Due process and no insurance

[army judge]

Some examples of illegal license plates used by so-called sovereign citizens​

Domestic terrorism—Americans attacking Americans because of U.S.-based extremist ideologies—comes in many forms in our post 9/11 world.

To help educate the public, we've previously outlined two separate domestic terror threats—eco-terrorists/animal rights extremists and lone offenders.

Today, we look at a third threat—the "sovereign citizen" extremist movement. Sovereign citizens are anti-government extremists who believe that even though they physically reside in this country, they are separate or "sovereign" from the United States. As a result, they believe they don't have to answer to any government authority, including courts, taxing entities, motor vehicle departments, or law enforcement.

This causes all kinds of problems—and crimes. For example, many sovereign citizens don't pay their taxes. They hold illegal courts that issue warrants for judges and police officers. They clog up the court system with frivolous lawsuits and liens against public officials to harass them. And they use fake money orders, personal checks, and the like at government agencies, banks, and businesses.

That's just the beginning. Not every action taken in the name of the sovereign citizen ideology is a crime, but the list of illegal actions committed by these groups, cells, and individuals is extensive (and puts them squarely on our radar). In addition to the above, sovereign citizens:

• Commit murder and physical assault;
• Threaten judges, law enforcement professionals, and government personnel;
• Impersonate police officers and diplomats;
• Use fake currency, passports, license plates, and driver's licenses; and
• Engineer various white-collar scams, including mortgage fraud and so-called "redemption" schemes.

Sovereign citizens are often confused with extremists from the militia movement. But while sovereign citizens sometimes use or buy illegal weapons, guns are secondary to their anti-government, anti-tax beliefs. On the other hand, guns and paramilitary training are paramount to militia groups.

During the past year, we've had a number of investigative successes involving sovereign citizens. A few recent cases:

• In Sacramento, two sovereign citizens were convicted of running a fraudulent insurance scheme. Operating outside state insurance regulatory guidelines, the men set up their own company and sold "lifetime memberships" to customers, promising to pay any accident claims against their "members." The company collected millions of dollars, but paid out very few claims. More
• In Kansas City, three sovereign citizens were convicted of taking part in a conspiracy using phony diplomatic credentials. They charged customers between $450 and $2,000 for a diplomatic identification card, which would bestow upon the holder "sovereign" status—meaning they would enjoy diplomatic immunity from paying taxes and from being stopped or arrested by law enforcement. More
• In Las Vegas, four men affiliated with the sovereign citizen movement were arrested by the Nevada Joint Terrorism Task Force on federal money laundering, tax evasion, and weapons charges. The investigation involved an undercover operation, with two of the suspects allegedly laundering more than a million dollars from what they believed was a bank fraud scheme. More

You can help. First, "be crime smart"—don't fall for the bogus claims and scams of sovereign citizens. And second, if you have information on any suspicious activities or crimes, please contact us.

The Sovereign Citizen Movement

archives.fbi.gov

 

[EeeeekitsaMouse]

The sovcit I'm dealing with actually thinks that we should pay him the money he owes us. The thinking process with these clowns is something I will never understand.

 

[army judge]

The sovcit I'm dealing with actually thinks that we should pay him the money he owes us. The thinking process with these clowns is something I will never understand.

They aren't the smartest people to begin with, add in the sovereign nonsense, they're suddenly dumber and dumber!

Sovereign citizen claims seem like a wild tangle of complex legal theories, but they all boil down to a simple concept: Sovereign citizens believe they are not subject to the laws or authority of the federal government, but only to "common law" or "constitutional law," the law of the original and "rightful" U.S. republic before the 14th Amendment — which addresses U.S. citizenship rights and the validity of the U.S. government's "public debt" — was ratified [source: Berger]. This means they believe they don't have to pay taxes and aren't subject to court rulings, arrest, fines or any other duty or penalty imposed by the government.


Sovereign citizens claim there is a difference between a human being and the separate legal entity represented by that person's birth certificate or legal name. To them, all government statutes are contracts between the government and this legal entity, which sovereign citizens refer to as a "straw man." Therefore, the human — not the straw man — is not subject to those statutes. Sovereign citizens are cautious of "creating joinder" between their human self and their straw man, which might happen because they register for a government service, accept a bill from the government or accidentally sign their name the way it appears in legal documents and tax paperwork. A sovereign citizen named Debbie Smith, for instance, might only refer to herself as "Debbie of the family Smith" or sign her name in an unusual way, like }}Debbie,,,Smith{{.

Many sovereign citizens believe that county sheriffs are the highest legal authority allowed in the U.S., and that state and federal police are illegitimate [source: Goetz]. They deny the authority of the U.S. federal government, or even the lawfulness of its existence. Another common claim of sovereign citizens is that they are not citizens of the U.S. (or whatever nation they reside in), but rather are separate, independent sovereign nations; citizens of such a nation; or citizens of a state or province. Some sovereign citizens claim to be citizens of a religious "nation" subject only to the authority of God.

The redemption movement is an offshoot of sovereign citizenry. According to adherents of this movement, the U.S. government issues everyone a birth certificate when they're born, creating the "straw man" legal entity that represents them. But furthermore, the movement claims, the government creates a bank account for each straw man and stocks it with $630,000. It's possible, sovereign citizens say, to use these funds to pay debts (especially tax debts) by filing a bunch of documents and sight drafts, which basically means writing checks drawing on this mysterious, unproven $630,000 account [source: Tremblay].

Even though sovereign citizens' beliefs may seem dubious at best, the movement is rooted in a history of groups with anti-government and anti-tax ideologies.

How the Sovereign Citizen Movement Works

From claims of secret bank accounts created by the government to exemptions from federal law, sovereign citizen beliefs seem outlandish. But is there any truth to them?

people.howstuffworks.com

The sovereign citizen movement began in the 1970s and grew from an extremist group called Posse Comitatus (a common-law legal term meaning "the force of the county"), which coalesced around right-wing, anti-government ideas in Oregon, although it had a presence in California and Wisconsin as well. The group's members maintained that the county level of government is the highest authority, that people can declare themselves sovereign and free of federal government control, and that income taxes are illegitimate. They also espoused anti-tax, racist and anti-Semitic ideas. The Posse's anti-government tactics spread and were adopted by different groups, like adherents of the racist, anti-Semitic hate group Christian Identity and sovereign citizens, as the movement's popularity rose and fell. Some form of sovereign ideology exists in most English-speaking countries — outside the U.S. it is more commonly known as a "freemen on the land" ideology, but the core beliefs and tactics are essentially the same.

In many cases, sovereign citizens employ violence to demonstrate their beliefs. Perhaps the most infamous violent incident involving sovereign citizens is the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995. Terry Nichols, one of the perpetrators of the bombing, had used sovereign citizen tactics in court cases and attempted to renounce his citizenship in the years prior to the bombing. In a separate incident, Gordon Kahl, a member of Posse Comitatus, killed three federal officers and was killed in a subsequent shootout in 1983. In fact, there have been numerous accounts of sovereign citizens murdering law enforcement officials or plotting to murder police officers and judges. The FBI's counterterrorism unit even declared sovereign citizens "a growing domestic threat to law enforcement" [source: FBI].

In the United States, several incidents of government agents engaging in armed conflicts with right-wing groups or families have even strengthened the popularity of the sovereign citizen movement in recent years. The Ruby Ridge (1992) and Waco, Texas (1993) standoffs are the most notorious, but the anti-government Montana Freemen had a months-long standoff with FBI agents in 1996, and militants conducted an armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in 2016. Although not all of these events were directly tied to the sovereign citizen movement, they incited an increase of anti-government sentiment.

Sovereign citizen beliefs have experienced a resurgence since the early 2000s largely because the ideology has been marketed to and adopted by groups other than right-wing extremists. Sovereign citizen tactics, stripped of white supremacy, Christian and anti-Semitic sentiments, can appeal to anyone of any race or religion [source: Goetz].

But how do sovereign citizens reach the point where they think writing in a certain color of ink or insisting to a judge that they are "not a person" are sound legal tactics? The justifications for their unusual claims follow a chain of faulty logic that we'll break down in the next section.

 

[Tax Counsel]

These folks come up with some really odd ideas. I dealt with a lot of such people during the couple years that I was a tax protest coordinator at IRS. (Congress later banned the IRS from identifying anyone as an "illegal tax protestor (ITP)" though what good they thought it would do is beyond me.) One guy believed that using U.S. currency and coins would create that dreaded contract with the government and insisted on doing all his financial transactions in gold and silver — and the gold/silver couldn't be in coins minted by the federal government. He also believed that all banks were part of the government conspiracy because they deal with and have to follow the rules of the Federal Reserve. We had to go dig up his yard to seize the boxes of silver he had buried there to protect it from the government and from thieves. Another guy refused to drive on any interstate or U.S. highway because those are created and partly funded by the federal government and thus could rope them into the contract that they fear and try so hard to avoid. He only used state highways, county roads, and city streets. Any time I dealt with these anti-government types I had armed federal agents with me because I could never tell which of them might get violent. The agents had bullet proof vests, high powered weapons, and walked and stood a few yards behing me. I didn't get a bullet proof vest; I was more like a human shield for the agents. One of them told me "don't worry, if he shoots you he'll be dead a second later". (Not a lot of comfort there for me.) Fortunately their very presence often did seem to be enough to keep the ITPs on good behavior.

 

[PayrollHRGuy]

tax protest coordinator

I bet it wasn't hard to find people to protest tax.

 

[Red Kayak]

I bet it wasn't hard to find people to protest tax.

Yeah, but coordinating them is tougher than herding cats.

 

[Tax Counsel]

I bet it wasn't hard to find people to protest tax.

Few people enjoy paying taxes. But most follow the law and pay their taxes. Then there are those, like the ITPs, who will try just about anything to dodge their tax obligations. They weren't all that hard to find, for the most part, as they also tended to be vocal about it. When I first showed up at their door they relished the thought of barreling me over with what they thought was a brilliant argument as to why they didn't have to pay. Their enthusiasm diminished greatly once I started taking their assets to pay the tax that the examiners had determined they owed. The stupidiest thing is I would point out to them that people had been making those same arguments literally for decades and none ever succeeded, but they'd say they'd succeed where the others failed. When I asked how they were going to do that, they couldn't articulate what made their claims different from all those who went before them and lost. The first taxpayer to ever try these arguments in court can at least say that the argument had never been tested and might win. But decades later doing the same thing after a whole string of failures by others you'd think they'd wise up and understand those arguments are bogus and will never work. It's like watching a whole line of people jumping off a cliff and go splat at the bottom and thinking that there's something special about them that will protect them from going splat, too. Then they get surprised when they go spat too.