The fringe movement punishing officials with fake debt claims

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-07-30/fake-filings-real-consequences-how-paper-terrorism-is-burying-a-state-system-with-bogus-claims

by classichasclass • 12 months ago

18 6 12 months ago

latimes.com

kylebenzle• 12 months ago

Paywall, can't read it.

BewareTheYiga• 12 months ago

http://archive.today/BkIhU

jmclnx• 12 months ago

In California, it costs $5 to record a lien on the secretary of state’s website

Interesting article. But an easy fix. Raise the price to $100 or more. It is refundable if the lien is valid. If invalid, then maybe the person who filed the lien is punished some how.

lokar• 12 months ago

I don’t think that would stop them.

The basic design is bad. You should have to serve formal legal notice before you can file. And aggressively enforce criminal penalties for fraud.

lordnacho• 12 months ago

Doesn't matter if the goal is political. You can still end up with a hundred liens if a hundred people find it worthwhile to fraudulently claim.

I think you need a criminal record if you're found to be part of a liening brigade.

potato3732842• 12 months ago

Having dealt with both false (in error, not malicious, same process tho) debt and capricious bureaucrats myself I can't help but feel that it seems pretty fair that random citizens can subject these people to byzantine appeals process they are not familiar nor are more equal in the eyes of with basically zero guidance to help them out. That is basically what they do, within the letter of the law, to parties they don't like, and it's especially effective when they do it to individuals. I don't feel all that bad about individuals having an "F you" button they can press back.

The doxing aspect seems like very much an appeal to emotion nothing-burger or at most a case of penalties offsetting. Having just a name out there doesn't mean much, anyone can get an address if they have a name and a general area and age they're looking for so few public interacting officials's are unknown to anyone who they have interacted with who cares to look. They know this. The public knows this. I think the author is just trying to appeal to emotion.

When she [local official on whom a false claim had been made] contacted the secretary of state’s office, officials told her their hands were tied and “it would have to be handled through the court.”

Oh, man, the irony here. This is exactly what pretty much every local bureaucrat says (not that they're wrong, it's how the processes typically work) after denying this or that. You can apply for something, get denied, typically appeal to some board and if you're not a big business interest probably get denied or incur so much expense it's not worth it and then your recourse is court where you'll once again incur so much expense it's not worth it.

All that said, I googled the person named as offering this class and their website makes the classes seem like a scam to lighten the pockets of sov-cits, so I'm not confident this actually works if your goal is to get an uncooperative bureaucrat to do their job properly vs just be annoying to them. I suppose I would've heard about this before if it was "legit" rather than quackery floating around sov-cit circles.

The fringe movement punishing officials with fake debt claims

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