BULLETIN: (UPDATED 4:38 P.M. EDT U.S.A.) A federal grand jury in the Western District of Washington has returned a superseding indictment against AdSurfDaily figure and purported “sovereign citizen” Kenneth Wayne Leaming.
It is the second superseding indictment against Leaming. The first was filed in 2012.
The new indictment was returned yesterday, a day after the White House and the Justice Department referenced “sovereign citizens” in a policy announcement that pointed to an FBI site that defined “sovereign citizens” as “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.”
Leaming is 57. His alleged onetime business colleague David Carroll Stephenson, 57, also is named in the superseding indictment. The indictment formally accuses Leaming of filing false liens against a federal judge, two former federal prosecutors and a U.S. Secret Service agent who had roles in the ASD Ponzi case. The liens were filed in August 2010 and November 2010, according to the indictment.
Meanwhile, the indictment accuses Leaming and Stephenson of filing false liens against two U.S. prison officials in July 2011.
Leaming, meanwhile, was further accused of harboring two federal fugitives in 2010 and of being a felon in possession of six firearms.
At the same time, the indictment accuses Leaming of passing a bogus “Bonded Promissory Note” for $1 million in March 2008, in a bid to defraud the United States.
Leaming and Stephenson are being held at the SeaTac federal detention center near Seattle.
ASD was a $119 million Ponzi scheme brought down by the Secret Service in August 2008. Leaming reportedly was performing legal work for some ASD members, even though he is not an attorney.
Leaming was arrested in Spanaway, Wash., by an FBI terrorism Task Force in November 2011. He has been jailed since then. Stephenson already was serving a federal sentence for a tax crime when Leaming was arrested.
Leaming has an existing federal felony conviction for piloting an aircraft without a license.
AdSurfDaily figure Kenneth Wayne Leaming now claims he’s been subjected to “POISON” and “TORTURE.”
In 2009, AdSurfDaily figure and purported “sovereign citizen” Kenneth Wayne Leaming claimed a city in Washington state targeted him for “DEATH” and threatened to kill him by “HUNTING” him down “in screaming packs and mobs” and using “several armed street gangs” that served as police, according to records.
Leaming, now 57, further claimed the Pierce County city of Puyallup engaged in terrorism by controlling “multiple electronic broadcast media” and employing police who used “chemical and biological weapons,” “machine guns” and “explosives.”
In November 2011, prosecutors said Leaming was found in Spanaway, Wash., with two federal fugitives from Arkansas. Those fugitives now have been convicted of mail fraud for a multimillion-dollar, home-based business caper. Court filings by Timothy Shawn Donavan, 64, and Sharon Jeannette Henningsen, 68, suggest they also were sovereign citizens.
After Leaming’s arrest with Donavan and Henningsen, federal prosecutors in the Western District of Washington said an FBI terrorism Task Force found evidence that Leaming had filed false liens against at least five public officials involved in the AdSurfDaily Ponzi case filed by the U.S. Secret Service in 2008.
Leaming allegedly also filed bogus liens or assisted in filing liens against a former cabinet official in the administration of President George W. Bush, the head of a credit union and at least two U.S. prison officials. In 2012, while detained, Leaming sued President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder, advancing a Birther conspiracy theory.
A federal judge tossed that lawsuit. Court filings by Leaming now suggest he intends to sue Holder anew, this time in the District of Columbia as opposed to the Western District of Washington.
But Leaming also has another active lawsuit against Holder and others in the Western District of Washington. A complaint by Leaming dated yesterday asserts he has been subjected to “POISON” and “TORTURE” during his ongoing detention at the SeaTac federal detention center near Seattle.
In October 2012, federal prosecutors alleged that Leaming “was instrumental in founding the ‘County Rangers,’ the sovereign group’s armed enforcement wing. Members of the County Rangers were issued realistic-looking badges and credentials were required to possess firearms as part of their duties, and held themselves out as law enforcement agents.”
Leaming already is a convicted felon from a case that alleged he had no license and yet piloted an aircraft. When he was arrested in November 2011 in the company of Donavan and Henningsen, several firearms were found in Leaming’s residence, including an “AK-47 style assault rifle with a bayonet,” prosecutors said.
He later was charged with unlawful possession of firearms as a convicted felon.
When agents executed a search warrant, they found “numerous boxes of correspondence and legal paperwork documenting other apparent fraud schemes,” prosecutors said.
BULLETIN: (UPDATED 12:35 P.M. ET U.S.A.) AdSurfDaily figure and purported “sovereign citizen” Kenneth Wayne Leaming has reached out from jail again in a bid to sue the government and officeholders.
Leaming, 57, is detained in the SeaTac federal-detention facility near Seattle on charges of filing false liens against at least five public officials involved in the ASD Ponzi case and other crimes. He was arrested by an FBI terrorism Task Force in November 2011. Since his arrest, Leaming has filed lawsuits against President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington and a county sheriff in Arkansas.
Filings in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia — the venue from which the ASD Ponzi prosecution was brought — now show that Leaming is seeking to sue Holder anew, along with a federal prison official in Washington state. Leaming originally sued Holder and Obama in a different venue.
His new claims make Holder a prospective defendant in the D.C. District Court and make new claims against the Attorney General.
The case is docketed as “unassigned” to a specific judge, but U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer — an alleged target of one of Leaming’s false liens and the presiding judge in the ASD case — has issued an order that requires Leaming to submit certain paperwork to the court before the case can proceed. The January docket for the D.C. district suggests that Collyer’s duties this month have included the initial responses to complaints brought by individuals desiring to sue members of government.
Leaming does not appear to be making an ASD-related claim in his most recent case. Even so, it is possible that Collyer would remove herself from any Leaming-related process moving forward because of the FBI allegations he filed a false lien against her in Washington state.
In the new filing in the D.C. District, Leaming appears to be trying to make a damages claim against a SeaTac prison official while simultaneously making a claim against Holder. The earlier case against Holder and Obama was tossed in the Western District of Washington months ago. Following a Birther conspiracy theory, it alleged that Obama was not born in the United States and thus was inelegible to be President — and that Holder was a bogus Attorney General because he’d been appointed by a bogus President.
Leaming now is demanding damages paid in “United States Silver Eagle Dollars,” amid allegations he was denied access to a law library. In his earlier case against Holder and Obama, he demanded payment in gold in silver.
BULLETIN: David Carroll Stephenson, an alleged business associate of AdSurfDaily figure and purported “sovereign citizen” Kenneth Wayne Leaming, has been moved from a federal prison in Arizona to the SeaTac federal detention center near Seattle to answer charges that he conspired with Leaming to file false liens against two Federal Bureau of Prisons officials.
Leaming, 56, remains in federal custody at SeaTac. In addition to charges that he worked with Stephenson to file bogus liens totaling $30 million against Harley Lappin and Dennis R. Smith, Leaming is accused of filing false liens against at least five public officials involved in the AdSurfDaily Ponzi case. He’s also charged with harboring two federal fugitives from Arkansas at his residence in Spanaway, Wash., being a felon in possession of firearms and uttering a bogus “Bonded Promissory Note” with a purported face value of $1 million.
Lappin is the former director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons; Smith is the warden of the Federal Correctional Institution in Phoenix. Stephenson and Leaming divined a construction by which Lappin owed Stephenson $10 million and Smith owed him $20 million, the FBI said in court documents filed in November 2011.
Some of the firms with which American-International had a business relationship formed their names with words typically associated with government or banking. One was called “Homeland Security Service,” for instance. Another was called “Presidential Detail.” Yet another was called “Federal Asset Management Service.” Still another was called “Federal Fleet Management,” according to records.
Stephenson, 56, was serving a 96-month prison sentence (ending in January 2013) for defrauding the United States in a tax scam during the time in which he plotted with Leaming last year to carry out the fraud against Lappin and Smith, the FBI said.
An FBI affidavit filed in November alleges that Leaming was conducting research on the real estate holdings and personal finances of U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts and his wife and discussed a scheme to serve Stephenson-related documents on Roberts through the school his children attended.
Robert’s is chief judge of the U.S. Supreme Court and America’s highest-ranking judicial officer. He is one of nine members of the Supreme Court.
Other Leaming email correspondence cited by the FBI suggests he sent a “certified,” Stephenson-related letter to the personal residence of Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and was trying to find a home address for Associate Justice Stephen G. Breyer — instead of sending Stephenson-related correspondence to the Supreme Court address.
Like Roberts, Ginsburg and Breyer are members of the Supreme Court.
Breyer’s name was in the news yesterday, amid reports that he was robbed while vacationing with his wife and several friends in Nevis last week by a masked intruder wielding a machete. The Supreme Court is on break. There were no reports that anyone was injured in the Nevis incident, but the robber allegedly got away with $1,000.
The email was attributed to “Keny,” a nickname used by Leaming.
Court records suggest Leaming was under FBI surveillance when the email was sent. He was arrested by an FBI terrorism task force about seven weeks later.
In court filings in the original liens case against Leaming in November, the FBI said “one of the specific documents” found in Washington state sought the staggering sum of $225.4 billion and listed “Kenneth Wayne, sovereign man” as “grantee,” and public officials as “grantors.”
Bogus liens against Mary Peters, the former U.S. Secretary of Transportation, and Cutler Dawson, president and CEO of Navy Federal Credit Union, also were discovered, according to court filings.
Leaming was arrested on the liens charges via a criminal complaint filed in November. The firearms, fugitive-harboring and false-utterance charges were added in a superseding grand-jury indictment returned on Jan. 26.
The two fugitives Leaming allegedly harbored were implicated in an Arkansas-based, home-business scam that fetched more than $2 million, according to court records. Meanwhile, the ASD Ponzi scheme fetched at least $110 million, federal prosecutors said.
Timothy Shawn Donavan, 63, and Sharon Jeannette Henningsen, 67 — the fugitives allegedly found with Leaming — both are listed as federal detainees at facilities in Texas. They initially were jailed at SeaTac in Washington state, but made bond after their November arrests and returned to Arkansas, according to federal records.
Bizarre pleadings laced with language associated with “sovereign citizens” soon began to appear in their Arkansas proceedings. Donavan’s bond was revoked after he refused to be sworn as a witness at a pretrial proceeding in Arkansas, according to records. He is jailed at a federal facility in Texas.
Henningsen currently is in federal custody at a Texas facility that provides specialized medical care and mental-health services, according to records.
Andy Bowdoin, the 77-year-old alleged operator of the ASD Ponzi scheme, is awaiting his September 2012 federal criminal trial on charges of wire fraud, securities fraud and selling unregistered securities.
Fahimi Fisal (left) and Mukhtar Kechik. Source: INTERPOL.
Ponzi schemer Robert Miracle, who scammed investors in a $65.3 million oil-and-gas fraud operating in the Seattle area, knows he’ll bed down tonight in custody at the SeaTac Federal Detention Center in Washington state.
His co-defendants, though, are less certain of their sleeping spots — and still have to worry about knocks at doors in the middle of the night.
Fahimi Fisal and Mukhtar Kechik — both Malaysian nationals of middle age — are international fugitives wanted by INTERPOL. Fisal is 40; Kechik is 54. There are “Wanted” posters in each of their names.
Miracle, 50, Bellevue, Wash., was sentenced this week to 13 years in federal prison, but he already was in custody. While awaiting trial in May 2009, his bail was revoked for not complying with the conditions of his release.
In February 2009 — just two months after the $65 billion Bernard Madoff caper came to the fore and the word Ponzi became a daily part of the national and international dialogue — Miracle, Fisal and Kechik were charged in in a 23- count indictment alleging conspiracy, mail fraud, wire fraud, money-laundering and tax evasion. The criminal case against Miracle and his co-defendants was one of the first major prosecutions of the post-Madoff era.
Many towns across the United States now have their own individual “mini-Madoffs,” and the alleged schemers are accused of consuming individual and family wealth on a local, regional, national or international scale, taking wrecking balls to churches, charities and endowments — and leaving Ponzi pain on the doorsteps of hundreds of thousands of people.
The Miracle scheme “ruined people’s lives,” prosecutors said, quoting U.S. District Judge James L. Robart, who sentenced Miracle. Miracle pleaded guilty to mail fraud and tax evasion.
Prosecutors said he operated companies purportedly involved in oil development in Indonesia, and sold “shares” in ventures known as Laramie Petroleum Inc., MCube Petroleum Inc., Diski Limited Liability Co., Basilam Limited Liability Co. and Halmahera-Rembang Limited Liability Co.
“Miracle and his co-defendants represented to investors that various companies were making money from oil field development and services on oil and gas fields in Indonesia,” prosecutors said. “In fact, the proceeds of later investors were used to pay off the investments of earlier investors in the form of a ‘ponzi’ scheme.”
BULLETIN: (UPDATED 4:38 P.M. EDT U.S.A.) A federal grand jury in the Western District of Washington has returned a superseding indictment against AdSurfDaily figure and purported “sovereign citizen” Kenneth Wayne Leaming.
