"Sovereign Squatter" Movement Running Bogus "Home Adoption" Rackets By Using Phony Deed Filings Spreading Around Country?

In Polson, Montana, the Missoulian reports on the so-called "home adoption" racket being run by self-proclaimed "sovereign squatters" that recently hit locally and is apparently hitting other spots around the country:

• What’s occurred in Montana is evidently more prevalent elsewhere. In California, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center ["SPLC"], “sovereign squatters” are filing bogus deeds on luxury homes from San Diego to Sacramento. They’ve even got a name for it – “home adoptions.”

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• “Sovereign squatters” justify their actions, according to the SPLC’s quarterly Intelligence Report, “with a mix of ‘common law’ theory, so-called sovereign immunity and references to the Old Testament.” The most brazen attempt at a property takeover by the sovereign citizen movement may have occurred last year in a Miami suburb. There, one Angel Cruz showed up with 20 black-clad followers and 10 hired – and armed – security guards, to take over a strip mall branch of the Bank of America.

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• Wearing counterfeit U.S. Treasury badges, according to a story by Casey Sanchez in the SPLC’s Intelligence Report, the 30 blocked the bank’s entrance, parking lot and drive-through lanes. Cruz apparently believed what he was doing was legitimate. A week earlier, Sanchez reported, the 49-year-old had stopped by the Palmetto Bay Police Department and asked that officers back him up during his “eviction” of the Bank of America.

• “To an incredulous police officer,” SPLC’s Intelligence Report said, “Cruz handed over a ‘court order’ signed and sealed by a ‘judge’ from ‘The United Cities Private Court’” – United Cities being a company Cruz started.

For more, see 'Home adoptions' in Lolo, Polson: Sovereign squatters a national movement.