Report Profiles Suspected 'Paper Terrorist' Accused Of Claiming 'Sovereign Citizen' Status To Snatch Homes As Cops Fiddle; FBI Says 'Please Stop'

In Central Florida, the Sarasota Herald Tribune reports:

• On paper, Jacob-Franz Dyck is one of the largest property owners in Florida. More than 600 deeds have been filed in the name of trusts he controls in 17 counties, including eight in Sarasota and Manatee.



• But Dyck never paid a penny for those properties. A self-proclaimed "sovereign citizen" who believes that U.S. laws don't apply to him, the 72-year-old Dyck filed some deeds with the purported goal of helping people facing foreclosure remain in their homes. Others were to help evicted owners reclaim their property.

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• But Dyck -- a man stripped of his dental license in 1988 and imprisoned for six years for grand theft a decade later -- has alarmed law enforcement officials. They say he and members of his anti-government group are committing "paper terrorism" by clogging courts with an avalanche of almost unintelligible lawsuits and "wild deeds" that purport to protect property by placing it into "pure trusts" defended by "land patents."



• There is nothing illegal about the suits and deeds, lawyers and real estate experts say, but at least two title agencies have already sent out statewide warnings about Dyck's activities.



• Dyck himself acknowledges that he has been visited by an FBI agent, who warned him to stop attempting to mass-produce his activities.

For more, see Anti-government activist takes on foreclosures.

In a related story, see Economy boosts sovereign-citizen movement:

• Paper terrorism. That is what the FBI believes sovereign citizens like Jacob-Franz Dyck are committing when they file lengthy lawsuits loaded with non sequiturs and so-called wild deeds backed by supposedly all-powerful land patents on behalf of people facing foreclosure.