Part 1 | Part 2 [to be published]

If one googles the name "Ian Freeman" and "bitcoin," the result will be hundreds  of articles describing Freeman as a "fraudster." That's because immediately after  Freeman's sentencing in a criminal case in a U.S. District Court in New Hampshire  on October 2, 2023, the U.S. Attorney's office in New Hampshire sent out a press  release in which Freeman was labeled a "fraudster." 

There is one big problem, however, with that description: Freeman was never  convicted of fraud, and the U.S. Attorney's office knew that when it sent out that  press release on the day of his sentencing.  

That's not to say, however, that there wasn't any evidence of fraud in Freeman's  trial. There was, but it was fraud committed by the U.S. government official whose  testimony the U.S. Attorney used to secure a conviction of Freeman on a bogus  charge of "money laundering." Although the jury found Freeman guilty of money  laundering based on the sworn testimony of that agent, the federal judge presiding  over the trial, Judge Joseph Laplante, as we see later in this article, threw out that  finding of guilt and acquitted Freeman of the money-laundering charge. 

Nonetheless, Freeman was convicted on other charges — conspiracy to engage in  money laundering, failing to register his bitcoin business with the federal  government, conspiring to fail to register his bitcoin business with the federal  government, and income-tax evasion, all of which, as we will see later in this  article, were as bogus as the money-laundering conviction that the judge rightly  threw out.  

In short, this article is about the unjust conviction of an innocent man — Ian  Freeman — who is now serving an eight-year jail sentence that was meted out to  him by the same judge who threw out that bogus money-laundering conviction.