The Farrier Who Filed 200 Shoes 4 Ounces Too Heavy - and Moved $1.6M in Silver

A mobile farrier in Ada County, Idaho, filed 200 horseshoes that weighed four ounces too much per foot. Inside each shoe: a refined silver core cast at a forge behind a Boise feed store, moving bullion from an illegally operating Owyhee Mountain mine across Nevada, Utah, and Arizona. Learn how a BLM range specialist's scratch pad note during a wild-horse gather triggered a nine-month IRS Criminal Investigation grand jury that seized 4,200 ounces of loaded shoe blanks, $340,000 in cash, and reconstructed 19 months of unreported bullion sales totaling $1.6 million. IRS-CI, BLM law enforcement, and the U.S. Forest Service converged on the mine, the forge, and three trailer stops on the endurance racing circuit. Nine defendants indicted. One still unlocated. Eight hundred thousand dollars unaccounted for. Federal Docket documents the full case. Built from open-source reporting and analysis. No classified information. Archive footage from official releases and open sources illustrates the events described. Shots are representative and do not necessarily show this specific case. Chapters and sources below. Subscribe so you don't miss the next one:    / @federaldocketus