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Tag: Thanh Viet Jeremy Cao

  • 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.

  • BULLETIN: Thanh Viet Jeremy Cao Pleads Guilty In False Liens Case; Ponzi Schemer Admits He Filed 22 Bogus Claims For Hundreds Of Millions Of Dollars Against Public Officials

    BULLETIN: Thanh Viet Jeremy Cao, the California Ponzi schemer sentenced last month to 30 years in federal prison and ordered to pay $12.4 million in restitution, has pleaded guilty in a separate fraud case.

    Federal prosecutors in Nevada alleged last year that Cao filed nearly two dozen bogus liens against SEC attorneys, federal judges, federal magistrate judges, a U.S. Attorney, assistant U.S. Attorneys, U.S. Secret Service special agents and special agents of the IRS.

    In an agreement with prosecutors, Cao pleaded guilty today to six counts of filing false liens against public officials. He admitted he filed 22 false liens in all, the Justice Department, the IRS and the Office of the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration said.

    The bizarre Cao saga began in 2007, when the SEC named him a defendant in a fraud lawsuit. At the time, Cao also was under criminal investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California and the Secret Service for the same fraud scheme — and by the IRS for a tax scheme.

    Cao went on a lien-filing spree in retaliation for the various investigations, claiming in Nevada that various public officials were “debtors” who owed him sums ranging from $25 million to $300 million, according to records.

    Sentencing in the false-liens case is scheduled for Sept. 21 in Las Vegas.

    Cao’s 30-year prison sentence in the Ponzi case was one of the longest sentences in the history of federal white-collar prosecutions in Southern California.

    To keep victims in a state of terror, Cao said 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.

    Those threats led to an extortion and firearms case brought by the state of California.

    And Cao dialed up the terror by referencing an “assassination” and “fatal car accident.” When he was arrested, “he possessed a loaded firearm, and body armor and other firearms were found at his residence,” prosecutors said.

  • UPDATE: Thanh-Viet ‘Jeremy’ Cao’s 30-Year Ponzi Sentence One Of Longest In Southern California History; Feds Say He Told Story About A ‘Chopped Up’ Infant And Threatened Victims With ‘Extreme Violence’

    Thanh-Viet “Jeremy” Cao, the California Ponzi schemer later accused in Nevada of filing fraudulent liens for enormous sums against public officials and identified by the Anti-Defamation League as a “sovereign citizen,” once threatened to torture and kill his business partner and the partner’s wife and family, federal prosecutors said.

    To keep victims in a state of terror, Cao said 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.

    Those threats led to an extortion and firearms case brought by the state of California.

    And Cao dialed up the terror by referencing an “assassination” and “fatal car accident.” When he was arrested, “he possessed a loaded firearm, and body armor and other firearms were found at his residence,” prosecutors said.

    Cao, who was convicted in the state-level extortion case in 2009, was convicted Monday in the federal Ponzi case, which was brought after an investigation by the U.S. Secret Service. He was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Larry A. Burns to 30 years in prison and ordered to pay victims $12.4 million in restitution. He is scheduled to stand trial in the false-liens case later this year.

    Victims in the liens case included four federal judges, staff members of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California and employees of the SEC, the Secret Service and the IRS, federal prosecutors in Nevada said year.

    The IRS Criminal Investigations unit brought the Nevada case, prosecutors said.

    Cao filed at least 22 fraudulent liens for astronomical sums, according to records. He turned to filing bogus financial claims after law enforcement, acting with the authority of a court order in the California Ponzi case, seized a $200,000 Bentley Cao had acquired with investor funds and sought to equip with armor.

    “Cao is a financial predator who will stop at nothing to cheat his victims out of their life savings,” said U.S. Attorney Laura E. Duffy of the Southern District of California.

    “He continues to show no remorse for his actions, which destroyed the finances of many innocent and hardworking people,” Duffy said. “When law enforcement and the federal judiciary stepped in to stop this fraud, Cao retaliated by trying to ruin their finances through the filing of false liens. The sentence in this [Ponzi] case demonstrates how dangerous predators like Cao can be.”

    A veteran Secret Service agent said bids to injure victims and the U.S. financial system would not be tolerated.

    “The U.S. Secret Service has more than 140 years of experience in investigating criminals like Cao, who target the stability of this country’s financial systems and prey on innocent victims,” said Gregory J. Meyer, special agent in charge.

    Cao faces a maximum sentence of 223 years if convicted of all counts in the false-liens case. He was indicted by a federal grand jury in Las Vegas in July 2010.

    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.

    He also filed for bogus tax refunds, according to records.

    Cao’s purported business career was one marked by “cheating” that got him fired from his job for “fraud and misconduct,” prosecutors said, describing him as a “career criminal.”

    “When victims asked Cao what happened to their investments, Cao taunted them with profanity,” prosecutors said. “Cao’s victims lost their life savings, retirement funds, and their homes.”

    About 190 victims were affected in the Ponzi scheme, prosecutors said, describing his 30-year sentence as one of the longest in a white-collar case in the history of Southern California.

  • URGENT >> BULLETIN >> MOVING: Thanh-Viet ‘Jeremy’ Cao Sentenced To 30 Years In Federal Prison; Ponzi Schemer Also Filed False Liens Against Federal Officials, Prosecutors Said

    BULLETIN: Convicted Ponzi schemer Thanh-Viet “Jeremy” Cao, who also was accused of filing false liens against federal officials and has been linked to the “sovereign citizen” movement by the Anti-Defamation League, has been sentenced to 30 years in prison in the Ponzi case.

    Cao was convicted in December 2010. The U.S. Secret Service and the IRS handled the probe.

    In July 2010, Cao was charged criminally with filing false liens for tens of millions of dollars against federal officials. He also was accused of filing for a false tax refund for the astronomical sum of $82 billion.

    See KFMB website story on Cao’s sentencing in the Ponzi case.

  • BULLETIN: Another ‘False Liens’ Case; Andrew Isaac Chance Charged With Filing $1.3 Billion Bogus Claim Against Federal Prosecutor In Maryland

    BULLETIN: A Maryland man has been indicted and arrested on charges of filing a false lien for more than $1.3 billion against a federal prosecutor who had successfully prosecuted him for filing a bogus income-tax return in 2007.

    Andrew Isaac Chance also has been charged with filing false tax returns for an entity known as “Andrew I. Chance Trust” in 2007, 2008 and 2009. He faces up to 25 years in prison and a fine of up to $1 million if convicted on the new charges.

    In 2007, Chance was sentenced to 27 months in federal prison for filing a false tax claim for an entity known as “ANDREW CHANCE TRUST.” Chance sought a refund of $306,753 in that case, and refunds of $300,000 for each of the three years cited in the new case, prosecutors said.

    He is currently on federal probation — and now faces the new charges.

    Prosecutors said he placed a false lien of “$1.313 billion against the property” of the federal prosecutor in the earlier case. The prosecutor was an assistant U.S. Attorney, according to the U.S. Department of Justice and the IRS.

    A federal grand jury in Greenbelt, Md., returned the new indictments, the Justice Department and the IRS said.

    Bizarre paperwork attacks against prosecutors and other federal employees have occurred elsewhere in the United States. In July, a California man was indicted in Nevada on charges of filing 22 false liens ranging from $25 million to $300 million against the officials, prosecutors said.

    Thanh Viet Jeremy Cao also sought $20 billion in fraudulent tax refunds, prosecutors charged.

    In June, Ronald James Davenport of Deer Park, Wash., was charged with filing false liens against federal officials in Washington state.

    Davenport, who described himself as a “sovereign” being, sought the spectacular sum of nearly $5.2 billion from each of the officials, including U.S. Attorney James McDevitt of the Eastern District of Washington, an assistant U.S. attorney, a court clerk and an IRS agent, according to court records.

    Prosecutors in the Chance case in Maryland described him as a “tax defier.”

    Members of the AdSurfDaily autosurf — an alleged Ponzi scheme — have been associated with schemes to file liens or threats to file liens against judges, prosecutors and members of law enforcement.

    Some ASD members have described themselves as “sovereign” beings. Elsewhere, the three principal figures in the “3 Hebrew Boys” Ponzi case in South Carolina also described themselves as sovereign.

    The sentences handed out to the “3 Hebrew Boys” defendants were the longest in any federal Ponzi scheme case in South Carolina history, prosecutors said earlier this week. The sentences totaled 84 years — 27 years each for two defendants, and 30 years for a third.

  • UPDATE: California Man Who Allegedly Filed ‘False Liens’ In Bizarre Paperwork Attack Against Law Enforcement Claimed IRS Owed Him $82 Billion

    A California man accused of filing “false liens” against public officials in pursuit of their duties also filed a “bogus” tax-refund claim with the IRS for the preposterous sum of $82 billion, federal prosecutors said.

    Thanh Viet Jeremy Cao and his business, Phoenix Financial Management Group, now have been permanently barred by a federal judge from preparing federal tax returns.

    Cao was found in a civil case to have “prepared numerous federal tax returns” for clients, “claiming a total of over $200 million in tax refunds based on false representations of tax withholdings,” prosecutors said.

    He filed for a bogus refund of $82 billion “on his own 2009 income tax return,” prosecutors said.

    The scheme centered on a “frivolous” theory that the U.S. government established “secret” Treasury Department accounts for citizens in the 1930s and that citizens can “draw” on the accounts to pay their taxes and other debts. The theories sometimes are known as “redemption” or “straw man.”

    One part of the bogus theory holds that the “secret” accounts contain enough money to make every American a millionaire and that the accounts can be tapped to satisfy debts, including tax debts. Another part of the theory holds that the secret money can be accessed by filing tax forms, including Form 1099-OID, which is why the fraud also sometimes is referred to as an “OID redemption” scheme

    Cao is required to provide the government with a list of people for whom he has prepared tax returns since Jan. 1, 2005, and notify those people of the court’s order, prosecutors said.

    A criminal prosecution against Cao is proceeding on a separate track.

    See earlier story on Cao’s alleged “false liens” scheme.

  • BULLETIN: Another ‘False Liens’ Case Alleged; Feds Charge Thanh Viet Jeremy Cao With Targeting Federal Judges, SEC, IRS, Secret Service And Prosecutors In Paperwork Scheme

    BULLETIN: Yet-another bizarre paperwork attack on U.S. law enforcement has occurred.

    A California man has been charged with filing “false liens” in Nevada against federal officials and employees of the SEC, the Secret Service, the IRS, four federal judges and staff members of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California, federal prosecutors said.

    Thanh Viet Jeremy Cao was indicted by a federal grand jury in Las Vegas on charges of filing 22 false liens ranging from $25 million to $300 million against the officials, prosecutors said.

    He also sought $20 billion in fraudulent tax refunds, prosecutors charged.

    Cao resides in Orange County, Calif. If convicted on all counts, he faces up to 223 years in prison and a fine of up to $5.75 million.

    “Cao corruptly obstructed the administration of the federal tax laws, by, among other things, filing retaliatory false liens against IRS employees, filing and attempting to file with the IRS false Forms 1099-OID (Original Issue Discount) that claimed fictitious income tax withholdings, filing and attempting to file false tax returns that claim fraudulent refunds totaling approximately $20 billion, and preparing at least five false tax returns for third parties that claimed fraudulent income tax refunds totaling in excess of $1.1 million based upon fictitious income tax withholdings,” prosecutors said.

    In June, Ronald James Davenport of Deer Park, Wash., was charged with filing false liens against federal officials in Washington state.

    Davenport sought the spectacular sum of nearly $5.2 billion from each of the officials, including U.S. Attorney James McDevitt of the Eastern District of Washington, an assistant U.S. attorney, a court clerk and an IRS agent, according to court records.

    Prosecutors described Davenport as a “tax defier.” Davenport has described himself in court filings as a “sovereign.”

    Some members of the alleged AdSurfDaily autosurf Ponzi scheme and other HYIP schemes have been linked to tax-deniers and the so-called “sovereign” movement.

    See earlier story that references the Davenport action. (The story also provides some background on court filings and other actions by ASD members.)

    In a civil case that preceded the criminal indictment against Davenport, Senior U.S. District Judge Justin L. Quackenbush ruled in May that the liens “were filed to retaliate against the officers for their good-faith efforts to enforce the tax laws against Mr. Davenport.”

    Quackenbush struck the liens, which were filed in the form of UCC Financing Statements with the Washington State Department of Licensing, according to records. The liens not only were fraudulent, but also contained “sensitive personal information” that violated privacy laws, the judge ruled.

    Davenport also filed instruments dubbed “Notice[s] of Claim of Maritime Lien” with the Spokane County Auditor’s Office, according to records. Those, too, were struck.

    The act of filing false liens or sending “demand” letters to officials or litigation opponents in a bid to hamstring civil and criminal prosecutions has been referred to as “paper terrorism” and “mailbox arbitration.”