Obamistas Confiscating Farmers’ Bank Accounts
Courtney Mabeus at FrederickNewsPost.com writes that “..[t]he government is seeking to take more than $62,000 from a local dairy farmer who it says knowingly violated federal banking statutes meant to curtail money laundering…” “…In a six-page complaint filed Thursday in U.S. District Court, U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod Rosenstein accused Randy and Karen Sowers, who own South Mountain Creamery on Bolivar Road in Middletown [Maryland], of violating federal currency reporting requirements — known as structuring — by depositing money in increments of less than $10,000 so they would not have to fill out forms required under the Bank Secrecy Act…The couple deposited more than $295,000 into a PNC Bank account in about 36 separate transactions of just under $10,000 each from May 6, 2011, though Feb. 27, 2012, Rosenstein said. During that time, the couple’s cash receipts from farmers markets, including two in Baltimore, totaled more than $320,000, the complaint said.”
Rady Ananda of FoodFreedomgroup.com says that:
“Admittedly, when the Sowers earned over $10,000 in February, and learned they’d have to fill out paperwork at the bank for such large deposits, they simply rolled the deposits over to keep them below the none-of-your-[...***...] -business amount, rather than waste time on bureaucratic red tape aimed at flagging terrorism or other illegal activities…“Structuring,” explains Overlawyered.com, “is the federal criminal offense of splitting up bank deposits so as to keep them under a threshold such as $10,000 above which banks have to report transactions to the government…While being questioned, the Sowers were finally presented with a seizure order and advised that the feds had already emptied their bank account of $70,000. The Dept. of Justice has since sued to keep $63,000 of the Sowers’ money, though they committed no crime other than maintaining their privacy…”
It would seem that, while the term “confiscating” is used to describe this method of taking people’s hard earned money and is an attempt at sugar-coating the outright seizure of funds, it amounts to stealing and robbery, regardless of the law the accused have allegedly violated.
Ananda states:
“Former Maryland assistant U.S. attorney Steven Levin told the paper, “The emphasis is on basically seizing money, whether it is legally or illegally earned. It can lead to financial ruin for business owners, and there’s a potential for abuse here by the government…Ya think?…The Bank Secrecy Act was modified* after 9/11, another in a long line of Constitutionally-abhorrent laws enacted by officials who cannot prove they were elected to office (given those elections were held on electronic voting systems that can be hacked without leaving evidence of the crime)…”
In light of federal government increased hirings of IRS personnel to administer ObamaCare, it appears the government has figured out a way to force more families out of business, and onto the unemployment lines, and this particular issue strikes at the heart of American culture: Family farming. For government this aspect of U.S. culture cannot be eradicated quickly enough and replaced with Corporate farming.
What do you think?
libertynews.com 
I don't think that government is trying to or wants to eradicate the family farm. What they do want to have is control. Passing an amount above which deposits had to be extensively documented wasn't enough for them, they have to make smaller deposits illegal by calling them "structuring". That's highly unreasonable. If for any reason the feds really need to know about the money going in in smaller deposits then lower the amount. Even one penny as the amount, would make more sense than allowing prosecutors to arbitrarily decide which deposits smaller than the amount they are going to consider felonies. |
