In the Bahamas in early 2021, Sam Bankman-Fried was allegedly conducting a brazen, multi-billion dollar scheme. He virtue-signaled for liberal causes, was put on the cover of magazines, and—until things got really bad—seemed to stay off the authorities’ radar.
Around 800 miles east at the same time, a conservative activist named Peter Schiff was running his own bank in Puerto Rico. Schiff is a financier and prominent economist who regularly speaks publicly about how he thinks the government should be run: with fewer taxes and less regulation. The U.S. government teamed up with four other countries to undertake the “world’s largest tax evasion probe” against Schiff. Despite “a very significant investment by all the countries involved,” they found nothing.
Then they destroyed him anyway. Authorities leaked the existence of the investigation to the media, then cited the resulting negative publicity to take the bank from him, costing him more than $10 million.
The IRS’ top criminal enforcement official flew to Puerto Rico to hold a press conference where he gave the impression that the IRS was shutting down Schiff’s bank for facilitating tax evasion and money…
