Guest Post by Mara Zebest
Imagine going out of town and returning home to discover someone used a loophole to fake deed ownership of your home, moved in, and changed all the locks. WLWT-TV reports one such story of an Ohio family suffering this outrageous crime when returning home after visiting and caring for a dying relative.
WLWT video below and more here:
NBC Chicago provides another video report along with the following:
Cook County Recorder of Deeds Karen Yarbrough was new to her job when she spotted the problem: people getting in line to file fraudulent property deeds and other documents at the county office. And not a thing Yarbrough and her staff could do about it.
By law, the Recorder’s office could not verify or authenticate documents — it could only file them for the constituents who pay the approximately $40 fee. And the shenanigans that can result from fraudulent filings often involve high-stakes items: homes.
“To steal a home, all you have to do is doctor some paperwork up and photoshop it, bring it to the recorder’s office, record it and voila — you own a home. And it happens, right here in this office,” Yarbrough said. “When I walked into this office, I knew this was happening … and I decided I couldn’t just sit idly by.”
Yarbrough launched a three-pronged attack: she petitioned the legislature for more power for her and other Recorders’ offices to be able to stop suspicious filings, she launched a free property alert system at cookrecorder.com, and brought in a national expert to teach her employees about the crime often referred to as “paper terrorism.”
“They’re bullies, they’re brazen, they think that nothing can touch them, they think they’re entitled to everything,” Mark Pitcavage of the Anti-Defamation League says of the sovereign citizens often behind this crime. Sovereign citizens are an extreme, anti-government faction known for tactics that include filing inordinate numbers of documents to intentionally overwhelm a government office.
“They’re bullies, they’re brazen, they think that nothing can touch them, they think they’re entitled to everything,” Mark Pitcavage of the Anti-Defamation League says of the sovereign citizens often behind this crime. Sovereign citizens are an extreme, anti-government faction known for tactics that include filing inordinate numbers of documents to intentionally overwhelm a government office.
Pitcavage defines paper terrorism as the use of bogus legal documents or the misuse of legal documents for the purpose of harassing, intimidating, and retaliating against anyone who has irritated a sovereign. “For example, I’m a sovereign citizen and I feel you have trespassed upon me in some way. I file a $25 million lien against your home and you can’t sell that home. Your title is clouded and you have to go to court, spend a lot of time, money and effort. That’s the essence of paper terrorism, using our open government as a weapon against the government and its citizens.” […]
Watch the Chicago video report and read more here.
A group known as ‘Sovereign Citizens’ are mentioned in both instances with additional information on the criminal behavior of ‘Sovereign Citizens’ here and here—the latter link mentions the group started thriving during the late 2000s. Hmmm, that’s weird… right around the same time Obama and ACORN started to build-up their regime power?
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