It has been a common practice for people to keep cash stowed away in lockboxes or under mattresses in their homes, but now, even something as logical and important as keeping a cash stash for a rainy day can make you a suspected criminal.
Ethel Hülst, a 91 year old Swedish women, unfortunately got to experienced the ruthlessness of her country’s central bank first hand which may have contributed to her death.
Over the years, Ethel had accrued a modest and honest nest egg of around 108,450 Swedish krona which amounts to approximately $12,000 USD in cash.
To her surprise, upon her request to exchange her outdated notes, she was denied the new issue notes. The bank’s justification for the denying the women the service was that she could not produce the proper receipts to prove the cash was earned legitimately.
She was pressed with hard questions such as whether she had ever been involved in laundering money or ever had involvement in organized crime.
She was essentially assumed to be guilty until proven innocent.
Little did she know, she was dealing with the policy of the biggest and most dangerous organized criminals in the world; central bankers.
In this case, Ethel had no way of proving the cash was legitimate. She´d saved it a little bit at a time over decades. And of course, 50 years ago, the idea of providing a receipt for cash would have been seen as ludicrous.
Ethel lost the case the first time when the bank ruled against her. Then she lost the appeal. The idea that a central bank could request proof for cash was upheld and the stress presumably helped to encourage her death.
This is the kind of craziness going on in a world where central banks have been increasingly set against cash transactions and cash in general.
Central banks have a monopoly on legal tender and thus are the arbiters of what is and isn’t legal tender.
Right now Sweden is one of many countries in the middle of a big cash war and the victims are those who for a variety of reasons want to save outside of the current, oppressive, savings system.
Ethel Hülst was told she would have to prove the origin of her savings. The bank was in the midst of an exchange in issue and ordinarily could have just traded her new notes for her old ones. But not these days. Not anymore. In this “Brave New Sweden” even holding small amounts of cash gives you an appearance of criminality.
If you’re a young person with a lot of cash, you might have to prove where you have gotten it from. As an elderly person, you may have to prove that your money wasn’t a part of a larger cash hoarding scheme comprised of ill gotten gains.
Since Ethel had to prove the stash was legally acquired, unfortunately the burden of proof was all hers.
The bank is entirely unapologetic. And it is certainly making it clear that cash from a bank is becoming increasingly less dependable and that other forms of money such as bitcoin and gold are superior.
This does not mean that alternative forms of money are always dependable. However it certainly highlights the usefulness of currencies such as bitcoin, gold and silver as alternative mediums of exchange and more secure stores of value and savings.
Aside from being the best performing currency by far this year bitcoin is also one of the best performing assets in any asset class.
Our guide is for beginners who recognize the value in a currency which is nearly impervious to capital controls and retains its value in the face of fiat inflation.
Despite how tragic a story Ethel’s is, it is a wake up call for those young and old, but especially for those who are retired or close to retirement who are planning to hold cash in their physical possession.
These types of things happen all the time. One example is Lyndon McLellan, the owner of a convenience store, gas station and small restaurant under one roof in rural North Carolina who managed to save $107k or so in cash before the IRS deemed it ‘illegal proceeds’ and stole it. They claimed it was suspicious because he deposited it in increments of just under $10,000 to avoid filing paperwork.
To learn how to avoid banking predicaments like these by investing in bitcoin, check out our Bitcoin basics book here.
And you can receive a free copy of our book, Getting Your Gold Out of Dodge here.
The War on Cash is in full swing. People in India and Venezuela have already woken up to find out most of their cash was outlawed. These are likely test cases that will soon happen in other countries. In fact, Greece has just moved forward on its attacks on cash and we’ll cover that here tomorrow.
We’ve predicted this since our inception of The Dollar Vigilante (TDV) in 2010. In fact, our tagline is “Surviving and Prospering During and After the Dollar Collapse”. The US dollar will likely be the last fiat currency to fall… but fall it will.
Join us at the TDV Internationalization & Investment Summit on February 24th, 2017, in Acapulco, Mexico where we have experts in how to profit and survive the ongoing War on Cash including David Morgan, Bix Weir, Bill Murphy of the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee (GATA) and the entire TDV team.
Don’t wait until it is too late and your savings are sequestered, outlawed or inflated into worthlessness.
Flagged as autoreposted non-original content that is also heavily autovoted and does not drive engagement, participation, or distribution of rewards
Stop upvoting this scam artist.
https://liberty.me/discuss/t/jeff-berwick-and-tdv-immigration/
I will continue to flag these posts as my conscience will not permit me to actively support an individual that has and continues to scam people out of money. I'll go ahead and copy and paste that thread for those who don't follow the link:
Rich Meister December 23, 2016 at 10:55 pm
"I used to admire Jeff Berwick and The Dollar Vigilante. That admiration ended this year when my Paraguayan citizenship finance plan abruptly ended. I contacted his associate, Chris Martin, and was told that their Paypal account had been closed, most likely due to foreign government intervention. He asked that I be patient while they found an alternative payment processor.
Well, about a month and a half later, I emailed Mr Martin. However, I have yet to receive a response and it’s been about 2 months. Repeated emails to his email address and info@tdvimmigration go unanswered. The two phone numbers listed on the TDV Immigration website (646-568-5518 and 315-944.2383) don’t work either. I’ve also tried to contact Berwick via Facebook to no avail. And Chris Martin’s Linkedin profile has vaporized.
As libertarians, we are strong proponents of voluntary contracts. Hiding out in Mexico and defrauding fellow libertarians is no way to act. If Berwick had let his clients know what went wrong and worked out some way to pay them back, that would be fine. Mistakes happen. However, hiding in Acapulco and ignoring the emails and phone calls of his clients is inexcusable.
I know Berwick is a member here. I invite him to reply to this thread. I have emails and documents to back up my claims."
He probably won't reply to this thread because he doesn't use this site any more. The posts are autoreposted from here and likely heavily autovoted.
It's a zombie blog.
zombie blog in several meanings of the word. I do want to thank you for your input.
Are any ongoing court cases, money sent, documents promised or other important information public as of yet?
However sceptical I am about much of Jeffs work, I think we need to see more than just claims. We don't want a pizzagate style "investigation" over these serious allegations. It should be better than that.
This is Rich, the guy who wrote the liberty.me post. You'll find excerpts of documents on the post I made. You can also try calling any of the phone numbers on the TDV Immigration website. All are non-working. There's also no address.
there are too many victims at this point involved. I heard that there may be pending court cases. I'm providing information that is publicly available. It's because I actually care about other human beings in this community that I put myself out on a limb about this. I don't like doing this, but my conscience will not allow me to be a passive sheep. Do your own research then we can discuss.
It's great you put forward the issue, I'm just very hesitant to get onboard anything like this against anyone. I want hard evidence first. (in other words, no pizza bs and the likes)
I've critiqued TDV over his doom porn and support of what I consider too be witch doctors over the years already, however this is an even more serious allegation.
I probably don't have the time or energy to spend researching these claims unfortunately.
you can start with this interview from one of TDV Immigration clients:
I've already watched the video you linked. As much as I want to trust the person in the video, to me that's only another persons claim.
(And even in a case where he was proven to be partially correct and Jeff was proven to be partially incorrect -- I still wouldn't necessarily know who was right about the particular claims made that Jeff is a scammer)
He lured me into a $10m real estate scam in Chile but, as Rich mentioned, because he and his victims live in different counties, legal options are extremely limited. I spoke to the PDI here in Chile about it (like FBI) and they straight-up told me that they don't waste taxpayer money on gringo-vs-gringo financial disputes. When justice finally catches up with Jeff, it'll likely be the good old-fashioned rusty-machete variety.
Well if you've got any documents or physical evidence you could provide us in the internet community with, that would still go a long way.
The guys who lost the most have been working to reclaim their losses in the courts but it has been very slow going. Law enforcement doesn't care and the lawyers are happy to keep making money from the proceedings. The recovery effort is still being documented here at http://ggcrecovery.com and another good site to read a detailed history of the debacle is here at http://mcgillespie.com/jeff-berwick-and-galts-gulch-chile-a-regrettable-summary.
if you follow the link above you can see the documents.
I skimmed and searched the entire page for documents using the ctrl + f search function and found essentially nothing of value. Do I need to become a member to see the documents?
I would prefer if all documents and evidence were made available online, for anyone to view, and more easily sorted through.
Few people are gonna have the time and patience to join new discussion forums and very carefully search for the correct materials.
To know for sure that Berwick actually tried to/successfully scammed, someone would have to be much more specific in their accusation and provide much more specific evidence. Showing me a Terms Of Service or other agreement in of itself proves nothing as there are no signatures or anything, but I would have to know that it was actually knowingly/repeatedly broken.
I've also seen the "Service Provider's Fees"-picture you just provided, as well as a rather embarrasing video where TDV (apparently drunk, which is something he's admitted to having had issues with) is trying to excuse himself for not delivering on time.
None of that is new to me, but hardly qualifies as good evidence for fraud and actually being a scammer, at least I should say as far as I personally have been able to make out of it. -Keep in mind however, that I'm a non-native english speaker with very limited time to do this kind of digging, so I could very well be wrong.
I would never advice anyone try to do this kind of high risk business with TDV though. Once again, I'm just very hesitant to make claims I can't back up.
There's a screenshot with his signature in the thread. The contract I have is with TDV Media and Berwick yet he denies any connection. I made every payment. Then the payment plan ended abruptly. Chris Martin said they were looking for a new payment processor. I waited a couple months, emailed him back and NO response. I tried other emails, too. Then when I pretend to not be a client, I get a very quick response. The funny thing is that I was going to pay the balance on the plan but changed my mind when they became totally unresponsive.
Are any ongoing court cases, money sent, documents promised or other important information public?
However sceptical I am about much of Jeffs work, I think we need to see more than just claims. We don't want a pizzagate style "investigation" over these serious allegations. It should be better than that.
Here's the problem: Berwick operates out of Mexico. Were he in the US, I would have sued him already. Subscribe to his Dollar Vigilante free newsletter. Note the address at the bottom of the mail. I think it's 123 Main Street. Also, go to tdvmedia.com. Try to find an address there.
Sigh... the state of the libertarian community is not what I would like it to be. I wish you will be able to prove his guilt one day.
I certainly wouldn't do business with him, but that's because I'm more careful than some about where I spend my money. Some other guy might think it's perfectly reasonable to take the gamble.
It's much easier to do something constructive, rather than trying to prove or disprove this or that claim made on the internet all the time. This is another reason why I want to do my own thing and bring some order to this nihilist chaos. -I won't be on the payroll of TDV, Infowars or Freedomainradio, I can promise you that.
And if you could create something yourself, I think that could be a great thing.
This makes me sick! It's not like she had millions of dollars worth. How can you treat a human like that... Let alone an elderly person. Even if she did obtain it illegally, Just let her enjoy her money. They should of been forced to prove that she actually did something wrong.
It's a strange culture for so many reasons...
I personally went to a physical currency exchange a few months ago (regular banks don't deal in cash anymore and many shop owners are hessitant to exchange money) and asked to exchange into some coins from my credit card, so I could use them to get a tan over at the unmanned tanning salon because I looked miserable even for Scandinavian standards... This is part of the service they offer and there should be nothing to question if I wanted to do it.
The just slightly older woman behind the desk looked at me with total distrust and asked me if there was "any particular" use that I would want the coins for?
As she still did nothing and when I apparently didn't answer her straight enough because I thought we were just exchanging some courtesies, with a rather strange smile on her face she started asking me for more specific details on what I was gonna use the money for. As if I were a minor trying to buy cigarettes from her.
No pen in hand, no papers out, seemingly no actual need to ask. Just standing there and looking at me. Considering me weird and likely a potentially bad person, simply because I was seeking the national currency in cash.
Finally as I explained the entire process to her and promised that this was all I was about to do - now I was fully considering just giving up, because this all felt like a waste of time - she filled out some papers, let me pay using my credit card and slowly handed me the currency.
There are so many other examples that I could tell you about, but this one comes to mind. The total distrust of anyone using cash. Supposedly, only beggars and criminals would have a reason to use it and it's up to you to prove you're not one or the other.
(and then there are even some increasingly popular requests to put beggars in prison for begging in public)
Insane!!! Well, I guess that goes to show the madness, and that our world is entering into when it comes to the war on fiat money as well as showing the commitment of the ones in charge of making this happen... Grrrrr! Thanks for sharing as so many of us still need to wake up to such facts. Namaste :)
UV and RS for you Jeff.
It's true --- when you really start to dig into the best places to live and or move to for Liberty and true freedom, you really find out quickly there are not a ton of good places left -- mostly due to fascist banking and police state policies in place against the PEOPLE.
I'm from Sweden and I can say it's crazy here. You have to fill out papers if you want to put over $600 in your bank account. Every employe on the bank has to monitor peoples accounts every day.
That sounds crazy :( Very sad. Unfortunately nobody focuses on wasted tax payers money...
combine this anti-cash agenda to the legal maneuvers some countries have moved to confiscate wealth directly from bank accounts (as in Greece), and your money is never safe.
That really Stinks!
That is terrible... thanks for shedding some light on a terrible situation. I'm not sure about all the other stuff you are predicting, but that is a terrible story for that poor woman and I am sure it could happen other places as well.
Sounds terrible if this story is true.
This story is 100% true. And she isn't the only one. We got new notes in 2016 and the old ones is useless this year i think
We live in a mad world & this is coming to the USA. prepare accordingly
Upvoted and tweeted. Stephen
Disclaimer: I am just a bot trying to be helpful.
You would think the mint or print date on the currency would be proof enough and the money would be grandfathered in..... Just a horrible situation. Thanks again Jeff for this useful info and the warning!
Disgusting; thanks for the article, upvoted and followed.
Welcome to earth #sickshit
She is a victim of the system