Accounting firms rely primarily on the representations of management. Read the introductory letter from the accounting firm on any set of audited financials. They have no clue how many certificates this guy has mailed out, or will mail out in the future without adding a corresponding amount of silver to the warehouse, and no way of having any clue.
The article says that the same e-mail which complains about the raid “repeatedly defends the Liberty Dollar as a legal tender”. I haven’t seen the text of the entire e-mail, but in one of the excerpts given in the article, the author refers to the “real money” his group issues, versus “fake government money”. Whether this e-mail uses the exact term “legal tender” I don’t know, but I seriously doubt any of the purchasers could explain the difference between “real money” and “legal tender”. Since the e-mail says that the gold and silver backing the certificates has been confiscated, and is thus no longer accessible to the people who purchased the certificates, it pretty much proves the point: the certificates are completely worthless, and were always at huge risk of becoming completely worthless, and I seriously doubt that the issuing group’s marketing materials ever pointed that out to potential investors.
How do you know this for a fact?
Dana Robson, CPA, for the aforementioned firm, signed a paper attesting to a finding that all warehouse receipts are 100% backed as indicated and stored properly as of the close of 2006.
The most recent available audit report for July 2007 was signed by Anderson Bros., CPA, Idaho State Board of Accountancy firm number FR-0161, says much the same thing, and includes a detailed schedule mapping warehouse receipt serial numbers to bullion inventory.