First Official Complaint Filed To DOJ-Anti Trust Over JPM's Role In Silver Manipulation Case

Someone had to do it. So we applaud Jason Hommel of Silver Stock Report for submitting the first official complaint to the United States Department of Justice over the recent revalations of unprecedented manipulation and fraud in the silver (and gold) market.

Citizen Complaint Center
Antitrust Division
950 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
Room 3322
Washington, DC 20530

Re: Reporting Antitrust Concerns
>http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=cme

JPMorgan Chase & Co. has been named by thousands of writers in the private sector, all over the internet, based on the reports of the BIS, the Bank of International Settlements and the OCC, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency at the US Treasury, that they manipulate the precious metals markets by fraudulently selling metal that does not exist. This Bank report indicates that JPMorgan Chase & Co. is heavily involved, far more than any other, in derivatives, exceeding $72 trillion.

JPMorgan Chase & Co.
270 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10017

>

It has been estimated that JPMorgan Chase & Co. has held up to, and over, 90% of the commercial short interest in silver futures contracts, essentially dumping silver on the market, silver that does not exist, in an attempt to contain, thwart, suppress, and manipulate the price of silver lower than it should be, and otherwise would be.

RE: The Sherman Act also makes it a crime to monopolize any part of interstate commerce. An unlawful monopoly exists when only one firm controls the market for a product or service, and it has obtained that market power, not because its product or service is superior to others, but by suppressing competition with anticompetitive conduct.

World silver prices are monopolized by this price manipulation that takes place at the COMEX, and also in the London market, which is even more heavily leveraged due to excessive selling of silver on paper that does not exist in the real world. Their primary product, "silver on paper" is clearly inferior to real silver, in that the key difference is that real silver does not depend upon the financial solvency of JPMorgan Chase & Co. for its value; and paper silver will lose all value if JPMorgan Chase & Co. goes bankrupt. Competition for real silver as an asset is suppressed by their choice to sell paper silver at a discount to the costs of delivering real physical silver, which must include shipping, manufacturing, and mining costs. Other popular forms of silver for investment, such as 100 oz. bars, and 10 oz. bars, and 1 oz. rounds also include manufacturing costs, which are also not included in their "paper silver" investment products, such as the ETF, SLV, futures contracts at COMEX, options on futures contracts at COMEX, and the standard LBMA "unsecured bullion accounts".

RE: The Clayton Act
This Act is a civil statute (carrying no criminal penalties) that prohibits mergers or acquisitions that are likely to lessen competition. Under this Act, the government challenges those mergers that careful economic analysis shows are likely to increase prices to consumers. All persons considering a merger or acquisition above a certain size must notify both the Antitrust Division and the Federal Trade Commission. The Act also prohibits other business practices that may harm competition under certain circumstances.

The Clayton Act was likely violated when JPMorgan Chase & Co. acquired Bear Stearns, and inherited their short position in silver, giving JPMorgan Chase & Co. even more control over silver market prices, due to their even larger and more concentrated short position. "Higher prices for consumers" is a result if the consumers are silver investors, and if they lose the value of their silver, and thus, have to pay relatively higher prices for everything else in the economy as a result.

RE:
The Department of Justice also often uses other laws to fight illegal activities, including laws that prohibit false statements to federal agencies, perjury, obstruction of justice, conspiracies to defraud the United States and mail and wire fraud.

The BIS, the Bank of International Settlements indicates that the notional value of "other precious metals" (silver) in the "over the counter" category increased to $203 billion by June of 2009.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. is also the custodian of the ETF, SLV, which is supposed to have up to 300 million ounces held by JP Morgan, which is also likely not there.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. is thus likely engaged in a Ponzi scheme of selling silver to clients, without actually purchasing the real physical silver in the marketplace, which is a totally fraudulent and illegal activity.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. is likely engaged in sending false brokerage statements to account holders of unsecured bullion accounts, and thus, is likely engaged in both mail fraud and wire fraud.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. is likely engaged in defrauding the United States Government by manipulating silver prices low, by selling excessive amounts of "paper silver", which creates the false illusion of abundance of silver, which creates the illusion of a false sense of availability of silver, which is likely needed by the Department of Defense for the national security of the United States, as silver is vital and necessary element for the defense industry.

=====

3. Can you give examples of the conduct that you believe violates the antitrust laws? If so, please provide as much detail as possible.

Yes. Andrew Maguire, a silver trader, who knows the silver traders who work for JPMorgan Chase & Co., testified to GATA, and to the CFTC in the recent hearing on March 25th, 2010.

See
A London trader walks the CFTC through a silver manipulation in advance
By: Bill Murphy, Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee

=====

5. Who are the major competitors that sell the product or provide the service?

The largest refiner of silver in the world is likely Penoles of Mexico, who may refine about 70 million ounces of silver per year, over 10% of the world's supply. The second largest source is likely the Cannington silver mine owned by BHP Billiton, which produces about 30-40 million ounces of silver per year. The largest silver refiner in the USA is Johnson-Matthey, who also might have been engaged in illegal allocation of 100 oz. silver bars back in 2008, as their primary retailer had a wait list of over 2 months for delivery in 2008 as a result of their complicit actions in the price fixing scheme. They refused to allocate silver to the highest bidder at the time. At that time, I helped pioneer the development of a silver auction website, with the owner of silverseek.com, who created seekbullion.com, which sold over 10,000 oz. of silver per day to the highest bidder for a few days during a time of a national and worldwide silver shortage that resulted from the illegal price fixing.

=====

6. What is your role in the situation in question?

Another very good question. I invested in silver, starting in 1998. I have been advocating silver as an investment since then, as can be seen at silverstockreport.com, which also has an email newsletter that reaches out to 80,000 readers. The price manipulation has negatively impacted the success of my own investment choice, and the investments of hundreds of thousands of other people around the world. I have been working to expose this manipulation since 2002, as I wrote, and spent over $500,000 to publicize, articles such as:

>CFTC Response to Silver Problem Jan 14, 2003
>Letter To Authorities of Silver Markets Jan 6, 2003
>Refuting Myths about Gold Oct 28, 2002
>Impending Gold Futures Default May 29, 2002

7. Who is harmed by the alleged violations? How are they harmed?

As I have said, silver investors who need to sell their silver for their retirement are primarily the ones harmed. But also, silver mining is suppressed, which hurts companies working to develop technology to explore for silver. It hurts engineers and builder who develop mines. It hurts and restricts the production of silver byproducts, which raises the prices for gold, copper, zinc, and lead, which restricts industrial development worldwide.

But primarily, it will catastrophically hurt holders of American dollars in the future, as they are currently being lulled into a false sense of security about the false and fraudulent value of US Dollars, or more accurately, Federal Reserve Notes, which stand to lose value rapidly as the fraud of selling silver that does not exist gets exposed.

Thus, the silver fraud is a small part of the Ponzi Scheme on which rests the much larger Ponzi scheme of the US Dollar itself, a $14-16 Trillion fraud, and also, the much larger US Bond market, which may exceed $30-40 trillion. Further, the $70 Trillion "interest rate derivative" fraud is also supported by silver price manipulation. Inflation-indexed bonds are also sold as a competing investment to silver, and so, by hurting the silver price, or by making the silver price seem dangerously volatile by way of direct price manipulation, JPMorgan Chase & Co. supports its entire mountain of paper investment products, which it clearly dominates in world trade.

The silver price suppression scheme, and the resulting failure of paper money, and the resulting collapse of commerce and world trade risks sending the entire world into a severe depression that risks famine on a world scale unlike what has ever been seen before in world history, and could therefore cause the direct deaths of anywhere up to a third of all humans on earth, or even more.

Please pause now, and reflect on that for a moment. You may wish to consider and ask yourself if you want that on your conscience, or if you want to be blamed for that, by God himself, in the eternal reckoning that must come due for all men, if you decide to do nothing to stop the fraud on progress, that could potentially cause so much devastation.

=====

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/first-official-complaint-filed-doj-anti-trust-over-jpms-role-silver-manipulation-case