I mean, it's not about building a Bitcoin economy, it's about operating an unlicensed money transmitting business. Regardless of where you stand on the political spectrum, trying this is the US is risky at best, and outright stupid at worst. I also found this about their indictment, which just paints a worse picture for them:
According to the indictment, some defendants then engaged in substantial efforts to evade detection of their unlawful virtual currency exchange scheme by avoiding answering financial institutions’ questions about the nature of the business and misleading financial institutions into believing their unlawful virtual currency exchange business was instead a religious organization receiving charitable contributions.
All that being said, the use of force certainly seemed excessive; I hope that no one was hurt. It seems
he has since been placed under house arrest though, so that's a bit better for him at least.