Self-Sufficiency

Asheville man charged in alleged Liberty Dollar fraud scheme

By Clarke Morrison

Citizen-Times | Federal authorities arrested an Asheville man in what they said was a scheme to undermine the U.S. currency system and defraud consumers with so-called Liberty Dollars.

William Kevin Innes marketed the “barter” currency in Western North Carolina and recruited merchants willing to accept it and give it as change for products bought with real money, according to an indictment unsealed this week.

Innes, 53, faces up to 45 years in prison if convicted. He was indicted along with Bernard von NotHaus, president of the National Organization for the Repeal of the Federal Reserve and Internal Revenue Codes, and two other defendants from Indiana associated with the corporation.

Innes made an initial appearance before a federal magistrate judge in Asheville Wednesday and was ordered detained pending a detention hearing set for Monday before a judge in Charlotte, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Liberty Dollars are coins made of silver or gold and are touted as inflation-proof and a way to encourage buying local goods.

“When groups seek to undermine the U.S. currency system, the government is compelled to act,” said acting U.S. Attorney Edward Ryan of the Western District of North Carolina.

“These coins are not government-produced coinage, yet purchasers were led to believe by those who made and sold them that they should be spent like U.S. Federal Reserve Notes,” Ryan said. “Such claims are in violation of federal law.”

Innes and von NotHaus are charged with uttering and passing coins resembling genuine U.S. coins and intended for use as money, mail fraud and selling and possessing Liberty Dollar coins with intent to defraud.

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By Gillian Flaccus

AP | With the recession in full swing, many Americans are returning to their roots — literally — cultivating vegetables in their backyards to squeeze every penny out of their food budget.

Industry surveys show double-digit growth in the number of home gardeners this year and mail-order companies report such a tremendous demand that some have run out of seeds for basic vegetables such as onions, tomatoes and peppers.

"People's home grocery budget got absolutely shredded and now we've seen just this dramatic increase in the demand for our vegetable seeds. We're selling out," said George Ball, CEO of Burpee Seeds, the largest mail-order seed company in the U.S. "I've never seen anything like it."

Gardening advocates, who have long struggled to get America grubby, have dubbed the newly planted tracts "recession gardens" and hope to shape the interest into a movement similar to the victory gardens of World War II.

Those gardens, modeled after a White House patch planted by Eleanor Roosevelt in 1943, were intended to inspire self-sufficiency, and at their peak supplied 40 percent of the nation's fresh produce, said Roger Doiron, founding director of Kitchen Gardeners International.

Doiron and several colleagues are petitioning President Obama to plant a similar garden at the White House as part of his call for a responsible, eco-friendly economic turnaround. Proponents have collected 75,000 signatures on an online petition.

"It's really part of our history and it's part of the White House's history," Doiron said. "When I found out why it had been done over the course of history and I looked at where we are now, it makes sense again."

But for many Americans, the appeal of backyard gardening isn't in its history — it's in the savings.

The National Gardening Association estimates that a well-maintained vegetable garden yields a $500 average return per year. A study by Burpee Seeds claims that $50 spent on gardening supplies can multiply into $1,250 worth of produce annually.

Doiron spent nine months weighing and recording each vegetable he pulled from his 1,600-square-foot garden outside Portland, Maine. After counting the final winter leaves of Belgian endive, he found he had saved about $2,150 by growing produce for his family of five instead of buying it.

Adriana Martinez, an accountant who reduced her grocery bill to $40 a week by gardening, said there's peace of mind in knowing where her food comes from. And she said the effort has fostered a sense of community through a neighborhood veggie co-op.

"We're helping to feed each other and what better time than now?" Martinez said.

A new report by the National Gardening Association predicts a 19 percent increase in home gardening in 2009, based on spring seed sales data and a telephone survey. One-fifth of respondents said they planned to start a food garden this year and more than half said they already were gardening to save on groceries.

Community gardens nationwide are also seeing a surge of interest. The waiting list at the 312-plot Long Beach Community Garden has nearly quadrupled — and no one is leaving, said Lonnie Brundage, who runs the garden's membership list.

"They're growing for themselves, but you figure if they can use our community garden year-round they can save $2,000 or $3,000 or $4,000 a year," she said. "It doesn't take a lot for it to add up."

Seed companies say this renaissance has rescued their vegetable business after years of drooping sales. Orders for vegetable seeds have skyrocketed, while orders for ornamental flowers are flat or down, said Richard Chamberlin, president of Harris Seeds in Rochester, N.Y.

Business there has increased 40 percent in the last year, with the most growth among vegetables such as peppers, tomatoes and kitchen herbs that can thrive in small urban plots or patio containers, he said. Harris Seeds recently had to reorder pepper and tomato seeds.

"I think if things were fine, you wouldn't see people doing this. They're just too busy," Chamberlin said. "Gardening for most Americans was a dirty word because it meant work and nobody wanted more work — but that's changed."

Harris Seed's Web site now gets 40,000 hits a day.

Among larger companies, Burpee saw a 20 percent spike in sales in the last year and started marketing a kit for first-time gardeners called "The Money Garden." It has sold 15,000 in about two months, said Ball.

A Web-based retailer called MasterGardening.com is selling similar packages, and Park Seed of Greenwood, S.C., is marketing a "Garden for Victory Seed Collection." Slogan: "Win the war in your own backyard against high supermarket prices and nonlocal produce!"

Cultivators with years of experience worry that home gardeners lured by promises of big savings will burn out when they see the amount of labor required to get dollars from their dirt. The average gardener spends nearly five hours a week grubbing in the dirt and often contends with failure early on, said Bruce Butterfield, a spokesman for The National Gardening Association.

"The one thing you don't factor into it is the cost of your time and your labor," he said.

"But even if it's just a couple of tomato plants in a pot, that's worth the price of admission."

At the end of 2008, there are three consumer marketplaces that are experiencing record sales volumes—firearms, precious metals, and emergency storage food. Crisis preparedness is increasingly the theme for those seeking a refuge for their money and comfort from their concerns.

PR Web | Gun dealers all over the United States are having a hard time keeping any inventory on hand for anxious customers. Reports are that guns and ammunition are selling at levels up to 50% higher than previous records.

The demand for gold has similarly erupted—Q3 of 2008 showed global sales 45% higher than the quarter before, which itself set the previous high-water mark.

Survival gear and emergency food producers are shipping product as fast as they can get it through their facilities and onto the loading docks. Using packaging technologies that deliver shelf lives measured in years and even decades, producers of storage food are experiencing unprecedented demand today for their products.

Victor Rantala, owner of the crisis preparedness company Safecastle LLC, said: “Our business volume this year will triple over last year, and most of this increased activity has come in the last 3-4 months.

“By far, our best seller right now is Mountain House freeze-dried food. It stores for more than 25 years, it’s easy to prepare, and it tastes great. Outdoorsmen and adventurers consider it a preferred staple. Our customers, those who are looking at a future that looks very uncertain, see it as a way to lock in today’s prices and to ensure a level of peace of mind that is hard to otherwise put a value on.”

In response to the overwhelming demand for storage food and strains on customers’ budgets, Safecastle is offering an end-of-the-year sale on Mountain House freeze dried food in cans—which offer the longest shelf life of any storage food on the market. All Mountain House cans are 25% off list and ship for free to the continental U.S.A. The sale is running at the Safecastle Royal Buyers Club from December 6 to December 19.

Said Rantala, “Anxiety and bearish outlooks abound wherever one cares to look today. There’s precious little a concerned citizen can do in reaction to global forces spinning out of control. But we all do what we can. At Safecastle, we’re particularly happy to give our customers this holiday-season opportunity to become better positioned for what looks like rough times ahead.”