Most of the articles about the case published by the mainstream press stated that he had been convicted of fraud in a jury trial. The libertarian philosophy does not countenance fraud, and I believe that the jury system, albeit far from perfect, is still the best system ever devised to render justice. Thus, I decided to delve no further into the case.

In the summer of 2024, I was speaking at the annual libertarian PorcFest festival in New Hampshire, where Freeman had resided. Someone mentioned his case, and I turned to a friend of mine whose judgment I fully trust and asked him for his position on the case. He responded that it was a totally bogus conviction. Given that I fully trust his integrity and judgment, I decided to delve much further into the case.

My friend secured a copy of the entire record of the trial, which I read from beginning to end. Upon finishing it, I came to the conclusion that not only was this case a perfect example of the statist system that I described in part 1 of this article but also that Freeman, who was one of the first people to sell Bitcoin, was an innocent man under both the facts and the law of the case. Despite the fact that the First Circuit Court of Appeals has now upheld his conviction and eight-year prison sentence, I continue to steadfastly maintain that this case is a horrific miscarriage of justice and that Ian Freeman has no business being punished and deprived of his freedom.

Freeman was convicted of essentially four groups of crimes: (1) money laundering; (2) conspiracy to launder money; (3) failing to register his Bitcoin business with the federal government and conspiracy to fail to register his business with the federal government; and (4) income-tax evasion.

The money-laundering conviction

Money laundering involves federal statutes that were enacted as part of the federal government's decades-long, failed, deadly, destructive, and corrupt "war on drugs." Drug prohibition has long been a core element of the statist box that I described in part 1. It would be difficult to find a better example of how statists have destroyed the freedom of the American people with this federal racket, which, as most everyone knows, is now being used to justify the illegal, immoral, and unconstitutional killing of people on the high seas.

Of course, by now — some 50 years after the drug war was launched — most everyone knows that the war can never be "won." But most everyone also knows that in the effort to "win" the war, U.S. officials have enacted — and continue to enact — ever-harsher measures that have contributed — and continue to contribute — to the destruction of the rights and liberties of the American people. Notwithstanding the fact that none of these freedom-destroying measures ever succeed in "winning" the drug war, they are never repealed. They just keep getting stacked on top of each other, with no end in sight. It's a perfect racket for destroying the rights and liberties of the American people.

Among these measures are money-laundering statutes. Once the government made it illegal to take "dirty" (i.e., drug) money and convert it into "clean" (e.g., bank) money, it was argued, the war on drugs would finally be "won." Of course, the same argument has been used in every other liberty-destroying and privacy-destroying drug-war measure, such as civil-asset forfeiture laws, mandatory-minimum prison sentences, no-knock raids, racist enforcement of the drug laws, and more.