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Tag: Ronald Wesley Groves

  • RALEIGH NEWS OBSERVER: Purported ‘Sovereign Citizen’ Jailed In North Carolina, Amid Allegations He Filed Bogus Lien Against Wake County Court Clerk

    americaatrisk4It has happened again — this time in Raleigh, N.C., officials said.

    Sullivan Colin, 36, has been arrested on a charge of filing a false lien for $3 million against a court clerk who oversaw a foreclosure case, the Raleigh News Observer is reporting.

    From the News Observer (italics added):

    Court officials say the lien and a second one that . . .  Sullivan Colin, 36, was trying to file Friday when he was arrested, are part of harassment of court officials by adherents of a “sovereign citizen” movement that denies government authority.

    Colin was taken into custody at the Wake County Register of Deeds office Friday afternoon when he went there to file another lien, officials said, and was arrested Friday evening.

    Purported “sovereign citizens” have been implicated in bizarre plots in various U.S. states to file false liens against the property of public officials. The practice has been described as “paper terrorism.”

    AdSurfDaily figure and purported “sovereign citizen” Kenneth Wayne Leaming was convicted in March of multiple crimes, including filing bogus liens against federal officials involved in the prosecution of the $119 million ASD Ponzi scheme. In May, he was sentenced to eight years in federal prison.

    Former Leaming business associate David Carroll Stephenson also was convicted of filing false liens. He was sentenced to 10 years. Stephenson already was in jail for a tax scam.

    In March, two California scammers (Ronald Wesley Groves and Donald Charles Mann) who’d swindled investors in an “international bank trades” caper were sentenced to additional time for targeting a federal prosecutors and FBI agents with false liens.

    Earlier — in January 2013 — Robert Clifton Tanner, a purported Louisiana “sovereign citizen” implicated in a cross-border plot to file bogus financial judgments against state-court judges and others in Utah, was sentenced to 30 months in prison.

    In November 2012, Cherron Marie Phillips, a purported Illinois “sovereign citizen,” was charged with filing false liens that sought $100 billion each from former Chicago U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald and 11 other public officials, including a chief U.S. District Judge, a U.S. District Judge, two U.S. Magistrate Judges, an assistant U.S. Attorney, a federal court clerk, four federal Task Force officers and a federal agent.

    Harvey Douglas Goff, a purported Utah “sovereign citizen” who allegedly claimed he enjoyed “diplomatic immunity,” was charged in May 2011 with placing bogus liens seeking spectacular sums from public officials. He was sentenced in April 2013 to 36 months in federal prison.

    In 2011, California Ponzi schemer Thanh Viet Jeremy Cao pleaded gulity to federal charges in Nevada that he filed false liens against public officials. Meanwhile, Mark D. Leitner was indicted in Florida during the same year on charges of filing false liens for $48.489 billion against a number of federal employees.

    Flash forward to 2013, and Donald Joe Barber, a purported Alabama “sovereign citizen,” was convicted of fraud for trying to pay off a mortgage with a bogus “bonded promissory note.” Purported “sovereigns” have been linked to multiple forms of fraud

    Also see December 2010 story about a false-liens case against Andrew Isaac Chance in Maryland. Meanwhile, see a June 2010 story about a false-liens case against Ronald James Davenport in Washington state.

  • California Scammers Who Wiped Out Investors In 4,000 Percent ‘International Bank Trades’ Swindle Get Extra Prison Time For Filing False Liens Against Federal Prosecutor, FBI Agents

    ponziblotterRonald Wesley Groves and Donald Charles Mann swindled $4.8 million from 642 investors in a bizarre “international bank trades” caper that promised a payout of 4,000 percent. Now, they’ve been sentenced to an extra year in federal prison for filing false liens against a federal prosecutor and two FBI agents involved in the fraud probe, the office of U.S. Attorney Benjamin B. Wagner of the Eastern District of California said.

    Prime-bank fraud schemes, which may trade on secrecy and claim to be humanitarian in nature, are among the strangest of all in Ponzi Land. In the Groves/Mann scheme, $300,000 made its way into “the coffers of a Liberian presidential candidate,” prosecutors said.

    Liberia is a country in West Africa.

    Groves, 71, was sentenced last week to 10 years in federal prison for his role in the “Money Growth Solutions” (MGS) swindle, which operated between April 2005 and April 2006.

    Mann, 56, was sentenced to more than 17 years for the same swindle.

    Both men were sentenced today to an extra year in jail for filing the bogus liens while they were awaiting trial on fraud charges from the MGS scheme in 2008. The liens claimed that Groves and Mann were owed $101.9 million and that the meter was running against the prosecutor and FBI agents at a rate of $100,000 a day.

    Groves and Mann were charged with four counts of retaliation against federal officials by false claim and slander of title and one count of obstruction of justice.

    From a statement by prosecutors:

    The defendants told investors that these bank trades were a highly secretive investment vehicle known only to a few people around the world.

    In June 2011, a jury returned guilty verdicts against Groves and Mann after a nine-day trial. According to evidence presented at their trial, in one program, investors were offered a 10 to 1 return (1,000 percent) on their investment within a matter of weeks. In a later offering, the defendants promised a 40 to 1 return (4,000 percent) in the same amount of time. The defendants told investors that while their money was waiting to be placed into a bank trade, it would be maintained in an escrow account that could not be touched for any other purpose. The defendants also told investors that if they were unable to execute a “bank trade,” the investors would receive their entire investment back plus 6 percent interest within 12 months. With the exception of a few people who were able to obtain refunds, every MGS investor lost their entire investment.

    The federal investigation revealed that by April 2006, out of the $4.8 million received, Money Growth Solutions had less than $65,000 remaining in its bank account. Some of that money — $300,000 apiece — went into the pockets of the two defendants. The remainder of the money went to the defendants’ various pet projects, including $300,000 to the coffers of a Liberian presidential candidate and $2.5 million to a Florida company that was supposedly developing a revolutionary battery. The battery company was later determined by the Securities and Exchange Commission to be a scam and its owner was federally indicted.