they understand what the wire is for aka buying bitcoin, from localbitcoin.com or telegram, the username used, signature, and date, etc]

Q Date of wire?

A Jan 15, 2020

Q Sent to?

A Ian B Freeman

Q What is reference?

A Drilling equipment and virtual goods supplied to me by jerry

Q Date of 2nd wire?

A Jan 21, 2020

Q Did you know why you had to put rebeca down as to who you were buying bitcoin for?

A No

[ok, so, we’re all suppose to stop buying or selling bitcoin or anything else online because there are vulnerable people in the world? come on…]

Q Did you know what bitcoin was at the time?

A Yes

[I kid you not, she actually says she did know what she was buying at the time, but not who it was for]

Q Why did you use two banks?

A To avoid red flags

[doesn’t this sound awfully couched? How many times have you heard an old lady utilize the term red flag?]

Q Who told you this?

A Jerry

[I am skeptical here because I don’t think scammers know of or utilize this terminology ‘red flag’, but maybe I’m just not familiar enough with the scamming world]

Q Did you speak to freeman?

A yes

Q Did you call him?

A He called me, once or twice

Q What did he ask?

A If I wanted to send this money

[so this is evidence that the church’s policy was followed… when a ‘red flag’ occurs the thing a bank might do, but won’t do generally most of the time is take an additional step to approve a transaction or investigate and confirm… the government is evidencing Ian did more than the banks were doing and wasn’t even technically required to do it as he and the church are not a money transmitter and nor a financial institution that is regulated by the feds according to their own rules and of which the lawyers already had advised of]

Q Did Mr Freeman ask why you were buying drilling equipment?

A No

Q About what bitcoin was?

A No

The following day he said he was needing to pay tax at port so I broke up with him

Bank told me that wire was fraudulent and if you accept fraudulent wire you would be on the hook for it so I declined it

[I’m pretty sure she is talking about the scammer here given she didn’t have a relationship with Ian]

Q Where did money come from?

A Sale of plane, money I made, inheritance from mother and partner

Q How has this impacted you?

A Changed how I live

Defense Cross Examines ‘Victim’ Witness

The lawyer starts off with kind words saying “I was touched by your story”

Q This Harmon guy was a fabrication?

A Yes

Q You invested a lot in the guy not just money?

A I did

Q After one video did you preserve it?

A I have no idea

Q Did government ask for it?

A No

Q Charlotte was a setup right?

A Yes

Q You got to Alexandria you had specific place to meet?

A No

Q He never sent flowers?

A He never said that, but sent in his name despite this he seemed unaware

Q Did Chase bank advice this might be a problem?

A No

No one managed my money

Q They didn’t question what you did with your money?

A Right

Q You did wire with other bank to avoid authorities?

A Yes, Jerry said to

Q You never asked about Rebeca?

A That is correct

Q Two short calls with Ian Freeman?

A Yes

Q Asked if really wanted to send money? He was concerned?

A Yes

[ok, so red flag, warned, sent money anyway, exactly what the bank would do in most cases assuming they even went that far as the evidence shows from these government witnesses that the banks rarely questioned transactions]

Q Did he know who Jerry Harmon was?

A I don’t know

Q Did Harmon know Ian?

A He represented himself as knowing Ian

Q He represented himself as a lot of things that were untrue, right?

A That is correct

[yikes!]

Back to FBI case manager agent

Prosecutor asks questions first

Q Do you recall how much was being discussed?

A About $350,000 and $40,000

Q Documents found at radio studio?

A Yes

BoA audio played

Ian “My name is nobody and church of the invisible hand”

Ian: “So BoA decided they would close my church account, but decided that a wire was fraudulent so went to local branch and James Baker came (Aria) and he certified that it was not fraud and notarized it.”

Ian: “No one in your department indicated they got it.”

Ian: “You are sitting on $350,000 and I’d like to get that back”

Q Was that nobody?

A No, it was Ian

[just love this, cause he’s presumably authorized to speak on nobody’s behalf]

Search warrants for emails: shirebtc@gmail.com

From Ian to Chris

We don’t check it because vending machine is part of church and respect privacy

Q Letter say bank wants to know source of funds?

A Yes

Q Did he reply?

A Yes

Ian said: “We have received contributions from people in various parts of the US, is that a problem?”

Reply “No, not a problem”

Ian: “Are you referring to check that came out?”

Q Any discussion of bitcoin?

A No

One email says

“Never invest more you can afford to lose”

email (FinCEN letter):

Threatening FinCEN Letter Displayed On Screen

Another letter from Attorney Seth Hipple is displayed about how a vending machine is not an ATM and no KYC is required to sell crypto from ones own wallet.

Letter Written By Attorney Seth Hipple Explaining Why Church Is Not A Money Service Business

Another set of letters is shown on the screen  to at least one or more banks in an effort to find a less hostile bank and identify what the issue is exactly that causes banks to close accounts. The letter asks one of the banks is it threats or fines by government?

Plays video clip where I believe it is Ian talking about vending machine and explains that it is like candy, can’t be taxed, can’t be stolen, I didn’t ask permission to sell Bitcoin.

[note: Ian’s not required to ask permission to sell Bitcoin as prior letters from attorney clearly state no registration is required at state or federal levels within the context of the churchs crypto operations]

That’s it for day 6!

If you got this far you might also consider gifting Joa from Breaking The Flaw some crypto. He has consistently come out to the trial, drawn cartoons for us, and helped with making little protests outside the courthouse like that of last week an amazing success. No one here is getting paid to write these articles, take notes, make drawings, film, or do really any other connected activity. That means any fiscal contribution you might consider making to offset our, or in this case Joa’s costs to come out to the trial and produce these drawings for us is greatly appreciated.

Direct Your Crypto Gifts To Joa

Forensics Device Used In Investigating Ian’s Computer

Day 5

I actually was able to enter an entire day of the trial in one go! So there is no need to come back and read this story again. Read it from top to bottom for an as accurate as can be reasonably expected version of the days going ons given the court bans reporters from coming in with electronic devices such that the job can be done properly (and for that matter the public can hold the court to account when they misbehave).

~16 supporters at trial

New witness

Dustin Long

FBI agent

info technology sphere

digital forensics examiner

6-7 years

analyze digital evidence

BA degree

Cyber investigation specialized forensics

Training

12 week course covers how to use a computer, apple systems, mobile devices, and you must pass course and he did

[use computers? Ha? Maybe I misunderstood something, but you probably don’t learn much in a 12 week course anyway so maybe not if it’s just a broad overview]

Ongoing education

Q How many devices examined?

A 200 devices

Q Where do you work?

A New England Computer Forensics Lavatory

Forensically image device

I first investigate at date of search warrant

I look for devices at search location

Is called by others to look when a device is found to determine if a device should be seized

Recording studio in house photo on screen

[this is not the photo the feds used, but is a picture of what the studio looks like from one angle, from other angles you’ll find peace signs, shire society, and other church related stuff]

Agent identifies devices seized

Laptop, taken back laptop for review

Bagged it

Back at lavatory I imaged the laptops drive bit-for-bit

I removed drive from laptop, then connected to a TX1 portable imaging device

[Ever wonder what one of these devices looks like? Well guess what, now you do. The above picture is the same model the feds use and runs about $3,000… you can purchase these yourself if you got the cash for it, I’m not quite tempted enough to get an overpriced $30 card reader with a screen attached though else I might actually have picked one up just for the fun of it, but basically this is just a small computer with a card reader attached that copies the drive, with some write blocking functionality built in, ohh yea, I have a computer forensics background, feel free to ask me about slack space and all sorts of fun computer forensics terminology, and unlike these guys I’ve actually written the software to extract data from what amounts to unutilized portions of the disk which can contain remnants of what a system was used for at some point in the past, but for this reason I also am VERY skeptical of “forensics” experts who get up on the stand and talk about stuff they don’t really have a clue about, and build a case off proprietary tools that aren’t scientifically sound, and of which there is no complete set of source code for, thus you can’t even confirm with certainty that the device is working in the manor the manufacturer is claiming even if based on generally sound principles, for instance, a computer forensics examiner testifying that someone searched for “how to kill” utilizing remnants from the disk may not be able to confirm that they actually searched for how to kill even if that is what they’re testifying to because part of that might be lost, so for example someone might have searched for how to kill a mockingbird rather than how to kill and the forensics examiner can’t distinguish between one and the other, yet trials have hinged on little more than this faulty “computer forensics” evidence on many of occasions for lack of someone actually competent to argue or explain why the “experts” testimony is highly suspect and flawed]

At this point the investigator goes over the write blocker

A write blocker prevents data from getting from their system into the hard drive

[what he is trying to say is the write blocker prevents contamination of the evidence]

He finds a Linux encrypted drive

[I so want to call him out for this, it’s GNU/Linux!!!!!]

Linux is just different OS

[yea, this is pretty much how he said it]

Encryption prevents others from accessing the data

Q Did encryption stop forensics imaging?

A No

Q How did you confirm it is accurate?

A Via hashing

[this is kinda bizarre and wrong really because hashing it doesn’t have anything to do with accuracy of initially acquired data, but that initial hash can prove later that nothing on the drive has changed since it was initially hashed, but it can’t prove that someone didn’t tamper with it prior to the hashing occurring, say like while in transport, but this is suppose to be solved by the bagging and recording of the folks keeping track of the evidence, thus you can get someone on the stand if a question of authenticity comes up]

Q Hashing is mathematical algorithm that computes long string of #s, verifies bit for bit copy? If one bit changed hash changes right?

A Right

I contacted computer scientist who has experience with Linux encryption

New witness

Name: Nickiles Nathens

Cyber security corporation miner corporation

Previously worked for FBI

Work:

ID collection and analysis of devices

General specialist

Computer forensics

Computer scientist to solve more complex problems

[yea!!!!! we were successful in making the government actually do a little bit of work for once, though given the lack of real security it’s somewhat humorous they needed a specialist here to solve more “advanced” problems]

Forensic examiner follows scientific process for review of structured data

The witness got her undergraduate degree from a Florida university information systems with a concentration in security

[this is kinda funny, Florida is known for having some of the worst schools in the country, I guess that is how they ended up working for the feds though]

Certifications in CompTIA, SANS cyber digital forensics

[you come to me with a resume listing these certifications don’t expect a interview, these are the things that get you passed human resources in the corporate world, not a job]

Q How many devices?

A 300

Q Ians?

A Yes, from March 16, 2021 raid

[This is funny because in March of 2016 there was another raid with no charges brought and an attempt to ruin Free Talk Live and Ian’s reputation, that raid utterly failed to do that, exactly 5 years later they do another raid, most devices from the first raid were returned, no charges were ever brought, a lawsuit is underway to force the feds to return the remaining devices, something every lawyer is going to tell you to NOT do because this forces them to investigate something that they otherwise might not investigate ever, and to what benefit? It’s a 7+ year old set of devices stolen, maybe there is something, but is it worth spending time in a cage over? Basically the fact alone that there is a lawsuit evidence the feds corruption here, and there resistance to release the remaining devices is likely in order to try and have something to hold over his head and taint the judge, which they have already successfully done, to the point in which the judge instructed the prosecutor to go after Ian over charges that the prosecutor even stated were investigated and had no merit!!! You would think a judge instructing a prosecutor to hang a man from a tree and perform mob justice on them would get them some sort of censure … but well… not yet anyway… probably never sadly]

The government now shows a picture of a laptop on the screen and has identified it as ian’s laptop

[this is wrong, it’s the churches laptop, and the feds forced the church to hire a lawyer to get back a laptop from the 2016 raid that was stolen by them, whereas other devices could be obtained without a lawyer because they didn’t involve an entity of some kind, this double standard is quite curious]

After the seizure this examiner was asked to analyze a copy of the image

An examination workstation to examine the laptop image was used

Q What is Linux?

A Just another type of software

[I was expecting operating system, but really it’s the kernel, not an operating system, but these guys aren’t competent enough to understand any of this]

We did not know the password for the system so we contacted Quantico Virginia to do a password crack

[aww what? That’s a town in Virginia… presumably a government agency of some kind specialized to do this sort of thing, but who knows]

Several weeks later they cracked the password

[they supposedly used brute force which is possible if the password was week, which shouldn’t be too surprising, but they could have done something called ‘live forensics’, which at least back in the day was rare, but basically it involves extracting the contents of ram, and that forensics technique would have worked against a laptop that was powered on at the time of the raid and the length of the password would then not matter, so could Ian have done a better job? Sure, but if the objective was to make them work rather than actual security he did everything perfectly]

Got no errors on accessing drive

[aww trying to understand what the heck they are talking about here… why would you get an error on accessing the drive if you have the password? This might be a ‘forensics thing’ relating to ensuring that the defense can’t challenge the evidence later, but it’s weird too because they’re not accessing the drive, but an image of the drive]

We then inventoried user profile, docs, etc

There was one user account ftl_ian

[this is wrong, like really wrong, there are multiple profiles and accounts on a default GNU/Linux system]

I made a listing of all files, then copied to forensically prepared media

[ie they zero’d out the disk before copying the data over basically, it’ll be interesting to note the media used which I think I made a note of as newer flash based media doesn’t give you control over low level access to the disk which could compromise the integrity of the claim here]

Copied everything over then

Made a 2nd copy for case agent

Provided on thumb drive or USB media to case agent

[this wasn’t sufficiently clear as a thumb drive would be problematic assuming we mean some sort of flash, but USB media could be a traditional spinning drive connected via USB]

Folder, docs, pictures, would have been seen

30 years of resumes for instance

I verified hash of files to make sure nothing changed

[so this would confirm what was read from the original matches what is being read from the new media, so this makes sense]

Picture of files on screen of home folder

Text file containing an ‘audit log’: copylog_export_home_files

[that makes sense]

We now find out that there is a Seagate Backup Plus drive

[this drive appears to be utilizing a traditional platter which is probably good given the prior claims, but there may still be concerns given the proprietary nature of some components utilized within the device not to mention the operating system utilized to present that evidence]

New Witness

Name: James Rossell

Victim

Lives Rockford, Tennessee

Before that he lived in New Jersey

How long? 20 Yrs

72 years old

He’s been retired for 15 years

He was a firefighter

US navy 4 years

Widowed 3 years

Married 39 years

3 daughters

8 grand children

Retired at 55

Retired early

Q After wife passed away was there time you were seeking companionship?

A Yes

Q 3 years ago?

A Yes

Went on dating site for senior citizens and met someone on site named Maria Romeo

Q Were they a real person?

A No

[must have been a dang bot]

Q What happened?

A She constantly needed money for this and that, then flew to Asia to get her inheritance

Q How did you communicate?

A Text message

She recommended we move to site more private

Q How often did you talk?

A Daily, sometimes

Q Talk about?

A Her inheritance

Q Did you help her with that?

A Yes

To help develop our relationship

[hmm this is beginning to sound a lot like prostitution to me]

Q Was it romantic?

A No

[gee paying for sex without the sex, there use to be 900 #s for that, but maybe this is cheaper?]

Q Was there hope for a romantic relationship?

A Yes

Q What was your hope for inheritance?

A I hoped she would come to the United States

I signed paperwork to say we’d marry

Q Did you know tuegroing at the time?

A No

[hmm sounds like a Russian bride situation so stereotypical in comedies on TV]

Q After signed paperwork then what happened?

A To get inheritance you must pay taxes in Indonesia

 

I sent $103,000 to her from my retirement account, which was from life insurance

She setup account from bitcoin

Q Was your money in bank accounts?

A I had to move from retirement account to bank account and then have it wire transferred

Q Did you have communication with her while you were doing all this?

A Yes

Q Did you have to take photos?

A Yes, picture of self

Q Who asked you to take a photo?

A Marry

Picture of sign is shown on screen

~“I am certifying I am buying bitcoin via wire transfer from the church of the invisible hand and ftl_ian”

“I james rossel authorized and completed a wire transfer in the amount of 67,000 USD for purchase of bitcoin from ftl_ian. I understand this transaction is non-refundable

username jrosell”

[the summary of this he sent KYC or know your customer documentation to marry to authenticate his purchase was intentional!!! it should be hard to claim ignorance when you’ve signed a document clearly stating what it is you were doing and why… but the government is depending on the jury being sympathetic to the plight of these victims, but the problem here is that Ian and the Shire Free Church/Church Of The Invisible Hand are not the predators nor intentionally partaking in victimizing this man any more than the financial institution who wired the money on his behalf is… and unlike the bank this is far more information demanded than the bank, but even if, when a transaction was suspect Ian would go out of the way to find a phone # in the phone book and call the person to verify that they understand what they were buying… which is exactly the same sort of procedure a bank might do… but such a procedure doesn’t result generally in a bank stopping the transaction from going through anyway]

Q What did you tell the bank you were buying, bitcoin?

A No

[if you were concerned then why not ??? did you even question it???]

Q Do you remember sending the wire?

A Yes

Q Problem with wire?

A Yes, the wire was canceled because it was too large of amount to to charity

[this is humorous given what he does next and they let go through without issue, but chances are this isn’t what they actually told him anyway as these folks are well rehearsed by the scammers on what to say]

Q What happens after?

A I got called by Ian Fleming as to why the wire did not arrive

[this is probably a not-quite-accurate description of what happened as the church has a policy to call when a transaction looks off, not when a wire doesn’t go through, but you’ll have to confirm this with Ian after the trial is over, but do notice how the guy got Ian’s last name wrong]

Q What did you tell Marry?

A It didn’t go

Q Then what?

A She suggested I sent a personal check

A check made out to Ian Freeman is shown on screen

Q What did you do with check?

A I sent it to Ian

Q Why wasn’t it for the $67,000?

A Not enough money at that point so I sent $7,000 later once money was in account

[basically the guy had funds coming in on a regular basis from other sources, this wasn’t his life savings or anything like that, or at least financial worth]

Q Did you get bitcoin?

A No

[then why did you sign a document stating you were buying bitcoin????]

Q How did things end with Marry?

A I just ended it

Q How did it effect you?

A Taught me to be careful on internet

[hmm yea, we seem to need more of this if the world is going to change for the better… learning life lessons is somehow the only way people learn anything and it’s probably wise for us to educate people about scammers as soon as humanly possible, not wait till people are in there 70s… no matter what a government tries to do you will not stop scammers… but you can educate people and get programs setup to protect the more vulnerable via special accounts that limit spending to some percentage over an average thus ensuring control of their assets while still requiring a 2nd person like a guardian or financial advisor before a larger transaction can occur, and that might not stop all scams, but it would put a more significant damper on scammers taking advantage of vulnerable people without hindering the rest of society as currently happens]

Defense lawyer cross examines witness

Q you don’t know Freeman?

A One time, on phone

Q What was your conversation?

A It didn’t go through so I sent check

Q So Ian did not ask for check?

A Right

[wow, so it’s the victim that is proposing to send a check from Ian’s perspective!!!!]

Q You understand you were scammed, right?

A Yes

Q $67,000 right?

A Yes

Q How did you lose the other $36,000?

A Some sent to Marry

Q How long was connection?

A 6 months

Q It went in bits and pieces?

A Yes

Q So it was more than Ian?

A Yes

Q You have no idea who this man in the middle is, right?

A Right

Q The scammer had you on the hook for quite a while?

A Yes

Q Purchase were made at behest of Marry right? Not Ian?

A Yes

Q The only conversation with Ian was wire could not go through?

A Yes

Q Ian told you bitcoin could not be purchased if wire did no go through, right?

A Yes

[he admits right there he knew he was purchasing bitcoin !!! remember that these are the governments own witnesses, and the defense is only cross examining them]

Q Bank tried to straighten you out, right?

A Yes

[so, now we know both the bank tried to make sure he wasn’t getting scammed and Ian tried to as well, but neither attempt was successful at stopping the scam, and Ian had less information to go on than the bank did]

Q They tried to stop scam?

A No, they said it was not on the up and up

[hilarious, this guy is trying to make himself believe he is a victim when in reality it’s pretty apparent he knew full well what he was buying, he clearly knows what “on the up and up” means, and this is why it’s important to demand your right to face your accuser in open court, and not via some virtual video conference thing, because in court the jury, when not masked can see indicators that may indicate someone being less than truthful, and in this case we probably largely see it in the words too, but… none the less the point stands]

Q The same bank let check through even though they stopped wire to some purported charity?

A Yes

Q Same amount?

A Yes

[this is important because there is this idea that the amount itself should have set off alarm bells or a ‘red flag’, but the reality is a red flag doesn’t mean a bank has to stop the transaction from going through, nor a money transmitter, not that Ian or the church were either of these.. what this evidences is that the systems in place forced by government don’t even work and are basically utterly pointless]

Q Ian never pressured you to send check?

A No

Q Never threatened you?

A No

Q It was Marry who did it all?

A Yes

[so now we know, the bank nor Ian, nor church is the predator here, but rather a third party we can only identify because the church did know your customer and got a copy of the scammers drivers license or passport and it’s the government who is refusing to investigate the actual scammers]

Defense lawyer ends the testimony with “sorry that happened to you, thank you very much”

New witness

Name: Patrick Brown

Lives in Spicewood, Texas

18 months

Previously San Jose CA

8 years

68 years old

[notice he wasn’t 68 at time the time incident occurred just as the other ‘victims’ weren’t as old either, this trial is covering events from 2-7 years ago so the ‘victims’ were all much younger]

Employed? Yes

Lows Hardware: 2 Years

Q Working previously?

A No

Q Any prior work?

A Property management for 33 years

Q Reason you came out of retirement?

A Yes, I was scammed of 1.2 million

[note: they aren’t claiming the church/Ian scammed the guy of all that money, only some of it went through the Shire Free Church and the government isn’t claiming Ian or the church was part of any of these scams]

Q you saved for retirement?

A Yes

Q Was that all of it?

A Yes

Q Did you get an email that changed your life?

A Yes

Q Do you remember who it purported to be?

A No

Q Federal or state agency in email?

A Didn’t say

Q It said your social security was hacked?

A Yes

After talking to agent he suggested moving my money around to different accounts to keep it safe

Suggested different banks to keep money at

Q What did he ask you to do after opening accounts?

A Move money to new accounts

half a dozen accounts

Q After money was moved, then what happened?

A I’d go there and he would tell me how much to move

Q OK there wire to accounts in your name?

A No

Q You moved money when asked?

A Yes

and when money was moved I verify it was moved

Q Did you believe it was moved?

A Yes

Q What was goal?

A To make it safer

To accounts in my name but not banks I had one business with before

Q Then what? Wired money to peace church?

A Yes

Q Did you send pictures?

A Sent money to this person yes

photo of driver license on screen and passport on screen

Q Why did you?

A Because Bruce (aka bruce is the scammer) told me to

“I certify I am buying bitcoin from bombshell on localbitcoin.com”

Q Do you know what bitcoin bombshell is?

A No

[aww it’s someone or some entity, you at least must have realized that, right? If not you should be in a home where someone takes care of you, not living by yourself]

Q Do you know what localbitcoin.com is?

A No

[then why did you certify that you were buying something you did know what it was from someone you did not know??? this is just crazy]

Q Who told you to write those words?

A Bruce Williams

[effectively the government seems to think bitcoin should be banned because stupid people exist]

Q Did you write it was a donation?

A No

[Note: he did tell the bank it was a donation as that is why it shown as a donation on the bank document shown on the screen prior, this witness is unreliable]

Q Any phone calls about why you were making so many wires?

A No

[this according to the government should have been a red flag! But if the banks aren’t doing it how can a not-bank entity be expected to do it? And humorously when something was suspicious and apparent to the church phone calls WERE made to verify that people knew what they were buying based on information not from the scammers, but from the phone book, you can purchase a premium subscription and still look people in the phone book, it’s not just landlines as I’m sure many think]

Cross examination by defense

Q Town you live in?

A Spicewood in hill country

[this was kinda funny, he actually said that]

Account is in Boston

Q What did you have to do to take it [out] ?

A Bits and pieces

Q Did you have to talk to a person?

A Small amounts no, big #s yes

Q How about for $50,000

A Yes

Q What was going on?

A They would just approve it

[this is his bank]

Q The bank never asked why such a large amount?

A No

[remember that the government is claiming that a large amount is a red flag so… the transaction shouldn’t have been allowed ! Lets be real, banks aren’t actually required to stop a transaction just because it is red flagged as the government is trying to claim here as is evidenced through this and many other GOVERNMENT witnesses]

Q How much of scam came through Fidelity? How much of the 1.2 million?

A Completely (all of it)

Q Charles Swab next?

A Did not lose any from Charles swab

[this guy is an unreliable witness]

Q The transactions for Bruce came to $180,000 and the rest went somewhere else?

A Yes

Q How long did scam go on?

A ~6 months

Q Only 4 transactions to Ian over 7 days, right?

A Yes

Q So Bruce Williams is probably fake name, right?

A Yes, I mean I don’t know, probably

I wouldn’t do it again

[that’s funny cause you can’t do it again, you’re working at lows no offense to those working at lows]

Q You never checked with social security?

A Yes, never checked

Q Started with emails, right?

A Yes

Q He never said he was working an Ian Freeman, right?

A Right

[this is important because the government is claiming that while Ian is not the scammer that he worked with the scammers when this is so obviously false and every government witness confirms it]

Q Just what other transactions were taking place?

A The only reason I did was because Bruce told me to

Q Can you tell me what other scams were going on?

A I can only say they were going on at different times

Q You just don’t know where it went?

A Right

Q You did no get bank statements after six months?

A No, well, yes

Q You never talked to Ian nor got convinced to do anything by Ian or peace church?

A No

Q Did they investigate bank?

A I did not do it all at Charles Swab

Q Did you ask Fidelity why they did that?

A No, I was customer with them for years

Q Did you ever have contact with Fedelity with why transactions were occurring?

A No

Q It seems like you would do anything Bruce tell you to do?

A Pretty much

[I ask myself this- how to do you help people like this?]

New witness

Name Herald Jones

75 in January

[trying to make him sound older than he is]

Lives in Kansas City MS

Retired since 2003, but worked for 10 years before that

Family: yes, married

54 years

Separated for 2 years

Children 2

44, and 32

4 grandkids

Developer in real estate builder and inventor

Q Successful?

A Yes

Telecommunications hotel

Possibly biggest in midwest

Personally made 10 million

Pretty high risk tolerance

Some successful

Q Spring of 2020?

A Separated from wife?

Q Did you go online?

A Yes

Q Did you meet someone online?

A Yes, Natoshia

Q How long?

A Several months

Q What did she tell you?

A She told me she needed help clearing taxes and attorney fees to get 100 million inheritance

[ohh boy greed gets the best of em]

Q Did she have council?

A Yes, Rayman Miller

Q Did you meet Rayman Miller?

A No, just online

Q Who helped with financial transactions?

A Rayman Miller

Q Did you send lots of wires?

A Yes

Q Who told you?

A Rayman Miller

Q How many wires?

A 30-40

Q What banks?

A Bank Of Westin and Bank Of America

Q Did you get feedback from bank?

A Yes, they thought I was being defrauded

Q Did you eventually stop?

A Yes after Bank Of America closed my account

Q When did you get banking info to wire money?

A Rayman Miller

“I Herald Jones completed a wire in the amount of $8,000 to purchase bitcoin from…”

[note: this is more than standard operating procedure for people who sell crypto online… the church did MORE than anyone else try and stop scammers]

Q Did you ever get any bitcoin?

A No

Q Did you ever get any inheritance?

A No

Q What happened to Natosha?

A No idea

Defense cross examines witness

Q Ever meet Freeman or church?

A No

Q Total lost?

A ~$800,000

[remember that this isn’t all going through the church, this is just what these victims of scammers lost]

Q All had to do with Raymond Miller?

A Yes

Q Spoke with someone who claimed to be Raymond Miller?

A Yes

Q Phone calls?

A No, just online

Q Natosha?

A Just online

I got pictures

[now we really know what this was about!]

Q Any physical evidence she had inheritance?

A Yes

Q Ever have contact with a lawyer?

A Raymon Miller or I thought he was

Q How long?

A 6 months

Q Started?

A March 2020… actually April

Q Out of nowhere the money starts coming?

A Yes

Q Other things could have been happening before May?

A I don’t remember

[another unreliable witness?]

Q Was Ian Freeman ever mentioned?

A No

Q Any indication he was working with Ian?

A Yes, Raymond said

[aww yes, the person we have identified as the scammer]

Q Did you ever ask Ian?

A No

Q Did these banks tell you to stop?

A Yes

Q Did they tell you why they thought it was a fraud?

A No

Q Multiple transactions went through both banks before anyone stopped you?

A Yes

[red flags aren’t enough to require a bank to stop a transaction!!!]

Q Did they ask you what it was for?

A No

Q So someone was scripting you?

A Yes

Q Miller was telling you what to tell the banks?

A Yes

Q You would say what Miller would tell you?

A Yes

[this is the problem, no amount of screening is going to stop scams, and it will also hinder legitimate transactions if the sole basis is the amount of the transaction]

Q Freeman did not tell you what to say right?

A Correct

Prosecutor

Q You wealthy?

A Yes

Q Why didn’t you tell bank truth?

A None of there business

Defense lawyer

Q Do you know reformed satanic church or aria?

[he got this wrong, it’s the reformed satanic temple pretty sure, not that it really matters]

A No

[this was on the wire transfer document shown on screen in court so the person had to have told the bank that at some point]

New witness

Name: Melanie Neighbours

Age 36

Manchester

How long? 4-5 years

Before? Keene

Grow up? Louisiana

Education? Accounting JD 2013 law degree

Q Bar?

A Yes

character and fitness no

DWI between law school and bar

Q Moved to New Hampshire?

A Yes, 2015

Q Worked?

A Financial analyst

Q Met before?

A Yes, five times

Q Agreement with office you won’t be prosecuted?

A Yes

Q What brought you to NH?

A Politics [I think]

Q Political beliefs?

A Anarchist

It’s immoral to commit fraud and use violence and government does that, the non-aggression principle

Q Is that why you left?

A Yes

Most libertarians and anarchists are in NH

Q How did you find NH?

A Internet, websites

Q Where did you decide to move to?

A Keene

The more in system activism is in Manchester

The more activist or civil disobedience activists were in Keene

Q How did you decide that?

A Chatroom / Shire Society

Q Is it through that process you men Ian?

A Yes

Through forum I found a place

Q Where did you move?

A Moved in to Ian’s duplex

[this is humorous because it wasn’t Ian’s duplex and Melanie Neighbours darn well knew that, and we can come to that conclusion by answers she provides later that she is lying or at least missleading]

Q What side?

A Other side, not studio, aka Rich Paul/Nobody side

Q Who lived with Freeman?

A Renee a the time

Q Anyone else?

A Yes, different room mates at different times

Q What did Ian do?

A I know he ran radio show

Q What did you do?

A Taxes/accounting

[aww yea, barely, not sure she actually had any business and there is evidence the few inquires she had were not followed up on, though this wasn’t fully apparent until more recently]

Q Did you enjoy living in Keene?

A Yes

Q What was Ian’s show?

A Free Talk Live

Q Were you part of that?

A Yes

Q Were you paid?

A Yes, $20 / night

[this isn’t the full honest answer, there was a $20 / night stipend to cover gas/vehicle expenses for co-hosts, but this wasn’t a regular consistent payment and wasn’t even happening in 2016, it started sometime later on, this was utterly voluntary contribution by those who shared the same beliefs or at least purported to and that was advocating peace, and the way I like to phrase it is taking a stand against the use of violence to achieve social and political objectives, but it’s not really limited to that, but rather you are just shy of a pacifist with one exception, and that exception is the use of violence in self defense, even if you’re principally trying to avoid said violence or avocation thereof]

Q What was the show about?

A It was a show on philosophy / current events

[Really??? Lets check Melanie Neighbours version against what FTL’s site says the show is about rather than giving vague unclear answers:

“This show is about Liberty with a capital L. Free Talk Live is an open phones panel discussion with a variety of hosts. The hosts serve as a check on each other and bring diverse viewpoints to the table, while still all being liberty-friendly.

Our show is headed up by multiple ministers of the Shire Free Church and features various voices from New Hampshire’s liberty activist community. Most of our hosts are here in NH as part of the Shire Society or Free State Project.”

I hope it becomes apparent that we share a key underlying belief as best stated by the Shire Free Church website: “The Shire Free Church does not define a specific path beyond those parameters that must be your foundation: peace as your way, love as your guide, and liberty as your light”

It’s an interfaith church and you may have other beliefs, but peace is the foundation of the church and mission thereof. It even sates this on the website: “It is our mission, inspired by God, Allah, the Universe, and the inner light – to foster peace.” and one way the church does this is through spreading cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency undermines the governments use of violence. How you might wonder? It does that by reducing the demand for US dollars. It’s the increased demand by peoples usage around the world of the US dollar that fuels wars waged by the government against others overseas. The more demand there is the more dollars can be printed and spent. The less demand the less dollars that can be printed and spent without causing the collapse of the US dollar.

Is Melanie Neighbour’s being willfully blind? It sure seems that way given she co-hosted FTL for years. Was she always an informant? I don’t know, but she certainly seems to have become one.

]

Q Ian a permanent host?

A Yes

Q Others?

A Yes, Mark, Aria, Renee

[curious she didn’t mention Darryl W Perry who was actually a permanent host and I don’t believe Renee or Area are or were, but Mark was, and so was/is Ian]

Q Anyone else on show?

A Rich Paul and others

[talk about being coached on what to say]

Q Besides that any other jobs?

A Yes, mostly admin work, did pay co-hosts from wallet

Q Did you do from office?

A Remote work

Q Did you leave Keene?

A Yes, when I met my husband + for other jobs

Q Other work in Manchester?

A Accounting firm, warehouse work, and at some point to work for Mark Edge

Q Ian a friend?

A “Friendly acquaintance”

[this is just unbelievably insulting, Ian is the best friend she’ll ever have and likely ever has had]

Q Helped as bookkeeper?

A Yes

[this is an exaggeration of what she did from what I understand]

Q Did you use Telegram with Freeman?

A Yes

Q Did you get subpoena for Freeman?

A Yes

Chat between Melanie Neighbours and Ian on screen

I need to hire an accountant to certify me as an accredited investor to prove net worth. I don’t own things, but have control over 2.5 million.

[Ian is the minister of the Shire Free church and has control over these assets through that position]

Q When you lived at address did you see church activities happen?

A No

[Were you blinded by government money or something? What did you think was happening 365 days a year every night from 7-10PM eastern? I guess all those people going to the studio were just a figment of my imagination. I guess all those church events that CONTINUE to occur every week are also just a figure of my imagination. I’ sorry-I’m insulted. Ian should be doubly so.]

Q When was it a church?

A When he fought property tax on building or whenever it was convenient

He connects not having assets to being a minister

[first, the defense blows her away later.. but first something I want to make clear here, this was her exact wording, not some interpretation thereof… now you can probably understand why people are saying she is an informant.. she didn’t have to say this… she only had to tell the truth to retain her immunity that we’ll find out later wasn’t even needed]

Q Are you a certified public accountant?

A No

Q Did you write letter for freeman?

A Yes, $35 maybe

I charged $35 / hr except tax forms

Letter stated $3 million in cash and assets

Q When did fallout happen?

A Bail

Q Why upset?

A He said he was broke

I didn’t agree

[wow, really??? one look at his place you’d know this guy has taken a vow of poverty… not to mention it wasn’t exactly a secret… he had room mates, *had a bedroom* and shared a bathroom, the vehicle he drove was an older used vehicle, later replaced with another older used vehicle, Ian never spent money wastefully and even donated most of his personal wealth he did hold prior to the church to the church years before any significant sales of crypto occurred or of which the government is accusing him of having sold for that matter, not to mention the government had likely seized or froze whatever assets he might have had left during the 2021 raid, so even if he had something the morning of the 2021 raid he didn’t possess those assets when questioned]

Q Did you explain why you were upset?

A Yes, the letter was an oversight on his part

Q Did you take your negative statements to the internet?

A Before, not after

[aww what? This was definitely after the 2021 raid, but I guess she meant that it was only after talking to Ian during a short window when the court accidentally removed Ian’s restriction on talking to his friends]

Q Do you still remain angry with him?

A Yes

[ohh yea, this is apparent as hell, if not just entirely made up for the benefit of the prosecutors at trial]

Q What do you know about bitcoin business?

A There were multiple kiosks, actually bitcoin vending machines is what they call them I think, he was selling and buying from localbitcoin.com

[it’s interesting at no point does she correct him about this, it’s a church, I’d understand it if someone else who knew not much of anything said this, and ~1 witnesses said as much, but you Melanie?? sorry- you have no excuses, you can’t claim ignorance on this one… this was just too well thought out and orchestrated]

Q Who is Aria?

A Moved after me, was co-host of Free Talk Live, started satanic church, did various homeless outreach

[why do they keep saying church… hmm I’m beginning to think it’s my memory now, I’m a bit under the weather as I type this, but it’s reformed satanic temple anyhow, maybe I just wrote it down wrong…. I guess we should just be glad she admitted that she knew the temple did homeless outreach without the defense having to press her on it]

Q Did she do bitcoin thing?

A Yes, she handed out bitcoin to homeless people

Q Selling of bitcoin?

A Yes

Q Distinct from church?

A Yes

[I’m not sure sure if she means the temple here or the shire free church, because one would be a true correct statement, and the other would possibly be a false statement, though I question how much she even knew of any of this, first hand anyway, maybe she was told this by Aria]

Q Did Aria ask you to write letter for her?

A Yes, an asset certification letter

Q Where did you understand the satanic reformed church assets were coming from?

A Ian

[constantly misstating the name seems to make me think it wasn’t just me in note taking]

Defense cross examines or I should say destroys backstabbing lying government agent/informant

Q Law school, but no lawyer? Bookkeeping, but no CPA?

A Yes

Q Aria right: Not Ian?

A Right

[aww ok, so that makes it an oversight you both missed, it was your job to get it right and you failed, not Ian]

Q How I choose a bank, right?

A Something like that

[I think something is lost here in transcribing unfortunately]

Q Don’t get into conversations about use even if innocuous, right?

A Right

Q That is a video about what she said, right?

A Right

[ok, I figured it out, so they are playing a video of aria explaining how to sell bitcoin and do it legally while trying to make it look like she’s committing criminal activity, and the defense is cross examining her on that video]

Q Your an anarchist?

A Yes

Q And an atheist?

A I was

[she was a big time atheist, curious the change]

Q When did you become a non-athiest?

A End of 2021

Q Same time as bail hearing?

Q Why?

A One of my daughters had died before birth

I tried preying as my partner suggested

[she claimed her daughter had died as a result of the FBI prior, curious]

Q You were bookkeeper?

A Yes

Q You didn’t do bookkeeping for Ian?

A No

Q Minister married you right?

A Yes

[gotcha! Ha she’s forced to admit the church is real, or at least it becomes apparent that the church does in fact do church things despite her fraudulent attempt to claim it was fake]

Q You did bookkeeping for Mark?

A Yes

[Mark Edge is a minister of the Shire Free Church and one of the main co-hosts of Free Talk Live, although has been absent more in recent years, he’s still good and involved in the Shire Free Church]

Q Radio station?

A Separate thing

Q You knew Mark was involved with Church right?

A He was involved with FTL

[she tries to avoid admitting knowledge of the fact Mark Edge is a minister of the Shire Free Church which is just crazy because the show is under the Shire Free Church ministries and she already admitted that Minister Mark married her and her husband]

Q Was Mark giving to charity?

A Yes

Q You are aware that Ian donated to charity right?

A Yes

Uganda orphanage, 100 nights homeless shelter, etc

[notice when questioned she admits knowing of at least these things, but there are others as well]

Q You know they gave bitcoin to homeless?

A Aria was

Q 100 nights homeless shelter isn’t fake, right?

A Right

[ ~she’s grudgingly responding to these questions]

Q Upset he claimed he had no money?

A Yes

Q April 2021

A Yes

Q You don’t know his financial situation in 2021, right?

A Right

Q Did you know that dash is a crypto, did you know dash crashed?

A I didn’t follow closely, but vaguely

Q You don’t know if church was above or below water

A Right

[gotcha, yet you are getting up on the stand and lying to the effect he wasn’t broke when you could simply have said you didn’t know, no one told you to lie, I told you to tell the truth even if it hurt Ian, yet you didn’t, you got up on the stand and fibbed your way through it with the intent to hurt Ian, that is NOT something Ian would have ever done to you]

Q You have no idea he was in control of anything in 2021, right?

A

[I think she just doesn’t answer this one, she knows she’s been caught red handed]

Q You did not see a shrine? Is that something you have to have?

A No, it’s loose in New Hampshire

Q No symbol defines has to be a church?

A Right

Q Did he register as a church?

A He said he didn’t! But I since checked and he did

[curious, so does not registering make you not a church??? as I understand it one need not register and one can still be a church or other religious entity or group and didn’t you more or less just admit to this prior with it being loosely defined in NH?]

Q The last time you had an interaction was years ago, right?

A Yea

Q Why are you under speaking with a grant of immunity?

A Something my lawyer got

Q Were going to be indited?

A No

Q Was there something I should have known, but didn’t?

A I don’t know

[I think the implication here is that she was working for the government all along as some sort of informant and getting paid to do it]

Q What are you worried about saying?

A Allot about 4-5-6 years ago… I don’t keep track of every conversation

Q Did jury know your under some sort of pressure to testify?

A I think they said they weren’t planning to prosecute for anything

Q You got immunity for nothing?

A I talked to them

Q Yea, a lot of people talk to them

A Yea, I had to comply

[this is getting super intense in the court room]

Q Were you granted immunity because of something you did?

A I’m not sure

I didn’t get immunity until after these letters were handed over

Q You don’t know why you got immunity?

A That is correct

Prosecutor

Q Was lawyer concerned about lying in letter about church source of funds?

A Yes

[talk about being coached]

Defense

Q What were they going to charge you with?

A [She can’t answer this… deafening silence… then..]

I didn’t work with federal stuff

[whatever that means, probably referencing her law degree though and not having experience with federal cases]

New Witness

Name Carla Cino

Age 74

State NJ

Since 1975

Real estate broker

Still? Yes

Married? No

Children? Yes 3

Were married? Yes

How did end? Divorce in 2003

Q At some point did you meet man online?

A Yes, online 2016

Q Name? Fredrick Drac

We spoke back and forth and online, he was in Germany

Q How long?

A 8 months

Q How often?

A Multiple times a week

Q He need money?

A He said he had to pay a lot of money to pay fines due to oil tankers stacking up he said guard wanted $5,000 fine

Q How much did you send him?

A $100,000

[some people deserved to be robbed, ok, I don’t really mean that, but dang, I work too hard for money to send $100,000 to some random guy on the internet who takes an interest in me that I’ve NEVER MET]

Q Did he say he would pay you back?

A Yes

Q Did you believe him?

A Yes

for a while

He said he had an opportunity to broke bitcoin and could pay me back more quickly if I helped

[let me get this straight, this women worked with scammers and helped launder money yet isn’t being charged yet Ian Freeman, who is a saint is being charged????]

Q What did he want you to do?

A He said people would wire me money and if I forwarded to Ian he would make money

Q Multiple communications with Ian?

A Yes

Q What would he tell you?

A Where to send money and only for bitcoin

Q Reason?

A For rare coins Ian said. They [banks] don’t like to see bitcoin.

Q Why a lot of banks?

A He traveled a lot

[what? Maybe she means the scammer? Or maybe she means Ian went to the state house and other court cases… not really clear]

Q Did you ever speak Aria or Renee?

A No, just Telegram

Q Where did your funds come from?

A All over

Q How many times?

A I don’t know, but a lot of money over time, 2019-202

[I think they are talking about how many times did she lose money from the scammer]

Q Did he ever ask why you were buying so much bitcoin?

A No

[I’m guessing this is referencing Ian, but not 100% clear]

Q Did wires every become a problem?

A Yes, but they never said why they closed account

[this is actually a very common and honest answer and basically the same thing that happened to Ian and the Shire Free Church repeatedly]

Q Why did it stop?

A I had an account at a bank I had a good relationship with give me an article about Ian’s arrest

Q Did you get your $100,000 back?

A No, I didn’t get any of it back

[Soo let me get this straight, Ian’s not the scammer, but you stopped because Ian was arrested ? Does that make any sense to anyone else? Sounds like the prosecutor is trying to convict through implication rather than actual facts]

Q How did you communicate?

A Telegram

Q How did you initiate a transaction?

A I would tell how much and they would reply with bank info

[they put up a standard shire free church disclaimer and signed receipt]

Q Did Ian ask why you were doing this?

A No

Q Did he ask if it was your money or someone else’s?

A No

I sent this one to neighbor Aria

Aria said she took out loan on house so reference construction won’t cause a problem with wire transfer

[extremely misleading given she was writing on the receipts who she was buying it for which is by implication suggesting it was her money or at least money she had the right to control, and the construction was completely true, she did have construction done on her place]

Q Did it really have to do with construction?

A Ohh I don’t know

[soo it might have then???? really… come on… you got to have a better case than this prosecution… after a decade of investigation Ian and 3 incidents later, 2012, 2016, and 2021 you can’t make for a stronger case than this??? you guys had millions of dollars to play with to secure a solid case and with that kind of money you shouldn’t just have a chance of winning here, you should have been able to create evidence through trickery to get Ian to say something incriminating even if he didn’t actually commit any crimes]

This one is for Renee and I think that is his girlfriend

[she probably was told ex-girlfriend as by this date in 2020 they had broken up already]

Cross examination by the defense attorney

Q You don’t know who your friend was do you?

A Right, don’t even know if photo was real

[ok, so she doesn’t even know if she was actually scammed? Because no one has actually investigated the scammers and for all we know these folks all just went belly up and died]

Q Never ian though?

A Right

Q The guy taking advantage of you had nothing to do with Ian right?

A That is correct

Q Why did you continue?

A I thought he was legitimate

[she makes a good case or example for arguing that those with dementia should have their assets restricted, though I’d argue by way of voluntary consent, not government violence, and not restricted entirely, but limited to a certain percentage over the average to ensure that a scammer would need a guardian or financial advisor to sign off without actually restricting or being a burden on the vast majority of normal healthy adults]

Q Did he say he was in business with Ian?

A No

Q He never said he was in business with any of them, right?

A Right

Q Did you know Ian sold bitcoin?

A Yes, I suppose I did

[how many times does one have to write it to realize that they’re buying bitcoin???]

Q None of your banks warned you of anything?

A No, it was occasionally

Q So all different ways you’d use to send Fredrick money?

A Yea

[Fredrick is the real scammer in this case]

Q Is Frerick being investigated?

A No, not that I know of

Q Did they give you any info on Fredrick?

A No

Q They want to know about Fredrick?

A No, they were focused on Ian

[notice that in coming days they realize this is a big problem and get other witnesses to make probably false allegations that they are investigating some of the scammers, but it’s also possible the “investigations” just started hmm immediately following the testimony of these witnesses YEARS later and despite never having inquired with Ian or the church about IDK KYC pictures he ACTUALLY preserved for incidents that might occur just like this that could not be avoided]

Q Ian gave you his real info?

A Yes

Q Did you tell him why you bought bitcoin?

A No

Q Did you tell him you were into trading?

A No, I didn’t chat with him allot

Q So he would not have any idea then what you were doing with bitcoin?

A Correct

Q This Fredrick guy has been in contact with you recently?

A Yes, in fact just last week he tried to involve me in some other scheme

Q Has the FBI been doing the right thing for you?

A I think so

[if this isn’t evidence this women needs to be in a home I don’t know what is]

Q Did they tell you they would go after Fredrick?

A Not at this time

New Witness

MC

FBI agent 8 years

Apparently this agent was sequestered like presumably all the others were. That means she heard everything that was said by other witnesses in the case.

She testified before and was in courtroom.

University of Virginia masters

Police City of Charlesville

Los Angeles division

The DC attorney general detail to protect attorney general

Q Then?

A NH

Q Assignment?

A National security

Q Before?

A White collar crime

Q You were involved in this case?

A Yes

Q You came after search warrant?

A Yes

Q What did you do?

A Interview people

Q Role in computers?

A I reviewed Ian’s computer and 3 cell phones: Renee, Andrew, and Arias

Q What did you do?

A I reviewed kraken crypto exchange records

Q What was the first thing you got?

A Everything when done

Q Lets go through what you were able to figure out

IRS doc defining what a church is shown on screen from Ian’s (really the churches) laptop

Church does not have to withhold income tax for ministers

Q What is itbit?

A Cryptocurrency exchange

Q Who is passport of on screen?

A Renee from crypto folder

itbit non-profit organization document shown on screen

Q What church is this for?

A Crypto Church of New Hampshire

Q Who?

A Renee

Q Ownership?

A 100%

[this question doesn’t even make sense for a church yet somehow is suppose to prove something]

Q Source of funds

A Donations

Q Purpose of account?

A Invest in bitcoin

Q Is this document too in this crypto folder?

A Yes

statement of dissolution

Q Reason

A To reform

[I’m leaving out the folks it lists for privacy reasons, but it basically has ~4 people on the board of directors for the Crypto Church Of New Hampshire and anybody who really wants to can probably look it up anyway]

Q Do you recall Renee’s reluctance to draft letterhead?

A Yes

Q Did you find letterhead on Ian’s PC?

A Yes

[it’s a laptop, but whatever, let’s not quibble over the details]

Crypto Church of NH Document Registration Shown on screen

Apparently the government thinks having large amounts of cash makes you a criminal! If so come and arrest me! Note: Lawyers will say that having or moving large amounts of cash isn’t a crime despite what the government wants you to believe and it’s not evidence of ill gotten gain either. In this case it’s business cash of my company in my possession as I write this.

Crypto6 Day 4

[the accounting of Day 4’s trial has now been updated and completed, if you already started reading day 4 you can start off where it is noted below]

When passing through security and United States Marshals asked a question or two I said “I don’t speak to liars and thieves”, to which a Marshal humorously responded “You just did”, in those EXACT words. If I had been quick thinking I would have liked to have responded with “I rest my case”.

Today there were about ~16 freedom loving crypto6 supporters in attendance in spite of little advance notice about the fact the trial was now to be held on Fridays too. Previously we had been told or it had been implied based on the estimate end date and calendar days that the trial would not be conducted on Fridays. Apparently the court can’t do basic math.

Here is my Day 4 summary:

New witness

Name: Hope Cherry

Silverspring MD

Worked for agriculture federal credit union

Worked as the VP of security

Federal credit [something or other, possibly regulated by or some similar word] USDA

The credit union has 3 branches

Q What is a credit union?

A non-profit member owned financial institution

Q Smaller?

A Mine is

Q What is shared branching?

A As one does not have a lot of locations shared branch banking enables members to make deposits at associated credit unions

Q How do you use shared branch banking?

A Most use it for deposit and withdraws

Q What do you do?

A I’m a compliance officer

Q Bank secrecy officer?

A Make sure in compliance with law

Q Are you required to register with FinCEN?

A Yes

Q Do you have to have anti money laundering program?

A Yes

Q Do you have to have an anti money laundering program?

A Yes

Q Does it have a reporting requirement?

A Yes, anything in excess of $10,000

[what is interesting about this is that they’re not claiming he was required to register as a bank and money transmitters are regulated differently than banks of which they are saying is he required to register as, though the defense is claiming or will be claiming he was legally advised by state and a lawyer that the church was NOT required to register given the way the church operated its vending or crypto sales operations… it’s also important to note that if you are doing a check or credit card or something similar via a bank these things are not required of businesses selling stuff]

Q Anything else?

A Yes, also SAR

Q Like?

A If we suspect exploitation or elder abuse

Q What did you collect to comply with these laws?

A Name, Address, TAX ID, day to day transaction of the person

Q Do FinCEN give guidance on filing a suspicious activity report and what it is?

A Yes

Q How does someone open an account?

A Come in or online

ID, Name, address, tax ID, employment, use

Q Do you know Ian Freeman?

A Yes

Q How did he open an account?

A Online

Q Type of account opened?

A Personal

[something to note is that someone operating a business from a personal account is ok, one can also do business without registering a corporation, trade name, doing business as, etc, with some restriction possibly, but basically if you aren’t incorporated you’re generally a sole proprietor, but it may also be unclear what you should register as if you are another type of entity like a non-profit or a church]

Q Purpose listed?

A Household

[It is also the case that one might open an account for one purpose and end up using it for another, there is nothing indicating to the opener what a personal or business account are or which one to choose either or why in most instances but it also usually will come down to marketing of features even if, so one for example might open a business account if they do a lot of wire transfers because then they don’t have to go into the bank to conduct the wire transfer, but that will usually cost more, so you might prefer a personal account for a business if not much business is going to go through it, or only certain types of transactions will be passing through it]

Q Source of funds?

A $500k in transactions / month, location NH, it was unusual, and only application we’ve had from NH

Q Type of activity expected?

A Regular stuff, paychecks, bills, etc

[that is curiously maliciously answered response considering I know for a fact many small business are sole proprietors and will also use personal accounts for business, not just bills and paychecks, I both have had sole proprietor businesses and did work for MANY MANY other small businesses operated in the same LEGAL way]

Q Anything stuck out about this account opening?

A We checked into it and there were multiple inquires from other institutions

Q Example?

A Check tax ID correct, etc

Q If it was suspicious why did you open it anyways?

A This does not mean he is up to no good

[they are showing a bank statement on the screen]

Q What month was this?

A 2nd

Q What does ver. Mean?

A Verify account # is correct

statement shows deposits from all over the country

Q Anything suspicious? Did you file a report?

A Yes

[this is humorous because I also operated a computer repair business at one time with deposits coming in from all over the country… in and of itself this is NOT or should not be suspicious.. in my case contractors would deposit checks and cash into the business account once conducting repair work for customers and I’d then pay them per agreed terms for said work, and this is actually very common and there were far far far larger players in this field than me, in fact Dell did something similar for years, and other smaller players focus exclusively on contracting out repair work to third parties and then pay their contractors this way to such a degree they have custom developer websites and portals for it all]

Q Was there information from any other credit union(s) available?

A I asked others and got told they were seeing deposits and names of people making deposits

[Share branch deposit tick shown on screen with a $6,700 ticket]

Q What is this photo?

A I asked for a photo of the person making the deposit

[they bring up a page on screen from a currency transaction report]

Q What does this show?

A Someone other than the person owning the account made a deposit

[again none of that should be suspicious in and of itself, this is common with businesses for a variety of reasons, one is to avoid fees, wire fees have a $15-40 cost for instance whereas cash or check deposit is free and faster than mailing it and you avoid credit card fees, for years I paid a couple other small businesses that supplied my company with certain products or components used in products with a check from my bank, but I’d stop at their bank to make the deposit directly into their checking accounts as it was far far easier than mailing the check and cheaper than using a credit card and for that we would get a 1-3% additional discount on top of another discount we already got, my company sells computers and accessories for clarity on what we did/do aka ThinkPenguin.com ]

Q Did they get ID?

A Yes

[this is or was uncommon, I don’t think I’ve ever been asked for ID to deposit money into someone elses account and this is not or was not a standard procedure at most banks, though it’s possible in recent years it has become more common, but based on what I’ve heard at trial it sounds like this is still rare, but done at least at one financial institution]

Back to statement on screen

Q Stop after 12/6?

A Right, and serious concern about source of money so we restricted account

This activity cause us to talk to Mr Freeman

I called Mr Freeman and he said he was dealing in rare coins

Turned out to be virtual currency

Drilled down and found virtual currency

[she’s admitting that Mr Freeman was not dishonest about his use of the account and told them what it was being used for when asked for further details here which is the exact opposite of the governments claims that he lied to banks, they may not have understood that rare coins is an accurate description for what he was involved in, but as will or was demonstrated through anothers testimony who better although still poorly understood bitcoin that bitcoin has the word coin in it and what makes bitcoin valuable is its rarity, there are only 21 million coins that will ever be ‘minted’, and bitcoin when explaining it to people is commonly explained by comparison to gold and silver in that it’s valuable because of its rarity]

 

[it’s funny how I had a similar banking situation for years and years and no one ever restricted my account or asked questions about it, now there was one difference and that was that I believe I was using an actual bank rather than a credit union for business at the time, but there was a time where I used a credit union too, and it is possible that they would have seen this as suspicious as running a business from a credit union account while possible is less common, so to them it might have been seen as odd by comparison to other customers, the reason it’s hard to do business with a credit union as a business is usually due to wire transfers having to go through a bank and thus you end up with multiple intermediaries where mistakes can occur in the wire process… I actually closed a credit union account after a few years because it was just too much of a pain in the neck because of this, though not all small businesses do a lot of wire transfers, so I suspect at least some small businesses still do use a credit union over a bank like I did for my business for a while]

Q How did you feel about this?

A It was a red flag, but unsure about it

Q Type of business when asked?

A Shire Free Church

Q Did you search for it?

A Yes, I found the church with a search

Q Make any conclusion?

A It was a little different type of church

We felt we were dealing with and he was not registered

[ while I can’t speak with certainty it is my belief that it was probably the case that the Shire Free Church was not registered with any government at that time, and at some point something did get registered because of this incorrect assumption by financial institutions about the law, or at least they felt obligated to see that a church was registered even if not because of their own legal requirements, and it’s my understanding that churches can’t be required to register with the government because of other supreme court precedent, but that doesn’t mean you can’t register either, and many churches are registered in one way or another with government(s) in the united states at I believe the state level]

Q Did you close his account?

A We suggested he close it or we would

Defense cross examines the witness

Q You are employed as fraud officer?

A Yes

29 years

Q He applied in his name?

A Yes

Q Not a fake name?

A Yes, it was his real name

Q Address?

A Yes, it was a real address

Q He opened for minimum amount of money like most people do?

A Yes

Q $55,000?

A It went to buy bitcoin

Q Made deposit and purchased bitcoin?

A Yes

Q When opened account some red flags?

A No clear cut reason to say no

[this was a simple yes or no question she answered with a sentence… she was trying to avoid giving the defense evidence of innocents here because what this shows is that you don’t have to refuse business with people just because there are red flags and not even financial institutions who actually have to register need refuse service, so that begs the question why should a church who sells bitcoin and isn’t required to register as a money transmitter let alone a bank have to… remember she is also competing with bitcoin and as a competitor she doesn’t want this bitcoin thing to take off because it puts them out of business]

Q When asked for drivers license he provided it right?

A Yes

Q he didn’t stop doing business right?

A No

Q He was compliant right?

A Yes

Q No negative balance right?

A No

Q All positive searches?

A Yes

Q When did you find out cash coming in?

A We have a report, but didn’t immediate stop it

Q Shared branch did business with victim?

A Yes

Q Was there a problem?

A Concern, yes

Q Shared branch bank allowed it despite concerns right?

A Yes

Q She still has money in her account right?

A I can’t tell you

Q This one isn’t in her late 80s or even 70s right?

A Yes, that’s right, she is in her 50’s

Q She was a school teacher right?

A Yes

Q Because over $12,000 a report was filed right?

A Yes

Q They didn’t refuse it right?

A Right

Q Did teller have any problem with 2nd transaction shown?

A No, not that I’m aware of

Q He gave account info on how to contact him right?

A Correct

[ at this point the judge criticizes prosecutor for wanting to censor his own evidence]

[Exhibit on email communications between ian and bank compliance officer shown on screen]

[It’s admitted for what they call a limited purpose]

Judge says ~“can’t be considered true statements, only to understand his point of view, and to round up and understand conversation”

Overview of letter:

Letter explains Ian is a minister of church and law does not apply according to his lawyers. He explains why he thinks the compliance officer is wrong to close account.

There is no difference between vending person to person and selling online.

New Hampshire says “we don’t regulate that”

[this is a reference to what the banking department of New Hampshire stated prior to the state removing their authority to regulate cryptocurrency businesses, meaning the state already wasn’t regulating even if the banking department had the authority to do so before the bill removing their authority passed: https://freekeene.com/2016/09/29/full-video-of-nh-state-house-commission-to-study-cryptocurrency-first-meeting/ ]

The letter says the church conducts know your customer and gets IDs of buyers to stop fraud that is rampant in the online world.

We confirm buyer knows they are buying coins.

[He uses coins in regular conversation and not just “rare coin” when convenient. I believe later on there is evidence Ian even goes out of the way to call customers that he thinks may be getting scammed to ensure they know what they are doing. So much for the claim he didn’t stop transactions that were red flags. Notice though that the credit union lady already said they weren’t stopping transactions because of red flags because that isn’t what the law actually requires.]

Q Is that an accurate letter?

A Yes it is

Q Can you recall attached letter?

A Yes

[the attached letter is separate to the email discussed above]

It was NH banking commission

[while I’ve seen this letter I haven’t been able to locate it online anywhere unfortunately, not on FreeKeene.com nor in the docket, but the letter exists and was displayed in court]

Q You did send his remaining balance to him?

A Correct, there was no suspicion of wrongdoing

[aww wait wait wait what??? didn’t you just close his account for some sort of wrongdoing? Now you are agreeing with the defense that no wrongdoing on his part occurred? What this is suggesting is that the reason they closed the account was of liability on their part, not wrongdoing on the Shire Free Church’s part nor Ian Freeman]

Prosecutor cross examines

Q Did you speak to victim?

A Yes

Q How did you feel after talking to victim?

A I felt she could be victim of scam

[notice we don’t have any evidence that she is a victim of a scam and I’m not even sure they presented evidence she was a victim of a scam here, though this case is so unclear it’s hard to say one way or another, lots of “evidence”, but much of it is to make you feel bad, not that there is evidence of a crime, or at least not of Ian Freeman or the Shire Free Church, and remember the bank let this transaction through too, not just Ian Freeman]

Judy admits in writing to Ian Freeman/Church that the letter is “compelling” evidence of his argument.

Q Do you believe he was honest after using personal account for business?

A No

[this is such a load of crap, people use “personal” accounts for business all the time and she’d know that as the compliance officer, a sole proprietor is a non-registered entity effectively that is representing themselves unless they have a doing business as, but even in that case they are still a sole proprietor and would normally likely open a personal account for business because of the way taxes are conducted even if they have a separate personal account for their business activities separate from their bills/personal stuff]

Defense cross examines

Q Ian wasn’t taking deposits right?

A Correct

Q It would be up to each branch to stop transactions right?

A Not as clear cut as that

[she’s admitting that you only have to stop a transaction if you believe it suspect, and even then not necessarily which backs up the fact that simply doing some amount of due diligence even if you can’t confirm someone isn’t being scammed is sufficient under the law, thus Ian calling people who he thinks might be victims and getting additional verification from them about the transaction is exactly the same level of compliance that the banks do, but unlike the banks he has no legal obligation to do it on behalf of the church because he is neither a financial institution nor a money transmitter under the law, and while this COULD be different for another business if operated differently that wasn’t the case here, selling your own bitcoin from your own wallet does not make one a money transmitter, but an actual bitcoin exchange would make one a money transmitter under the law because you are acting as middlemen in the transaction and moving money or value from one location to another or one place to another, this is exactly what the law says, and the church didn’t do that]

Q They don’t try and stop it?

A [Silence]

Q Ian couldn’t stop it right?

A Correct

[wow, just wow, remember that this is the prosecutor’s own witness and has come in with an agenda of making Ian Freeman look bad]

Q They [the teller] took the deposit right?

A Correct

Q They [the teller] had control over that transaction right?

A Correct

Q Mr Freeman wasn’t there?

A Correct

Q He didn’t see any tell tail signs of a scam, right?

A Correct

Q If red flags existed Mr Freeman wouldn’t have known, right?

A Correct

Q The only person who could have stopped it was the branch employees, right?

A Correct

Q Is it policy to return funds to illegal transactions?

A What were we supposed to do?

[she doesn’t want to answer this one!!! I wonder why]

Q Did you ever sit down with FinCEN?

A No

Prosecutor asks some more questions

Q Do you know what Ian said that led to these people to deposit money?

A No

[how about what the fraudster said if this was a case someone was scammed because Ian wouldn’t have known what they told the victim and the bank wouldn’t have known either, this is a man in the middle scam, it’s neither the bank nor Ian/the Shire Free Church whom are to blame]

New witness

Name: Bruce Sweet

US Postal inspector

Federal agent related to crimes involving US mail

He works with drugs, money laundering, etc

Q Was Ian investigated?

A Yes

We investigated a package going to the church at shipping shack mail box

It was addressed to the shire free church

We open’d it and found a galaxy s phone box with cash inside it

It had $4,000 inside it

Box was from same victim as prior bank victim

Defense cross examines

Q Was complaint from victim?

A No

Q Do you know what cash was for?

A Yes, bitcoin

Q Wasn’t for drugs, right?

A Yes, it wasn’t for drugs

Q Legal product right?

A Yes

New witness

Name Paul Priosey

US Treasury IRS criminal investigation special agent

14 years

Investigated potential violations of the law like money laundering

Based out of charlot Virginia

Previously based out of NY

Q Was Ian investigated?

A Yes

Undercover doing transaction with Ian Freeman

Q What did Ian use? [forms of payment presumably]

A It depends

Q What was your role?

A Conduct bitcoin transactions with freeman

Q How long was your part in the investigation?

A One year

Q Much of it in writing?

A Yes

Q How did you connect with freeman?

A localbitcoin.com

Q Who told you where to start?

A Yea, others

[transactions shown on screen from 2019]

confirms he did these transactions with ian on localbitcoin.com

Q Why did you ask Ian to do a transaction off localbitcoin.com?

A It was easier

[curious – so they aren’t suggesting doing it off localbitcoin.com is to hide some sort of crime]

Q Transaction size?

A $502

“video” pulled up of conversation on telegram

[the prosecutor doesn’t understand what the word means, but none the less telegram is pulled up on the screen]

Q Can you ID defendant?

A Yes blue shirt

[in the room he identifies defendant]

Q Why did you tell freeman wire to bank account wasn’t working if that wasn’t true?

A To get another bank account

[agent openly admits he lied to mr freeman, a red flag you’re dealing with an undercover agent and I have to wonder if Ian wasn’t thinking this too at the time because it’s rare for stuff to not work like this for no apparent reason, but stupid could also explain it]

[chat logs on the screen show agent tried to get ian to do an in person sale after making a series of cash transactions into bank accounts]

Q Did he ask about source of funds?

A No

Q He told you what to tell the bank?

A Yes

[The undercover talks about church events like social sunday, night cap, crypto meetup, new vending machine at thirsty own, does $1000 transaction at vending machine, etc]

Q Asks no questions about why you have so much cash?

A No

[does $1500 constitute a lot of cash these days? If so I must be guilty of being a criminal… there is I believe $8k in cash in my hand right here or thereabout I believe and cash isn’t a crime, and do you know where I got this cash? the bank, and do you know the upstream source of this cash? a legitimate business where I sell computers and accessories called ThinkPenguin.com, and do you know what a lawyer would tell you? Possessing large amounts of cash isn’t a crime! :

 

 

 

 

[Day 4 continues from here… ]

Q Where did you meetup?

A Central square

Q Who there?

A Aria, Ia, Nobody

Q Was it recorded?

A Yes

Q Was it clear?

A No enough

Q We have short clip, does it accurately report what was said?

A Yes

[They play the audio clip in court. It’s entirely unclear  what was said other than “I don’t know. I’m gay” which is humorously something I said in response to someone else. Pretty sure that doesn’t make any of us criminals unless they criminalized me when I wasn’t looking. The agent said something about “infiltrating” our group which is humorous as it is an open to the public group on Telegram or was at the time Monadnock Cryptocurrency Network, and now on Matrix.. this clearly isn’t the brightest fed in the room and it was repeatedly stated by us over the years that the room had or likely had feds it… not that anyone was doing anything illegal, but people should be conscious of the fact that thugs were lying in wait to pounce on folks for doing legal things…]

A chat log containing conversation with Ian is put up on screen.

“only suckers pay tax on crypto

Also how was I obligated to pay taxes created in the first place?”

More Ian quotes from chat log shown:

“they sent a threatening letter to cvm operators a year ago

we all ignored it”

[the interesting part of this is that the church and Ian ignored it because legal council had already been advised that the church was operating in a way that didn’t require registration, which of course the government completely ignores that aspect of it all, and is actively fighting to keep evidence of this out, though they failed]

Ian chat log:

“I can’t sell you crypto because you told me too much”

[this is in response to the undercover fed who pretended to be a drug dealer, and there is NOTHING wrong with what is being said as the law says KNOWINGLY, so once you know you can’t, but prior to that you can, this is actually evidence Ian and the church were not committing a crime even though he may have wanted to]

More Ian chat log:

“I can’t KNOWINGLY assist you with your financial matters”

[again KNOWINGLY is literally in the law, yet this is what the feds are claiming was a ‘wink and a nod’ that it was “OK” to buy crypto from him despite NOT helping him with buying crypto or other financial matters]

Fed asks “Why not?”

Ian responds:

“You told me you sell drugs”

“Money laundering is knowing of illegal activity”

“I advocate for ending the war on drugs and responsible use of various substances”

[The undercover fed pretending to be a drug dealer came to a meetup and recorded audio and video at meetup.]

The prosecutor plays a VERY short video clip on screen.

Video shows nothing Ian and him saying machine is still at thirsty owl.

Q Agent say “You can still use it”

A Yes

[this was false… wait till the cross examination … it gets interesting ]

Q What did you do next?

A Went to thirsty owl and bought $20,000 from machine

They show a receipt of the money bought from the vending machine on screen

Q What was fee?

A 14%

Aug 25, 2020(?)

Defense gets up and cross examines undercover agent pretending to be a drug dealer

Q Purpose of undercover is to obtain evidence of criminal activity through deception, right?

A Yes

Q Sometimes it works and sometimes it does not right?

A Yes

Q No problems nothing illegal about the first dozen transactions, right?

A Yes

Q Telegram used because it is easier right?

A Yes

[interesting because I half expected them to try and claim it was used to cover up criminal activity, claiming something about encryption, when in fact Telegram is NOT end-to-end encrypted, but they didn’t go there in this case like they have in certain other cases in the past 5 years]

Q Why didn’t you disagree with him if investment wasn’t why you were buying bitcoin?

A Because I have a strategy to get conviction

[hmmmm so you don’t care about how you achieve the results, only that you achieve results]

Q Did you want to be willfully ignorant?

A No, just following directions

Q He didn’t say you couldn’t ask questions right?

A No

Q How do you know that his intent was to donate part of transaction to church?

A I didn’t

Q Meetup wasn’t illegal right?

A No

Q Nothing illegal about being a libertarian crypto guy right?

A No

Q You wanted to do this to further the trust aspect?

A Yes

Q Your goal was to get him to do something illegal?

A Yes

[How is this not entrapment???? definition of entrapment: the action of tricking someone into committing a crime in order to secure their prosecution.]

Q You want him to slip-up and fall?

A Yes, depending on how transactions go

Q you did not correct anything, right?

A Right

Q Did he ever say he wanted to lie?

A If asked to tell then it was donation or investment

Q But you did not ask Ian why that was, right?

A No

Q Ian dropped from 14% fee to a 10% fee for you right?

A Yes

Q He wanted your legal business, right?

A Yes

Q If they didn’t like you no break right? [if he didn’t like you he wouldn’t have given you a break, right]

A Yes

Q If they didn’t like you no break right?

A It depends but usually yea

Q Before [he knew of your criminal dealings he gave you a] 10% rate, but not once he knew you were involved in drug activity, right?

A Yes

Q Once he knew he didn’t want to do business with you right?

A Yes

Q Even after you didn’t stop trying to get him to commit crime right?

A Yes

[there is an aspect of entrapment in the law that basically says the government can’t try and get you commit a crime you wouldn’t already have committed on your own, which is probably why the lawyers asking these questions, they can hang out with you, but they can’t ask to buy drugs from you, if you are a drug dealer, but if after befriending them they try and buy drugs from you- then it’s not entrapment- it’s something along these lines anyway- but trying to win a fight with the government over entrapment is hard as everything favors them]

Q Despite insistence you still tried, right?

A Right

Q “I can’t tell you you can do that”, he said that right?

A Yes

Q You asked him specifically about using machine, right?

A He said I can’t tell you you can use it

[the fed admits that he lied previously on the stand under oath and that Ian didn’t say he could use the vending machine]

Q He said he can’t deal with you any more?

A Yea, but he said knowingly

[aww yea, cause buddy, he knew you were a fed, and he was quoting a key aspect of FEDERAL LAW]

Q You did ask and did get answer right?

A Yes

Q You put money in machine and out came receipts right?

A Yes

Q When he wanted you it was a 10% rate and after what was it?

A 14%

[ie the vending machine was 14% and Ian was giving the guy a 10% rate up until he couldn’t legally do business with him any more]

Q You did it on your own right?

A Yes

Q And this is a guy who gave you a break when he thought you were legal, right?

A Yes

Q You speculated, right?

A Yes, but he knew based on prior conversations!

[referencing that wink and a nod comment he made previously]

Prosecutor asks questions:

Q You broke his rule by telling him what you do right?

A Yes

Q What did he understand your intent to be?

A Ian said “If you mail UPS or Fedex because private mail service they can open package, but if USPS they supposedly need warrant so probably best with track + signature required”

[yea, this doesn’t mean he thinks you’re doing anything criminal, it’s also protection potentially from companies one might not trust, and I’m pretty sure there was evidence presented to this end, but he was saying some people trust USPS over UPS/Fedex because supposedly USPS needs a warrant whereas the others don’t, not that he even thinks this necessarily, he wasn’t the one with this concern, you were]

Q Is it your experience when people talk about search warrants they talking about criminal activity?

A Yes

[everyone thought this guy was a fed, hard to believe anything from this liars mouth]

[actual friends were given way better in person rates too at certain points as low as I believe 5% at one point, which was also the normal in person rate people were charging, so the market rate at the time, I can’t speak to later on, which probably would have been higher, but I suspect it wouldn’t have been 10%, but still would have been lower]

Defense cross examines witness again:

Q You did break the golden rule, you said you do something illegal?

A Yes

Q If you tell the bank you are a drug dealer they won’t do business with you either right?

A Yes

Q UPS is different right?

A Yes

Q USPS is safer right? Protect by government, right?

A Yes

Q But fedex you don’t know who is touching your stuff right?

A Right

Q They might have a criminal record right?

A Yes

Q One reason to suggest USPS is because it is safer, ever think about that?

A No

Q Postal is more regulated right?

A Everyone has there preferences

[humorously he didn’t answer the question]

Q It isn’t illegal to mail cash right?

A Right, send whatever you want

Q Did you ever ask why USPS over fedex specifically?

A He answered in voice

Q He said search warrant right?

A Yes

Q Makes it more secure right?

A Yes

Q You said it was legal to mail cash right?

A Yes

Q To get a search warrant illegal activity must be suspected, right?

A Yes

Q It starts warning people of scams right?

A Yes

[they are referencing the signs a the crypto vending machines]

Q Did he tell anyone to scam, or he activity sit there and let people get scammed?

A “I don’t recall”

[wow-really? are you kidding me? Does anybody believe this liar? why would you invest in a machine if a person was going to do the job??? this makes no sense and I have a hard time believing a jury if they’re following this would believe it either]

Q He specifically told you he didn’t want to do business with you right?

A Yes

Q “I can’t tell you you can use it” right?

A Yes

New witness

Name: Renee Spinella

25 years old

Married to Andrew Spinella

Live in Manchester

Completed high school 2014

Employment history: waitress

Q Know freeman?

A Yes, a decade

Q How did you first meet him?

A I don’t recall

We started dating in 2014

Q 2014-2017 living at his house?

A Yes

Q Professional relationship after breakup?

A Yes

Q What is this agreement?

A Agreed to generally help me move on

[the agreement they are referring to was effectively a breakup agreement that provided Renee with a bit of cash to move on with her life and was clearly not something Ian had to do because of some sort of court order, but simply because he was a good guy and wished the best for her, and I think those around Ian also were aware of his best intents for her even if not this agreement]

Q You had separate agreement for shire free church?

A Yes, selling bitcoin

Q Were you charged?

A Yes to one charge

Q Do you have immunity here?

A Yes

Q How long did you do the job?

A 2017-2021

Q Did you write contract?

A No

Q Do you know who wrote it?

A No, someone from the church

Q How did you communicate?

A Text, telegram, signal

Summary of screen chat log or similar content: Renee was told by Ian to tell banks she traded and banks would assume she was talking about trading stocks and commodities.

[what is interesting about this is that the day of the 2021 FBI raid the half dozen different 3 letter federal government agencies were all arguing about what to call bitcoin… some were saying it was a commodity, some were saying it was a currency, some were saying it was a security… if the government can’t come up with a straight answer here why is this a problem?? ]

Q Did you sell stocks and commodities?

A Bitcoin is a commodity isn’t it?

[to be fair I’m not sure even Renee knew, but probably thought yes here, but given government doesn’t know how is this even a fair question?]

Q Why did you say in chat he was rich?

A People making normal salaries are rich to me, as I’ve always been poor

ItBit log shows they want money service business registration stuff if operating an ATM

Government shows Ian saying “fuck” in the chat log to the demand for money service business registration documents

[something to note is that most people hate documentation of any kind or having to provide it whether or not they doing something criminal, being disgusted by this is not evidence of anything]

Q Did you open accounts for Mr freeman?

A For the church

Q Did it seem like a lot of money or a bit

A “A bit”

Q Would Ian review chats for you?

A Yes

Ian helps Renee with dealing with banks, itbit, and others, and making letterhead for crypto church

They play audio of FTL show talking about Nigerian scam

[totally missed the point of this audio clip, I guess we are suppose to assume he’s guilty because he is aware of some Nigerian’s scamming folks? I guess you shouldn’t do business with folks in an entire country just cause there are some bad apples… but of course if we took this literally then no one could do business anywhere because there are scammers everywhere]

End of day 4!

[Renee gets sick so she isn’t going to be coming back to testify until at least day 8 of the trial (ie which will probably be 12/19/22 assuming she tests negative for COVID and is feeling up to it), but her testimony is not over, and the defense has not had a chance to cross examine yet either, also two days were canceled of the trial already due to her and her attorney coming down ill]

 

 

Melanie Neighbours On Witness Stand

Today was a very sad day. I heard from what I considered a good friend turn on another good friend during day 5’s Crypto6 trial. While I knew Melanie Neighbours had some misgivings I had never imagined that she would actively work against Ian Freeman let alone lie- or at least mislead a jury on the witness stand.

Shortly after the March 2021 raid we communicated a number of times and I said to her there were two things I thought she should do in regard to her situation. One was not lie even if it was to Ian’s detriment. Ian Freeman could take care of himself I said, and two, don’t do anything to incriminate yourself or even remotely appear to be partaking in any activity that might be perceived as not-kosher.

Alas- she seems to have at least broken one of these pieces of advice. Why? Over a stupid squabble? Some insignificant issue she perceived to exist? Well, unfortunately yes. There was a question as to whether or not a mistake was made in certifying Ian’s assets vs the Shire Free Churches assets and what was little more than a minor oversight she turned into a flaming drama fest on the stand.  As a bookkeeper she certified Ian as having ~3 million dollars in assets of one kind or another.

Not everyone whose taken the stand to testify for the prosecution has done everything perfectly. Being questioned by a prosecutor or lawyer can be quite nerve wracking after all! One witness who should have been favorable to the defense (though forced to testify against Ian Freeman) let (however unintentionally) the prosecutor lead her to a mistaken answer. That was correctly fixed by the defense re-asking the question differently. No hard feelings. It happens. The damage could be huge, but the defense fixed it. We’re all human.

This? This is going to take a lot more time to heal. That said Ian Freeman’s got one of the biggest hearts and I bet he’d even forgive you despite this attack. Maybe there is more to the story I’m not seeing still. Maybe this was the plan all along. I’m going to hope it really was just a squabble over some irrelevant detail, because the alternative is you are the biggest piece of shit Melanie.  If you were working for the feds all along you are lower than low and I will NEVER forgive you. Feds don’t deserve forgiveness. Anyone else… even the most depraved human beings I can forgive, but NOT people who create a living out of others misery.

I’ll end on a positive note. The Crypto6 protest went great! ~16 people came out to the trial today and ~50 turned up to our little protest outside the federal courthouse in Concord. The video(s) I recorded are below.

 

https://www.freedomdecrypted.com/public_html/other-content/dec-12-2022-protest-crypto6-federal-courthouse-concord/part1-dec-12-22-protest-concord-federal-court-crypto6.mp4

 

http://freedomdecrypted.com/public_html/other-content/dec-12-2022-protest-crypto6-federal-courthouse-concord/part2-dec-12-22-protest-concord-federal-court-crypto6.mp4

Crypto6 Trial Day 3

We had a turnout of ~15 supporters throughout the day. Not bad~ given we’ve got 10-14+ days of trial here. We’re up to maybe ~55 folks who have come out and supported (some may be on multiple days) so far. I want to say thank you to all those who have taken time off work (even if only for half a day) to come out and support Ian & the crypto6. A supportive community is one of the things that make living in New Hampshire like nowhere else.

One of the best parts of the day was when Mr Bitcoin entertained us in the morning by trying to enter the courthouse!

Here is the video:

http://freedomdecrypted.com/public_html/other-content/mr-bitcoin-denied-access-to-supposedly-public-trial.mp4

 

Here is a summary of the days goings on:

Prosecutor continues asking questions of the last witness from the prior day’s trial.

FinCEN employee Theodore Valahakis
Q Shire Cryptocoin operation directed at kiosk?
A Yes
Q Why was the letter sent?
A General campaign
It was to identify non-compliant businesses
The letter is not itself the registration requirement, and so a business must register whether or not they get a letter
Defense cross examination:
Q Jury should not assume Ian Freeman was placed on any notice by the federal government?
A Correct
Prosecutor introduces new witness to stand
Name: Kathryn Thibault
FBI agent
24 years with FBI
Prior experience: state trooper Maryland
Role: Supervisor
Based out of Knoxville, TN
Does polygraph work
Prior worked in Bedford NH
Worked on: Child exploitation & white collar crime, example: bank fraud, money laundering, and romance scams
Romance scams usually target people through social media where scammers befriend people and then deplete the persons of all their money claiming they need funds and the scams usually focus on elderly victims.
Ways scammers send money: Master card / Visa cards
-Cash transactions
-Wire money
-Personal checks
-Bitcoin
Money mule: a person who moves assets from those they don’t know for obstruction from other persons
Scammer grooms person to become mule
Then the mule moves money to another account
Hard to ID where everything is ending up
Q Part of Ian Freeman investigation?
A Yes
2017
Lead case agent till 2020
Did lots of interviews
Chats were not available while working on case
Ian Freeman’s PC was not available
I interviewed with people doing wire transfers for Mr Freeman
I based investigation on suspicious activity report
Q how many SARs did you review?
A More than 100
I did not interview 100 though
I focused on New Hampshire with only a few
Q Did you have another source of info?
A Yes, local police
Q Where were the victims located?
A All over the country
Q What was the average age?
A Over 65
Q Did the investigation involve banks?
A Yes
Q Another part of case?
[hmm she sounds coached]
A Kiosks
Q How did you find these Kiosks?
A Through online site coinmaps
Then I bought bitcoin at kiosks
Q Why?
A To see what was required to buy from kiosk and to see what wallet the coins came from
Q Was this your money?
A No, it was government money
Q Where were the machines?
A Murphy’s taproom, 101 local goods
They asked how much to buy and then scan for QR codes on phone containing wallet addresses
Then you feed the bills in and it sends bitcoin to your wallet
Q How long does it take?
A No very
Q Did it require a name?
A No
Q Did it require a drivers license?
A No
Q Did it require a photo?
A No
Q Did it require a phone #?
A No
Q Did you buy at a machine not owned by Ian Freeman?
A Yes, and it required a state ID, no prepaid phone # was allowed, and the owner communicated with the buyer
Q Was finger print scanner required on Ian Freeman’s machine?
A Not to my knowledge
Crypto vend rules:
1. Must use own wallet
2. Crypto is your responsibility to keep safe
3. All sales final
4. Do not tell our staff why you are buying bitcoin
Q Is that what you experienced?
A Yes
Q “If you believe something went wrong please contact us at”…
Witness identifies email in letter from FinCEN matches letter on machine
[note this is evidence displayed on a screen]
name on email of vending machine matches email sent by ian to free giveaway price winner
Phone # matches rules sign and localbitcoin data old phone #
[again evidence displayed on a screen]
I obtained a warrant for search of Ian Freeman’s residence based on this
The house is a duplex
73 is right hand side
73 is where Ian Freeman lives
75 is on left hand side is where Mr Nobody lives
Q Please describe it
A White structure, green, white

Special agent tivo
Q Were you able to ID a video from internet related to front porch?
A Yes
Q Where?
A On Odysee
Q Interview occurred after?
A yes
Q Did you watch clip of video?
A Yes
Q Did the full video have audio?
A Yes
Q Was freeman speaking?
A Yes
Q What is it?
A It’s a stop sign
It says stop and then “paying taxes”
[this has been on the porch as long as I’ve lived in New Hampshire since pre-2016 and numerous people have lived and rented here, this doesn’t actually tell you ANYTHING, but it is intended to bias the jury against the defense… in practice the Shire Free Church does pay taxes or the property would have been seized long ago]
Q What was on 75 side?
A Living room with kitchen upstairs
Q Any shrine?
A No
Q Any chapel?
A No
Q Any meeting rooms?
A No
Q Were others living at 73 side?
A Yes
It was a mirror image of other side, but living room was a radio station
[this is wrong, it’s got recording equipment for a radio show, radio stations require big antennas and all sorts of stuff you’d not find at this address]
Q Any shrine?
A No
Q Any chapel?
A No
Q Any meeting rooms?
A No
The prosecutor brings up a picture of the radio studio as evidence
On left is radio equipment, chair, documents
Desk is behind chair
Q What is procedure of search?
A Take pictures of house is necessary before conducting search
Then take picture when everything of interest is found
Everyone volunteered to help with search
[something tells me this was a paid gig, but on the other hand 365 days of criticizing the feds on Free Talk Live is probably is incentive enough, not that I’m unsure about them being paid]
If anyone has a question they ask me if we should take it
Photo shows folder and the folder has “FBI Crypto” on it
Another has “IRS Bullshit” on it
[this is weird, all it could do is bias a jury against a defense and has no value other than to show Ian Freeman dislikes the government, it doesn’t reveal if he paid taxes, but it suggests he was at least doing something in regard to government demands, certainly that isn’t what the government was trying to do with the photo though]
[humorously the photo also shows shire society and signers on it, a rosary, and peace signs hanging on the wall related to the church that is “fake”, but no one mentions these]
Defense cross examines witness
SAR report interviews Renee Spinella & Andrew Spinella
Q Did you link a scammer with Ian Freeman?
A No
Q Don’t scammers often team up with money launders?
A I don’t know
Q Did you know Ian Freeman required ID?
A I didn’t know that
Q How many devices did you try in state that weren’t Ian Freemans?
A Don’t know
Q How many require ID in the state?
A I don’t know
Q How many machines did you look at?
A I only compared Ian Freemans 6 and 1 other non-Ian Freeman machine
I looked on YouTube for how machines worked
[she has no idea how many if any require a fingerprint/ID]
Q You shouldn’t draw generalizations from 1 machine, right?
A I can’t tell you what to do
Q Do you know how long machine was at Murphy’s Taproom?
A No
Q Know of any complaints?
A No
Did not ask owner of bar about issues or complaints
It was not part of my investigation
“Don’t talk to staff sign” is shown
Q Have you seen signs like that before?
A No
Q But only looked at one other machine, right?
A Correct
Q Part of process to buy crypto was to agree to it, right?
A Not really
[apparently terms don’t matter if you don’t have to click an I agree button … so much for the internet full of privacy policies and other terms of service]
Q Sign though says that right?
A Yes
Q Are you able to verify FinCEN letter ever got to email?
A No
Q You were at the search in Keene on site agent?
A Yes
Q Was this a violent search?
A “officer safety”
Q Ian Freeman was non-violent?
A Yea
We know he was not violent
But but “lots of people had weapons”
And and were “coming and going”
Q Were people displaying weapons day of search?
A No
We had several months of footage from cameras focused on the house
Q You were spying on completely innocent people?
A We were checking people
Q Would you have checked my license if I had been there?
A Yes
Q Why was the specific day of search selected?
A Lots of people involved, coordination
Q Asked about shrine, does that mean a building can’t be used as a church?
A Well not that I would recognize
Q Is there something specific that makes it a church?
A No
[wow- so umm it could be a church then????]
Q You heard of radio ministries right?
A Yes
Q Ian filed a form for religious purposes?
A Yes, but it had a PO Box on it
[this is wrong, it had a mailing address similar to a PO box though]
Q How long did the search take?
A The whole day
Q How did you search?
A Used a swat team
“gave opportunity to leave on own”
“they did not exit on own”
Q What time was the search taking place?
A 6AM it was, dark out
Q People are generally still asleep at that hour right?
A Yes
Q Before searching did you do due diligence and know who was coming and going? Did you do a criminal background check on residents?
A On some
Q No record and has right to carry?
A Ian freeman had no felonies
Q Did he have firearm?
A No
Q Matt roach?
A no felonies either
Nobody had criminal record
Q You know who would be there right?
A No
[At 6am??? If this was a 6PM raid, ok, but after 5 year investigation they know exactly who is home at 6AM, maybe she is a liar, or just incompetent, but either way I sure hope this came off right to the jury as one or the other or both]
Q Does the Freeman house have security cameras with the ability to video record?
A Yes
Q Did you know agents tried to destroy his cameras?
A I know they attempted to disable
[they showed video of them intentionally damaging the cameras, not disabling them]
Q What is a bearcat?
A It’s an armored vehicle used by police for tactical purposes
[yea, sourced from the military and designed for the military no thanks to government programs]
Q Is that what is in the video?
A Yes
Q How many people from swat team were there?
A I don’t know
[there were 56 FBI agents there according to the prosecutor from one of the very first hearings]
They play a video of explosives being thrown at window

Q What were tact team equipped with?
A Shields…
Q Looks like automatic weapon, no?
A Yes
[conveniently failing to mention the most obvious stuff from the video]
Q How many agents? 6?
A Yes
Q What did agent rip down?
A That was for officer safety!
I don’t know what that was
[they ripped down a peace sign, but she conveniently won’t admit what it was.. seems to be a pattern here of the government agents not recognizing stuff indicative of a ministry]
Q Any indication that there was any verbal resistance?
A I don’t know
Q Any reports of threats?
A Not that I know of
Video of Mr Nobody is played for court
Q Any firearms or weapons?
A It does not appear in that frame
[what about the other frames??]
Video of Matt coming out of house is played for court
Q What is Matt Roach’s attire?
A He is in a t-shirt and has no shoes on
Q Any resistance from Matt?
A No
Video of Ian coming out is played for court
Q What is Ian Freeman’s attire?
A Sweatshirt
Q Who is with him?
A Dog
[I guess Ian Freeman wasn’t about to let them shoot the dog, he’s holding him in the video as he comes out, certainly to protect him from the police as they like to shoot dogs]
Video of Bonnie coming out is played for court
Q The one you weren’t sure was there?
A Yea
[this women interrogated Bonnie and lied about it on the stand for some reason or other]
Q Does she have anything on feet?
A I can’t see in this frame
[how convenient, she’s avoiding answering the question, Bonnie was barefoot and made to put on shoes with glass in them]
Q Any indication of resistance?
A No
They play a video of an agent attempting to and actually destroying a camera with what was I believe an automatic firearm
Q What is agent doing?
A Disabling camera
Q Is this standard procedure?
A I’m not on swat team so I wouldn’t know
Q Might be that they didn’t want to see people like a jury seeing them do bad stuff?
A We are professionals!
[she acts all shocked!]
[ room laughs hysterically given we’ve all just watched video of them behave unprofessionally and then lie about it, the judge however erupts in anger at the courtroom because of automatic reactions people have when other people say absolutely batshit crazy stuff, at least some of this video including the FBI destroying the camera is posted publicly and available at TheCrypto6.com or on odysee directly at https://odysee.com/$/embed/FBI-Raids-FTL-2021/beccf363b14222723dde8bad26f18c4ed3a0136b?r=uzeVx1wy6w7bXhFWKiHNnHAiQvPfC7kA ]
Q What is that?
A Bearcat with battering ram
Q People already came out right?
A I wouldn’t know. I don’t know if this was cut.
[I’m not certain if this video is all at TheCrypto6.com, but it probably is and you can tell the order of stuff happening based on the time stamps on the video]
Prosecution now cross cross examines the witness
Q Was this the only search?
A No
Several other sites in state were searched
Q Did any others have swat teams?
A No
[this is interesting given that I’m 99.999% sure that other searches involved folks who owned firearms also which means “officer safety” was nothing more than an excuse to target the person they were really wanting to hurt, ie because Ian Freeman is behind Free Talk Live and Ian Freeman’s show has people on criticizing not just the government but the FBI, IRS, Treasury, and every other government agencies every night for 3 hours 365 days a a year on around 200 radio stations and then other outlets as well ]
Q Why swat this location?
A High power rifles and a full size sword
[what she is calling a sword was Mr Nobody’s gardening tool]
Q Was anyone hurt in this event?
A No
[this is actually incorrect, the victims that the feds were targeting were injured by the feds blowing in of a window and Bonnie or Ian’s girlfriend, now wife received aid after release from federal detainment, and the primary one injured was not involved in cryptocurrency sales or the reason for which they were raiding and no charges or accusations have ever been made about Bonnie during this investigation]
Q Where was the call out?
A It happened
[keep in mind they played the video which showed the FBI pulling up to the house and at no time did they call out unless a flash bang grenade is now what constitutes calling out]
“They just didn’t cooperate”
[it’s a few minutes after 6am so even if they had called out it’s unlikely anyone would have heard it given they were asleep, but I was not and fortunate enough to have good instincts and some forewarning and arrived before anyone inside new the feds were outside about to bust in, and I watched and filmed the whole raid from across the street, and then a block away and can attest to the fact that no “call out” occurred as was required by the warrant given it wasn’t a no-knock issued warrant]
Q Time?
A 6AM
Q Once the residence was secured what happens?
A Swat then leaves
Q What were you wearing?
A Cargo pants traditional pants
[I think what he was trying to demonstrate was just how cold it was outside and what outrageous conditions they made the victims of the raid suffer through, remember one person had no shoes on! It was something in the negatives, I want to say -20 below, but even if it was only freezing it was COLD and people were made to wait outside for a bit]
Q How far is Matt’s bedroom from Ian’s bedroom?
A Not far
A picture of matts room is shown to the court
Q You know what was found in matts room?
A Weapons, firearms
Q Do you see a bunch of weapons?
A Yes
Defense cross examines witness
Q You knew of Matt Roach before the search right?
A Yes
Q You knew he had no criminal record, right?
A Yes
Q You know he had a completely separate room right?
A Yes
Q There was a call out right?
A Yes
Q Do you know that dust or flakes are occurring in the video?
A I don’t know
[it’s a video that clearly shows a flash bang grenade of some kind being thrown at the house and going off]
Q Do you know if a flash bang grenade is a call out?
A No
[is she seriously suggesting she does not know if a flash bang grenade is a call out? If this doesn’t destroy her credibility with the jury there is no hope for a win at this trial]

[ Day 3 continued, as I ran out of time to include the rest of the the original story here it is below ]

New witness called

Name: Kevin Mccusker

FBI agent

Portland main office

2 years with this office

Prior he was with the Boston field office

His was part of the white collar crime squad

Duties included:

Gathering evidence and info and speak to witnesses about violations of federal law

[ I believe this is the defense cross examining below and the prosecutor mostly just asked questions about the guys qualifications above ]

Q Background info before volunteering?

A Yes

Q You aware of warrant

A Yes

Q Role?

A Assisted in search of residence

A photo of the studio is presented as evidence on screen

A crypto photo is shown

Q Did you hear anything?

A No

Q Call out?

A No

Q Flash bang grenade ?

A Don’t recall

Q How far away were you?

A ~1-2 blocks

Q How many total agents?

A “I don’t know”

15-20 maybe

The amount was appropriate based on the size of the search

[56 is the correct number of FBI agents according to the prosecutor from an early hearing, but there were many many more law enforcement agents and others there]

Q What does that window look like?

[This is a window on the Free Talk Live’s Studio of which they were raiding]

A Broken

Q Do you know why?

A No, not specifically

New Witness

Manchester Police Detective

Name: feather ? [it was hard to hear]

Patrol officer

He was on a task force for FBI: state st task force

It focused on drugs and violent crime

Q Sometimes you help other groups?

A Yes

Q Who did you help?

A Katie

Several search warrants

Where: 142 Chestnut Rd, Derry NH

Q Had info?

A Search warrant had minimal information

Photo of house shown on screen [like above]

Q Involved in swat?

A No

Looking for electronic devices

Found 2 phones

New witness

Special agent

Name: Scott Odonell

FBI Bedford residential agency

27 Years with FBI

Helping with search

“general review”

Information on what to seize

659 Marlboro St in Keene

 

 

 

 

[This is Aria’s house, a co-defendant in the case that took a plea deal]

The government put up a bedroom photo

Explained found cellular telephone on bed

The agent interviewed aria briefly

[ Aria was smart enough to be what they’d call uncooperative, providing no useful information voluntarily for them to use against her ]

New witness

Detective

Name: U Kaljita

Brookline police Department, MA

A detective since 2015

Patrol

Certified forensics examiner

Worked for computer crimes laboratory

Did cell phone and call line analysis

Qualifications included:

12 week course in advanced crime scene analysis

Learned about bitcoin

1. How to acquire data from difference devices
2. Continuing education
3. CCPA self certified basic and advanced forensics analysis

ID and preserve device in field

In lab same role take measures to preserve data

Specialized in general digital forenstics

Most common is cell phone

Examples ~1,000 phones

Certified in tool used with cell phone

Celltrack program used to preserve data and make human readable

Catalogs into pictures videos etc

Produces compressed image (cell brite)

Role: extract, process, review, and examine Ian’s devices

[this was weird, because it seems they are taking Aria’s devices and then saying they are ian’s not really clear]

Exhibit #1

hdd contains three cell brite reports

Did you analyze three devices maintained

Q Is examination similar?

A Yes, of Ians 3 phones examined, photo’d and assigned unique ID

Analyzed in Chelsea, MA

• no network
• take sim card out

This is important because people can remotely wipe phones

[wipe is another term for delete the contents of the phones, and thus evidence]

Q Next?

A Notes on devices

Q Then?

A extract data from device with cell brite tool premium

Q How do you know it’s accurate?

A Hash of data file alphanumeric value, like a fingerprint like 15- digits and can be longer but not sure how big

Q How do you use to know you made accurate copy?

A Check the values match

Q Did you check the value of all three devices?

A Yes

Cell brite physical analyzer

At first in digital format

Tool makes 1’s and 0’s human readable

ie pictures, videos, etc

Q Is that what can be searched?

A Yes

Q Is this like on phone?

A No

The government puts up a picture of photo data that has been extracted, or more like meta data, information about the phone

It includes same email as listed in localbitcoin.com data bitcoinbombshell user

I sent report to case agent

Q Do you get everything?

A Not always

We make a bit for bit copy

Q Can you get deleted data?

A Sometimes

I may have remnants of data but not all data

[ this is how people get convicted of murder when they didn’t actually murder anyone, those remnants of data may be “How to kill” but not include “mocking bird”, the one makes you think they searched for how to kill someone and if combined with the later just looking up a classic book ]

New witness

Chris Rietman

Q PA to NH? Why?

A It was more expensive to live in PA than NH, loss of rights

Q Why NH?

A I looked around country and found NH

Q Why NH?

[Notice the prosecutor here is trying to force him to say he’s a free stater because there are folks on the jury who indicated that they hate free staters yet still are on the jury]

A It’s the live free or die state

Libertarian

I’m not a free stater

Small L libertarian

A persons rights need to be respected

As long as you are not infringing on anothers rights you should be free to do what you like

Q Why Alstead?

A High speed internet and not too far out and affordable

Southwest NH fit the bill better than other locations

Q Did you meet Ian Freeman?

A Yes, when we moved

It was suggested we attend a meetup with a bunch of people

Q Is he your friend?

A Yes

Q Met a few times?

A Yes

Q You testify via agreement with government?

A Yes, for $40

[this was hilarious, the government was paying him to testify, hmm might bias him in favor of what the government wants him to say]

Q What have you been doing in NH?

• PC [repair?] work
• Routers to avoid government survailance
• Start business
• Route 101 goods llc
• Mighty Moose Mart

Q Who owns building?

A Rented from Shire Free Church Holding LLC

Q Tenent?

A Ian Freeman

Are you a member ?

No one has told me they are members of the Shire Free Church, but Ian is

Q You paid rent?

A Yes- gave deal on rent when starting business

Q Direction of chruch for crypto church of new hampshire

A Yes [I think]

Q Do you know religious principle?

A No

Q Have you been to a service?

A No

Q Did it stay 101 good till today?

A No

Q Why closed?

A People don’t buy gifts often

Changed to convenience store

Q Arrangement changed?

A Ian invested in business, yes, no rent if we kept space for Bitcoin embassy.

[this is actually an incorrect understanding of what the situation was… as a part owner in the business here I can attest to the fact that the convenience store rented a portion of the building from the shire free church, but as the shire free church was investing in the business too it provided the space at no charge… though this could have changed with some future negotiation once the business was off the ground potentially]

Q Was there a vending machine prior?

A Yes

Q Who was the owner?

A I don’t know, Ian operated it

Q Were you happy to have it on when you took over?

A Yes

Q Why do you like bitcoin?

A Not subject to whims of banks and politics, the dollar lost 98% of its value

Q Did you know bitcoin was pseudo anonymous?

A Yes, there is no name associated, it just works

No law can change bitcoin, it doesn’t care

Q Did you have keys to the machine?

A No, originally no

Q Do you know how it works?

A In general yes

Q Did you make video?

A No

Q Are you in video?

A Yes

[you can watch the video they played in court yourself here: https://freekeene.com/2018/08/19/how-to-buy-cryptocurrency-like-bitcoin-and-dash-in-under-two-minutes-in-keene-nh/ ]

They have terms of service of the vending machine blown up and on screen to read

Part of it said:

~”our staff don’t need to know what you use them for”

Q Video about dash?

A Yes

Q What did QR provide?

A It was to wallet

Q Did they have to ID?

A No

Q Is that how it worked?

A Yea, thats how it worked

had two keys and one let you in machine

Q What did machine charge?

A It charged no more than 14%, but it was based on market rates and changed over time, 8-14%

2017 or 2018 maybe

Q Neither had ID?

A No, it was not enabled

Q What was your role?

A I helped with machines if people had questions

Q Did you get compensation?

A I don’t remember, but most value was bringing people into the store

[I think he’s referring to when it was 101 goods here as I don’t think the Mighty Moose Mart business received anything from the machine, as that was entirely separate, something I made sure of before investing in the Mighty Moose Mart business]

I follow the principle in life I don’t need to know what you do with your money

Up to $5,000 limit

Q Did you talk to people putting money into machines?

A Yes

I did not what to know that people investing and certainly not if they doing something criminal

Q Could you do serial transactions?

A I suppose, but I never saw anyone do that

If something was troubling we would ask people to leave

A man who owned a small business for example said that they were ~”going to cut off power and I need to pay in bitcoin”

I told him it was a scam

In another incident a women came in with lots of cash to buy bitcoin

Women would get money from someone for auto parts

If we suspect scam we would stop it

Q Did you see mostly older people?

A No, all ages

High school kids all the way up to elderly

Occasionally we had family member buy bitcoin

love of life once and romance scam

Q Did you talk to Ian to do anything to stop it?

A No

Q Did you do anything?

A Yes, I made a sign to warn people of common scams

A photo with a sign saying Bitcoin Scam Warning is shown as evidence

Q But no change in functionality of machine?

A No

Q You said you had interest in bitcoin?

A Yes

Q Did you have an idea for bitcoin?

A Yes, I had idea to put bitcoin machines in airports

Q Did you decide your machines would have KYC/ be registered?

A Yes, a minimum of KYC

Q Did Ian see it?

A Yes

Q Did he have an interest?

A Yes, “no, not for me” he said

[this is hearsay, but I’m sure also true]

Q Did he ever talk to you about other machines?

A Yes, 3-4

Q Did you know he had other methods for trading Bitcoin?

A Selling bitcoin yes

[note how chris does not say trading bitcoin, he says yes to selling bitcoin]

Not know anything about it other than localbitcoin.com

Q Did he ask you to do any of this?

A I was frustrated with td bank at the time

I told him I would shut down my account

He asked if he could use it to I guess sell bitcoin

Q Did you sign agreement?

A Yes

Shows the agreement to assist shire bitcoin outreach operation 2017 on screen

Q Did ian pay you from time to time?

A Yes

ian admin

chris: assistant

Q Do you know who wrote the agreement?

A No

Agreement has to turn over account for exchange outreach

non-taxable

bitcoin undermines state going to war

20% pd to assistant

chris says made $100-1500 in early days / month

Q How were you paid?

A pd by check, cash app, or similar

Q Did you sign td bank [blank] checks and hand to freeman?

A Yes

Q Did you have to deal with account issues from time to time?

A Yes

Usually when my account was being scammed and people would claim deposit in wrong account and bank would give scammer money back

I would talk to teller sometimes

Q Did you ever talk to customer of freemans business?

A No

Q Did you open bitcoin account for exchange for freeman?

A No, not worth the time, too much paperwork

Q Did you open a 2nd bank account?

A Yes, Bank of america

Q Did you intend to use for 101 local goods?

A I intended to provide freeman access

[I believe they have put up a bank statement document on screen of which chris is referencing to give these answer ]

Q How much money?

A $787,300.63 in 1 month

Q Is counter credit cash?

A I guess

Q $185,000 huffman 4 transactions

Schmit $65,000

Said it was wire for orphanage

outgoing wires all say to ian freeman

and checks too

Q Not made to shire free church right?

A Yes

[Yea, except that doesn’t mean it wasn’t for the shire free church, you can write your legal name or the name of your business and BOTH are acceptable to the bank]

Q Did you want to stop?

A Yes, banks were getting irritable by cash deposits, and it took too much of my time

They show a document on screen as evidence that says it’s a termination agreement

2/12/2020

It includes a $6,000 severance

Resignation from crypto churhc

The defense now cross examines Chris Rietman

Q you were involved in it for quite a while?

A Yes

Q Why did you gravitate to it?

A It was money not controlled by banks and governments

Q Good arrangement for you?

A Yes, 101 local goods was not doing well and this supplemented the income for the business

Q Is Ian a good guy?

A Yea

Q Kept agreements?

A Yes

Q Did he ever indicate he operated a money laundering service or worked with scammers?

A No

Q What did he express?

A He expressed gratitude someone was using bitcoin for good, to build orphanages overseas

Q Did he encourage you to prey on old ladies?

A No

Q What did scam warning sign say?

A Bitcoin Scam Alert

it included information on common scams like romance scams and utility bill scams

It was in a public space where people would see it

Q Why was it called a vending machine?

A The term vending machine means one way, it’s not connected to the banks

A vending machine is something you put money into and get something of value out of

Q Who owned it?

A Ian or the the shire free church

Q Product sold was by church, someone else?

A Yes

It did not go out to third party, it was sending it’s own product to individuals, yes

[this is super important, because if it had sold someone elses bitcoin it would be an exchange and not a vending machine and an exchange would be regulated under money transmission laws]

Q The terms of service said “you must use a QR code from wallet you control”, Why?

A he does not want third party involved in transaction

Another term was “Don’t need to know you want them”

Q Did anyone explain why they wanted anything at 101 local goods?

A No, no where they got there money from

Q What were the demographics of people using the machine?

A They were all over the place

Q It wasn’t a hang out for some particular demographic?

A Right

Q Did freeman ever say to let people be scammed?

A Ian was like we shouldn’t care what people do with there own money

Q Was anyone concerned with fees?

A Yes

But the machines were charging about market rate

[I’d say they were below market rate during much of their operating life, though got more expensive as the government cause the cost of running things to go up, but still were well within market rate!!!]

[ An interesting thing occurred at this point that we noticed… there was a change in courtroom procedure because the public wasn’t standing for the judge, but we were standing for the jurors, and thus the judge is now walking in after the jurors whereas before he was walking in sitting down, and then having the jurors come in, the public was showing respect for the juror, but not the judge ]

chris rietman defense cross examination

kiosks

Q Lack of ID you agree right?

A Yes

Q Did anyone like that?

A Yes, it was nice for a $20 purchase

All people felt they should not have to ID just to buy something

fees were variable

I often asked % they were

I always expected the price to be higher

Checks

Q you kept account open?

A Yes

Q That account actually making 101 money, right?

A Yes

[ This is an important point the defense lawyer is making, while Ian was using those checks, this activity was bringing in money for 101 goods, so it was part of 101 goods business ]

Q How much did it make route 101 goods?

A I don’t recall, but we never retired

Maybe $1000-2000 / month

Q Same with other account?

A Yes

It was keeping our business alive

Q Ian was a pretty good landlord right?

A Yes

Ian was always willing to work with us during hard times

Q Good landlord then?

A Yes

Q good guy to be in business with?

A Yes

Q Good friend?

A Yes

Prosecutor asks some more questions of chris

Q You opened 101 local goods?

A Yes

Q You didn’t tell the bank the real reason for the account?

A They never asked

sometime would ask why open account and I’d explain we are a consignment shope

Q You could not stand by machine 24/7, right?

A Right

Q When open it could have taken ID?

A No

Because not enabled

Q Airport business would be vending business?

A yes

Q You said you would register with FinCEN?

If I got to a level I would be a money transmitter

two-way is why I’d need to register

The vending at 101 local goods store was not tied to exchanges, but in my idea it would connect to exchanges

This is why I’d have to register with FinCEN whereas the 101 local goods store vending machine operated by Ian did not have to register

Q What were fees?

A 5% up to 10% depending on a lot of factors

But always would have to be something

Q How much you made total?

A No idea

$6,000 was most we ever got

Defense asks more questions

Q Car scam would it be stopped if you showed license? Would it stop scam?

Prosecutor asks more questions

Q Id won’t stop illegal transaction?

A No

Q Drug dealer would think twice if ID?

A No, but I would have stopped them

Prosecution

Q Could ID stop some transactions though?

A Yes, some possibly

Next up for testifying is Colleene Fordham

61 years old

What does she do? Works at Mighty Moose Mart

Owner: Ian Freeman

Moved ~8 years ago from PA

Worked previously for delta insurance

Q Do you share same libertarian views as husband?

A Yes, but not as strongly

Q You were charged with money laundering and wire fraud and had an agreement to testify?

A yes

[ note: she didn’t take a plea deal, they dropped the charges, and the testify agreement was separate agreement not to bring other unrelated charges whether or not they were likely ]

Q How did 101 get started?

A Worked for thrift store in same location and got a brainy idea to start a craft store

Q Why was the store not successful?

A No, not really, not many people buy gifts often

Q Shire Free Church associated with Ian?

A Yes

Q His responsibility for machine?

A Ian came in and removed cash

Q Any responsibility?

A No

Q Anyone tell you why they used the machine?

A Yes

Q Who made the sign?

A Ian or Chris

Q Who used it?

A All types

Q Was ID Required?

A No

Q Did you find out about online selling?

A yes

Q Did you get asked to help?

A Yes, open bank accounts

Q You have agreement with freeman?

A Yes

Q How many accounts?

A 3

Q Did you sign blank checks to freeman?

A Yes

Q You have to deal with account issues?

A Yes

Q Happen often?

A No, but stressful because I didn’t deal with customers

They present a letter from an investigator for service credit union on screen

Q Why stressful ?

A Because I didn’t not how to handle it

“I sell rare coins like gold and silver”

Mr freeman wrote email

Q Happen often?

A No, 2 times

2018 letter goldbacks

Email to bank shown on screen proves ian did not hide bitcoin sales from banks as it explains what happens and who colleene and shire free church are.

Defense cross examines colleene fordham

Q You made a deal with government right?

A Yes, money laundering and wire fraud

Q Did you consider yourself as someone involved with money laundering or co-conspiring with one?

A No

Q Any agreement to launder money?

A No

Q Freeman on church own building?

A Yes

Q Good person to do business with?

A Yes

He is not capable of doing the sorts of things he is accused of

Q He never expressed interest in scams?

A No

Q Freeman didn’t oversea machine did right?

A Yea

Q What were the age groups that used the machine?

A 20s to 70s

Q No specific demographic?

A No

Q He would not have known if something was shady?

A No

Q Did law enforcement ever ask about the machines?

A No

Q Do cops come in?

A Yes

Q Just right there right?

A You couldn’t miss it

[Note: the fbi actually missed the machines because they were too stupid to realize that the bitcoin vending machine was in the bitcoin embassy and even raided the wrong location, they raided the mighty moose mart convience store, stole a safe, a point of sale machine, and 15 minutes later realized their mistake and returned the items ]

Q There has always been a machine in the building?

A Yes, since I’ve been there

Q you were getting something?

A Yes

Q Did he ask you to lie to banks?

A No, he discouraged it MAJORLY

Q He’s not hiding? He is writing letter right?

A Correct

Letter says “church mission is selling bitcoin online”

“We ID to stop fraud”

[Note: the letter related to online selling of bitcoin by the church, not the vending machines, as other methods were used to stop scams there, ie scam warning sign]

Q Ian is taking it upon himself to explain whats going on with the scam?

A Right

Q He is saying clearly that it is him involved in the trade right?

A Yes

Q He is not hiding the fact he is selling bitcoin to a bank investigator, right?

A Right

[this is important because the government is claiming he is misleading the banks when it fact he does tell the banks how the shire free church operates, who colleene fordham is and her relationship to the church’s operating, what bitcoin is, using the term bitcoin, etc]

Q He is giving a lot of info to the bank rep right?

A Yea

Q Still a convenience store?

A Yes

Q Is Ian still treating you fairly?

A Yes

[the prosecutors own evidence shows ian is innocent]

Prosecutor asks questions now

Q not gold and silver coins, right?

A No

[the letter says like rare coins like gold and silver, not that the thing being sold were traditional coins and bitcoin is often compared to gold and silver, it’s like it in its value, in that it is a result of being rare]

Q Not true right?

A No

[Colleene Fordham is not a technical person, she barely has a crypto wallet, and what she had hadn’t been utilized ~4 years, she doesn’t understand the question here very well]

Cross examination by the defense now:

Q Bitcoin has the word coin in it right?

A Yes

Q It’s rare, right?

A YES!

[She gets it now! Yes- bitcoin is rare coin, just not the type she was understanding or thinking]

Day 3 is over!

 

Crypto6 T-shirt Supporters Are Wearing

[ This story was updated on Dec 8 ~ 9:30 PM eastern to include more of the summary of the days testimony which I ran out of time to include prior, see further down for where the new edition starts ]

One thing to say is Ian’s lawyer is killing it. The prosecution’s doing such a terrible job that it appears they couldn’t convict a ham sandwich in a grand jury hearing where 99.99% of the time prosecutors win because there is no defense allowed.

Come out and support the Crypto6’s Ian Freeman in OUR fight against tyranny and the state. Plenty of people showed up on Tuesday throughout to support the cause. Questions are going around about the mask and ID policy. Unfortunately the court has instituted a mask required policy and a new ID policy in an attempt to deny supporters of the Crypto6 entrance. As a result of prior incidents at the court involving ID and other government monitoring of supporters the court has instituted these policies. It’s possible that someone will try to justify these policies as not being the result of our support. However the facts speak for themselves. The government instituted the ID policy in late November ~ about 30 days prior to the trial. Evidence of this has been posted above. Until jury selection and trial began there was no mask policy or no enforcement thereof. I’ve been to dozens of court hearings in the past year and none of them required a mask. Now you might be thinking- maybe it’s to protect people because there are so many people in the room. This is non-sense. The judge instructed the room that they could remove the masks on Wednesday following the exit of the jurors from the room. This policy or enforcement thereof has nothing to do with the guise of safety. It has to do with keeping supporters out. The justification by the court for the masks is due to CDC guidance when in fact the CDC has NOT recommended masks for quite some time maybe ~6 months or even much longer now.

I’d encourage people not to let this stop you from partaking in observation of the trial and the hearing. The best way to counter these policies and their main aim (to keep us out) is to resist, but ultimately comply. Compliance ensures we put up a fight while still achieving the greater aim. Ultimately this is the only thing we can really do in regard to any of these draconian efforts to undermine the guise of what they call the justice system. That is protest- fight- but do so peaceably as we always have. It’s peace that demonstrates who the real aggressors are.

My resistance led to a 45 minute delay on Tuesday and resulted in me missing part of the jury selection process. It was the best day to resist as not much happens during jury selection that is actually public despite it being “public”. No, it’s not ian that has been secretive, and having something to hide. It’s the court, it’s the government. ~3 hours of classical music playing in the background to inhibit the public from hearing the quiet whispers is right out of the soviet era. A tactic of suppressing dissent while giving the appearance of having an “open” and “free” or democratic system.

We can resist AND support Ian and freedom in more than one way simultaneously. For those who come to the main room there are free the crypto6 t-shirts that say Bitcoin is not a crime available. No charge. I will graciously accept contributions to offset the printing costs however, but more importantly is people find me and get a t-shirt. I have hundreds of crypto6 t-shirts left and I want them GONE by the time this trial is over.

What happened during Day 2 of the trial?

About 15 supporters of the Crypto6 came out to support the trial. Good job guys! Some interesting notes of the day. Where the defense had 1 layer the prosecution’s team had 6 lawyers on the prosecutions side that we know of. Other lawyers likely were helping with the case elsewhere or on other days. The disproportionate funds being spent by government to attack people are far greater than those any individual can generally afford to put into a defense as the government generally isn’t paying for a good defense.

Prosecutor

The prosecutor starts by calling Alex Commoli to the stand. Alex Commoli has an undergrad degree, has a law degree, is an attorney, and a forensics annalist.

She is involved in cyber money laundering, drugs, virtual currency, and works as a case agent alongside prosecutors. She said she worked for the “virtual currency evolving threats unit” for 5-6 years and partook in training activities. She also has worked (exclusively) online as an undercover to “infiltrate online communities”.

Q What was your role in this case?

A Looked at records

She would purchase bitcoin as an undercover agent from localbitcoins.com

Q Do you have a basic understanding of how crypto works?

A Yes

Fiat is currency backed by a government.

Q Do you have a bank account?

A Yes

Q What was the process for opening a bank account?

A Provide ID so they know who you are

Q When purchasing a car with a check whose involved in the transaction?

A Me, you, and two banks

Q What are the banks doing?

A debiting my account and crediting yours

Q In virtual space how would you do this? What does this case use?

A Bitcoin, instead of a check we do it in bitcoin

example 1 bitcoin for car

Q How do we do this transaction?

A Need something to store, send, receive

Q How do we get this?

A Via a wallet, a wallet stores Bitcoin

Q Where is the wallet gotten from?

A There are hardware wallets and web wallets

Q Both have wallets?

A There is a public and private key, an address is like a bank account

Q Private key?

A It’s equivalent to a pin or signature authority, it’s a super secure string #

Q Your wallet to my mine, how many entities are involved?

A Two. You and me.

Q For banks how many entities are involved?

A At least 4 for banks

Q How do we keep score in bitcoin?

A It’s done on the blockchain the same way banks do debits and credits

Q How do I see it?

A Download or via a website

Q How many digits is wallet?

A About ~26 to 36, I can’t remember exactly

It shows ABC2 sent money to ABC1.

Shows amount, time, and other info.

Q Wallet, time, and amount?

A Yes

Bitcoin network verifies transactions

There is no entity that is blockchain

Q Identity notification on blockchain?

A Yes

It’s pseudo anonymous

Q Could I figure out every transaction you made?

A Yes

anonymous means you can’t know

pseudo anonymous means you can know

Q Is the bank pseudo anonymous?

A No

Names are on your checks and banks know who you are

Q Can you investigate a check?

A Police can and a bank can

Q For Bitcoin?

A You can call police, but no recalling is possible

The transaction can’t be undone

It’ can’t be pulled back

Q “anonymous and unrecoverable?”

A Yes

[ The witness falsely indicates here and contradicts what she said earlier that bitcoin is psudo anonymous ]

Q Previously we presumed we already had bitcoin. If we don’t have it how do we get into it?

A Mining. The most common way is through exchanges. Places you can buy crypto..

Q Dollars to bitcoin conversation requires what?

A ID, passport, email, and other info

Q What is another way to do cash to bitcoin?

A LocalBitcoins.com

It’s like craigslist or ebay

It has different options for payment

ie it’s peer to peer or person to person

Q Another way?

Often they will go offline

Q Private sale?

A Yes

Q Other ways?

A Kiosks

You put in money and get bitcoin out

Q LocalBitcoins.com is an investigation you worked on?

A I can confirm Ian Freeman used LocalBitcoins?

[This is technically a false statement, as a forensics expert she only can confirm that someone passing through an internet connection registered in Ian’s name and might be Ian used LocalBitcoins, but it could also be another user, a name in a fraudulent account, or someone proxying through the connection, I have computer forensics training and a computer science degree, and much of what is said by computer forensics “experts” is just wrong or misleading, and this case is no different]

Q We will go through records from LocalBitcoins.com, you have been a buyer here?

A Yes

Q How?

A You put in how much of a % you want to sell and payment methods

Q Like ads for buyers?

A Yes

Q So you found an ad you liked now how do you start?

A Looked for terms like ID required

Q How do you start?

A You enter an amount and click trade. A chat box then opens with the seller.

Q How do you get money to sender?

A LocalBitcoins.com acts as an escrow service. So seller can’t make off with your money without releasing crypto. Can be done with gift cards, wires, etc. Bitcoin is released once the terms are fulfilled.

Q Is feedback important?

A Yes

Feedback is like that on Amazon and Uber and other platforms.

Q Why is feedback important?

A Buyers choose sellers based on high feedback level

[At this point they pull up a record from LocalBitcoin.com]

[This shows information in a database that LocalBitcoin.com maintains pertaining to transactions purported to be in the name of ian, and different churches, and unknown parties ]

Username is important to people as they tend not to use full or their real name.

Real name won’t show to buyer unless seller reveals it.

Q Did Ian?

A Yes

[ This is technically inaccurate as they have not and can’t confirm it is Ian behind the account, none-the-less the so called computer forensics expert testifies to it ]

Q Did he provide phone, email, address, etc?

A Yes

Q When was account created?

A ~2016

Q Last seen?

A June 3, 2020

Q 39 Ads?

A yes

Q Trades?

A 3946

Q What is this?

A drivers license to open account

[Note that a drivers license is not proof that someone opened an account, a drivers license could be obtained via a database leak from the dark web, and then utilized to open the account, while Ian doesn’t appear to be disputing this it’s not as clear cut as the forensics “expert” is making it sound]

[They now admit evidence which is a list of ians advertisements on LocalBitcoin.com]

Q What is this?

A Customer information for user bitcoinbombshell

Q Is account?

A Renee Spinella

Q Are these all to sell Bitcoin?

A Yes

Q What is a wire?

A A transaction between two bank accounts

[They now present a terms of trade document on the screen, the evidence is all being displayed on large TV screens in the courtroom]

Q When does this come up?

A Pops up if a user clicks on an ad

Q Is the time a transaction takes a concern?

A Yes

– For Bitcoin no refund

– Take a pic of entire receipt

Q Why is this important?

A Confirms funds transferred to seller

Ian’s disclaimer on screen:

~”what you do with bitcoin is your business. Don’t tell me what you do. I reserve the right to refuse sale. You certify you are buying and receiving the Bitcoin.”

Q You reviewed each trade?

A Yes

Q Was the disclaimer in every trade?

A Yes

Terms of trade

Q Due to fraud I may ask for additional info

A Yes

“depending on history I may require more info… must right for bitcoin purchase from ftl_ian”

Q “Due to fraud I have had to tighten up security?”

A Yes

Q Why?

A To protect seller

Q This one is for a wire transfer?

A Yes

“Must match government ID”

Photo of government ID required with written note “I certify I am buying Bitcoin from church of invisible hand” on the receipt is required. User name and reference # on receipt + selfie holding slip is required.

[The defense has no objection to chat log localbitcoin.com, logs are from end of 2019 until 2021, chat logs show ian refused to not follow law when buyer wanted to skirt currency transaction reporting requirements]

[The logs show that ian or purported ian is telling the buyer to say the reason for the transaction if asked by a financial institution is to purchase rare coins]

In the chat log ian says to buyer:

“I can not be seen as avoiding a cash transaction report”

“make deposit, upload photos, and then mark complete”

Account partner: 101 local goods

[What is interesting to note here is that these other entities or individuals are what are called payment processors in the industry and are a completely normal part of conducting these sorts of transactions, there are contracts between entities like convenience stores for example to receive money for goods on behalf of other parties]

~“If having agent deposit on your behalf I need ID from both”

[A this point you see a Nigerian passport posted to the chat log and a “victims ID” Mary Hurd is posted too, this evidence was posted to the docket and evidenced Mary Hurd’s involvement in a scheme to defraud the Shire Free Church, this however isn’t presented or hasn’t been, and it may be due to the fact the evidence is hearsay, but the docket evidence shows Mary Hurd told prosecutors or an FBI agent that she didn’t know the fraudster yet wrote on a receipt when buying Bitcoin that she was buying Bitcoin for the fraudster by name, at a minimum her credibility is destroyed and likely why the prosecution dropped her as a witness yet continues to utilize the chat log as evidence here against Ian, the chat log is here: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nhd.56159/gov.uscourts.nhd.56159.218.1.pdf and

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nhd.56159/gov.uscourts.nhd.56159.218.0.pdf

The prosecutor said here that Mary Hurd’s only contacts related to these transactions were with “Arnold” and she does not know Chiedu, or the fraudster, yet bought bitcoin for him according the message communicated to Ian via the receipt. She did in fact know the fraudster Chiedu if you look carefully at the evidence posted in the chat log. ]

“I certify that I am buying Bitcoin from FTL_Ian and the Shire Free Church on behalf of [Chiedu, the actual fraudsters full name]” … and todays date and signature.

[Photo of the above is written on receipt with selfie posted to chat log]

Q Does he ask for reason for buying crypto?

A No

[The scammer is getting angry in chat log for Ian and the Shire Free Churches excessive Know Your Customer compliance policies, Ian repeatedly insists in the log that the scammer follow the rules]

Q Why is he doing this?

A To ensure he gets paid

[This is the most absurd answer. It’s obvious to anyone who knows anything about financial regulations that the reason he is doing this is to comply with the law that mandates you have a policy on know your customer assuming at least you are a regulated entity of which the church is NOT under the law meaning that ANY KYC is far in excess of what is required, but it’s actually over the top and not even the banks do this level of KYC]

[A dispute is opened by the scammer after the scammer violates FTL_Ian’s terms / the church’s terms and FTL_Ian continues to insist on following the rules]

“You have not provided the required receipt selfie”

[Scammer then threatened to call police on FTL_Ian. Ian then asks scammer to restart trade and fix issues and then will send bitcoin as was agreed to]

Q What is third party trade?

A Agent marry hurd, ftl_ian, and Nigerian national

[basically the forensics expert is saying a third party trade is where there exists an additional party to the transaction, you have the person depositing money into a bank account, and the person receiving the bitcoin is a different individual]

Prosecution

Q The premises of case is “no questions asked”. There was no due diligence on Mary Hurd. This was a red flag. Our whole overarching basis of the case is Ian Freeman engaged in money laundering.

Types of Evidence

– Testimony

– Exhibits

– Stipulations

He submitted a document to the court that he did not remember having any contact with Mary Hurd. Document indicates Ian to say rare coin / investment..

Q Is there any evidence that this was a transaction for rare coins?

A No

[This is blatantly false given that Bitcoin’s value is derived from it’s rarity and the name Bitcoin literally has the word coin in the name, but the government considers the word “coin” to be a legal definition and only ever mean US currency. If you claim a euro coin is a coin you’re somehow committing a crime. Obviously there are non-government coins in existence. Often valuable, often novelty coins, etc In fact my company sells something we refer to as a novelty token, and not a coin ONLY because the government uses this to persecute people, see https://www.thinkpenguin.com/gnu-linux/gnu-slash-linux-token-tpe-linuxcensored, basically we went in and made it obvious we were being censored as we can not utilize the term coin without the risk of the government using this against us under this absurd non-logic]

[Evidence of chats is suppose to show Ian never asked why customers were purchasing crypto as if it isn’t relatively obvious… 99.9% of purchasers are buying crypto as an “investment” whether or not freedom loving folks like that and he even had Marry Hurd write rare coin OR investment]

Q Is there any evidence of buyer making a donation?

A No

[This is also false, Google defines donation as “something that is given to a charity, especially a sum of money”, and the Church is a charity and the proceeds are that “something”]

[From all this presented so far we can gather that the government thinks that retired folks buying bitcoin with retirement funds is suspicious, though it’s not at all clear why this is suspicious, it’s as if old people aren’t interested in growing their wealth, which is obviously not true]

[Prosecutor evidences Ian verified phone #s]

[The forensics analyst is asked about using IP addresses evidence and it appears the prosecutor is trying to show or verify that that the account is controlled by Ian even though this can’t be proven. What is shown is a PUBLIC IP and the expert claims it’s a device IP which just isn’t the case. There is no link connecting Ian to the account conclusively.]

Q Anonymity is not illegal right?

A No

Q Private sale of material good you don’t have to explain your doing right?

A Correct

Q Bank didn’t stop that $750k transaction we talked about earlier right?

A I can’t speak to that

Q Nobody stopped that event right?

A Yea

Q Bank questioned and freeman questioned it too right?

A Yea

Q Ian somehow worked hand in hand with fraudsters right? Any indication he worked with scammer?

A No

Q It stopped on local bitcoin if suspicious right?

A Right

Q It would be crazy if a scammer didn’t want to remain anonymous right?

A Right

Q Did Ian give out spoof’d phone #?

A No

Q Did Ian give out fake name or address?

A No

Q If anybody wanted to go after him they could, right?

A Yes

Q So he wasn’t being secretive?

A Right

[This is important because in the opening statement the government claimed he was being secretive and their own witness is saying he was not secretive]

Q Is that normal for scammers?

A No

Q People want Bitcoin everywhere, right?

A Yea

Q Did Ian know any scammers?

A Nothing I did could make that link

Q Why is age important?

A Indicator of fraud can be age particularly with Bitcoin

We consider this to be red flag

[Wow- the prosecutors own witness testifies to the fact the government is expecting people to discriminate, likely illegally against old people, this conflict makes you a criminal whether you do or don’t comply with the governments interpretation of the regulations]

Q How many transactions did Ian do?

A Over 3,000

[note: it was ~3900, just shy of 4000!!!!]

Q 20 transactions seems like a small # out of over 3,000 transactions, right?

A Yea

Q Did you read Ian’s reviews? The feedback

A Yes

Q Good reviews?

A Yes, customers were satisfied

Q No scams or people being ripped off?

A Correct

Q Did Ian ever meet the Nigerian national?

A No

Q Did anyone follow up on the international scammers?

A Not to my knowledge

Q Why would someone document ID?

A Not a robot, a real person, and be able to dispute a transaction

[Aww this is a crazy answer, it’s obviously done for legal reasons, ie KYC]

Q It would be to protect against scams, right?

A Yea

[Then she admits its to stop scammers !!!! which is what KYC is for]

Q If government wanted to investigate they could because Ian had documented buyers, right?

A Yea

Q Did FBI ever go to Ian and ask for help?

A I’m not aware of that

[great answer, obviously they didn’t]

Q He had protocols to ID people, right?

A Yes

Q Did he try to corneal anything from the FBI?

A No

Q Before Bitcoin there were scammers, right?

A Yea

Q They used gift cards before bitcoin right?

A Yea

Q Nothing secretive about Ian’s bank accounts right?

A Yea

[Governments witness admits Ian didn’t commit a crime as the governments argument is or was he committed fraud against the banks, this part of the charges were dropped before trail]

Q When did bitcoin start?

A 2009

Q Did physical bitcoin ever exist?

A No

[Sort of right sort of wrong, but psychical coins existed after Bitcoin was invented, but more of a novelty item than actual Bitcoin even though they “held” Bitcoin]

Q Original value of Bitcoin was zero, right?

A Yea

Q People liked it because you didn’t have to tell anyone what you were buying, right?

A Yea

Q If you pay in cash for a car nothing is illegal about that right?

A Right

Q Freeman was concerned about impostors right?

A Yes

Q Is this normal for scammers?

A He wanted to make sure they had him

Q Scammers don’t try to protect people, right?

A No, not usually

Prosecutor counters cross examination

Q He is a money launder, not a scammer, right? That’s the government allegation, right?

A Yea

Q Ever Ask about source of funds in transactions we looked at?

A No

[umm 20 carefully selected transactions, but what about the 3880 transactions you DIDN’T look at????]

Q Are scammers hard to find?

A Often can be

Q Are these church entities the scammers?

A No

Q What point of bank account?

A To receive money

Defense responds:

Q banks didn’t ask where money cam from either?

A I couldn’t speak to that

[Obviously not, or if they did it didn’t stop them from doing business either]

Q Is it your experience good old money launders give their real info?

A Sometimes

[holly crap- sure, sometimes, but certainly that isn’t normal]

Q Is that the normal though?

A Yea, not the normal

[Government witness even admits it]

Q He’s flesh and blood, not a shell company, right?

A Yea

 

[ note: the below was added at ~9:30 eastern December 8th as I ran out of time to include it prior to a following day trial ]

Prosecutor

Theodore Valahakis

Works for: US department of treasury (Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, FinCEN)

Works as: Compliance officer

Education: BA and JA School of law…. [missing full name of school]

Joined in 2009

Bank Secrecy Expert

Answers how to comply with banking laws

Could call or email

Then became compliance enforcement officer

Help with enforcement actions

Help banks to understand rules

Q What is bank secrecy act?

A Requires banks to file reports and report suspicious activity

It applies to financial institutions:

– MSBs or Money Service Businesses

– Casinos

– Hedge Funds

Money services business is based on the type of business that is conducted

– Cash checking

– Money transmission

– Prepaid access

– Postal service

Money transmitters are those who transmit funds by any means

Q How about exchanging Bitcoin?

A Yes because if you exchange for fiat you are a money transmitter

Q Exceptions exist?

A Yes

example: If you cash an employees paycheck once you are not a money transmitter

Depends on facts and circumstances

Q What makes you regulated?

A Regular transmission occurs

1-2 in a year wouldn’t constitute being a money transmitter

FinCEN offers a money service business home page

– It has faqs

– Rulings

– A helpline

Q Guidance on virtual currency?

A Yes, 2013 laid out compliance for users, businesses, etc

A user is someone who make it or spends it

Exchanges virtual currency for fiat is a money transmitter

Q Does size matter for being a money transmitter?

A No

Q Does it it matter if business describes itself as a money transmitter?

A No

Q Does guidance on kiosks exist?

A Yes

Those were in 2014 and just clarify virtual currency for real money makes you a money transmitter

Q Manor does not manor?

A No

Q Are there registration requirements?

A Yes, all must register within 180 days

The form has bank info, name

There is no fee to register

States have their own requirements

Q Registering with the state does not matter?

A Right

All are required to have an anti-money laundering program

1. Policy, procedures, internal controls

2. Compliance officer

3. Education and training

4. Independent review

1. Policy should include:

a. When suspicious what to do

b. Know your customer [aka example you could include an ID requirement, though KYC does not specify this]

c. When to close account

 

KYC means use of business and type of transactions policy to ask purpose of transmission

[note: the mere sale of crypto wouldn’t necessarily have a intended purpose, only transmission might say if you bought goods, odd for bitcoin sale]

Reporting requirements include those that do all cash transactions over $10k in one business day

Purpose is to help with investigations like who is on behalf of etc

[the guy got this wrong… the # was lowered to $8k recently, assuming this law actually applies which it does not in this unique case, sad that I know more than he does]

Suspicious Activity Report

– They believe possible suspicious transmission occurs

– Most common is called structuring, for example someone deposits $9,900 to avoid being reported

[note: later the prosecutor introduces evidence that actually shows Ian ensured that structuring did not occur]

– Breaking up to avoid currency transaction reports,

[ ie depositing $8,000, then $5,000, yea, people get charged with this all the time for merely going about their business and not actually breaking up anything just because it can appear that they did ]

– Lower income person who starts sending millions of dollars

– 40 boxes, and custom box exist

– Unregistered MSB is an example of the above

info collected for narrative for report

Q How do they collect it?

A Type of guidance on how to identify and report

– Faq

– How to complete SARs

– Webinars

Elder fraud guidance

– Elderly all of a sudden wants to transfer large sums

[ my dad just bought a house and he’s elderly.. I guess he’s a victim of fraud for taking out a lot of money ]

– Does not know what it is

– Direction or control of someone else

Q Purpose of suspicious activity report?

– Bank name

– Suspect info, ID, address, payment instrument

– Find patterns across financial institutions

[ take note that the church is not a financial institution as it DOES NOT transmit anything, not a money transmitter of any kind, important down the line, evidence on day 3 ]

Q Does FinCEN reach out to register?

A Yes

FinCEN sent email to entities indicating it was believed to be a money services business

Shire Cryptocoin FinCEN Letter is shown on screen

Sent via email

2013 guidance sent in 2018

“letter says it isn’t targeting any specific entity”

[ meaning it’s a general letter to lots of businesses]

Letter sent to Shire Cryptocoin

[ take note: no one knows who this is… but it isn’t Ian, it’s not any of the churches involved in the Crypto6s ]

Q What circumstances led to this letter being sent?

A Part of general program

Q Did anyone ever respond to letter?

A No

[ this is a holy crap because it means no kiosk ever responded to their letters as requested, remember this is the prosecution asking this, NOT the defense ]

Q Can you identify if a business registered?

A Yes

Certified letter show business never registered

[ Which one? Shire Cryptocoin? No such entity exists connected to the crypto6 ]

Q Never filed suspicious activity report?

A That would not be possible

[ I’d presume that to mean you can’t file if you aren’t registered ]

Defense cross examination

Q Via electronic delivery?

A Yes

Q Has no human name?

A Correct

Q Not directed to Ian Freeman?

A Correct

Q Who runs Shire Cryptocoin?

A I don’t know

Q Was this even read by Ian Freeman?

A I don’t know

Q All you can testify to is this is a common letter sent to people?

A Right

Q You don’t know if Ian Freeman ever received this letter?

A I do not know

Q On any of the addresses in email or FinCEN letter do you see Ian Freeman, Shire Free Church, or Shire Bitcoin?

A No

Q Shire Cryptocoin?

A No

Q You have no idea if Shire Cryptocoin has anything to do with Ian Freeman?

A I don’t

Q The purpose of this letter is to tell public what is legal not, right?

A Right

Q The law does not have Bitcoin included until 2021, right?

A Correct

It redefined Money Service Business to include real currency or anything that substitutes for it

[ this is important because they have charged Ian with a crime that didn’t exist until after he was arrested, in the United States this is unconstitutional, this is the definition of an ex post facto law, or a law that retroactively changes the legal consequences (or status) of actions that were committed, or relationships that existed, before the enactment of the law. Note: that at least it would if applied, but it doesn’t because it only applies to those doing what Ian did AFTER he was no longer able to do it any more due to his bail restrictions, and he didn’t ]

Q Never asked to search suspicious activity for Mary Hurd?

[Mary Hurd was a supposed victim of a scammer who we found out the prosecutors evidence actually revealed that she knowingly took part in the scamming and defrauding the shire free church and knew the scammer by his real name and then lied about it based on a receipt where she wrote she was buying bitcoin for said scammer using his legal name, and then lying to the FBI and saying she hadn’t heard the name of the scammer before, they dropped her as a witness as a result of this, but it appears the prosecutions claims can’t be used due to the FBI interview not being done under oath, so sadly the jury never gets to hear that these “victims” in at least some instances were in fact defrauding the shire free church

Evidence of the fraud against the shire free church is available from the prosecutors own submitted evidence which you can find here:

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nhd.56159/gov.uscourts.nhd.56159.218.1.pdf

and here:

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nhd.56159/gov.uscourts.nhd.56159.218.0.pdf

]

A No

I did not search for any of the scammers

Q Don’t know if banks complied, right

A Right

[so they didn’t investigate the actual scammers and don’t know if even the banks were doing any KYC, yet Ian Freeman and the Shire Free Church’s policy was to always do KYC on new customers to the determent of the churches financial benefit]

Note: The day is over and the witness testimony continues on day 3

 

Protest Outside US District Court Ahead Of Trial

The first day of the Crypto6 trial (Dec 6th, 2022) went well for the Crypto6’s defense. More on that in a bit. There appeared to be about ~25 supporters in attendance although not everyone was in any one place all at once. Some were protesting outside, some were denied entry to the courthouse due to an attempt at suppressing support for the crypto6 through new ID and mask rules. 4+ people were denied access for having religious or health objections to the new mask mandate. 3+ people were explicitly denied entry for a newly created and enforced ID rule written in response to people Crypto6 supporters objecting to a not legally authorized demand for ID that existed prior to November. The paperwork was finally obtained evidencing this and is available from the Telegram and Matrix read-only update groups which can be joined via links at TheCrypto6.com

Many news organizations came out to report on the only jury trail to be held in the past 2+ years at US District Count in the District Of New Hampshire. The short list of reporting organizations that were in attendance included at least NBC, the Union Leader, the Sentinel, and an independent documentary crew.

One of the most interesting things I learned about the jury selection process at the federal level is that while it’s “open” to the public to attend the majority of the proceedings are secret. The judge started off with providing information on the process and there being juror questions. Potential jurors were then questioned, of which we learned nothing more than there name and what each potential juror looked like in ~2-3 hours of interviews. In the background all you could hear was some classical music playing over the loudspeaker.

The judge qualified 36 jurors and of those 15 were selected for jury duty with 4 alternatives selected.

The process gives the defense and prosecution an opportunity to ask the group of jurors questions. Some of these were quite interesting.

Except for at the end of the trail the prosecution generally goes first, as they have the burden of proof.

The prosecution utilized this time to ask these questions of the jurors or potential jurors:

How many don’t own a PC? Two responded that they didn’t.

How many don’t own a smart phone? One person responded that they didn’t (he did have a landline however).

How many don’t have an email address? One responded that they have no email address.

They also asked about social media to which nearly everyone had some form of social media.

A question on how many in the crowd were early adopters got a response that only 5 in the crowd would consider themselves early adopters. An early adopter is someone who seeks out the latest technology rather than waiting until it’s established and more widespread to pick it up.

Interestingly while most didn’t consider themselves early adopters about half considered themselves tech savvy and two indicated that they were uncomfortable with tech altogether.

Nearly everyone indicated that they had at least heard of crypto before, but just one indicated that they owned crypto. That juror was promptly dismissed.

Most of the crowd believed that the average age of a crypto user was under 30.

Only half of the crowd had heard of the Nigerian prince email scam and the same was true of the grandson in jail scam.

The general consensus of the jurors was that older people were more vulnerable to scams.

The defense utilized this time to ask the following questions:

What is the reason people have not bought crypto? Some of the reasons given by juror included:

– I work too hard to give my money away

– I don’t understand it

– It’s a pyramid scheme

– I prefer physical assets that have tangible value

– Scared of hackers

– Volatility

Many thought that people not understanding it made it good tool for scammers to take advantage of.

Many believed crypto to be what scammers use.

Of the juror or potential jurors 10 thought that crypto led to more scams.

One juror said in the early days of crypto it was not backed by government.

At least one juror felt he leaned toward crypto being “shady”.

I made as many statistical observations as I could. While not ideal this boiled down to the federal court utilizing a very secretive process by which to select jurors. While the jury selection process is open to the public the actual interview questions and responses are not. This leaves the public with nothing other than what might be available from statistical observations based on outwardly appearances. Thus you may get a feel for the potential juror makeup without any good idea if the process was actually fair or just.

– 22 out of 36 potential jurors had gray hair, no hair, or hair loss

– 10 or more of the 36 potential jurors had brought their own masks to court rather than utilize ones provided by the court at no charge

– 16 of the 36 potential jurors were women

– 100% of the potential jurors were white

– 12 of 36 juror wore glasses

Of the 36 potential jurors they concluded by selecting 15 with 4 being alternatives that can be utilized should people get sick or otherwise miss a day of jury duty.

At this point the judge adjourns the jury for lunch, but not before saying that the jurors will not be exiting from the front door of the building due to “a lot of activity”. This was code for Mr Bitcoin. Mr Bitcoin attended a protest outside the courthouse alongside many reporters and other peace loving activists who support Ian Freeman & the Crypto6.

Once the jurors are released for lunch a bit more back and forth occurs in the courtroom between the judge, defense lawyer, and prosecutor’s team of lawyers.

One issue that was brought up is that the prosecution wants to utilize a prior co-defendant Renee Spinella as a witness in the case. As she has taken a plea deal she could in theory be forced to testify. However there remains an issue because while she can’t be charged again at the federal level forcing her to testify could be self incriminating at the state level should one of any number of intertwining states wish to prosecute her. This is not considered an issue of double jeopardy, but what it does mean is she is likely able to take the 5th despite having taken a plea deal. The defense also revealed that she is considering withdrawing her plea. However, this is unlikely to actually be possible as the circumstances where this can be done are severely limited. If she was poorly advised there however may be grounds for withdrawal, but such withdrawal are rarely granted as the burden on the defendant of proving incompetence is high.

One of the most interesting things in the trial was that jurors were explicitly banned from tooting. Tooting is like Tweeting, but via a more decentralized or federated technology. While there is a standard protocol this generally means Mastodon. This may very well be the first time a federal court has brought up a decentralized or federated social networking platform.

Another interesting note is that the judge said that witnesses will not be wearing masks.

Prosecution

Ian ran a money transmitting business.

That business was a money laundering business.

The one goal to not know where the money came from.

He was involved in romance scams.

He would receive scam money and give Bitcoin in return.

He was intentionally disengaged to serve scammers.

It’s your business. Don’t tell me what you use the Bitcoin for.

No expert is needed to understand Bitcoin.

Selling Bitcoin is not illegal, but Ian’s selling of Bitcoin was illegal.

Bitcoin is pseudo anonymous.

There is no name or account info.

Nobody knows its yours unless you tell them.

It can’t be recalled.

These unique properties are desired by scammers.

Victims don’t know what Bitcoin is.

Ian’s business was involved in:

– Cash deposits

– Wire transfers

 

– Stacks of cash sent via the mail

Ian charged 10% and sometimes 20% fees!

Ian helped scammers remain anonymous.

There are laws to stop the very types of crimes Ian engaged in.

Businesses have to comply with rules to protect people. This primarily revolves around the bank secrecy act.

This includes:

– Registering with FinCIN

– Having an anti money laundering policy

– Filing suspicious activity reports with the government

He also had an obligation to stop suspicious activity.

– He did not register

– He did not do other things like file currency transaction reports

– Or file suspicious activity reports

He boasted he respected the scammers privacy.

Ian sold crypto via:

– Kiosks

– LocalBitcoins.com

– Telegram

His central basis for doing business was: what you do with your bitcoin is your business. Don’t tell me what you do with it.

Kiosk not registered

Completely anonymous

He advertised:

“You can get crypto online in various ways. The cheaper ones don’t respect your privacy.”

He’d say to employees:

– Big spenders

– Major wales

He had signs that said “Do not tell staff what you do with your coin. It’s your business to do what you want with it.”

This catered to scammers.

Ian proceeded to expand the business from kiosks to online crypto sales and hired employees.

This enabled him to reach people nationwide.

This was more complicated and he had to use banks to do it.

Banks follow rules.

They would frequently close Ian’s accounts.

At this point she admits Ian did KYC and said that to banks when he did disputes.

He directed people to tell banks deposits were:

– Church donations

– Purchases of virtual goods

– Rare coins

Then afterward he told people to write a different note on receipts about purchasing Bitcoin.

He would sometimes ask for a phone # to verify people knew what they were doing.

He would claim to be a victim to the banks when a recall occurred.

Ian said to contact him via Telegram and in PC he kept selfies of pics on his PC.

Victims never communicated with Ian.

He never asked too many questions.

We’re going to talk about one victim. A 76 year old victim. She sent 3 transactions totally $75,000 over 3 days. Ian charged a 10% fee.

Ian hired people to open banks accounts.

Ian opened bank accounts or had people open bank accounts in the name of churches. Church Of The Invisible Hand. The Shire Free Church. Crypto Church Of NH. Reformed Satanic Temple. Shire Peace Church.

Never told banks he opened accounts for Bitcoin.

He would tell banks he opened accounts for church outreach.

He never paid taxes.

– Conspiracy

– Tax evasion

– Money laundering of wire frauds

He shared 55 clients with Aria.

He made a sale of Bitcoin to an undercover FBI agent posing as a drug dealer.

In response to questions from the undercover FBI agent posing as a drug dealer asking about KYC Ian responded he disables all that.

The undercover agent went and bought crypto from one of Ian’s vending machines two weeks later and paid a 14% fee.

Ian “looked the other way”.

At this point the defense lawyer gets up and has the opportunity to make his own opening statement and responds to many of the claims of the prosecutor:

Can’t omit things.

(Ie meaning the government is lying)

Sisti says: “government made up stories”, “freemans not a scammer”

If freeman worked with scammers “place scammer on stand”

(note: there is no scammer on the prosecution’s witness list to base the argument of him working with scammers off)

[They] “investigated Ian for years”

[They] “made him out to be bad man”

Ian is most likely the least violent man in this courtroom.

Ian got money back from a scammer for a mother.

He helped a Texas investigator.

Church is real.

Church does real things.

Aided homeless in Keene.

Fed the homeless.

Helped with the courts.

Helped with community service.

“Setup orphanages in Uganda”

Lots of misconceptions going around.

Time to clear the air.

Freeman setup a mosque for the Keene’s Muslim community.

He helps local businesses accept Bitcoin.

He shows them how to do it for free!

Many businesses use his help.

Freeman is not secretive.

Photos have his name on them.

Record of transactions.

Warns people of scams.

Refuses to partake in scams.

He rejects deals.

He turns people away.

He works with law enforcement, on more than one occasion.

Money transmission came info effect post 2002.

Bitcoin did not exist in 2002.

Statute does not even mention Bitcoin.

Corrected only after arrest, and the law then only went into effect in Jan 2021.

Freeman is not in a business.

He’s not even transmitting anything.

Freeman relied on the law to protect himself.

Freeman sought a licensed attorney for legal opinion and relied upon that legal opinion:

The legal opinion said:

1. He was not operating a business

2. Church is not involved in exchange

3. Bitcoin is owned by church, not involved in moving other peoples money

No criminal intent whatsoever.

The banking commissioner of New Hampshire even testified that they are not money transmitters, but simply vending crypto.

Nefarious actors do not get:

– Drivers license photos

– Photos, selfies

All this was preserved for years.

What bank allowed $750,000 to be transferred by a 76 year old?

Freeman is not working hand in hand with scammers.

He warned people of scammers and they still would do transactions.

The undercover agent posing as a drug dealer is a sorry excuse to hang charges on Ian.

Ian refused to do business with the undercover agent.

Freeman told him no.

Why did the undercover agent need to go to the vending machine if Ian agreed to sell him crypto?

This was a “forced transaction”.

Told after the fact.

“I can not tell you you can use that”

What was he suppose to do? Post an armed guard in front of the vending machine?

Vending machines were operated for years at one location without problems. The owner at Murphy’s Taproom said there were zero complaints.

Murphy’s Taproom is open to the public, police, liquor commission, etc.

Remember what I said earlier. We are a “rule of law nation”.

It’s not a “good enough system” that we have.

You all agreed to follow the rules.

We need you now to watch and keep an open mind.

Burden of proof is on them, and it is a heavy one, “beyond a reasonable doubt”.

Sisti asks jury to vote “not guilty”- they failed

That concludes day 1 of the Crypto6 trial.

For more details, pictures, videos, etc on the days events visit TheCrypto6.com and join the Matrix or Telegram read-only Crypto6 updates group. We have links to articles written by others, pictures, videos, and more.

Need a comment for a story your writing on the Crypto6?  Want to get in touch? Need copyright sign off for your paper? Contact chris at thinkpenguin com for footage, pictures, potential interviews with those involved or surrounding the Crypto6 and more.