The Free Lakota Bank website promises to safeguard other people's precious metals for a fee.
When you bank with Lakota, you can expect us to safeguard your property with our lives. We will defend it from theft by looting or force. We will charge you a fee for this service.
Yet, nowhere on the website of Free Lakota Bank is there any mention of their physical location. There is also no mention of a third-party entity serving in the capacity of auditor or providing any verification of their claims.
Within the claims made by the Lakota Bank, there is the implied assertion they they will not use your deposits to secure any financial instruments, nor will they use it for loans. They have a separate, "General Investment Fund", for these purposes. Since they claim they are only securing your deposits, they charge a service fee of: 0.005%/mo OR 0.06%/yr. That is a nonsensically low fee in return for the service promised. This is a very typical part of a scam. You receive something at much less than its true value. Where do they get their end?
The Lakota Bank does not claim they have been licensed by any entity. They state that: "we issue, circulate and accept for deposit only AOCS-Approved silver and gold currencies" and they imply some sort of affiliation when stating that there are no fees assessed for: "unlimited transfers to accounts at any other AOCS bank". There can also be found on the website an image that says: "AOCS Approved". On the Lakota Bank website's Currency Promotion page can be found:
As the Free Lakota Bank does not sell silver, we invite you instead to access our Currency either through the network of AOCS Approved Currency Officers or by participating in a FreeMarketMetals.com Bulk Order. A Bulk Order purchase may be delivered to you or directly to your account at our Bank. A Bulk Order is by far the fastest and easiest way to fund your Free Lakota Bank account.
Odd that the Lakota Bank claims that they issue AOCS-Approved silver and gold currencies on one page, but then say that they do no sell silver on another.
AOCS stands for The American Open Currency Standard, and lists as contact: Rob Gray; National Currency Director; (888) 538-9990. The other place to acquire minted metal that the Lakota Bank will accept in deposit is Free Market Metals.
freelakotabank.com, opencurrency.com and freemarketmetals.com all resolve to the same IP: 205.178.145.65. It's a Network Solutions shared server, physically located in Toronto, Canada, with over 270,000 other domains hosted on it. All three domains are registerd by Network Solutions. freelakotabank.com and opencurrency.com are both registered to Rob Gray with a contact email server of networksolutionsprivateregistration.com. freemarketmetals.com is registered to an entity: "The Revolution". It's Administrative contact is rgray@revolution.gs, and address given is 7004 Bishop Road #3316, Plano, TX. It turns out that revolution.gs is also registered by Network Solutions, but to "The Revolution", and contact email server is networksolutionsprivateregistration.com.
It looks like Lakota Bank, and the two entities that it accepts metal deposits from, all point to the same Rob Gray, of Plano, TX. Can you say, "lack of transparency?" The AOCS website also lists Rob Gray as the Currency Officer from Texas, as well as being their National Currency Director.
Presently, the AOCS offers a 1oz .999 fine silver coin with a face value of $50. Presently the price of silver on the open market is $10.81/oz, effectively a $49 mark-up over the value of the metal. This is beginning to emit the foul odor of a Bernard von NotHaus scam. If you do not remember, von NotHaus was indicted as head of Liberty Dollar, and many people said the indictment was because they were about to circulate Ron Paul coins. He was marketing a 4- level pyramid scheme that greatly inflated the value of 1oz silver coins when sold to the end retail buyer.
Now if any of you think von NotHaus was or the AOCS is legit, I'm more than willing to to undersell them. For this day only, I will exchange with you 1oz of .999 fine silver for the spectacular discounted price of $30, payable only in Federal Reserve fiat currency. However, my penchant for honesty requires me to inform you would be an idiot to enter into this bargain, and that currently, it is possible to pick up 20 1oz .999 fine silver coins at Free Market Metals for the unbelievably low cost of daily spot market price + $5.25/oz, making it the cheapest of the rip-offs, at a little less than a 50% mark-up over the spot price. It should also be noted that these two suppliers of 1oz minted silver pieces will only accept payment in Federal Reserve fiat currency.
The AOCS gives props to Bernard von NotHaus on their website. Also worth noting is that Rob Gray is listed as a Liberty Dollar Dallas Regional Currency Officer, using the same phone number as is listed as the contact number for the domain, revolution.gs. Gray is also a member of The Austin Libertarian Meet-up Group (picture), and this does seem to be a mite bit redundant, but he also is a supporter of Ron Paul.
