Chief Timothy Shaw. Source: Temple Police Department website.
The police chief in the small town of Temple, Ga., told WSB-TV that his department’s encounter with a purported “sovereign citizen” issued a traffic ticket in November has turned into a nightmare.
Chief Timothy Shaw did not identify the recipient of the ticket, but told the station that a judge has issued a protective order.
From WSB-TV Channel 2, quoting the chief:
“I received Mapquest driving directions that he had pulled up, from his personal residence to my personal residence. Also his personal residence to my mother and father’s personal residence in Florida.”
Other worrisome events that sprouted from the traffic encounter ensued, the chief told the station.
Read a Feb. 6 USA Today story that reports the “FBI is being inundated with calls from local government officials asking for assistance in dealing with anti-government extremists.”
“It’s okay to have beliefs, but you don’t commit crimes in the name of those beliefs. You don’t get to pull a gun on a police officer over a traffic ticket.” — Jim Hudson, Tarrant County prosecutor,” Feb. 1, 2012
James Michael Tesi. Source: Office of Tarrant County District Attorney Joe Shannon Jr.
In December 2010, purported “sovereign citizen” James Michael Tesi received two traffic tickets in the Dallas/Ft. Worth-area community of Colleyville, Texas.
Tesi, 49, was speeding — and he had no driver’s license, Tarrant County prosecutors said.
A court date was set two months later, but Tesi did not show up. A municipal judge issued an arrest warrant, prosecutors said.
After missing his court date, Tesi “sent a legal-sounding document to the municipal court threatening ‘deadly force’ if anyone tried to arrest him on his property,” prosecutors said.
On July 21, 2011, prosecutors said, a Colleyville police officer observed Tesi driving and tried to pull him over.
Tesi, though, did not stop. Instead, he drove to his residence in Hurst and pulled into his garage, prosecutors said.
The officer walked up Tesi’s driveway with his gun drawn and observed that Tesi had a handgun, prosecutors said.
A shootout in which 15 shots were fired ensued. Tesi was hit twice, but survived with wounds to the face and leg. The officer was not hit, prosecutors said.
Inside Tesi’s vehicle, police found a Tesi “affidavit” that “warned any officer who attempted to stop him that they had no jurisdiction over him and could face prosecution for harassing him,” prosecutors said.
Tesi ultimately was charged under Texas law with aggravated assault of a public servant with a deadly weapon.
The jury found him guilty on Tuesday, after deliberating for about two and a half hours. The penalty phase then began. On Wednesday, after less than two hours of deliberations, the jury sentenced Tesi to 35 years in state prison.
UPDATED 1:33 P.M. ET WITH LINK TO INDICTMENT: AdSurfDaily figure and purported “sovereign citizen” Kenneth Wayne Leaming is facing new federal-felony charges.
Leaming, 56, originally was arrested in November 2011 by an FBI terrorism task force on charges of filing false liens against at least five public officials involved in the ASD Ponzi scheme case.
Prosecutors now say he faces charges in addition to the ones originally filed and will be arraigned on the charges tomorrow in Tacoma, Wash.
Among the new charges are concealing a person from arrest, being a felon in possession of a firearm and using a false and fictitious instrument, the office of U.S. Attorney Jenny A. Durkan of the Western District of Washington said.
Leaming is among at least six purported “sovereign citizens” recently charged or convicted of crimes in the western section of the state.
Timothy Garrison, 60, of Mount Vernon, Wash., was sentenced yesterday to 42 months in federal prison for a tax scam that cost the U.S. government more than $2.5 million.
Like Leaming, Garrison’s activities included filing false liens. He also made “threats to ‘arrest’ law enforcement officers,” prosecutors said.
“No one is above the law,” Durkan said. “[Garrison’s] scheme now creates a hardship for those who put their trust in Mr. Garrison – they have big tax bills to pay. His further abuse of the legal system with fraudulent liens and so-called ‘arrest warrants,’ is a dangerous mix for our law enforcement officers who are trying to keep our communities safe.”
A convicted felon prior to the charges for which he was sentenced yesterday, Garrison assisted in the filing of more than 50 returns with false or fraudulent information, prosecutors said.
When Leaming was arrested in November, he was found with two federal fugitives from Arkansas, along with firearms, prosecutors said.
UPDATE AT 1:33 P.M. ET. Here is a link to the indictment, which also names alleged Leaming associate David Carroll Stephenson in a count of retaliating against a federal judge or federal law-enforcement officer. Stephenson currently is serving time in an Arizona federal prison in an earlier case, and prosecutors said he’ll be brought to Washington state on the new retaliation charge against him. He is referenced in this November 2010 PP Blog story on a Leaming email sent to ASD members. Stephenson also is referenced in this November 2011 Leaming story about certain communications allegedly directed at U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts at the behest of Stephenson.
The indictment describes the weapons allegedly found with Leaming and describes the fugitives by their initials. The PP Blog previously confirmed that the fugitives were Timothy Shawn Donavan and Sharon Jeannette Henningsen, who were wanted in an alleged mail-fraud caper involving envelope stuffing in Arkansas.
Ronald Williams, 48, was an inmate in various prisons in New York state between 2006 and 2010, federal prosecutors said.
His mother told the Syracuse Post-Standard that her son was jailed in 2006 on charges of stealing a tractor-trailer full of “canned beans” off a street in Buffalo.
While incarcerated, Williams got the not-so-bright idea of filing false tax returns from prison, apparently after being influenced by a purported “sovereign citizen” website article attributed in part to “Obi-Wan Kenobi,” the newspaper reported.
Obi-Wan Kenobi, of course, is a fictional character from the Star Wars franchise.
Federal prosecutors now say Williams filed 11 false returns from prison, and assisted another prisoner in filing a bogus return.
In one instance, prosecutors said, Williams managed to dupe the IRS into sending him a refund of $327,456.04 to his prison address. The check was intercepted by the prison and returned to the IRS.
Williams, who “never actually received any monies,” also engaged in redemption scams in which he fabricated “withholdings on numerous Forms 1099-OID by claiming false withholding credits,” prosecutors said. “The eleven returns were for payment of refunds of taxes totaling $890,000,000.”
(See a PP Blog story about a different redemption scam, this one operating from Washington state and allegedly involving purported “sovereign citizen” John Lloyd Kirk, who once was imprisoned for possessing a pipe bomb.)
A jury convicted Williams last week on all 12 counts filed against him, the office of U.S. Attorney Richard S. Hartunian of the Northern District of New York said.
“The object of these schemes is to defraud the government and the taxpaying public,” said Victor W. Lessoff, acting special agent in charge of the IRS Criminal Investigations Unit. “Although a check was computer generated in this case, immediate action was taken as soon as it was identified by IRS Criminal Investigation and those involved in this scheme were vigorously prosecuted.”
BULLETIN: A new superseding indictment has been returned in federal court in Alaska against purported “sovereign citizens” and “militia” members Francis Schaeffer Cox, Coleman L. Barney and Lonnie G. Vernon.
In addition to the original charges outlined in an the first superseding indictment, the trio now is accused of conspiracy to kill federal officers and officials, according to the FBI.
Cox further is charged with soliciting Barney and Vernon to murder federal officers, the FBI said.
And Cox, 27, Barney, 36, and Vernon, 57, “are all charged with additional counts involving the carrying of firearms during a crime of violence,” the FBI said. “In addition to these charges, the indictment includes criminal forfeiture allegations relating to several seized firearms, silencers, and destructive devices.”
Cox allegedly has asserted courts have no authority over him. The superseding indictment alleges that Cox and his militia colleagues, despite their sovereign posturing and beliefs the government has no legitimate authority over them, apparently divined themselves the right to assert authority over private citizens.
Among other things, the indictment alleges that Cox had an armed security force and somehow persuaded himself that a federal “hit team” had been sent to Fairbanks to assassinate him, according to the indictment.
With Cox scheduled to make a television appearance in November 2010, Cox, Barney, Vernon and others “developed a tactical plan to provide security for COX,” according to the new indictment. “Part of the tactical plan included the wearing of body armor, the possession of hand grenades, arming with semi-automatic weapons, the possession of 37mm launchers loaded with Hornets Nest anti-personnel rounds along with the creation and implementation of a deadly force policy in the event the federal agents arrived to arrest or attempt to kill COX.”
On Nov. 23, 2010, according to the indictment, Barney, Vernon and others “established a tactical and armed perimeter security force of militia members around COX while COX was doing the television interview,” according to the indictment. “This perimeter security force, among other things, trespassed on the private property of local citizenry while ‘patrolling’ on COX’s behalf, constructed a vehicular funneling point in order to stop and inspect the vehicles and identities of private citizens, and did, in fact, stop private citizens without lawful authority and under the force of arms.”
The armed security detail asked citizens “for names and identification and prevented citizens from traveling either to their place of employment or their own private residences,” according to the indictment.
While stopping citizens, Barney had “a semi-automatic assault rifle, an AR-15 .223 rifle,” according to the indictment..
Attached to the “rail mount” of the semi-automatic rifle “was a 37mm launcher,” according to the indictment. “Loaded inside the 37 mm launcher was a ‘Hornets Nest’ anti-personnel round.”
For his part, Vernon had “a semi-automatic assault rifle, a Sig Arms AR-15 .223 rifle,” according to the indictment.
Also in November 2010 — apparently after divining himself the right to use armed guards to interrupt the free travel of private citizens — Cox paid for 16,000 newspaper ads, according to the indictment.
Here is how the ads read:
“The laws of The Judiciary appear to have been fraudulently displaced by a privately owned for profit corporation deceptively named the ‘Alaska Court System.’ This corporation and the Alaska Bar Association are under criminal investigation. If you have had a case decided without full disclosure of the true nature of the ‘Alaska Court System’ the damages can be corrected. Judgments can be overturned and you may be entitled to restitution! A public meeting to explain the process in simple laymen’s terms will be held at the CARLSON CENTER ON DECEMBER 1, AT 6:30 PM . . .”
On Nov. 22, 2011, AdSurfDaily figure and purported “sovereign citizen” Kenneth Wayne Leaming was arrested by the FBI in Washington state on charges he filed bogus liens against at least five public officials involved in the ASD Ponzi case.
Some ASD members apparently have relied on Leaming for legal advice, even though he is not an attorney.
Leaming was found with two federal fugitives implicated in an Arkansas-based, home-business scheme involving envelope-stuffing, federal prosecutors said. Those fugitives — Timothy Shawn Donavan and Sharon Jeannette Henningsen — were indicted on mail-fraud charges in February 2011, according to federal records.
Whether Donavan and Henningsen were ASD members is unclear. Also unclear is whether they relied on Leaming for legal advice at any point in time. Their filings, however, appear to be consistent with filings in cases involving purported “sovereign citizens.”
Although Leaming remains jailed, Donavan, 63, and Henningsen, 67, were released on bond in Washington state several days after their arrests and kept a court date in Arkansas on Dec. 8. During their initial Arkansas appearance, both defendants suggested they’d defend themselves — while also ambiguously suggesting they might hire a lawyer, according to court filings.
They again were released on bond, with the judge ordering them as a bond condition “to report to the court within 10 days o[n] whether they had hired an attorney or intended to pursue representing themselves.”
They did not do so, according to federal court records. The judge then set a hearing date for Dec. 27 and required Donavan and Henningsen to formally explain whether they’d rely on attorneys or themselves to defend the case.
On Dec. 27 — the date of the hearing and nine days after the initial deadline to inform the court on how they intended to defend the case — Donavan and Henningsen filed a bizarre pleading styled, “Notice: Forgive Me Request; Constructive Notice of Conditional Acceptance and Request to Continue Public Proceedings.”
In the pleading, Donavan and Henningsen apparently argued that they needed “80” more days to make up their minds. Their trail date, however, already had been scheduled for Jan. 19, 2012. Both defendants were aware of the trial date, according to court records.
It got stranger yet.
“At the hearing and in their Notice the Defendants stated that they were appearing as ‘Authorized Representatives for the Secured Party Creditor having a security interest in the collateral belonging to the Debtor-Defendant, SHARON JEANNETTE HENNINGSEN AND TIMOTHY SHAWN DONAVAN, and also accommodation parties, hereinafter, ‘Offerees.’” according to an order issued by the judge.
“The Offerees,” the strange pleading continued, “are in receipt of INDICTMENT a copy attached hereto and incorporated herein as if full reproduced herein as ‘Exhibit 1’ dated February 24, 2011 in Case #2:11-CR-20008, hereinafter ‘offer’, (sic) from UNITED STATES OF AMERICA via M.W. FLEMING, Assistant United States Attorney, U.S. Attorney’s Office . . ., hereinafter `Offerer’”. (sic)
Donavan and Henningsen then apparently ventured that they’d accept appointed counsel if the appointed counsel would “hold them harmless” for anything they suffered.
The judge denied the motion for an 80-day continuance and appointed provisional counsel.
How the case will proceed was not immediately clear.
Shawn Rice, a purported “sovereign citizen” the FBI described in March 2011 as a “fugitive,” has been arrested in Seligman, Ariz.
The Arizona Republic is reporting that the arrest occurred at 5:30 p.m. local time yesterday after a standoff that ended peacefully after negotiations with Rice, who had barricaded himself inside a house.
Rice, whom federal prosecutors in Nevada said was 48, was charged in Nevada with money-laundering and conspiracy in March 2009. His initial arrest occurred as a result of a sting in which he allegedly agreed with Samuel Davis, 56, of Council, Idaho, to launder proceeds from what the men believed was a bank-fraud scheme.
In reality, according to federal prosecutors, Rice and Davis were conducting business with undercover FBI agents posing as scammers.
Davis, another purported “sovereign citizen,” pleaded guilty to the charges in March 2011. He was sentenced in October to 57 months in federal prison. Rice, though, became a fugitive, the FBI said.
It was not immediately clear how the FBI learned yesterday that Rice was in Seligman. The arrest occurred while much of the nation’s attention was focused on the holidays.
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has described Davis as a redemptionist-seminar tax scammer and “one of the elders in the Guardians of the Free Republics, a sovereign group that claims to have recently set up ‘common-law courts’ in all 50 states.”
It is becoming somewhat common for “sovereign citizens” to conduct “trials” — occasionally inside places such as restaurants — at which fellow “sovereigns” implicated in crimes and within the jurisdiction of real courts are “acquitted.”
Prior to his guilty plea, Davis advised customers of his tax scheme “that everything is going as planned,” SPLC reported.
Rice is known as “Rabbi Shawn Rice,” SPLC reported.
“According to the court records, from March 2008 through the date of the Indictment, Davis and Rice allegedly laundered approximately $1.3 million of monies for FBI undercover agents,” federal prosecutors said in March 2009. “Davis and Rice were told by the undercover agents that the monies were proceeds of a bank fraud scheme, specifically from the theft and forgery of stolen official bank checks. Davis and Rice laundered the monies through a nominee trust account controlled by Davis and through an account of a purported religious organization controlled by Rice. Davis and Rice took approximately $74,000 and $22,000, respectively, in fees for their money laundering services.”
Patricio E. Sanchez: Photo from Volusia County contempt-of-court case.
Patricio E. Sanchez, a reputed “sovereign citizen” who is listed in state and national databases as a registered sex offender in a case involving a child under the age of 16, has been jailed in Florida for filing a bogus lien against a judge and litigation opponents in a foreclosure case.
The story first was reported by the Daytona Beach News Journal. The PP Blog confirmed details about Sanchez through public database searches and court records in Florida.
Sanchez is listed as an inmate at a Volusia County detention facility. He is being held after he was found in contempt of court for filing the lien against the judge and two attorneys. His path to jail began in January 2009, when a lender filed a foreclosure lawsuit. The lender ultimately prevailed, but Sanchez filed bogus liens and was found in contempt of court last month, according to court records.
The sexual-offender registration for Sanchez shows a 1997 charge of “Lewd or Lascivious” conduct against a child under the age of 16.
Separately, the docket in the foreclosure case features Sanchez-related pleadings that use phrases such as “oath of loyalty for Judges” and “Common Law” and “Uniform Commercial Code.”
Such pleadings and case stylings have surfaced in various types of cases involving so-called “sovereign citizens.”
Florida also has been confronting a situation involving so-called “wild deeds” that are filed to cloud property titles.
Saying that laws did not apply to him, self-styled “sovereign citizen” Monty Ervin declared himself a “Most Christian Prince” and “governor” of Alabama in its “original jurisdiction” while concealing his tax crimes in 2006 — crimes in which his wife Patricia also was implicated.
Patricia Ervin declared herself a “Most Christian Princess” who’d been “certified” by Prince George, whom she described as the “Arch Treasurer” for “The United States of America” in the “Treaty of Paris of 1783,” according to records.
The Ervins were indicted in Alabama in February 2011, and Monty Ervin went on the lam to Florida. He was captured in Naples the following month by the U.S. Marshals Service Fugitive Task Force. When captured, Monty was found to be in possession of a “notebook containing the latitude and longitude coordinates of an island off the coast of Honduras,” federal prosecutors said.
Among the evidence prosecutors introduced during the two-week jury trial was $350,000 in gold coins that the Ervins apparently buried in their yard while orchestrating a scheme involving bogus real-estate trusts.
The Ervins were convicted yesterday of three counts of tax evasion. Patricia Ervin also was convicted of a count of structuring banking tranactions to avoid reporting requirements. She faces up to 25 years in federal prison. Her husband faces 20 years. Sentencing for the couple is set for Jan. 23.
In August 2006, according to public filings, Patricia Ervin — for whatever reason — appeared before a notary public to certify that she was neither a “prisoner of war” nor an “employee of the government.”
Patricia also claimed not to be a “citizen” of “the United States” and not to be a “numbered member of the communitarian welfare benefit trust called Social Security Administration.”
In the document, Patricia refers to herself as a “sovereign Christian Princess like me.”
Jacob Franz Dyck: Source: Polk County Sheriff's Office
Jacob Franz Dyck, a purported Florida “sovereign citizen,” is wanted on a felony arrest warrant for “Criminal Act Under Color Of Law Or Committing Criminal Acts Through Simulated Use Of The Legal Process,” the Polk County Sheriff’s Office said.
Dyck, 72, has been the subject of considerable reporting by the St. Petersburg Times. See story about Dyck’s alleged filing of “wild deeds” to cloud property titles here. See story here about a missing pickup truck that led to the issuance of the arrest warrant.
Three of Dyck’s associates, including a notary public, have landed in jail, the Times reports.
See August 2011 PP Blog story on an FBI report that asserts there is a “continued effort by Sovereign Citizen domestic extremists throughout the United States to perpetrate and train others in the use of debt elimination schemes.”
See July 2011 PP Blog report on a 25-year prison sentence handed down to Jeff McGrue, a Washington state man who targeted people “at the end of their rope” in a foreclosure-rescue scam.
See August 2011 PP Blog report about disciplinary actions against notaries public associated with AdSurfDaily figure Kenneth Wayne Leaming.
Leaming is a purported sovereign citizen whom records show once filed an involuntary bankruptcy petition against the Washington State Bar Association and a community hospital in Washington state.
BULLETIN:Thanh-Viet “Jeremy” Cao, the California Ponzi schemer and purported “sovereign citizen” who was sentenced in May to 30 years in federal prison for the Ponzi caper, now has been sentenced to an additional 41 months for a Nevada crime in which he filed false liens for hundreds of millions of dollars against government officials.
Under investigation by the U.S. Secret Service, the Justice Department, the SEC and the IRS, Cao reacted by filing 22 false liens against against “SEC attorneys, U.S. District Court Judges, U.S. District Court Magistrate Judges, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California, Assistant U.S. Attorneys, USSS special agents and special agents of the IRS,” the Justice Department said.
Cao pleaded guilty to six counts of filing false liens in which he listed the federal officials as “debtors,” prosecutors said.
It was not immediately clear if Cao’s sentence in the liens case will run concurrently or consecutively to the 30-year sentence in the Ponzi case. In May, U.S. Attorney Laura E. Duffy of the Southern District of California described Cao as a “financial predator.”
The Ponzi scheme sentence was among the longest in the history of Southern California, and investigators said Cao kept his victims in a state of terror by telling them he knew people who previously had “chopped up” a baby in front of the baby’s parents, and then killed the baby’s mother,” prosecutors said.
As part of his liens fraud, Cao developed a “hit list” in which he promised to obtain certain personal information of government offcials “so he could ruin them financially,” prosecutors said.
