Bond promissory notes make the news

[Quixote]

Shadow Mountain Bank has a website and, reportedly, "[a]ssets in excess of I00 Trillon One oz. silver Specie".

[grixit]

Shadow Mountain Bank has a website and, reportedly, "[a]ssets in excess of I00 Trillon One oz. silver Specie".

3.175 billion tons? Yeah right, what does that mean-- they point to a mountain and claim ownership of all the silver ore it might or might not contain?

[fortinbras]

Shadow Mountain Bank seems to have no fixed address, only a post office box in Arizona ("Shadow Mountain", as a geographic reference, seems to be in the vicinity of Denver, CO). Specifically, Ash Fork, Ariz., population 450, which is on the edge of the Kaibab National Forest, west of Flagstaff.

For a "donation" of $100, they'll issue $100Gs worth of "bonded promissory notes". -- But the donation must be in cash or USPS money orders, only.

They claim to be able to do all sorts of financial and legal tricks, but only for "donations" in the hundreds of dollars.

Their website includes a disclaimer denying that anything said constitutes professional, legal or tax advice, and that you are responsible for any of their advice backfiring.

Apparently the mastermind of this "private bank" is J.W. Patterson, who has the Ash Fork PO Box, and a phone number of 928-254-3532. Anyway have any info on him (or her)??

[notorial dissent]

Point of information, Flagstaff is about an hours drive or so from Phoenix, whereas Denver is almost 12 hours away and could not be considered even remotely close.

[fortinbras]

My point was, although this "Shadow Mountain Bank" has its only address in a small town in Arizona, just about everything else I could find with "Shadow Mountain" in its name was in the vicinity of Denver, CO. Shadow Mountain itself I could not locate - not in motoring atlases - but I suspect it's part of the Rockies in the Denver vicinity.

Like the Puget Sound Agricultural Society car insurance scam, which operated out of southern California, nowhere near the Washington-Canadian border, they've used a name which is geographically misleading.

[BBFlatt]

According to http://www.mytopo.com there is a Shadow Mountain AZ, near Flagstaff in Coconino County at Lat 35.9194 N, Lon 111.4661 W to be precise.

There are also 2 Shadow Mountains in CO, one in Grand County, the other in Park.

[Thule]

3.175 billion tons? Yeah right, what does that mean-- they point to a mountain and claim ownership of all the silver ore it might or might not contain?

Yearly production of silver in 2000; 16.613 tons (metric). For a comparison, the yearly production of aluminum is said to be about 33 million tons.

Now, lies are of course mandatory in their line of work. But they really should learn how to stick to remotely plausible lies. Such a pile of silver would send the price plummeting.

[bmielke]

According to whitepages.com your phone number is a cell phone based in Sedona AZ.

[fortinbras]

I have not bothered to do the long division, but I'd like to point out that silver is measured in TROY weight, not avoirdupois: 1 troy ounce = 31.103 grams = 1.09714 avdp ounce. There are 12 troy oz (not 16) in a troy pound: 1 troy pound = 373.24 grams = 0.822857 avdp pound. Maybe not as much tonnage as if all that silver were in avoirdupois, but still more, perhaps, than any realistic amount.

[Nikki]

What's the big deal

All of these financial instruments were validated by SFBFKADMVP when he issued his word salad document in 2001.

[Unidyne]

Website: http://www.shadowmountainbank.org/

The website has angels, doves, and an animated teddy bear doing cartwheels.

According to 411.com, the phone number listed is a cell phone on the Sprint network in Sedona, Arizona.

Check out the "Matrix" link for some conspiracy babble on the Vatican & Illuminati.

"Private Bank"? Like I'm going to trust these people with my money...

[fortinbras]

Those "Matrix" essays (or rather one essay in three segments) pretend to be written by a judge, but (1) his grasp of punctuation would never pass muster for someone whose job is writing legal opinions, (2) his citations of legal authorities are inconsistent and contrary to anything taught in law schools, (3) his understanding of legal history and statutory interpretation is seriously defective (e.g., he claims that 98% of law schools don't have courses in Constitutional Law -- in fact, it is a required first year course in every accredited law school), and (4) his grasp of general history is completely deficient (e.g. Pope Innocent III died 400 years before the King James Version of the Bible; Mayer Rothschild was still financially struggling in the Frankfurt ghetto until well after the Revolutionary War). He spoons out militia myths that no one with a legal education would utter (e.g., the Executive Order 11110 story). He must be a judge of county fair baking contests.

[Prof]

Wrong! Constitutional Law was an elective at my alma mater, which has been accredited by the ABA for over 75 years.

I took two semesters of it. Because I felt like it.

Those of us who are traditionalists are amazed at the number of law schools that no longer espouse a required core program -- e.g., con law, criminal pro, civil pro, contracts, torts, real property, UCC and business organizations as well as the introductory course on income tax. Too many profs who want to teach their special interests, some of which are very useful -- say, Insurance -- and others of which may vary from challenging but less useful, like Legal History, to interesting but perhaps less than useful, such as "gender and the law" or "economics and the law" or "law and medicine." You get the picture. Part of this also comes from the idea that modern law students are so intelligent that each will find his own way thru the catalog and thru the practice.

My response is BS. Your milage may vary.

[fortinbras]

Back to the Shadow Mountain Bank. It's PO Box is in Ash Fork but the phone number is in Sedona - in the next county and about an hour's drive away. Nothing suspicious about that, when they're holding your money, right??

Penn & Teller described Sedona, Az, as one of the whackjob centers of the universe.

In the meantime, I cannot find a court case mentioning the Shadow Mountain Bank or its funny money.

[Judge Roy Bean]

...

Penn & Teller described Sedona, Az, as one of the whackjob centers of the universe.
...

I'd agree with one caveat: Consider Washington, DC.

[Demosthenes]

...

Penn & Teller described Sedona, Az, as one of the whackjob centers of the universe.
...

I'd agree with one caveat: Consider Washington, DC.

But Berkeley, California does not make the list?

How is DC a whackjob center? People here seem pretty well grounded. Greedy, but grounded.

As for Berkeley, 25 years ago, sure. Not so much these days.

I've been to Sedona. It's a really weird and not-at-all-delightfully tacky place.

[Unidyne]

Getting back to that website:

I did a WHOIS search via NetworkSolutions.com (strongly recommended for any website you think may be bogus) and found that the domain "shadowmountainbank.org" has its registry and administration listed to the following party:

Registrant Organization:Jim Patterson
Registrant Street1:P.O. Box 568
Registrant City:Ash Fork
Registrant State/Province:AZ
Registrant Postal Code:86320
Registrant Country:US
Registrant Phone:+1.9282543532
Registrant Email:vitesola@yahoo.com

This other info may be of additional interest:

Domain ID:D157289964-LROR
Domain Name:SHADOWMOUNTAINBANK.ORG
Created On:07-Oct-2009 22:34:24 UTC
Last Updated On:07-Dec-2009 04:02:21 UTC
Expiration Date:07-Oct-2010 22:34:24 UTC
Sponsoring Registrar:Melbourne IT, Ltd. dba Internet Names Worldwide

[fortinbras]

Shadow Mountain Bank has a web page explaining its Bonded Promissory Note (BPN) ...
http://www.shadowmountainbank.org/BPN.html
........ which is total horse manure.

Now, to begin with, I have not heard of an authentic financial document called a bonded promissory note. A promissory note is, by definition, the expression of a debt and a promise to pay in the future, a slight upgrade from an IOU. Bonding is a sort of insurance or financial guarantee. You'd think that someone who could get a financial guarantee from the source of the bonding, could, instead of sending a promissory note to a creditor, borrow the cash from the bonding source, pay the cash to the creditor, and thereafter be indebted to the bonding source. So the idea of a bonded promissory note is almost a paradox.

Here Shadow Mountain Bank says its entire transaction is selling the customer a document that supposedly is a promissory note for 0.1% of the face value of the BPN. A real bonding company would definitely want more evidence of the customer's solvency than that. Further, that the customer would use its BPN to "pay" the creditor -- when, in reality, a promissory note doesn't pay anything but only promises payment further into the future -- and, at that point, Shadow Mountain says, its own involvement in the matter ends. There's no mention of it actually covering the amount of the promissory note, which is, after all, implied by calling it bonded.


So this is really no different from previous scams that sold make-believe financial instruments to people; among them Leonard Peth and Leroy Schweitzer, both of whom are now getting free room and board courtesy of the taxpayers.

[notorial dissent]

True, for the simple reason there is no such thing. It is a contradiction in terms, a Promissory Note is by definition a promise, not a certainty. This is just more wishful thinking by the unclear on the concept crowd. In any event, the “bond” is just another promissory note worth even less than the original one.

The website is a crock from beginning to end. One trillion oz’s of silver, get real, these bozos have 17 trillions dollars to spend on silver and the market hasn’t gone batshit? And where would they come up with that much money in the first place? That is more money than most country's annual budgets. Not to mention is there even that much silver available, and where would you put it? This nonsense is beyond fantasy at this point. And if they have that much silver why would they need an account with the Fed, which they couldn’t get if they wanted to? More fantasy. The Fed is not and never has been a precious metals repository, the NY bank holds gold for foreign govt’s, but that only as a central banking function. More nonsense, in that Fed banks do not ever deal with the public, and certainly do not cash promissory notes. If you look at the rest of the site, it is more of the usual sovrun nonsense, so no big surprise. Just more scam looking for a sucker to bite.

[fortinbras]

Self-issued notes defy common sense, no good for debts
By Robert Patrick
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Thursday, Dec. 10 2009
. . . . . . . . .
One fan of the promissory notes, Denny Ray Hardin, of Kansas City, wrote on a
website in June that he set up the "Private Bank of Denny Ray Hardin" last year
"to help (people) remove their 'fictitious obligations' ... to 'foreign
agents' who control most banks, mortgage companies and lending institutions.
These are operated by the 'organized crime operation' commonly referred to as
'Credit.'"

Hardin's fiancée, Melinda Harrington, said in a telephone interview that Hardin
had "quite a few successes" with his bond promissory notes, and that she knows
other "private bankers" who have also had successes.

Hardin is currently in prison in Missouri for violating conditions of probation
imposed after he was convicted of tampering with judicial proceedings.
. . . . . . . . . .

Denny Ray Hardin is definitely a rara avis, issuing his BPNs ("Bonded Promissory Notes") and threatening letters to those who do not accept them in transactions, even while in Durance Vile. He had the chutzpah to send a just-short-of-threatening letter to the Prez, referencing both his funny money and his prison sentences.
http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum ... 829629/pg1

It's tough for for me to tell, but possibly he's the same "Denny R. Hardin" who was sentenced for serious drug offenses in Missouri more than a decade ago.
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