Beth Deisher, the Director of Anti-Counterfeiting for the Anti-Counterfeiting Task Force (ACTF) has confirmed that Liberty Coin Service Inventory Manager and Senior Numismatist Paul Manderscheid has been added to the ACTF’s national registry of rare coins and precious metals experts willing to volunteer their time to assist law enforcement officials in investigating counterfeiting of such products and serving as an expert witness in subsequent court cases. Manderscheid is now one of almost one hundred such experts around the country available to support law enforcement at no charge.
Said LCS CEO and owner Tom Coulson, “Paul is one of the top counterfeit detection experts in Michigan, regularly consulted by other coin dealers. Since he began working at Liberty in 1972, he has authored numerous articles on coin errors and tokens and exonumia, contributed research to numismatic reference catalogs, and is the author of Lansing’s Money, a reference catalog on Lansing issues of currency and tokens. When he took the American Numismatic Association’s course on Advanced Detection of Counterfeit and Altered Coins back in 1983, he caught two mistakes in the teaching materials.”
The Anti-Counterfeiting Task Force was organized at the beginning of 2017 under the sponsorship of the Industry Council for Tangible Assets. The ACTF’s mission is to help educate law-enforcement authorities about the rising threat of counterfeiting of coins, currency, and precious metals, help mobilize law enforcement to attack counterfeiters where they are most vulnerable, and provide expertise and other resources in the prosecution of cases. In June 2018, Jonathan A. Kirschner pled guilty in federal court to impersonating an agent of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) and unlawfully importing counterfeit coins and bars into the United States, products which, if genuine, had a retail value of more than $48 million. The ACTF first notified the US Department of Homeland Security of Kirschner’s actions and provided several volunteers to support the investigation and prosecution of this case (https://www.ictaonline.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=227:man-pleads-guilty-to-selling--importing-fakes--impersonating-agent&catid=26:news&Itemid=128).
Frequently-honored Liberty Coin Service, founded in 1971, is Michigan’s largest rare coin and precious metals dealership. It has been located in Lansing’s Frandor Shopping Center since 1975. Paul Manderscheid is one of four Liberty employees who are members of the elite Professional Numismatists Guild.
