Silly Petition or Federal Fraud? The 10th Circuit Will Decide

DENVER (CN) – A man con­victed of ask­ing the U.S. Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture to pay his debts enter­tained an incred­u­lous 10th Cir­cuit panel Thursday.

Last May, Gun­ther Glaub was found guilty of mak­ing false claims after he sub­mit­ted $1.7 mil­lion in debts to the USDA, includ­ing $73,000 for a Corvette, $65,000 for a Camaro bill, and a stu­dent loan owed to the U.S. Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion. Glaub included a note with the debts, politely ask­ing the USDA to set­tle his debts.

While he faced a hefty prison sen­tence, Glaub was even­tu­ally fined $500, given five years’ pro­ba­tion and ordered to do 100 hours of com­mu­nity service.

In its Feb­ru­ary 2017 press release, the Depart­ment of Jus­tice hyper­bolized Glaub’s crime as an attempt “to use stolen gov­ern­ment money to buy expen­sive cars and pay stu­dent loans.”

The FBI report­edly believed that Glaub was a mem­ber of the Sov­er­eign Cit­i­zens – a broad term for indi­vid­u­als who deny the legit­i­macy of the U.S. gov­ern­ment and acknowl­edge only com­mon law.

On its web­site, the FBI lists Sov­er­eign Cit­i­zens as a domes­tic ter­ror­ist move­ment that causes “all kinds of prob­lems – and crimes. For exam­ple, many sov­er­eign cit­i­zens don’t pay their taxes. They hold ille­gal courts that issue war­rants for judges and police offi­cers. They clog up the court sys­tem with friv­o­lous law­suits and liens against pub­lic offi­cials to harass them.”

The FBI labels such acts as “paper terrorism.”

Sov­er­eign Cit­i­zens believe there is a loop­hole in the sys­tem that allows the fed­eral gov­ern­ment to set­tle indi­vid­u­als’ pri­vate debts.

Glaub’s attor­neys later clar­i­fied that he never took the stand and never tes­ti­fied to being a mem­ber of the Sov­er­eign Cit­i­zens movement.

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