Leading sovereign citizen guru convicted for fictitious financial instruments

[jmowreader]

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/oregon-promoter-convicted-making-passing-and-sending-bogus-financial-instruments-us-treasury

Winston Shrout of Hillsboro, Oregon, is one of the biggest name-brand sovereign citizens. His schtick was to issue, or to have his followers issue, homemade "International Bills of Exchange" to use to pay their debts with. One of his greatest hits was to send to a small Chicago bank a package containing a thousand of them, each purportedly worth $1 trillion, in hopes a low-level banker would accidentally process it into the system.

Last week, he was convicted on 13 felony counts of issuing massive International Bills of Exchange
(at this point things devolve into a bad vaudeville routine:
"How massive were they?"
"They were so massive that cashing out all thirteen would have required all the money in the world!"
...and on that I am not joking - the Global Domestic Product, which is the sum total of all the money in the world, is $5 trilliion LESS than Shrout's thirteen IBoEs.)
plus one misdemeanor count of not filing tax returns for twenty years.

In August he'll be sentenced, and the mandatory minimums are 25 years for each count of passing bad paper and one year for not filing his taxes. (He was not charged with the other tax-related crime - not only didn't he FILE for twenty years, he didn't PAY either.)

[Warren DeMontague]

1. Long ago I worked in a video store, back when such things existed

and once one of these "sovereign citizen" yarblockos came in and tried to sign up for an account to rent Mighty Ducks III or Rocco Gets Funky Gunk on His Junk or some shit....


Yarblocko: "I'd like to set up an account"

Warren: "Sure. We need a drivers license and a credit card"

Yarblocko: "I don't need to give you a credit card. But here's my ....drivers license!"

Warren: "Sorry, we do need a credit card, and that isn't a driver's license, that is some bullshit you printed out at home on a dot matrix printer"

[snooper2]

7. See how far you can make it into this video LOL

Lady be nuts


Winston Shrout: Take Legal Ownership of Your Body Now! Your Body IS Real Estate! November 17, 2015

[Lee-Lee]

2. Excellent. These types are the lowest of the low

They manipulate people and the system with no other intent than to exploit all they can while claiming they are not part of the same system they are manipulating.

I've had friends who came close to suicide thanks to these scumbags filing false liens on their property.

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. 25 years is the statutory *maximum*, not the "mandatory minimum"

Sentencing is scheduled for Aug. 1. Shrout faces a statutory maximum sentence of 25 years in prison for each count of making a fake financial instrument and one year in prison for each count of failing to file a tax return. He also faces a period of supervised release, restitution and monetary penalties.

I'm glad it's not a 25 year minimum. It doesn't actually say if anyone was fooled by these 'financial instruments', apart from the gullible people who paid for his seminar hoping to make their own fake money. If no-one accepted them, then 25 years would be a draconian sentence.

[snooper2]

5. No, this stupid fuck needs 25 years

or at least 15, he probably doesn't have more than that left. These sovereign citizen assholes need to be stamped out.


They give rise to more fucking idiots like the Bundy fuckers or even worse, the father son assholes that murdered a cop a few years ago during a traffic stop.

Listen to how these dumb yuks laugh, think they are smart and cute LOL. Enjoy laughing in prison beeyatch!


WinstonShrout

[Mendocino]

4. I was selling a car.

This guy who was either SC or Oathkeeper maybe both, offered a good price. He then wanted to pay me with something like in the OP, International Monetary Notes or some such nonsense. He was also reluctant about registering at the BMV and paying the sales tax. I had to tell him no deal, he wasn't pleasant about it. I was truly worried about him retaliating in some way.

[jmowreader]

8. Good call

BMV...you're in Indiana?

How these notes are said to work: Thanks to House Joint Resolution 192, which took the US off the gold standard, the government started backing its money with the lives of its citizens. When a baby is berthed* the government sells the berth certificate on the stock market for a sum ranging from $640,000 to $100 billion. If you file a certain set of documents with your county clerk, you can separate your Flesh and Blood Man from your Strawman and access all that money for yourself. Naturally, this is the biggest secret in the universe and not even government employees know about it, which is why it'll cost you $3000 to become truly free.

* Sovereign citizens think all written law is Maritime Admiralty Law that isn't valid anywhere on land - hence the term "freeman on the land" that U.K., Canadian and Australian sovereign citizens prefer.

How they really work: Well...let's put it this way: if the government couldn't keep the Pentagon Papers, the KH-11 spy satellite, the Prism program and the blueprints for the atomic bomb secret, how in hell are they keeping something this explosive a secret? And my four examples are genuine secrets. The only thing paying a hustler $3000 for this information is going to free you of is your $3000. Actually using this information will probably land you in the slammer.

[Mendocino]

9. Ohio

Wowsa ! Up to $100 billion for $3k fee, show me where to sign up! Does that include snakeoil?

[jmowreader]

10. Snake oil is extra

The history of snake oil is actually kinda interesting:

The people who built the transcontinental railway indentured thousands of Chinese laborers to do the work, and the laborers brought their traditional medicines - including an oil rendered from the fat of water snakes. (I don't know why they thought of rendering snake fat. I didn't even know snakes HAD fat!) This oil contains fatty acids with very strong analgesic and antiinflammatory properties - which means if you rub it on your aching muscles they'll stop aching, at least for a while.

The Chinese, being generally nice people, gave some of their snake oil to Americans to make their sore muscles feel better - which is all it can do. Word got around the Chinese had a magic oil that would cure anything and the scammers started making fake snake oil from hot peppers and turpentine (which relieves muscle pain well and is sold today...but they call it "capsaicin liniment" as it contains no snake products) fake snake oil that didn't do shit, or real snake oil extracted from rattlesnakes that also didn't do shit. If you want real Chinese snake oil, you should be able to get it at an Oriental grocery store.

[Initech]

6. I'd love to see John Oliver do a long piece on sovereign citizens.

That would be epic.