2 tons of Ron Paul coins, 500 pounds of silver seized by feds, claimed to be ‘illegal’

EVANSVILLE – Federal agents seized two tons of copper coins featuring Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul and 500 pounds of silver during a raid on the headquarters of a group seeking to dissolve the Federal Reserve.\nAgents also took records, computers and froze the bank accounts at the “Liberty Dollar” headquarters during the Thursday raid, said Bernard von NotHaus, founder of the National Organization for the Repeal of the Federal Reserve Act & Internal Revenue Code.\nThe organization, which introduced its “Liberty Dollars” nearly a decade ago, has repeatedly clashed with the federal government, which contends the group’s gold, silver, platinum and copper coins are illegal.\nVon NotHaus claims the coins are impervious to inflation and can restore stability to financial markets by allowing commerce based on a currency that does not fluctuate in value like the U.S. dollar.\n“They’re running scared right now and they had to do something,” von NotHaus told The Associated Press on Friday. “I’m volunteering to meet the agents and get arrested so we can thrash this out in court.”\nIn the federal seizure warrant, agents alleged the money and other properties seized in the raid of the group’s Evansville headquarters were linked to money laundering, mail fraud and wire fraud.\nThe document did not include details linking the allegations to Paul’s campaign.\n“We have no connection with that,” said Jesse Benton, a Paul campaign spokesman. “He was using Ron as a marketing technique. We didn’t have anything to do with that or sanction it or give permission in any way.”\nWendy Osborne, a spokeswoman for the FBI’s Indianapolis office, declined to comment and referred all questions to the U.S. attorney’s office for the Western District of North Carolina. Suellen Pierce, a spokeswoman for that office, also declined to comment.\nNORFED has produced an estimated $20 million of its own paper currency in the past few decades, claiming its $1, $5 and $10 denominations were backed by silver stored in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.\nFederal agents also raided the group’s storage facilities in Idaho, von NotHaus said.\nVon NotHaus, a self-described “monetary architect,” started NORFED while he lived in Hawaii in the late 1990s as a tax-exempt, nonprofit organization. The organization changed its name to Liberty Services this year.\nThe raid came eight months after von NotHaus filed a federal lawsuit in Evansville seeking a permanent injunction to stop the federal government from labeling the Liberty Dollar an illegal currency. The lawsuit was a response to a U.S. Mint warning that Liberty Dollars violated the U.S. Constitution.\nPaul, a Texas congressman, is Congress’ most prominent advocate of returning to the gold standard, which the country abandoned in the 1930s. In its purest form, it would mean that all paper currency in circulation could be redeemed for gold.\nWhile he is considered a long shot for the Republican presidential nomination, Paul recently set a one-day, online GOP presidential-fundraising record and has improved his standing in recent New Hampshire and Iowa polls.\n“They raided right after the Ron Paul shipment got in. I thought that was amazing,” von NotHaus said. “It isn’t endorsed by Ron Paul, even though Ron Paul is a friend of mine. It came as a total surprise.”