Soverign Citizen Liens Question

[bmielke]

Who's bright idea was putting a lien on judges or other government officials. All the sovruns like to talk about it, as do tax protesters.

Is this the bastardization of some old law that I am not familiar with? Or the brain child of a nutcase?

[Judge Roy Bean]

It's actually the placing a lien on a piece of real property. The perpetrators take advantage of the fact that there is little or no filtering at the local recorder's office.

Even if they know there are huge penalties they'll try it because it almost instantly creates a financial nightmare for the victim.

It's very hard to un-ring a bell.

[fortinbras]

For the last 3 years, filing a nuisance lien against any federal employee (not just IRS agents but also judges and prosecutors) is a felony with prison time. Some guy got nailed for that, the first prosecution under that law, about 6 months ago.

[Judge Roy Bean]

For the last 3 years, filing a nuisance lien against any federal employee (not just IRS agents but also judges and prosecutors) is a felony with prison time. Some guy got nailed for that, the first prosecution under that law, about 6 months ago.

But it hasn't deterred the ignorant or those who are willing to lead them into the scam.

And the damage it can do is so pernicious that it is simply too tempting to try it. As long as these kinds of filings can contaminate credit reports and scores there will be no effective suppression.

As it stands, a minimum wage sovereign flake can make life hell for anyone with nothing more than a word processor and a filing fee.

[Gregg]

From a posting over on LH it looks like our buddy Harvester has discovered this and encouraging the crackheads to look into it.

[bmielke]

So it all comes down to being easy to do and creating nightmares?

Also are you telling me that in some states all you need to get a lien on real property is a typed up document and a filing fee?

AFAIK in TN you need a certified judgement for a lien on Real Property. Which makes a lot more sense. But I could be wrong, I work for Legal Aid we have never taken a lien since I've been here, only researched ones on people's property.

[Burzmali]

Yeah, and they catch the guys because they slap their own names on the things. Imagine the havok that would arise if they put other people's names on them. If filed in the name of a company that file lots of liens legally, they might fight to maintain the lien assuming their own lack of record to be a clerical error. If filed in the name of a dementia patient at the local loony bin, you could end up with a case where a when the victim attempts to remove the lien, a "defender of the infirm" lawyer picks up the case and tries to stop the heartless judge from taking advantage of his poor sick client.

It's the lack of imagination on the behalf of the sovereigns that keeps them from becoming too much of a threat.

[fortinbras]

Falsifying the names on liens and similar documents amounts to at least one additional crime, this time under state law. Some people want to chance to compare the accommodations of federal prisons against those of state prisons.

[Prof]

This sort of paper terrorism goes back a number of years. In the '80's, the radicalized farmers were prone to do this sort of thing. Also, in the '90's, the Republic of Texas whack jobs did the same sort of thing. One of the bankruptcy judges here had a multimillion dollar lien filed against his home.

I don't know when or where paper terrorism started. Mark Pitcavage of the ADL seems to suggest the '70's, but I cannot open his paper or reach the ADL page.

This is the sort of half-baked idea that spreads among the wacky and deranged and the 'Net gets that done faster than the communication chains that were in use among these groups in the '70's..

[ktesibios]

I don't know when or where paper terrorism started. Mark Pitcavage of the ADL seems to suggest the '70's, but I cannot open his paper or reach the ADL page.

I tired a Google search on "paper terrorism" site:adl.org and found this:

http://www.adl.org/mwd/privlien.asp

which says:

Although the earliest origins of the use of bogus liens remain unclear, the credit for developing an effective weapon of "paper terrorism" out of them must go to the organization known as the Posse Comitatus, a right-wing (and largely white supremacist) extremist group which originated around 1970 and flourished up to the mid-1980s before declining by the end of the decade.

The earliest incident documented in the paper seems to be from the late '70s.

[Omne]

James Wickstrom was advocating them back around that time in Wisconsin. He would have been one of the first.

[fortinbras]

Back in the mid-90s, Brent Johnson of Freedom Bound was advocating bogus liens on his shortwave program. His repeated advice was, as soon as you find out that the IRS is looking into you, file liens for a million dollars (or some other fabulous amount) against the IRS auditor or anyone else involved - on the premise that maybe they'll screw up somehow and you could sue them for a million bucks in damages and you want that money to be there for you. Also, it would encourage the IRS agent to be Very Careful and not make mistakes. He never actually said it was an instrument of intimidation, he had some bogus reason that may have sounded reasonable to amateurs. He also said that there was no way the person against whom the lien was filed could get rid of the lien, it would remain unmoveable for 99 years (also false). If the IRS person would not give you his name (or his real name, because about that time the IRS permitted its people to use fake names when dealing with nutcases, for just this reason), drive over to your local IRS office around closing time and tail that person to his home and then look up his name and so forth.

The Montana Freemen not only filed an enormous number of bogus liens claiming astronomical amounts, but then tried to "monetize" them by issuing "draft warrants" and similar check-like funny money pretending to be sums of money that would be gotten by enforcing these bogus liens. This, of course, violated a whole flock of laws including various fraud laws. (Passing these, even if the liens were entirely genuine and justified, constituted its own criminal offense of champerty - essentially selling shares in a lawsuit - logically, once the perp passed enough funny money for real goods and services, he no longer had a motivation to enforce the lien he had filed, and the recipients of the funny money would now have to try to enforce that lien in court, even though they had not the slightest idea or evidence about its backstory.)

A few legal facts: Liens are filed under state govt supervision in either county or (in some places) state registries. They do show up in credit rating reports. Liens are not immoveable and can be annulled, expunged or otherwise made ineffective by court order. In the 1990s, most (perhaps all) states adopted new laws to deal with bogus liens, especially against govt employees, that streamlined the process for nullifying them; some states made their filing a prosecutable offense (either under old laws against fraud or filing fraudulent documents or under new laws specific to nuisance liens), and the federal govt also occasionally prosecuted such things (under laws such as impeding the enforcement of the revenue laws, attempting to corruptly influence a govt employee, mail fraud, etc.). The federal govt frequently went to state courts to get liens against federal employees nullified. Contrary to Brent Johnson's (and others') claim, a lawsuit against an IRS employee, or the employee of virtually every federal agency, for something done at part of his official duties, is extremely difficult to win, and, moreover, the suit would almost always have to be against the agency itself or even (as in cases against the IRS) the US govt itself, rather than against the individual employee. In 2008 a new federal law went into effect, although the statute primarily protected judges and court personnel, the provision in question made filing a bogus lien against ANY federal employee (including an IRS employee) a felony all by itself. Someone was convicted under that law in the past year and I think got 15 years.

[Prof]

Real estate liens are generally filed in the County [Parish in LA] where the property is located.
(IIRC, Mass. and perhaps some other states have a district registry system).

UCC liens (Art. 9) agaist personal property other than fixtures are filed in the state where the legal entity which owns the personal property is chartered; if the legal entity is a human being or husband and wife, the lien is filed in the state of residence. The liens are filed with the Secretary of State. As far as I know, recordation at the state level is uniform in all of the States and DC.

A judgment lien is generally abstracted against realty in the county where the property is located. Once abstrated, a sheriff's sale can be requested. Sheriff's sales are judicial in nature, and not the non-judicial sales permitted under state deeds of trust or the self help seizure permitted under Art. 9 of the UCC. IIRC, only Georgia allows recordation of judgment liens against personalty (LawDog???). All other states require the sheriff or equivalent officer to levy (seize) personal property; the sheriff will then hold a sheriff's sale (execute) on the property.

The sovereign is least dangerous when he is playing with fake judgments, allegedly obtained by default. The Sheriff's office generally would ignore an attempt to get a sheriff's sale on real or personal property with fake judgments, etc.

The sovereign is most dangerous when he files mortgages/deeds of trust/fake transfer deeds and UCC-1's, because the ability and willingness of the county clerk or Secretary of State fo filter the trash is limited.

The bogus liens filed by the sovereign fruits and nuts would be filed as either real estate liens or UCC-1 financing statements.