Originally published at: Renowned lawyer Jacob Hornberger speaks out against the fraudulent prosecution of Ian Freeman @ Porcfest 2025 | Free Keene
After a thorough review of the court transcript independent and renowned lawyer Jacob Hornberger speaks out on the travesty of the prosecution of Ian Freeman
Renowned lawyer Jacob Horberger, founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation (FFF) attended the Free State Project’s Porcupine Freedom Festival this summer to present a speech on his legal analysis of the Ian Freeman case.
Ian Freeman was arrested in 2021 for the ‘crime’ of selling Bitcoin. In spite of the legal advise, few vending machines operated by him and the Shire Free Church, a complete lack of evidence connecting Ian to the supposed crimes, and more a prejudicial jury found Ian Freeman guilty on 8 counts and 4 charges. These included: Unlicensed money transmission, money laundering, conspiracy to launder, and 4 counts of tax evasion (one for each year of the federal government’s investigation).
Under cross examination the governments leading witness testified that she couldn’t confirm that Ian Freeman owed anything at all.
The money laundering charge was thrown out after the jury convicted based on the fact there was no evidence for a jury to base a conviction on that Ian had laundered anything. The undercover agent admitted that Ian hadn’t given him a wink and a nod to utilize his vending machines and had refused to sell to him once Ian had overheard a conversation where he had lied and pretended to be a drug dealer.
The government tried to make the case that Ian was a fraudster, but never tried Ian for fraud and even admitted pre-trial that Ian didn’t know of any scammers at the time a small percentage of the folks on the stand had been victimized. In fact despite no conviction on fraud charges it was the government’s false and misleading press release that misled and deceived the public.
Despite all this judge Joseph Laplante didn’t vacate the conspiracy to launder charge. However where there was no evidence of money laundering there was neither evidence that could lead a jury to believe Ian conspired to launder money. Selling Bitcoin is in and of itself not money laundering. As best we can guess the theory might be something along the lines that because the Shire Free Church had a privacy policy there was some sort of conspiracy. Something just about every bank and website have that Ian was catering to criminals. Of course none of this could be farther from the truth. A conspiracy generally involves multiple people working together and the undercover IRS agent failed to entrap Ian when he attempted to fraudulently claim to be a drug dealer while also getting Ian to sell him Bitcoin.
Money transmission involves moving money from one person to another or from one location to another. We’re not talking some theoretical virtual location here, but a physical place. A prime example of a traditional money transmitter would be Western Union. Another example would be Walmart. Both entities take customers dollars and then hand dollars to someone else at another physical location. The main goal here is to protect the consumer so someone can’t just take another money and then not fulfill the service advertised. Bother moving money from one location to another or from one person to another are both required elements of this charge that would lead one to be required to register as a money transmitter. The governments theory on this went something along the lines of anything of value that could be used was sufficient to warrant registration under the money transmission laws and then just ignored these elements. This is absolutely crazy and nonsensical. I run a company that sells computers, peripherals, and accessories. Under this logic because someone could buy 10 USB wifi adapters and then trade 3 of those at the Porcupine Freedom Festival for food means I’d have to register as a money transmitter under this logic. This obviously isn’t what was intended when these laws were written.