In the 1990s, a teacher and systems engineer named Harvey Francis Barnard proposed an extensive set of hypothetical monetary and tax law reforms, which he named the National Economic Security and Recovery Act (Nesara). Barnard’s primary concerns were the accumulation of debt and compound interest, the latter of which he viewed as a “moral evil.” He mailed copies of his thesis to members of Congress, hoping that lawmakers would consider his proposal, but there were no takers.
In the year 2000, however, after Barnard self-published a book titled “Draining the Swamp” that contained his ideas, a conspiracy theorist latched on to them and began propagating the falsehood that Congress had secretly already passed Nesara, which would forgive all debts and fundamentally transform the monetary system.
The Nesara conspiracy theory and its international variant, the equally fictitious Global Economic Security and Recovery Act (Gesara) — a supposedly secret international law that spans the global economy — persist today, in the form of a relatively fringe cryptocurrency scam. Yet its proponents now count some Republican Party lawmakers among their supporters.
In some ways the affinity is natural. The ideas that made the Nesara conspiracy theory powerful have had a significant role in GOP politics under President Donald Trump. Nesara’s core elements — like the claim that it derives from divine authority, and its use of cryptic language and apocalyptic predictions — also formed the basis for QAnon, the conspiracy theory that was especially popular with a large segment of MAGA supporters, including many Jan. 6 rioters. (It has since dwindled in popularity.) While the Nesara conspiracy theory promises that a secret economic revolution is on the cusp of being announced, QAnon promised a secret war against the “deep state” that would presage mass arrests of Trump’s enemies.
The audience for these conspiracies has become a prime target for scammers looking to prey on its anxieties. A New Lines investigation has uncovered some of the ways that these scammers operate, how they exploit their victims’ conspiratorial beliefs and how they use cryptocurrency to scam them out of their personal savings in a way that makes them incredibly difficult to recover. The investigation also sheds light on GOP lawmakers who bolster the conspiracy theory and, in at least one case, appear to promote the very cryptocurrency that scammers use when targeting victims.
Among crypto gurus and Nesara/Gesara influencers, the conspiracy is presented alongside buzzwords such as “quantum financial systems” (QFS) or “quantum devices” for accessing wealth — elements borrowed from QAnon.
“It is not unusual that people inclined to conspiracy theories believe in various of them at the same time (even in contradicting ones) and/or link various conspiracy theories together in overlapping conspiracy theories, so-called superconspiracies,” Tine Šteger, a researcher at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia who writes on conspiracy theories told New Lines via email.
In early March, the nonprofit newspaper Arizona Mirror reported that Republican state lawmakers Mark Finchem and Leo Biasiucci attended and spoke at Quantum Summit 2, a convention around Nesara and other outlandish beliefs, including that “extraterrestrials are helping shape national and global policy.”
A spokesperson for Finchem declined to comment, saying in an email, “There will be no comment at this time.” Biasiucci did not respond to New Lines’ repeated requests for comment.
Trump’s nominee for under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness at the Pentagon, Anthony Tata — a retired brigadier general and novelist with a penchant for making inflammatory and Islamophobic comments — was also scheduled to appear on a panel, according to the event pamphlets at Quantum Summit 2. The event’s website featured an image of him at last year’s summit in its promotional material for this year, in a section on speakers. When reached by email for comment, Tata responded to New Lines: “I was not in attendance at that conference and have no knowledge of what you reference. If I was listed on any materials for the event, it was done so without my knowledge or permission. I’m also precluded from engaging with the media given my pending nomination. Thank you.”
Attendees as well as Republican speakers at the event boasted ties to a range of different conspiratorial communities and beliefs. Arizona state legislator Finchem, a self-proclaimed member of the militia group the Oath Keepers, has previously appeared at QAnon-related events and is the founder of a nonprofit he created to spread claims that the 2020 election was stolen.
Nesara’s cryptic messaging and grand promises have not only persisted but have leaked out into other scams and conspiracies, and into mainstream political discourse. Online subcommunities once siloed off across different message boards and email lists now seemingly overlap. Proponents of Nesara often intersect with vaccine conspiracists, QAnon followers and election denialists. The crowd that gathered at Cape Canaveral, Florida, for Quantum Summit 2 represented a cross section of conspiratorial ideas.
“You had people there that were talking about election fraud. You had people there that were talking about child sex trafficking,” Jerod Macdonald-Evoy, who reported on the event for Arizona Mirror, told New Lines. “And they had people there that were trying to connect child sex trafficking and election fraud to all sorts of other stuff.”
At the Quantum Summit 2 event, Finchem spoke on several panels and showcased his proposed cryptocurrency legislation for Arizona, part of which included a mention of XRP, the cryptocurrency promoted by the event’s organizer as being key to Nesara’s realization.
Finchem proposed legislation that would use Arizona public funds to purchase a “strategic reserve” of digital assets — including XRP — and bolster cryptocurrency usage by deeming it “legal tender.”
“I hope I’m not advertising here, but now would be a good time to invest in XRP and Bitcoin,” Finchem said during testimony before the House Commerce Committee in March.
It is unclear whether the state senator might personally benefit from XRP, and his office declined to comment on the matter to New Lines, but during the summit, Finchem referred to XRP as his “favorite” cryptocurrency.
XRP and its parent company, Ripple Labs, ran afoul of U.S. regulators in the early and mid-2010s for failure to meet anti-money laundering standards, and they have been embroiled in ongoing litigation, with courts sometimes ruling in their favor. Part of the dispute was whether XRP counted as a security and if exchanges like Coinbase (one of the corporate sponsors of the June 14 Army parade in Washington, D.C.) had violated securities laws for trading it.
Politico first reported that a March 2 post from Trump on Truth Social, announcing a strategic crypto reserve that includes XRP, was actually authored by a lobbyist connected to Ripple Labs who had made a name for himself among D.C. lobbyists as the “Trump whisperer.” Upon realizing the connection, the president reportedly said he felt used, and the lobbyist has since been deemed persona non grata, Politico reported.
In late June, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) dropped its appeal of a court ruling that was favorable to XRP and agreed to reduce the penalty it had originally levied against the digital coin from $175 million to $50 million. In an X post, Ripple chief executive Brad Garlinghouse called the SEC move a “resounding victory” and “long overdue surrender” by the regulator.
At one point during discussions at Quantum Summit 2, Finchem broke from his panel members and cautioned his audience against investing all of its earnings into cryptocurrencies — something that scammers push for in emails as the only way to “protect” their finances when the impending financial shift occurs.
“I am also a contrarian on having 100% of your trust in cryptocurrency. That’s why I hold a portfolio — gold, stocks, crypto; not one of you in this room should put all of your full faith and investment strictly in cryptocurrency, that is a very dangerous move,” he said.
Arizona native Halley Orion runs the nonprofit watchdog Arizona Right Watch and writes about the far-right in the state. She told New Lines she attended the event wearing a Bitcoin shirt, believing that the focus of the event involved cryptocurrencies, but later learned this may have been a mistake.
“At one point, Finchem asked, ‘Oh, is anybody here invested in Bitcoin?’ And a handful of people raised their hand,” Orion recalled. “And then he asked, ‘Who’s invested in XRP?’ And the whole room raised their hand.”
Why XRP in particular seems to garner interest among proponents of certain conspiracies — as well as the scammers who target them — may be related to its relative ease of use and untraceability. Philip Stafford, digital finance news editor at the Financial Times, told New Lines there are several key technical differences between XRP and Bitcoin involving the scale, speed and cost of transactions sent through Ripple Labs’ product. “If you wanted to move huge amounts of money, it’s much easier to actually do it on XRP than it is on Bitcoin,” Stafford said.
New Lines identified numerous email addresses and websites that target believers in Nesara conspiracy theories with phishing scams, something even the organizer of the Quantum conference, Mel Carmine, has been accused of doing in online circles. New Lines also reviewed emails sent to prospective victims of these scams.
“To all patriots who have activated their QFS accounts and reached the asset withdrawal stage, you are now eligible to withdraw the $1,500,000 worth of XRP that Nesara has released to fund your humanitarian projects,” one email reads before adding: “If you have not yet obtained your quantum devices or haven’t completed your activation process, please understand that this withdrawal is NOT yet available for you, complete your activation to qualify for your blessings.
“Just as in the days of Noah, the ark was open — but many laughed and scoffed until it was too late,” the email continues.
These kinds of email operations are considered pig-butchering scams, described as such because they involve gaining the trust of victims over time, essentially fattening them up for slaughter. These scams also typically involve pressuring victims to invest quickly; in the case of the Nesara emails, that means before all their finances are lost.
New Lines identified a number of website domains used as part of connected phishing operations and reported them to Ripple support representatives, who said they would take appropriate action.
In early January, during an unrelated reporting trip, New Lines met an elderly couple who live in Colorado and subscribe to the Nesara and QFS conspiracy, as well as the belief that the Earth is flat. They were “ecstatic” at Trump’s win and shared an array of expected events they said their community and fellow MAGA voters were now awaiting. Among these were an imminent “shift to quantum banking” and the “arrival of MedBeds to all American households.” MedBeds are fictitious medical devices that “use extraterrestrial technology to cure everything from nearsightedness to cancer” when a patient sleeps in one. The couple also said they believed that MedBeds had been “used for thousands of years by elites” who have been “hoarding them for themselves” — something Trump was going to put an end to. (A simple online search found at least one seller of “MedBeds” currently under investigation by the Food and Drug Administration and the FBI for making false medical claims and duping customers.)
The intersection of cryptocurrencies and conspiracy theories has not been widely explored, according to Šteger, the researcher. Mike Rothschild, a journalist who focuses on scams and conspiracies, spoke to New Lines about the permeability of Nesara, QAnon and myriad adjacent conspiracy theories. He said the conspiracies themselves constantly evolve, adapting to the current moment and taking on new shapes, while the actual specifics are not all that important. “The mythology is so malleable. It doesn’t ever make any sense. It doesn’t need to make any sense,” Rothschild said. He added that the core of prosperity scams like Nesara, the promise of fast money, has increasingly found its way into mainstream political discourse. “Even if they’ve sort of left behind Nesara itself, I think the ideas that really made it so powerful and popular are sort of everywhere right now.”
The Nesara conspiracy, for those who still believe it, currently involves Trump declaring vast economic reforms that will put everyone’s savings at risk unless they transfer them into cryptocurrencies, specifically XRP.
Šteger told New Lines that one possible reason that XRP has been chosen (instead of, for example, Bitcoin or Ethereum) is because of Trump’s support for plans to include XRP in U.S. reserves. He added that he wouldn’t be surprised if another cryptocurrency proposed by someone prominent among the conspiracy theory’s adherents stepped in at some point to take over the momentum.
In his research, Šteger has found Ripple and XRP associated online with the Great Reset conspiracy theory, the main idea of which is that XRP will become the global currency in the future and replace the dollar as part of a larger plan. Its main distinction from Nesara involves whether this larger plan is viewed positively or negatively.
Among Nesara and Gesara conspiracists, the more ubiquitous Bitcoin is viewed as a “black hat,” shorthand within conspiratorial belief systems for existential evil forces. XRP, apparently, is a “white hat,” representing the forces of good.
The focus on an imaginary existential war between good and evil serves as a key component of contemporary conspiratorial ideologies and is a central theme in a children’s book by current FBI Director Kash Patel for audiences as young as 5. In her review, New Lines’ Lydia Wilson writes that Patel sees this existential war as all-encompassing and generational, with today’s children as its future fighters. In practice, this good vs. evil dichotomy tends to be entirely self-serving.
Much like the mysterious “Q” and the “Q Drops” in QAnon, the Nesara conspiracy’s proponents position themselves as having populist motivations, with insider knowledge of the “clandestine legislation.” They claim to be in the know and looking to turn against their fellow elites to save the working class. They also claim to have received divine revelations of upcoming major events. Gurus preach that they are chosen by God to assist and alleviate the financial and spiritual suffering of the people. They do this by collecting money from their supporters under the guise of protecting and multiplying wealth when the imminent financial shift occurs. This inevitable financial shift, Nesara proponents believe, has been a long time in the making, tracing back to the secret enactment of the legislation in Congress. In practice, Nesara’s announcement sits perpetually beyond the horizon.
For his part, Trump flirted with QAnon during his first presidency and began openly sharing QAnon-related content on his Truth Social page after he left office and during his campaign for reelection. More recently, he seems to have become personally enamored with the idea that Joe Biden’s autopen usage reveals some secret behind the former president’s actions while deeming the Democrat to have been illegitimate. Trump recently reshared a post on Truth Social that claimed Biden had died and was replaced by a double.
The Trump administration seemed uninterested in crypto during its first term. But the crypto lobby was a major backer of the president’s bid for reelection, and since taking office, the Trump administration has worked to dismantle consumer protections and regulations around cryptocurrencies, an industry with already scarce guardrails. Trump’s family has become deeply involved in the world of cryptocurrencies.
The week before Trump’s inauguration, the president and first lady both launched their own digital assets, $TRUMP and $MELANIA coins, the former of which generated over $1.1 billion in profits from purchases across just 58 digital wallets, according to data from the blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis, published by CNBC. The latter token was “sniped,” or targeted for speedy initial profits, with around two dozen digital wallets buying $2.6 million worth of the $MELANIA coin just minutes before the first lady announced the token in a post online, a Financial Times investigation found.
The Trump family also launched a crypto venture called World Liberty Financial that deals in stablecoins (digital assets tied to real-world assets or currencies), with 75% of the company’s revenue going to the Trump family. Abu Dhabi-based state-owned investment fund MGX moved to use World Liberty Financial’s stablecoin as part of a $2 billion investment in the trading platform Binance, according to the company’s co-founder Zach Witkoff. Two weeks later, during a presidential visit to the Middle East attended by Witkoff’s father, special Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, Trump announced that he would allow the United Arab Emirates to receive the coveted artificial intelligence microchips that the U.S. guards closely.
“I think this kind of quasi-cultic, scammy vibe has been around Trump for a long time,” Rothschild told New Lines, “and I think when you condition people to believe that great things are always about to happen, it becomes very easy for the person at the very top to take advantage of that.”
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