Lien Slappers

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Sovereign Citizens love this tactic

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What are they looking to gain from it? Never heard of this before.

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What are they looking to gain from it?

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Just a way to frick with people (usually associated with the state, like judges or prosecutors).

NPR Article from 2013

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The New York Times reported last week on the practice of placing bogus liens against the property of government officials. It's a tactic of self-styled sovereign citizens, people who deny the legitimacy of the federal government. They take advantage of laws, both real estate laws and also the Uniform Commercial Code, that make it easy to file liens even if they're phony. Why do they do it? Well, because a lien can ruin your credit rating, and removing one, even a phony lien, can take countless hours in court and cost thousands of dollars.

The problem is big enough to have led the National Association of Secretaries of State to issue a report on it earlier this year and to recommend reforms. John Gale is the secretary of state of Nebraska, and he says these phony liens have become a persistent problem.

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SIEGEL: But if somebody places a lien on another person under the Uniform Commercial Code, do they have to present documents that authenticate the claim and show that this is legitimate and that that person owes them money?

GALE: Unfortunately, it's been a fairly simple system up until recent years. By and large, the law required us to be simply ministerial and to file everything that came before us, and most states did up until recent years. Now, we have 16 states that are starting to attack the problem, but it just opened the floodgate to people who had some vengeful motive. It, of course, was - has been highly abused. And that...

SIEGEL: But, Secretary Gale, do I understand this, that if I were - if I wanted to harass some public official and went in and filed a lien against their property, there'd be no greater burden on my part to place a lien of $5 million than to place a lien of $50,000?

GALE: That's correct, Robert. That's the way it's been interpreted in many, many states over the last 20 years is that the filing officer has no discretion, even though it's clear that the names of the debtors are federal judges, U.S. marshals, local sheriffs, even though they know that. If the - if all the blanks are filled in properly on that simple form, it gets filed.

And up until now, the burden has been totally on the victim to seek out a proper recourse, which is obviously going to court and trying to get that lien declared as void and invalid. Well, that could cost you $10- or $20,000 or more and maybe two to three years of litigation to get that accomplished. So it's an extreme burden.

We've even found that a number of these liens come from prisons around the country, that the prisoners want to file these liens against the judges or the lawyers or maybe even the witnesses against them just to be a bully, just in order to seek some sense of revenge against people who they think wronged them.

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Also, some are via the UCC and this is the bible for sov cits, so it may have some esoteric value like their typical shitty arguments.

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While going through a HELOC application, it is discovered I have two liens filed against my property. I have a very common name ie. John Smith. These are judgements. Can you just go slapping liens on any property owned by a person with the same name as who your judgement is against? The state is Georgia.

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You probably have the same name as some kind of debt collector, state tax agent, or federal tax agent. These crazies will just file a lien in response to what they deem as illegal collection action (hey... they filed a UCC n' all) and you got caught in the crossfire.

Fricking with my property is a personal big issue in my realm. If this happened to me, I'd come at them with every civil action available that is at least a stretch. And yes I'd spend the cash to possibly collect nothing from some poor dumbass. But I'd get the point across.

I’m in the title business. What I said above is the most probable thing that has happened. Not a big deal and happens all of the time. The title attorney just clears the liens by verifying you aren’t the John Smith that has the lien and moves on.

blame your mother for deciding to name you "John Smith". I would never forgive her.

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The title attorney just clears the liens by verifying you aren’t the John Smith that has the lien and moves on.

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How long does that usually take?

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How long does that usually take?

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Are you closing at an attorney/title company or at your bank that is doing the HELOC for you? If you are dealing directly with the attorney/title company than it shouldn't be a very lengthy ordeal. They just need your ssn/dob and they will verify the John Smith with the judgments isn't you. That usually entails them reaching out to the attorney that filed the suit against the other John Smith and verifying who they actually sued is not you.

If you are closing at your bank then you are probably going through them to the attorney doing the title abstract for them so not sure how much your lender would jam up the process because they probably don't understand how it works either, to be honest. Maybe see if your lender can get you in touch with the attorney directly and give them your info to speed this up if you are closing at the bank.

Post Dispatch did an article about it in 2024 because some assholes were going around St Louis filing bullshite liens: stltoday.com

The liens aren’t necessarily against your property. When the title search and all of that was done, they found liens with a defendant that has the same first and last name as you. Whoever is doing the closing of the loan just has to verify that the judgements aren’t against you.