10 ‘sovereign citizens’ face 320 felonies for $2B in fraudulent liens

By Brian Seay

Ten so-called “sovereign citizens” in East Tennessee face 320 felonies for filing a series of bogus liens against government officials over the last several years.
The ten men were indicted in February on charges of filing fraudulent liens and forgery, according to the Knoxville News Sentinel. The group filed more than $2 billion worth of claims against mayors, police officers, deputies, state troopers and other officials — a tactic sovereign citizens have used in the past.
Members of the group believe the U.S. government was replaced by an illegitimate government in the 1800’s. They believe they get to pick and choose which laws to abide by, and they often create their own forms of identification which they’ll offer to police as valid forms of ID. On several occasions, members of the group have had deadly run-ins with law enforcement, most recently in Baton Rouge in July 2016 when three officers were killed by a sovereign citizen. In 2011, the FBI issued a bulletin calling the group a domestic terrorist movement.
The arrests in Tennessee all started when one of the defendants, Lee Harold Cromwell, 67, was arrested for recklessly driving his pickup truck into a group of people in Oak Ridge, Tennessee on

Source: Guns.com