Sovereign citizens are a diverse group of individuals whose activities and motives vary, but whose core tenets are the typically the same. They view United States citizenship, established government, authority and institutions as illegitimate and consider themselves immune from and therefore above the law.
In what may be the largest joint prosecution of sovereign citizens, authorities are bringing a 320-count criminal indictment against 10 of the antigovernment activists just arrested after a year-long investigation in Tennessee.
Christopher Byrne, a felon and self-proclaimed sovereign citizen — was indicted by a federal court on March 8, 2017 He is charged with illegally possessing weapons and ammunition, which police discovered when they pulled him over in a mall parking lot in Greenwood, Indiana.
Antigovernment “sovereign citizens” attempting to fraudulently gain possession of abandoned houses is nothing new. But taking over a restaurant? Well, that’s new to the menu of tactics.
A self-proclaimed “sovereign citizen,” who was tried in absentia because he refused to cooperate in state court, has been found guilty by a Pennsylvania jury of murdering his 5-week-old daughter.
Michigan State Police fatally shot a man who claimed to be an antigovernment “sovereign citizen” late last week after he sped away from a traffic stop, authorities report.
A vigilante anti-immigrant group called the Borderkeepers of Alabama is sending teams of men clad in camouflage and equipped with thousands of dollars in military weaponry to patrol for undocumented immigrants in Arizona and New Mexico.
An Alabama judge has sentenced a 74-year-old sovereign citizen to 20 years in prison after a jury found him guilty of extortion related to a “get-rich-quick” scheme based on a bogus claim that a bank owed him $10 billion.
The man who killed three Baton Rouge police officers over the weekend was a member of a black antigovernment “sovereign citizen” group whose members believe they are indigenous to the United States and beyond the reach of the federal government.
A sovereign citizen who engaged in “paper terrorism” by filing bogus commercial liens and attempting to extort millions from his former employers and government officials has been found guilty in New Orleans of 30 counts of mail fraud.
