I would defer to @paddyman98 and @JCro57 on this one as I would like to say it is legitimate but I'm just not quite sure...
Wow, it's only 8:00 here... Isn't it funny that we're more than a 20 hour drive away from each other and yet only one hour time difference? Cool!
I agree that it is a vice job. If you look at the obverse of the coin where it says "IN GOD WE TRUST" you can see the damage from the vise grip. Good luck, hopefully you will find something soon!
If you look at your first image, you can see that the "L" of "LIBE" is upside down. The remaining letters "IBE" look the same whether they are right side up or upside down. It's PMD.
I would say that someone put great effort and thought into this. They picked 3 letters in LIBERTY "IBE" that could be easily mistaken for correct even though they were actually backwards.
A false die could have been used. I'm not real sure how someone would make one that strikes backwards though.